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My weekly analytics Dashboards
I rarely log on to Google Analytics to check how this blog is doing. It would be good to know popular posts, monthly unique visits, bounce rate and time on site. Better, it would be great to have these emailed to me on a weekly basis so I can just check it off the iPhone. Since I use the new version of Google Analytics I came across custom Dashboards widgets that was released in early 2011.
From the Google Analytics Blog
Dashboards in the new version of Google Analytics have been redesigned to be completely widget-based and highly customizable. There are four types of widgets: Metric, Pie Chart, Timeline, and Table. This gives you the ability to choose the visualization that best suits the data you want in your dashboard. The Dashboard uses a three-column layout, and you can customize the layout by dragging and dropping the widgets as you’d like.
So, for this blog I quickly setup a “Snapshot Dashboard” with the most important KPI’s that I want to track.
Then I decided to follow the same method for DeskAway. I went ahead and setup the following Dashboards that email me every Monday. I have taken into account Goals (everytime someone signs up on DeskAway) for each of these Dashboards so I know whether organic is working better than PPC etc. I do have email notifications setup within the old Analytics account but this is far far better.
- General Dashboard
- SEO Dashboard
- PPC Dashboard
- Social Dashboard
- Usability Dashboard
Here are a few sites that helped me setup Dashboards for all my sites…
- http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/dashboard-widgets-on-google-analytics.html
- http://analytics-review.com/google-analytics-dashboard-widgets/
- http://www.newepicmedia.com/analytics/google-analytics-dashboard/
- http://www.seobook.com/setting-actionable-seo-dashboards-new-google-analytics
Every startup must set these up today and get a pulse of what is happening on their site.
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You win some, you lose some. Common reasons for churn in a SaaS business.
You work rigorously at getting your product shipped and aquiring customers. Then, after a month, all of a sudden you start seeing cancellations. This is one of the most frustrating parts of running a SaaS business. To add to the wound you don’t know why people cancel; UNLESS you ask them.We recently did a compilation of all the reasons why customers cancel their subscription for our app DeskAway. It is heartbreaking to see them go but that’s how life is - you win some, you lose some.
(in random order)
Lack of featuresOne of the biggest drawbacks is that there is no task dependency. Our projects are complex and we are used to this.
This is one of the most common reason why people cancel. People want stuff that you don’t have. They subscribed thinking you may develop the feature but quit if they don’t see it happen. I have learnt that you can’t please everyone when running a SaaS business. I do believe in a feature-rich app (less is always less, more is great) but adding features (just to please customers) that don’t gel with the vision of your app is a strict no-no.
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” - Bill Cosby
Lack of adoptionIt did not seem prudent to continue to spend money on something that was not being used. There was a very slow adoption rate on our side and we should have pushed more. We may revisit your product in the future.
This is common with collaborative apps - when you need a commitment to use from everyone in the team. I feel this has been the biggest challenge. Teams that use project management tools (as opposed to the ones that are satisfied with collaborating over email) have a different attitude and understanding towards using a system-driven approach to getting work done. They care about being on top of their work and having a transparent and smooth workflow.
I want a swiss-army knifeIt’s great for project management; but I also need customer management. If it was more widget/gadget based, it may have met our needs.
This somewhat ties in with the lack of features point above. People pay for the app but realize that they want CRM, Email Marketing and a gazzilion other things. There is nothing you can do here but to wish them good luck cause they are definitely not your target audience (unless if you plan to bloat your app).
Closing down the companyWe cancelled because we are moving towards closing down the company and I was very happy with your product. We used it all the time.
Absolutely nothing that you can do here. Hope that everyone using your tool starts their own venture (or join other companies) and yours is the solution they choose to use.
Using a competitor’s productWe are now using INSERT COMPETITOR that is free. It offers very little support in providing multiple project / team management, but my it fits very well into my teams ideas of what an individual task management app should do. So through diplomatic process, we’ve been using it and I’ve been supplementing it with other apps. I researched A LOT of project management apps out there and was happy with my choice to initially choose DeskAway.
Most people jump ship if they see something that is free. That is ok and we are completly fine with that. In this world you get what you pay for.
What we were working on is ‘frozen’It has nothing to do with your service, the project is frozen so currently I do not use it.
Perfectly fine. We have seen people restart their subscriptions once their projects get a go-ahead.
Budget CutsI liked your product/service. It’s just really tight right now and I had to make cuts.
We started out thinking that with such a low price-point there is no way companies will find us expensive. However, when you are talking about tiny teams of 2–5 people even $25 a month is an accountable monthly expense. Allow these teams to downgrade to a free plan and still use the app.
The app evangelist left the company“It was simply that as a group we were not using it. This was not due to the lack of the deskaway project but more changes in our operational procedures.”
There are some companies that have one designated person that acts as a project manager and drives the adoption of the app within the teams. When he is gone things come falling apart.
I am paying for trying itYes, we have had people who would pay for the app even though we have a free 30-day trial. They would discontinue if it did not fit their needs for the above reasons.
Are there other reasons why people discontinue from your service? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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Why the Summify shutdown pissed me off?
Before I left on my trip last week TechCrunch reported that Summify announced that it was being bought by Twitter. I had started using Summify for a few weeks now and it was my goto place in the mornings to catch up on popular news. Earlier, I used to weed through my Twitter feed but having a service that filters and curates content is wonderful. So, while going through the TechCrunch story I started thinking…Wow, that is awesome for the founders and the VCs that have invested in the company.
If Twitter can use the Summify engine and build the service into Twitter then that would be fantastic.
I read some more and noticed…
This sounds like a talent acquisition on Twitter’s part — in other words, the main purpose of the acquisition was probably hiring the Summify team. Some of Summify’s feature have been immediately disabled, it’s no longer accepting new users, and in a few weeks, Summify says it will shut down the current product entirely. Meanwhile, the startup will be moving from Vancouver to San Francisco to work out of the Twitter office.
My reaction was - damn, these guys sold out to Twitter and don’t care about their users. Something here was not right. Sure, if Summify went belly up then the service would be shut down. But, willingly killing the service is not cool.
This got me thinking about what we would do if someone wanted to buy out DeskAway. If DeskAway is getting a bigger, better home then why not. If they are going to kill the app then a big NO NO. If they are going to pay me to kill the app - then even a bigger NO NO. That would be complete injustice to our users who rely on the service each day.
Luckily, we are not investor-backed (by choice) and do not have the pressure to sell or go IPO. Definitely, not at the cost of our current users.
If Twitter bakes Summify into its service then this acquisition makes a lot of sense. Until then I am going to check out News.me.
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Why DeskAway Chucked the Rolodex
This article originally appeared on StartupCentral.in
In the second half of 2007, I would wake up every morning and immediately check our DeskAway dashboard to see if anyone had signed up. People were signing up in a trickle. We were getting a measly 3-5 sign-ups a week, probably because we had added the the site to directories or maybe a friend told a friend who told a friend. None of these were converting to customers.
This happened for the first five months. It was frustrating and emotionally draining, especially since we had zero cash flow (the services part of our business had been phased out earlier that year).
I had contacted the CEOs and founders of popular advertising agencies in Mumbai and spoken to them about how DeskAway could add value to their teams and business. They liked the idea but they didn’t get why they should be ‘subscribing’ to an online software and storing their project data online. Others told me that they were happy using email and didn’t want to adopt a new tool even if it made them more efficient and system-driven. They would call me for a demo, then yet another demo (because some manager didn’t make it to the first demo) and then another meeting to negotiate cost.
I thought to myself – “this is not the way SaaS (software-as-a-service) is sold, especially since our price points were low. The sales process needs to be online and completely frictionless. We wouldn’t be able to scale if we did this for thousands of businesses and ramping up would be a slow process. Going door to door is just not going to cut it.” I ignored my Rolodex of decision makers and moved on to the anonymous users on the web. This business was is not about who you know but how many people know you. I learnt that in order to sell online software I needed to be there when companies were looking to find me. Selling SaaS offline and especially in India (at that time) was futile and a complete waste of my time.
We were burning cash (from our service business) faster than we thought. Salaries were increasing and finding developers to work on a product with zero customers was a challenge in itself. I had to paint a picture of how the future would look and hope they understood. In hindsight, this was a good filter to have. Most importantly, my family agreed with my thoughts and were very supportive of me which is a huge help when you are steering on your own.
I also experienced a new low in my entrepreneurial career. We had a product, a team but no customers. Fortunately, this was when I got to know myself better because I felt many things that I never felt before. Deep down I knew that I needed to continue building the product. I kept telling myself that if we do the right things then things will eventually fall into place. I was living on hope. Abandoning ship was never an option but I had to prove it to myself, my team and people who never believed in us to succeed. I wanted to show the pessimists that we could build a global SaaS business from India. I wanted to prove that we could do this without taking external capital. I think these emotions and feelings led me to stretch out of my comfort zone. Probably, because I wanted to build a web business that could run on its own and didn’t need an army of people.
We continued adding new features, adding a payment gateway (even though we never saw a paid subscriber for months), hiring our third developer and just creating a better project collaboration tool. We stuck to building a better product and emailed bloggers to take a look at our creation. We started building our email subscriber list. We became much more personal (and less templatized) in our communication. We set up a blog to discuss what we thought. We read up on stuff that makes a true SaaS company – Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being SaaSy (Bessemer’s Byron Deeter is the same guy I interviewed for my book The SaaS Edge last year.) I didn’t want to go back to running a service business and stuck to the hope that this business would take shape someday (sooner than later). People across the world needed to know that we (Indians) are capable of providing more than just low-cost services.
Looking back, I knew that SaaS/Cloud was a new industry and the going would be tough. I prepared myself to wait it out as there would be a time when businesses would readily subscribe to software, rather than hosting it on their own servers. I was biding my time.
On 31st December 2007 we got our first paid signup from our website. We celebrated till the wee hours of the morning. 2008 was a different story with many many many more signups, upgrades, reviews and most importantly, getting known and respected globally.
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Starting a web product company from India?
Update March 4, 2011: This post was featured in Pluggd.in - one of the top blogs on technology and startups in India.
I recently (see my slides below) gave a talk at iWeekend Mumbai (IIT Campus) on the 10 things one should look out for when building a product company. While going through my notes I realized I had some additional stuff that I had jotted down. So, here is all of my brain-dump (including the stuff on the slides)…
* Keep scalability and cost efficiency in mind. Products are highly scalable but also expensive and time consuming to build and market.
* Most programmers you will meet will be veterans of the service industry. Watch out. Hiring for a product company needs a shift in thinking. In addition, I always believe in hiring for attitude.
* Try to keep a slim team initially. Get ready to wear multiple hats - development, design, marketing and support.
* Do not use offline strategies to build an online business. Marketing offline will increase the cost of customer acquisition. Selling SaaS to Indian companies will include multiple demos, presentations and negotiations. You need to evaluate if that is worth the cost of the product that you are selling. Instead focus on online marketing strategies - SEO, blogs, email marketing, social media, forums, q&a sites etc.
* Startups are hungry for attention and reviews. People know that and take advantage of this. Avoid startup events that will ask you to pay money to participate and lure you to meeting tens of VC’s. That is BS. Instead use that money for product development or customer acquisition.
* Build your initial user base quickly. Give free accounts and see how people use your product. Get early feedback and iterate.
* Focus on the minimal viable product that does a couple of things well. Don’t let featuritis get to you.
* Charge early and try to break-even or get profitable. There is lot to learn when people won’t pay for your product.
* Get quotes, testimonials and case studies from initial paying customers. This early credibility will go a long way to get others interested in your product and might just increase the conversion rate on your website. People like to know that others have liked your site and are using it.
* Build an affiliate program. Instead of one to one, think one to many. Most brick and mortar companies have gotten big by leveraging ‘partners’ or ‘resellers’. The same applies to an online business.
* Get noticed early. Get reviewed in blogs. This is one of the best ways to spread the word.
* Create a clean and slick website. Back when I was in the web design business there was a stat which said that people take 1/20th of a second to make a decision about the site they are on. Make sure the initial user experience is a good one.
* In the iPhone/iPad era an ugly looking/feeling app is not going to cut it. Make sure your user interface is crisp. People will like your product if it feels good. This includes the speed of your app and site.
* Customers buy your vision and not what you are selling. There are tons of others who are selling the same thing as you. What you need to do is to fix your vision and truly understand why you are in business.
* Measure metrics and understand analytics. Everything on the web is measurable. Do this weekly. Create various spreadsheets to track traffic, engagement, visitor to trial, trial to paid, churn, traffic sources etc.
* Paid online marketing is expensive. Instead, spread the word via social media. It is much more personal and effective.
* Have someone with above average English writing skills. You will need an online community manager, customer service rep and someone who can maintain your website and blog. Broken English doesn’t cut it anymore.
* Lastly, don’t get too caught up in code. Remember, you are building a business, not just a product.
