…And emerging ways to pay online and on mobile

Using the internet to sell products and services is the ultimate goal of many websites we come across each day.  Yet, as an increasing number of businesses and companies move online, emerging technologies are also bringing fresh ways to pay and receive money as well as completely new ways to monetise mobile and web-based content.  While 2010 was dominated by trends such as freemium as used by services like Spotify and Evernote, as we move into 2011 new types of digital currency and payment technologies are appearing and diversifying.  This post aims to define some oft-used but sometimes confusing terms in the new world of money online.

Facebook Credits

At the end of January, social networking supergiant Facebook announced that they will be requiring all social game developers to process payments via their own in-site payment system: Facebook Credits.  The virtual currency, which has been in the works since 2009, allows users to purchase credits (currently costing $1 for 10) which can then be spent on items in Facebook games and other apps.  Advertised as being a safer and easier method of payment, it’s hard to see how the idea won’t increasingly appeal to users – and in order to get developers on board, Facebook are offering a host of cool incentives for app makers.

In-game purchases

Monetising mobile apps is often a matter of tough choices as to whether you offer free versions and advanced (often ad-free) versions, or simply charge for one version from the outset.  For mobile games, in-game purchases are increasing in popularity because they offer a portion of what is paid for, i.e. the first few levels of a game, and give users the opportunity to pay for later levels or other unlockable content.  This also ensures that such games have more chance of being discovered by potential gamers – an important factor for developers as the market becomes increasingly crowded.

Mobile payments, e-wallets and Square

Mobile payments are likely to be a big deal in 2011.  The idea is quite simple, why not leave our credit cards at home and use our 3G enabled smartphones to transfer payments for us?  After all, we all have online bank accounts?  Now, a number of companies are planning on making our wallets redundant.  For paying for items, Visa have announced that they will be rolling out their PayWave system by the end of the year.  On the flipside, Square (part founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey) is a smartphone service which allows others to pay you via your mobile.  Less than 18 months after launch, Square are already processing $1m payments a day.  They have also recently made the potentially groundbreaking move to stop charging $0.15 per transaction for merchants, making the new technology (a simple dongle and downloadable app) even more appealing to small businesses, freelancers and workers on the go.

Micro-donations

Micropayments has been a popular term online in reference to simple small payment transactions for a few years now.  Today, however, micro-donations are offering a new way for bloggers and start-ups to monetise content without requesting an outright payment or subscription fee, and by avoiding the sometimes off-putting ‘donate’ method.  New service, Flattr, is a good example which gives web-content providers (i.e. bloggers, journalists, developers) a button for the posts they create (similar to Facebook ‘Like’ buttons), Flattr users who view the site decide how much money to put into their account monthly – and this amount is then shared between the sites that have been ‘liked’ or ‘flattr’d’ at the end of each month.

It is certainly an exciting time for developers to approach charging for web and mobile content, and we are sure to see some intriguing changes over the coming year.  Social media is certainly having a big effect, as well as emerging mobile technologies.  We, here at GoTripod, are curious to see what takes off.

Over the past few weeks, the team have been settling into our shiny new Go Tripod offices in Truro, Cornwall in the UK, and we wanted to take the opportunity to tell you why we’re so excited about our move, what we’re doing in Cornwall, and where we go from here.

The State of the Art

We’ve combined working remotely at opposite ends of the UK, and we’ll continue to do so. But a working environment where we can really put our heads together and crack the important nuts became crucial, and so we’ve taken out some office space in Truro (if you ever visit, come see us. And the Cathedral, it’s beautiful). We’re using the office as a base, but not as a place we’re tied to – forcing a 9-5 isn’t going to get more work done.

Our clients remain our most important asset, and we’re continuing to work very closely with existing customers as well as opening relationships with some exciting new partners (watch this space!). That said, we’re expanding development and promotion of our products like Stubmatic, as well as beginning to push new ideas like InStock – a simple stock control system. This seemingly two-pronged approach made us realise something fundamental about our business.

Products for Everyone

We make Stubmatic and InStock for ourselves. And for our clients, we make software and websites. But actually what we make for most people is products of their own – a system that they sell on to their clients to increase revenue. It’s not Go Tripod products plus client work – it’s Products for Everyone! Our potential clients come to us for a piece of software, and we help them understand how that software can be used and reused in way that’ll make their life easier, and make them money in the process.

Cornwall’s an exciting place to be at the moment, lots of activity in our sector and a growing university in Falmouth means that groups such as The Hub and Cornwall Social Media Cafe are attracting loads of interesting folks.

Myself, Jon, Simon and the rest of the Go Tripod family are really excited to be a part of it!

With so many ideas (like InStock), how do we test the viability of new business opportunities and  see if they stick before we invest the time in developing them? We have a couple of tricks up our sleeves to share with you that saves us both time and money and keeps us focussed on success.

Firstly we make use of two excellent online tools. Google Adwords and an awesome service called unbounce.com which, although designed for A/B testing, makes an excellent platform for soft testing our new business ideas. The main premise for the service is that you can setup a slick designed landing page in about 30 minutes and then use A/B testing to fine tune variations, instantly seeing the results. Then we apply the following 4 simple steps.

1. The Idea

We are always coming up with ideas, in fact we currently have an ideas board with about 20-30 undeveloped ideas awaiting this very process. So, the very first thing we do, is sit on the idea. When we first come up with an idea we are all passionate about it but as time passes sometimes we realise we were caught up in a moment of enthusiasm and actually the idea won’t cut it. Then at random intervals Colin, Simon and I go through the list and prioritise based on market factors and collectively what we are most passionate and excited about. Simple, and effective. There is no point developing something unless all three of us are passionate and believe in the idea and our experience helps us identify what is worth pursuing at this stage.

2. The one-sentence-sell

Once we have selected an idea, we try to come up with the one-sentence-sell for the product. The one-sentence-sell is a concept I picked up from Ryan Carson when I attended his startup seminar at Carsonified a couple of years ago. The idea is that you come up with a short sentence that both summarises and sells you business idea in one. Going through this process gets you thinking about your Unique Selling Points and provides you with all the material you will need to test the idea.

3. Soft testing the idea

Our main testing approach is to use Google Adwords, this allows us to not only test our one sentence sell which can then be refined into the product’s tag line, but also allows us to refine target keywords. Unbounce.com comes in really handy as it not only helps us create a compelling landing page in minutes that can be used to point the Adword Ads at. Unbounce.com also allows us to test variations of the landing page from a business model perspective as well as a design perspective. For example, although we are big advocates of the Getting Real approach of stripping a product down to the bare minimum, Unbounce.com allows us to A/B test different feature ideas, domain names and even pricing. It’s excellent statistics provide you with a break down of visitors, page views and conversions per variation. The key to getting good results out of A/B testing is to only test one variations at a time, but the process really allows us to hone in on not only how best to sell the app or what features to include but also based on the conversion rate gives us a bigger picture on whether to take the idea forward and build it.

4. Finally the added benefits

The great thing with taking this approach is that you can go ahead and build ideas confident in knowing that you already have a number of users from your converted leads wanting to use your service, you have an early online presence for the idea that helps you build traction and pagerank and you can also make use of it to test out ideas that arise during the development process.

The process is simple and cheap. You are in complete control of you Adword budget, though I advise investing a larger amount for a short period than running a long term campaign at a low rate like £1 ($1.60ish) a day. You can stop and start your ad as needed so focus on short and snappy tests. Unbounce.com offers a free plan for up to one domain being tested and has a range of good value premium plans from $25 a month.

We are currently testing http://www.instockapp.com, please feel free to check it out.

Our new InStockApp logo

Paul Colledge, our very clever designer has come up with this fantastic new logo for our new web based stock control system http://www.instockapp.com

Very occasionally, people will start asking me in detail what I do for a living. When “I write software” or “I make websites” doesn’t satisfy them, I go into a bit more detail about the different aspects of my job. One thing that happens quite regularly if I don’t go into enough detail, is that I’ll tell someone how long it took to write something, or how much it cost, and they’ll raise their eyebrows.

“How can it cost so much?! It’s just a website!”

I can see their point. Most websites contain common elements – login, lists, articles, shopping carts, and so on – so you’d think that once you’ve written one, you’ll have the bits and pieces you need to make more. And taken individually, each of these parts are fairly straightforward – a list of products contains some pretty basic HTML, surely? And HTML is just a text file?

And again, that’s a fair point. The real time isn’t taken in writing these bits and pieces, it’s taken in understanding how the customer wants them to be written and how they need to fit together in a certain situation. For example, a shopping cart quickly becomes more complex when the customer adds on a few more features:

• Integrates with Google Checkout
• Customers can save carts for later ordering
• Customers can reload past orders into a few cart

But it’s not just the cart, it’s viewing products too – what if certain customers see custom trade prices? Or products can be assigned to multiple categories and the customer wants to see how many products are in each category next to the category name? All of these things are minor when taking in isolation, but together they are a thousand tiny cuts which bleed development time.

As well as a collection of features, a specification for a website will also discuss requirements in language which is specific to the company you’re quoting for. Rather than “cart” you might have “basket”. Or you could have “assessors”, “reviewers”, “investigators”, or any other number of terms which a company uses internally and when referencing all of the features they want on their site. Eric Evans talks about the “domain” of a problem when discussing software – not only do you have to appreciate what kind of features are necessary but you have to understand the domain in which they’re going to be used, in order to create a solution which fits together correctly.

So software is a whole big bag of questions and clarifications and solutions. From a developer’s point of view, it’s not just a case of taking some standard components and piecing them together – though that does happen occasionally. Instead every step of the development process is about solving problems, by understanding what the customer wants and by understanding the problem domain. Every day of development sees a developer tackle a new bit of work that needs resolving in a novel way, and that’s why making software isn’t just a case of shoving some parts together and hoping that it works, but a process, an evolution of the initial ideas.

When clients come to us and ask for software, they’ll pitch it by saying “make us a website”. But we know that what they really mean is “look, understand, and solve our problem”. And that’s what we do.

I came across a great 404 page the other day and thought I would share it. The page at first glances looks like any other but if you read the text, you will see that they have redeemed themselves for the broken link by offering me a discount of $3 off any of their products.

This is a great way to capture the interest of would be browsers that would normally see this page and immediately hit the back key, instead not only do they capture my attention, but they also tap into my curiosity which gets me to immediately click the products link.

In this case I didn’t need any of their products but this is a great tip.

Also note the search bar being visible. This is essential on a 404 page for keeping customers that know what they are looking for on your site.