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Allan Chao Startup Consultant Startup V8 [email protected] UC Berkeley Extension, Summer 2012
Question of the day:
What do you need for an idea to be a viable business?
The Agenda Quiz
Quick review of last session
4 topics today…
Website Introduction
CMS Tools
Market Research
The process of building a website
Team hands-on time!
Quiz Time
Good luck!
10 minutes max
Quick review of prior material Pitch
Elevator Pitch
Components
Focus is critical
Angel Investors
Investor’s fund
Investor’s point of view
Pitch deck (details at right)
Naming Tools
USPTO, domain, Secretary of State
namecheck.com
CrunchBase
Dropbox
Pitch Deck
Cover
Mission / Vision
Summary
Team
Problem
Solution / Demo
Technology
Marketing
Business Model
Competition
Milestones / financial forecast
Conclusion
Components to a Website Domain Registration
$10/year = the data record of who owns what virtual
property
Email (free with google apps) = what happens to an email to [email protected]
Web Hosting varies greatly, $10-$2,000/month = actual physical server cost, with hard drives,
networking, and electricity
Web code code is free, engineers cost $$$ = the HTML, PHP, or anything else that happens
when the website is accessed by a visitor
Domain Registration www.________.com
Getting the ownership of virtual property
A lot like owning real land. Once you own it, you can build on it, sell it, or anything.
Generally very cheap, $10-20/year per domain
Registrars: Namecheap.com
Godaddy
Use a dedicated registrar, not a “secondary” reseller
Buying already-registered Domains Domains that are already registered
Legitimate reasons Domainers (domain name speculation) Cyber Squatters (typos, near existing brand names)
Depending on the name, cost can widely vary Usually at least $1,000, up to millions Private sale (sometimes through broker) Auctions: SEDO, Godaddy
Entertaining website that is not accurate at all: http://www.valueis.com Why? Because it’s the brand.
Pro tips for domains Top Level Domains
.com, .org, .net The rest only get for branding protection
Some companies/products are named for the domain del.icio.us , task.ly , bit.ly , fold.it , chronolo.gy , my.betali.st Domain hacks better for tech-savvy crowd, not for mainstream
For startups, register domains for 1 year Startups tend to die or change their names, so no reason to register
for longer
Get the privacy add-on to avoid junk mail and scams.
Lots of scams out there! Be very careful with your domain.
DNS = Domain Name System Foundation of how the internet works
Technically, converts www.______.com 135.57.249.152
Commonly called the “internet phone book / address book”
Frequently part of your registrar, you can tell it what to do with the domain for various instructions
http://_____.com
http://www._____.com
http://somethingelse._____.com
Email to ____@_____.com
Google Apps Free* and Awesome!
* free for small accounts, like startups.
Better than the alternatives
Lots of great collaboration tools
Calendar
Documents
Chat
Moderately-easy setup (requires DNS changes)
What about the website? Must set up DNS
Point to someone else’s server We will do this for the market research phase
pointing to other web apps (launchrock or CMS)
Point to our own server (must buy hosting) A CMS like Wordpress or Joomla running on our server
Or, our own custom code (web application)
We will do this in a few sessions
What are CMS? Content Management System
Modify a website without programming
Generally built for non-techies, but even techies use them
Easy to install, easy to update, easy to manage
Examples
PHP-based: Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, CakePHP
.NET-based: DotNetNuke, Umbraco
Proprietary: Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, Moonfruit
Many, many, many more
Pros and Cons of CMS Pros
Easy to install
Easy to update
Easy to manage
Requires minimal programming or engineering effort
Cons Limited by feature-set of the
chosen platform
Platform change cost is very high
Not a good foundation for a custom web application
A lot of things “out of your control”
The Bottom Line:
Sometimes, use a CMS to start, but plan to start over later.
Launch Page Send people to it while the “real site” is in development
Real website will take lots of time to build
Launch page gives some info, gets them interested
Collect email addresses for a mailing list Contact them as you progress.
Do a “hot” launch, not a “cold” launch
Assess business opportunity Run advertising to see marketing costs (CPC, CPA)
Analytics on visitor data
Launch Page: (a.k.a. Coming Soon)
http://sixrevisions.com/design-showcase-inspiration/25-beautiful-examples-of-coming-soon-pages/ , http://launchsoon.com/gallery.php
Building a Launch Page Use an online Launch Page builder.
You will replace it later, anyway. Consider it temporary.
May have a small cost. Consider it a “bridge” cost.
Will need to set DNS records to point the domain to the host
Online Tools that build Launch Pages LaunchRock
Kickoff Labs
Unbounce
MyBeta List
Wordpress theme: Launch Effect
Wordpress Platform Much more robust than a simple launch page…
Lots of very useful features Lots of customization
Can run a whole business website Many small business websites are running on Wordpress It’s my tool of choice for small business websites
Can even be customized at the programming level Extensible to be like a custom web application Very simple custom web applications can use a wordpress
foundation.
What is Wordpress? Wordpress.ORG
A free, open-source platform. Managed and improved by the goodwill of many programmers around the world.
Built for all (simple) websites, NOT just blogs.
Easy to use, but requires installation
Wordpress.COM A company (for profit) that makes it simpler to get
started with wordpress.
Free to start, but charges for “add-ons”
Can be limiting, and doesn’t have the full flexibility of Wordpress.ORG
Wordpress.com Step 1 - home
Wordpress.com Step 2 - signup
Wordpress.com Step 3 – theme
Wordpress.com Step 4 – dashboard
Wordpress.com Step 5 – editing
Wordpress.com Step 6 – site is live
CMS vs Custom Application CMS
Easier, faster, cheaper
No technical skills
Limited by platform
Custom Application
Harder, slower, costlier
Lots of technical skills
Unlimited… dream big!
Our strategy: use a CMS to put something together quickly, as a placeholder, while we develop our main web application
Our Goals Is this a viable business
opportunity?
What is the market interest in this product?
Who are the competitors?
Who are the ones we need to be most concerned about?
Who are our users/customers?
Do some customer development!!
Google SERP SERP = search engine result page
Just do Google searches for related keywords… see what comes up
Which ones are direct competitors?
Which ones are niche focused?
Which ones are unrelated?
Google Insights and Google Trends
Google Analytics The purpose is to
understand who your visitors are
Where are they coming from?
What are they looking for?
What are the trends?
Requires minimal setup
Complex tool with lots of data
Learn it during the marketing pilot, then use it for the real product.
Google Adwords The purpose is to understand what kind of advertising works best
What keywords are best?
What ads work best?
What is your conversion rate?
How much does a user cost?
Costs money to run set a budget before starting
Requires significant setup
Complex tool with lots of data
Learn it during the marketing pilot, then use it for the real product.
In-Person Market Research Run focus groups
Ask them lots of questions
Have them take surveys
Do interviews with potential customers
Use your existing relationships
Reach out to new people
When to stop? It’s a judgment call, stop when you feel comfortable.
Perfect results don’t guarantee a successful product
Yet, a product can still succeed despite terrible results
Before we begin… Building a “web startup website” is very different from
building a “small business website” Just like starting a “web startup” is very different from starting
a “small business” – remember last session?
By a factor of at least 100… Much more difficult
Much more expensive
Much more time consuming
You get what you put into it (money, time, effort)
Why so different? When you build a web application, you’re actually
building something completely new that’s never been done before.
When you build a small business website, you’re actually just using someone else’s web application
All the small business website builders are web startups Wordpress.com
Wix
Weebly
SquareSpace
Moonfruit
If you use that, you are just a customer “user” to their startup.
Software Product Development
Creating the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Functional Requirements
Wireframes
Graphic Design
Code
Content (Copywriting, Social Media accounts, analytics, etc.)
Deploy (aka Release)
Functional Requirements Questions to answer
What customer problem does this product solve?
What are the customer use cases?
How will the customer use this product to solve his problem?
How will the product make money?
Sitemap
Wireframes
Graphic Design
Content Every single screen… text, images, videos
Instructions to the user
Search-Engine-friendly URLs and content Long tail keywords
Content Uniqueness
Any emails that are sent?
Blog posts?
PR releases?
Social network accounts (Facebook, Twitter)?
Analytics tools
Code HTML, CSS, Javascript, Jquery, Node.js, Django,
python, Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET, Java, ….
Traditional Software Development
Agile Software Development Start Small
Minimum Viable Product
Iterate quickly
Track user data
Flexible software
Release frequently
Cycle weekly or every two weeks
Homework (In Teams) Register the domain
I recommend namecheap. A different registrar is OK if you already use a registrar. Set up Google Apps (for the email and calendar)
Set up Launch Page I recommend LaunchRock. Using a different launch tool is OK, but may be more time
consuming. Get it the launch page running live, and test it
Market Research
Investigate the Google SERPs for related keywords Set up Google Analytics, optionally Google Adwords Spread the word about your new startup and send people to your launch page
Begin the Design Write out the functional requirements Design a sitemap
Don’t forget… Work on the pitch deck as much as possible with your team.