The blog highlights some of my learning’s of internet business. Though there might be exceptions, however, I believe that for most of the internet businesses, the following holds good.
- Copy!
Copying is wrong. Who says!
Check out the social networking sites, portals, entertainment website, et al. How different are they?
A website gets funded and the very next day there is a slew of similar if not same websites. A top ranked website adds a feature and all the remaining, starting from no.2 onwards start copying the same.
Well, without adding any value judgment to “Copying”, let’s face it, it’s inevitable and it’s really not a bad thing to do, if it helps you to remain afloat.
So do copy.
- Be quick
A stimulus to above point is to “be quick”.
Be quick to:
1. Innovate product
2. Market product
3. Grow members / users
4. Approach VCs
5. Copy (if need be)
6. Recruit team
7. Grow revenue
And anything else related to your business, if I missed in the above points
That’s the nature of e-business. To survive you need to be quick.
Try innovations, test them, get feedback, scrap if it doesn’t works and make a big noise if it does. It’s the only mantra to survive in such a dynamic business lest you will perish otherwise.
- Take it Or leave it
Be harsh to your users, if need be. A lot many times users end up using the website for purpose other than what the website is meant for.
For instance, a lot of social networking websites end up being used for online dating instead of connecting friends, sharing content, et al for which the website was meant to be.
The only way to retain the value of your website is to prevent users from doing things other than for which the website is meant for. Example: Adding privacy feature on social networking sites creates a barrier to frivolous users who come to the website with the intention of dating.
- Give Little and then Little More:
Always add features to your website one at a time .Then promote the feature on your site and give some time for users to explore and get used to it. Analyze usage of the features.
Scrap it if it’s not well taken by the users, else, if users like the feature, work on it to make it better.
This gives a lot of focus to the product team. It’s also better than coming out with new features at a breakneck speed, which leaves users lost and the product team discouraged if features don’t work. Small successes with little failures help increase morale of the team, keep users happy and saves cost.
- Keep focus:
With strong analytics, one can gather all information required about the website.
Number of visitors, number of downloads, exit rate, bounce rate, etc. Addition of features increases the numbers you need to track regularly.
So what’s important for you?
Is it time spent? Is it page views? Is it visits?
The answer is “depends”
So even though for a website that depends on ads for revenue, the number of page views, visits and time spent is important, for an e-commerce website number page views might not be an important metric. Similarly for a search engine (such as google) time spent by the user on each visit, is not important.
So, it’s very important to know the metrics that are important for your business.
- More is not merrier:
Websites that have ads as a revenue model, end up pestering users by making them land on a new page, each time a user wants to access a feature.
Suggest designing the website such that users can access the product features without much clicking. Building widgets, customizable pages – where user can select features he wants to use; relieves users of innumerable clicking.
Don’t forget, user is God. Don’t pester him/her.
