Measure, Measure, Measure

The focus of Web 2.0 this year was the power of less. While there was definitely a feeling that nothing really new was happening in the industry, a couple of talks I attended focusing on optimisation of your business were probably the highlights of the event for me.

Eric Ries (blog: Startup Lessons Learned) was almost evangelical in his talk: The Lean Startup.

He espoused the virtues of measurement, feedback loops and iterative, agile development. All music to my ears and things we're doing and continue to improve on at Esendex.

What really got me thinking though was the notion of A/B testing of application features and measure how that translates into improving your businesses KPIs (key performance indicators).

To date I had considered A/B testing to be the domain of web sites, try different graphics, messages, calls to action, processes, etc and measure the goal completion percentages.

We're deep into building the new version of our new application at Esendex and we're making important decisions about the functionality and features we're going to make available.

The problem is those decisions are pretty much based on opinion rather than any objective measure. While we think they're a good idea, it remains to be seen whether our customers find them useful.

There is a certain amount of inspiration required and going with our gut instinct. Innovation generally involves a step change after all. As Henry Ford famously said:

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

But, if we take the leap and put the feature out there, wouldn't it be good to know if it gave the desired results. We need to be able to measure a) whether people use it and b) whether not it had the desired effect.

Outcomes in the web analytics world are generally fairly well defined. A site visitor bought something, registered on the site or, in our case, signed up for a trial.

The desired outcome of introducing a feature could be more grey. Outcomes are very likely not to contribute directly to one of our KPIs. The path to KPI improvement will probably be circuitous and require a degree of assumption but at each step we should be testing the hypothesis.

Often we'll be introducing a feature because we believe that it will improve on of our KPIs but that could just be by offering something other services don't, encouraging people to sign up with us rather than someone else.

In this case we will need to measure an indirect outcome until such time as we enough of a population to then measure more directly against our KPIs.

Very much more art than science.

I'm very much working this through at the moment. We're adding feature measurement into the beta product we're launching in May and I'm looking forward to using this process to improve the product in the direction our customers want.

I'll report back.

All Hail the Uber-Geek

One of the highlights of Web 2.0 was seeing Steve Souders presentation: Even Faster Web Sites.

His book High Performance Web Sites, is a well thumbed tome at Esendex and YSlow is required add-on to Firefox on our developer's machines.

Steve is an uber-geek. He has a passion for web-site performance like few others. He tirelessly investigates, tests, hypothesises, tests those hypotheses, and, importantly reports back to the rest of us.

His passion, and most importantly, the fact that he shares his results with all of us is something we should all be thankful for.

As developers we get adulation for building faster, more responsive and thus more usable web sites.

As web site users, we get a rich, responsive experience that does what we want quickly.

So all hail uber-geek and thank you to you all.

Twitter is a bag of w**k!

I've just been at an establishment trying to buy something, doesn't matter which one, and had dreadful service. My immediate thought:

I'll tweet about this, that'll show them

What a load of passive-aggressive nonsense.

Tweeting, blogging and the rest allow us to whinge about bad service without having to face up to the people we're whinging about. In fact they encourage it.

I find myself standing there, working myself up into a disgruntled fury, safe in the knowledge that I can explode onto twitter and receive reassuring affirmation that I'm justified in feeling so insulted.

If I'm having bad service I should challenge the person there and then. Politely, calmly, assertively but then, when it's happening to the person who is exacting this distress upon me.

A friend recently tweeted about losing a bit of his soul in Carphone Warehouse, within seconds someone had @ replied to him asking him what was wrong.

Excellent, my friend thought, he asked them for an email address he could send a more detailed description of his issue to, it would have stretched way past 140 characters, and...nothing.

He asked again...nothing.

So Carphone Warehouse engagement 10/10, follow though 0/10.

Actually, while I'm having a twitter rant, auto follow and tracking really annoy me as well. I actually find it quite intimidating. I'm find myself getting nervous about mentioning any company in case they start following (stalking) me.

I mentioned about taking my iPhone unto CPW for a repair, seconds later 'Hi I'm Justin and i work for CPW....blah, blah'.

I mentioned the Beastie Boys this morning in a tweet. Next thing I know the Beastie Boys are following me. Their account following 8,000, 1 update, a link to their web site. Nonsense.

Leave me alone!

I like a lot about twitter but a lot of the content is starting to devalue the core proposition for me.

It's crossroads time for twitter. It's in danger of becoming the domain of celebrities and 'engaging' companies and not a place I want to inhabit.

Nottingham University Student Venture Challenge

I had the pleasure last week of being invited to address the Nottingham University Student Venture Challenge awards.

My talk 'Being an Entrepreneur' took a fairly candid whizz through my story from graduating Nottingham University in 1997 to the success I now enjoy leading Esendex.

I included a few warts. My audience were just starting their entrepreneurlal journeys, hopefully some of my experiences and thoughts would be useful.

The evening was the culmination of many months of work by the student business teams, judges, mentors and the Nottingham University Business School team.

As I had arrived at the end of the process, I only got to hear the 3 minute elevator pitches from the 5 finalists. All sounded like promising propositions and I was left thinking that I wished I'd been involved in the judging, seen the full pitches and delved into the young entrepreneur's minds to learn more.

The winner was Andrew Webber with Sonix Media, his venture to provide a new software approach to learning a musical instrument. The other finalist that caught my eye was Alejandro Macedo with bGrantez a service to manage student placements in Spain.

What I liked about these in particular was not only were they both innovative, applying a new solution to an existing problem, but they were both obviously actually in progress.

Andrew had a working demo of his solution that demonstrated his unique approach. Alejandro was actually building the web site that was to be the hub of his service.

I've lost count of the number of people who I've met who have written a business plan about an idea and stopped their. Waiting for someone to confirm that it's a good idea by giving them the money they need to try it out.

So I wish Andrew, Alejandro and all the other finalists the best of luck with their ventures and thank Dan Edge and his team for the opportunity to speak.

I've included the slideshow below to give you a flavour of what I talked about.

Being An Entrepreneur

View more presentations from adambird.

Virtual Mobile Numbers - Out of Bundle?

I heard something rather worrying yesterday. It seems that some mobile network operators are taking SMS messages to virtual mobile numbers out of bundle.

This means that when someone sends an SMS to a virtual mobile number instead of being deducted from the SMS allowance that comes with their contract, the message is billed on top.

This is not the same as operators charging SMS messages to virtual mobile numbers that look like UK numbers but are actually hosted off-shore, like Tyn-Tec's Isle of Man number range. This is apparently happening to UK mainland numbers from Vodafone, Orange, etc.

This is crazy and very short-sighted, but unfortunately typical.

Over the years ay Esendex we have time and time again convinced our customers to use Virtual Mobile Numbers when communication with their customers via SMS.

Just broadcast to customers and you might as well be shouting at them. Give customers a reply path and you are interacting.

Where virtual mobile numbers differ from shortcodes is that as far as the recipient is concerned they are just like any other mobile number, and, importantly, SMS to them are billed liked any other mobile number.

This means there is very little resistance from the customers to interact. The messages are essentially free and more interaction occurs.

I don't understand why an operator would stand in the way of this.

Interaction = more engaged subscribers = more messages = plan upgrades = higher ARPU

Isn't that how it works?

I've had some brief interactions with operator interconnect teams and based on these experiences I suspect this is where this 'initiative' originated.

There is very much a sense of 'we're not doing it so we're going to do our damndest to spoil it for everyone else', like a petulant school child.

Am I wrong?

My Second Bike Race

Slightly more successful this week. Stayed with the leading bunch pretty much all the way.

Fast and furious at times. Cornering literally shoulder to shoulder with other riders at speed was a real buzz.

When I got to 10 laps to go I was confident that I would finish with the pack and really started to enjoy myself.

I experimented with different positions in the pack, different lines round corners and straights and was planning to be somewhere near the front when the final sprints kicked in. Not to join them, I hasten to add, just to get a view on what happened and how more experienced riders got themselves ready.

Unfortunately I was caught the wrong side of a crash on the final lap. Nasty one, we were travelling at around 35mph at the time. I ran out of road to navigate round it and my race was over.

Absolutely hooked, training hard now and maybe, just maybe I'll trouble the leaders in a few races time.

Found this picture of me in action http://www.veloriders.co.uk/gal/album60/IMG_0523

My First Bike Race

I took a step into the unknown this weekend and competed in my first bike race. A 22 lap criterium at Darley Moor Motor Racing Circuit, near Ashbourne, Derbs.

Armed with my new British Cycling race licence I joined over a 100 other cyclists all gunning for the top ten positions where national ranking points were available.

I didn't trouble the leaders.

I've posted about it on the Beeston Cycling Club web site: A Racing Education