What Auto-Renewals Miss Feb 09 Jason Moore

An important aspect of being a true SaaS model is the ability for your customers to become a paying customer without the need to interact with someone directly.  Many SaaS companies also utilize the efficient practice of auto-renewing their clients with an easy option to cancel their subscribed services.  The advantages to this are lower acquisition costs due to the absence of man-power, and -- if your cost structure is low enough -- an almost “under the radar” effect for the renewal.

We approach this transaction differently, though, for our HelpDesk ticket software for specific reasons.

NOTE: One key aspect that should be considered when making this decision is the size of your average transaction.  If you have a $2.00/month subscription, an auto-renewal system is a must.  This is vastly different than a $2,500+/year subscription relationship.

Our clients predominantly choose an annual contract versus a monthly subscription based on the impact to their business.  Switching costs are high when you are serving as the backbone for an entire department or across multiple departments.

Due to the nature of our clients and how they use our products, we view renewals as a chance to build upon our relationship with them as well as look for opportunities for cross-selling, up-selling, or identifying needs not being met with their current subscriptions.  This is where renewals go from merely keeping the lights on to being a growth stream for your company.

Many of our clients are also education and government organizations.  Many times, having a credit card on file is not something they prefer when buying.

There is more than likely a formula that can be derived based upon some key factors:

• Renewal amount/frequency
• Number of clients
• Compensation of employee responsible for renewals
• Internal opportunities for cross- and up-sells
• Do clients need PO process associated with invoice?

Although auto-renewals are an extremely valuable addition to most SaaS offerings in the consumer marketplace, be aware of some of the opportunities that your company may miss out on when not utilizing the opportunity to build on your personal relationships.

App as a “Form” Feb 08 Jason Moore

Sign-up forms on your website are a critical component for any successful SaaS company.  Are you paying enough attention, or are you putting the responsibility on your prospects to navigate rough waters?

Taking this thought further, most SaaS applications are an in-depth form with specific functionality wrapped around it.  With that thought in mind, how much time is spent during the development process thinking of the interaction with your SaaS as a conversion opportunity?

This post from the Conversion Room Blog is geared towards your website forms, but the information is extremely valuable when it comes to application design, as well.

Our HelpDesk Ticket software is a very clear example of the “app as a form” concept.

The thought of each interaction with our HelpDesk as a conversion opportunity is brand new to me.  I’m hoping to get feedback on this concept to flesh it out further.

One complication that many SaaS products will encounter is their highly configurable nature.  Taking into consideration your clients’ desire to add more and more fields to your standard form will certainly increase the amount of care needed for pre-launch design.

How will the conversion rate change when too many custom fields are added?

Will the intended “simple” feel of your application be lost once a local administrator has their say?

How can you preempt this common behavior?

Thinking of our application as a conversion calculator for organization’s support structure is interesting (to me).  What would our conversion funnel --for brand new clients-- look like from logging in through work order request completion?

Response Message Box and Next Step Dec 14 Jason Moore

My absolute favorite type of upgrade to any of our applications is when we make current functionality simpler to use for our clients.  Improving efficiency is at the core of everything we attempt to build here at bigWebApps, and it’s even more exciting to me when we don’t have to build a new feature to accomplish this goal.

Response Message

The improvement that was published this past weekend that fits this bill is to how response messages are sent to the end user and technician of a ticket.  Prior to this update, there were three separate boxes to send a message or add a log entry.

As illustrated in the screenshot to the left, this functionality is now combined into one control.

To add a log entry without sending any notifications, simply uncheck all parties associated with the ticket represented in the list.

If there are multiple technicians associated to your ticket, then they will be listed out one-by-one in the technician line.

Help Video for Response Message can be viewed here.

Next Step

Next Step is a new functionality added to the HelpDesk to give your support staff better visibility at a quick glance beyond the subject line of a ticket.

It’s hard to see in the limited space of this blog, but the highlighted text in the capture above (highlight added for emphasis) is additional text separate from the subject line. 

An example of this in a real world case would be if you have a ticket for a printer issue.  You have determined that the print cartridge is bad, and you have ordered a new one.  You could add a Next Step such as “waiting on print cartridge delivery”, so when you are looking at your worklist you immediately know where that service request stands.

Help Video for Next Step can be viewed here.

I would love to hear any feedback or questions you have about these two features… or anything else to do with our products and/or company.  Send us an email to support@bigwebapps.com or call (866) 996-1200 x 2 for support.

Love your SaaS!

4 Steps to Growing Your SaaS Marketing Mar 30 Jason Moore

As a follow up to our earlier post on 3 Keys to SaaS Success, we have had some great discussions on “What next?” Once you have your application built with the three self-reliant tools built in for your clients, how do you find your clients?  First things, first.  Initially, your clients will not magically find you.  Let me be clear.  Your product is great and you have architected a beautiful design, but without some marketing efforts you and your product are just Dust in the Wind (go ahead and listen while you read the rest).

Whether you are bootstrapping the project on your own or have funding from your company, taking the proper steps will save you time, money, and effort when it comes to today’s marketing environment.

The four steps are as follows:

1. Built-in tools for self-reliance – as mentioned in the previous post, without this relationship between your clients and your application, all other efforts will be more expensive and time-consuming.  So even though these tools are not necessarily “marketing” items, they are critical for your word of mouth to ignite.

2. Build a practical and clean site – your website is critical to your business as a SaaS company, but it is not critical to break the bank on it.  Once you have your basic site built with concise copy (with whatever tone you want to set as your company’s voice), a place where someone can self-signup for trial or paid account, and a feedback loop then you are ready to launch.

Other free tools that are available to increase your presence on-line while keeping costs low are Ning (for community-oriented communication), Wordpress (amazing how customizable it is today), and Google Analytics (see next step).

Your best friend at this point will be your ability to get your voice out to the places it needs to be.  This could be online (Twitter, company blog, discussion boards like on LinkedIn, etc.) or in real life meetups where you (aghast) shake hands with people and develop relationships OFFline.  You (and other employees) are the company.  And people like doing business with people.  Getting involved in your community whether it be local or virtual is the absolute best way to drip your name into conversations.

3. SEO/SEM – Once you have your site up, and you have been able to drive some traffic to the site, start measuring.  Optimizing your site to see what has been effective and how you can climb up the search engines with targeted keywords.  Once you have some income sprinkling in, start dabbling in paid SEM.  Be ruthless on your money going out, though.  If a particular search term or ad is not producing revenue there is ZERO reason for you to continue to put money towards it.  As more accounts come in the door, add more money to what is showing success.

4. Spend money on targeted efforts – For the most part, spending money on advertisements outside of SEM should be done after you are cash flow positive. Money spent in this fashion is better served as brand awareness as opposed to lead generation.  There are many avenues that have little to no cost involved that will generate more leads for you in the beginning.  And without the first three steps covered well, money spent on advertising will more than likely lead to very high abandonment rates when you do garner someone’s attention.

 

You already know about these four steps, and you are possibly participating in some or all of them today. Have you evaluated the strength of your base lately? Did you start buying advertisements and pay-per-click Google ads prior to honing the copy on your site?

One of the dangers that of putting too much effort into step 3 prior to step 2 is translating your data incorrectly.  When you start measuring your sales funnel the abandonment rate could be much higher due to your copy and website flow instead of the effectiveness of the ad.  Changing the ad could be counter-productive.

The order of your efforts is just as important as what the efforts are in many cases.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.  Have you had success with a different order?

Three Keys to SaaS Success Mar 23 Jason Moore

I am very fortunate to be in a community that has a great entrepreneurial spirit. Being in this community, I get to hear a lot of ideas for projects that people want to turn into businesses.

Outside of the standard requirements for any business to succeed such as revenue model, marketing and acquisition costs, and so on; you also have three key areas where the relationship between your potential clients and your application must work together seamlessly.

As has been pointed out countless times on SaaS model success, the real key is scalability.  The following three attributes of your application will have huge impact on whether scalability is something you will be able to achieve.

1. Self Setup – Self Setup is the most important “feature” that your application will need to scale your business. Once you have targeted beta clients, immediately start working with them to design how they will be able to get running on your application without you. The self setup should start immediately after someone clicks the “Free Trial” or “30 Day Demo” button on your website.

One of the major differences between SaaS and traditional software is that setup process begins prior to your sales process does.

2. Self Signup – As you are getting launched, sales/signups are not as critical to be automated as setup is. If you are manually having conversations with people through the sales process in the beginning, you will learn what the roadblocks are to purchasing your product. The knowledge that you gain throughout this process will be invaluable to writing effective copy and to designing your site’s sales flow to best suit your potential customer’s needs.

This is closely related to self setup because your potential customer’s experience during that trial period will be the first impression that he remembers when making the decision whether to type in their credit card number.

Self signup is the actual transition between trial and paid. If you plan on launching with a freemium model, this transition period will be laced into your application when your customers hit feature/size roadblocks. Offering them compelling reasons to upgrade, and more importantly, an easy way to act upon that decision could decide your success. Once again, automation on this is not a requirement to get started if you are looking for the specific reasons why people are not buying.  But implementing this should be early in your timeline.

3. Self Help – Prior to launching your product to beta and then full production, it is critical to have dead-nuts simple avenues for your customers to reach you.   But you do not need to be in self-help mode just yet. This is primarily due to the fact that you won’t know what problems/questions your varied customers are going to have until they have them.

It is absolutely critical to have the record button pushed at all times. When it comes time to start writing the self-help material for your application, you will be able to quickly reference your real world feedback ensuring the help material is focused on problems that real people have instead of on problems that you “think” they might have.

photo credit: purplepigswithfigs

15 Free Icon Sets for iPhone Mar 14 Jason Moore

This entry is by guest author, Anton Zykin (personal bio coming soon)

It’s common knowledge now that the iPhone is the best mobile device for combining excellent design and cutting-edge user-focused technologies. The army of iPhone fans is growing daily.

And, of course, people want customization! Tons of themes, wallpapers, and icons for the iPhone can be found. As icon design professionals, we are always looking for new icon sets. Today, we are going to share some of the best with you. Here are the TOP 15 FREE Icon Sets for the iPhone. Enjoy!

#1 Agua by David Lanham and Louie Mantia

Neat and quite simple; Very appealing

http://macthemes2.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16783459

#2 Buuf by Mattahan and Louie Mantia

Uncommon icons: Soft colors with an old-fashion touch

http://macthemes2.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16783456

#3 Chalkwork iPhone & iPod Touch Mini-Set

Unique texture using photographic background

http://www.mezzoblue.com/icons/chalkwork/iphone/

#4 Hand Draw iPhone Icons

Hand-drawn style; inspired in Apple’s own iPhone icons

http://fasticon.com/freeware/?p=79

#5 Web 2.0 iPhone Icons

Large icon set; Web 2.0 style with reflections

http://forums.ipodhacks.com/showthread.php?t=19619

#6 Comic iPhone Icons

Comic style; good use of depth

http://fasticon.com/comic_iphone.html

#7 CMT iPhone icons

Excellent iPhone replacement icons! Sleek, elegant, and richly colored. This is a must-have!

http://ruizdesign.deviantart.com/art/CMT-iPhone-icons-69567377

#8 iPhone theme: Blueprint

Blueprint styling; true to original set

http://sometoast.deviantart.com/art/iPhone-theme-Blueprint-65406791

#9 Revolver Summerboard theme

Black and purple theme; interesting use of actual photos

http://sometoast.deviantart.com/art/iPhone-theme-Blueprint-65406791

#10 iFoley Summerboard Springtime

Great green theme; Natural color scheme and softer shapes

http://rawmade.deviantart.com/art/iFoley-Summerboard-Springtime-79284200

#11 iPhone Space Theme v1.1

Unique and professional; This is also a must-have.

http://pimpmyiphone.deviantart.com/art/iPhone-Space-Theme-v1-1-65747334

#12 Sticker by David Lanham and Louie Mantia

Retro styling similar to stickers; Impressive

http://www.iphoneskinning.com/2008/01/sticker-by-david-lanham-and-louie-mantia-iphone-theme-of-the-day.html

#13 Renaissance By Louie Mantia

Beautiful art that could only be created for an Apple product; Say Hello to Leonardo Da Vinci. Louie Mantia rocks!

http://www.iphoneskinning.com/2007/12/iphone-theme-of-day-renaissance-by.html

#14 Shiizun's REALIZE

Gorgeous REALIZE icon set seems to be a new trend in icon design for iPhone.

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/iphone-modifications/theme-shiizun-s-realize-16705.html

#15 Prado Theme

Minimalist and early computer era

http://www.iphoneskinning.com/2007/12/prado-iphone-theme-of-day.html

Asset Phase I update p. 6 Jun 25 Jason Moore

Asset Phase I upgrades are fully working on the beta site at this point!!  We are on schedule to publish the update over this coming weekend, so the new features and functions will be available when you arrive at work on Monday morning, July 2!

Included Asset Upgrades:

• Saved asset sorts/filters
• Export multiple types of assets together (1 worksheet, multiple pages)
• Import and overwrite changes made in excel (this is a biggie!!)
• Printable versions of specific list of assets
• Export specific list of assets (another biggie!!)
• Add and verify assets during ticket creation
• Add multiple assets to one ticket
• Link related assets
• Easily manage tickets associated with assets
• Track life cycle of asset as well as value depreciation
• Add picture of asset for tracking damage
• Improved log entries to better track the history of checked out to, location, status, and value changes
• Overall improvements to Setup Categories/Type/Make/Model section
• Add links to outside manuals or links on the web based on Model of asset; for example, you can add a link to the Dell Inspiron Support page that will show up in each ticket that is associated to a Dell Inspiron desktop

Include Upgrades outside of Assets:

• Add files to ticket during ticket creation
• Spell check during ticket creation for subject line and initial post
• Add files to Scheduled Tickets

We look forward to getting everyone's feedback on this.  We will be sending out a schedule of webinars to walk through the new updates once they are released.

Enjoy!!

iPhone: The Reebok Pumps of 2007? Jun 08 Jason Moore

There is no doubt that the iPhone looks to be a very cool product.  So were the Reebok Pumps.  But as soon as the hype wore off from Dee Brown's fantastically brilliant evangelistic marketing move during the '91 dunk contest, sales at Reebok returned to normal and nothing really changed.

The iPhone is NOT the next iPod of mega-market domination.  There will be great sales initially, but I am going to have to be proven wrong on this one if the iPhone comes even close to living up to the lavish hype around it.

My guess is that if you can get your hands on one early at cost, there is a mint to be made on eBay reselling them for 2-3 times sticker price.  It's the sustainable market share that I don't believe in.

Any opinions on this?

Bonus question:  Who did Dee Brown defeat in the finals of the '91 dunk contest with his no-look dunk?

The first person to email the correct answer to jason.moore@bigwebapps.com will receive a $25 Borders online gift card.

UPDATE:  Jake Garris of Pittsburgh, PA wins the bonus question with the answer of Shawn Kemp!

To Sell Change or a Slightly Better Way May 12 Jason Moore

We have just recently (in the past 6 months or so) realized there was a major flaw in the way we present our support application to potential clients. Many of the times, the organizations/companies that we are talking with need a major overhaul of their support process.  The problem is that a major overhaul, well, feels like it is going to be a major overhaul.

Seth points out how selling change can be a big challenge.

The new twist that should have been obvious to us long ago is that our applications can help them do almost exactly the same thing they are doing now but with better organization, tracking, and reporting.  Once we help them implement our application to slightly improve their current process, we can continually improve (overhaul) their process over the course of months/years instead of making them feel like it has to happen overnight.  The overhaul will always be available, but a gradual change is more likely to be accepted.

We'll see how this goes.

Ferrari Making Hard Drives Apr 29 Micajah

Here is a good example of you can never have too much design. By the way, Pininfarina is the designer for Ferrari.

I feel very strongly the future economies will contain more and more abstract ideas of value, like a Ferrari designed Hard Drive.   It is important for American companies to place Design on the same level with Engineering.  Engineering has worked well over the past 100's of years, Desgin will be a large player in the future 100 years.  One could argue Design is everything, at least I agree, it means a lot.

If you are skeptical, think about Apple, Sony, BMW, Mercedes, Land Rover, JCrew, Starbucks. 

FROM GQ:

Drive Time

A supercar designer takes on computer accessories

April 26, 2007—What with all those MP3s, photos, and illicitly downloaded Welcome Back, Kotter episodes, it doesn't take much to fill up a computer's hard drive these days. Luckily, the unwieldy external drives of yore are being replaced by a new generation of models that offer both smart design and extra storage capacity. Chief among them is SimpleTech's new Pininfarina-designed SimpleDrive line, which sports a sleek, aerodynamic profile and comes in a variety of splashy colors (each capacity level gets a different hue). So how did an outfit known for sculpting curvaceous Ferraris find its way into the unsexy market for computer peripherals? "I think there was a lack of awareness concerning design in this sector," says CEO Paolo Pininfarina. "It is not because of a lack of clever and talented designers. It is because of a lack of vision concerning the power of design among final consumers." Well, whether or not you buy that reasoning, the hard drive–car connection doesn't end there. La Cie, the French brand behind Ora-Ito's "Brick" and Karim Rashid's "Skwarim"drives, offers a collection designed by Porsche. Now if only they could do something about your actual computer...

SimpleTech SimpleDrives, from around $100, www.simpletech.com; La Cie hard drives, www.lacie.com/us, also from around $100.