Carsonified

This week the interwebs have been alive with the sound of the so-called ‘touch icons’… a low hum possibly produced by them gently jiggling away on your homescreen.

Like many a designer looking for the frequent digital distraction, I’ve been creating some icons for the Carsonified sites. Earlier in the week, almost right after the iPhone / iPod Touch software update was announced, Dan was on the case and his walkthrough was a more extensive guide than the one on the Apple Developer Connection. Shortly after, Nathan experimented with larger image dimensions than the 57×57 recommended by Apple, and - after a few experiements from and on behalf of readers - found that 60×60 was the ideal size. Huzzah! Cue a lot of happy web designers, all making shiny new icons for their sites.

However, this was only the first stage. Drew came up with a bookmarlet to address the fact that we wouldn’t normally be able to edit icons for sites we don’t manage, only to have it improved upon by Rob to override websites’ existing icons (and then re-tweaked by Drew). Then, just when we thought we’d achieved the highest possible state of ecstatic icon-induced nirvana, Cameron modified the bookmarklet even further and made the whole process a doddle for the average user. (His article is also a rather nice summary of the work done by others.) Finally, we’re now seeing all kinds of sites pop up (such as Andy’s iclypso.com) that offer a number of icons ready for the end-user to install.

Phew! Now that I’ve worn myself out with a blow-by-blow account of that week - which will no doubt be out of date by tomorrow - I thought I’d show you the Carsonified icons (styled here so as to mimic their final rendering on the iPhone / iPod Touch) that I’m in the process of rolling out. They should be on all of the relevant sites by the end of the week.

Every time we sit down at the beginning of a new Future of Web Apps planning session, we seem to ask the same question: which are the killer apps right now? Which apps are the ones that people really can’t live without?

We turned to the web to see if it had the answer - but try typing in ‘popular web apps’, ’successful web apps’, ‘most used web apps’, and the picture you get is far from conclusive.
So with that in mind, we decided to do some research of our own, and behold, the first Web App Charts

Our aim is to get a definitive idea of the most popular web apps out there - as used by real people. Please visit the site and vote for the single most wonderful web app that you use and couldn’t live without - it could be the most useful, the most brilliantly designed, the best value for money. And when you’re done, please mention it wherever you can so we can get as many votes as possible. One voter will be selected at random to win a shiny new Nintendo Wii!

The results will be announced at our next event, the Future of Web Apps Miami, 28 April - 1 March 2008.

Paul Graham just posted a lengthy post in response to my on-stage rebuttal to his talk at FOWA. I disagreed with what he said during his talk at FOWA so I felt compelled to stand up on-stage and respond very quickly.

One of the main reasons we organize FOWA London is to encourgage people to build web apps here in Europe. We want people to feel encouraged, equiped and connected after the show. Saying “Well, you’ve got a better chance if you just move to Silicon Valley” makes my blood boil. It just isn’t true.

I won’t try to summarize his post here, as that wouldn’t do it justice (please take a minute to read it). However, I’ll try to explain why I think he’s wrong.

Silicon Valley vs The Rest of the World

In Paul’s talk at FOWA, he essentially said that startups have a better chance of succeeding if they are located in a ‘Startup Hub’ - a city where there is a large amount of support (funding, legal, news coverage and social). I fully agree - startups have a better chance at succeeding with support.

But I don’t think that’s the whole story.

I just spent 14 days travelling around various cities in Europe on our FOWA Road Trip. I shook a lot of hands and had a ton of great conversations with folks who are building web startups.

It was amazing how many people are launching web apps outside the US / English speaking market. They’re excited, motivated and many have already launched their apps. These folks are getting more and more support from movements like Seedcamp and investors like 3i, Index, Advent and Accel.

Events like FOWA, dConstruct, Mix and Max are also equipping people in Europe - the level of support is skyrocketing. There are also a ton of BarCamps and Open Coffees sprouting up. Not to mention the excitement around mobile (Mobile Mondays, Sweedish Beers, etc).

It seems crazy to discourage that growth by saying that people should move somewhere else. How can we get to that critical level of support here in Europe if we always have people saying everyone should move to Silicon Valley?

Look at last.fm (£140 Million!) and moo - if you ever needed an example that you don’t need to move to Silicon Valley, they’re surely it. I’d like to also humbly put forward DropSend. We’ve managed to succeed and we’re not even in London.

100 Million vs 1 Million

Paul didn’t clarify in his talk or post whether he was referring to startups who are funded or those that are boot-strapped.

This is a vital issue to clarify. If a web app is boot-strapped (as DropSend was) you really don’t need to move to a startup hub. Why? Because if it’s a decent idea and you’ve got a little bit of business sense, you can turn that into a product that is worth upwards of $1 Million (depending on the idea and market). If you’ve thrown $35,000 at a web app and you can eventually sell for $1 Million, that’s a pretty damn good return on your investment.

That’s the crux of my frustration with Paul Graham’s attitude. I almost felt as if he was saying “Yeah, for you little guys, you can stay wherever you are. But if you want to be a real startup and play with the big boys, better get yourself over to Silicon Valley.”
There’s way too much pressure in the web app industry to be the next $100 million dollar company. Screw that. Let’s all focus on being passionate about our great ideas and growing them into viable, profitable businesses. There’s nothing wrong with that :)

Paul’s a smart guy, but just because he says you need to move to Silicon Valley doesn’t mean it’s true.

I’d be interested to know what you think - looking forward to the discussion :)

(Thanks to flickr.com/photos/sergiopepe for the photo)

I came across this vitriolic thread about me this morning. Wow, what a great way to start the day :)

So I’d like to give everyone an update on my original post titled Why you need to get rid of your freelance developer ASAP.

We couldn’t be happier

Since we decided to stop using freelance developers and invest in building a development team in Russia, things have gone really well. We’ve made huge improvements to DropSend and the backend to our events system.

In case you never read my first post, our setup is fairly simple. We have one manager who works 20 hours a week for us and he speaks fluent English. His name is Alex and he manages our full time LAMP developer (who is named Marat). Alex is super friendly, happy to help, very professional, and overall, a joy to work with. I’ve never actually emailed Marat directly, but I’m sure he’s a nice guy as well ;)

Whenever we need a new task done, I put it on a list in Basecamp. The higher up the to-do list, the higher priority it is. It works great. Occasionally, I’ll wireframe something if it needs detailed explanation.

The challenges

The hard part about having a team off-site is that you have to specify things in detail. You can’t just lean over your shoulder and say, “How’s it going? Oh, that’s not quite what I meant … Let me draw a sketch for you.” etc etc.

I find that when I’m asking for a brand new module to be built, I have to thoroughly think through the details and do a lot of sketches. Ironically though, this has helped us to avoid some snags that we would’ve encountered if we hadn’t specified things carefully.

Overall, it’s rocking and I’m so glad we’ve got Alex and Marat on the team! We might even be adding another developer and increasing Alex’s (the Manager) time to 80 hours a month.

Our first true expo is now available for booking at The Future of Web Apps.

We’ve created a great opportunity for any size Web company to gain exposure to our expected 3000 attendees, a 3m x 3m booth is only £2195 and that includes a shell, carpet, electrical and internet connection.

We also want to encourage any non-profits and .org’s to exhibit for free. If you are a startup looking for exposure, or an established company looking to get in front of a serious enterprise attendee, please contact Andrew Calvo at andrew [at] carsonsystems dot com for more info.

We had our panel today at SXSW and I think it went really well. Read/Write web has a good write-up (thanks guys).
Feel free to download the slides. There’s tons of interesting financial info.
Sorry for the short post, but I’m off to the bazillion parties tonight! :)

I got a pretty good beating on the blogosphere :) for my post about handling abusive customers. It was well deserved and I’ve learned my lesson.

Another important lesson

In addition to remembering that the customer is always right, the most important thing I’ve learned through doing all the support for DropSend and Amigo is this:

Make it easy to help your customers.

Sounds obvious right? Well, believe it or not, it’s the small details that happen during the build of the app, that will determine how easy it’ll be to help your customers.

Here are some things you should build into your app’s back end in order to make customer service easier:

Simple search for users accounts

You will get tons of emails from customers saying things like “Please cancel my account” or “What plan am I using?” or “Can you re-send me my last two invoices?”, etc.

It’s insane, but I actually have to page through thousands of accounts in DropSend, in order to find someone’s account so I can answer those questions. I can’t do a simple search based on their first/last name or email address.

Building a simple user account search (name or email address) will allow you to quickly help your customers. If it’s quicker for you, you’re more likely to be helpful to your customer because it takes one minute, instead of ten!

Allow token gestures of kindness

There will be plenty of times when a user encounters a bug and they’ll be pissed off.

You can apologize and promise you’ll fix the bug ASAP, but that won’t really make your customer feel any better. If you can easily do one of the following, it’s likely they’ll forget about their frustrations and they’ll keep using their account:

1. Give them one free month of service
2. Refund their last invoice
3. Give them some extra free usage (ie in DropSend, we can give them an extra 15 files sends for that month)

If you can’t easily do these things in your app’s backend, you’ll find yourself dragging your heels when it comes to helping your customers.

For example, if you have to contact your book keeper to refund invoices, instead of simply clicking a button in the app’s backend, you won’t do it as often as you should.

Reduce that friction

Making it easier for you to help customers will dramatically improve the quality of your customer service.

Make sure to spend the extra time on the app’s backend and you’ll see a huge payoff in happy customers!