Thinking about building a web app? Not sure what web application you should build? You probably have a few ideas kicking around, maybe you’re thinking of building a project management application, maybe a video sharing site, or a social networking site. Heres a tip to help you choose:
Build a web application that helps its users make money.
Why?
Because people can justify paying for a service if it helps them conduct their business and make money.
Thats ONE of the reasons for the success of 37signals products. Their core products, Basecamp, Highrise and Campfire all help people conduct business and make money.
If you help people make money you can also charge a higher cost for your web app. Its not reasonable to spend $49 a month sharing your videos, you wont find many people willing to shell out that kind of money on a recreational activity. But it is reasonable to spend $49 a month running your business. If you build a web app that makes people money they will pay more, a lot more, to use it.
Also if you’re helping people make money, there’s another side benefit. When you’re in charge of running a business you usually want the best equipment. For example, if you can afford it you would upgrade your typical office chair to an Aeron. Its somewhat similar when it comes to web apps. Entrepreneurs won’t settle for a standard plan when they can upgrade to a premium plan. Choosing a premium plan over lesser plans intrinsically shows you and your employees that you’re serious about business.
Its like choosing Windows professional edition over Windows Home edition. A lot of business’s could get away with using Home edition but they’ll purchase professional edition anyway. Business owners don’t want their employees seeing HOME edition when they boot up, they want their employees to see their running professional. There’s also an element of human nature, rather than doing more work its easier to show your dedication by purchasing better equipment.
Expect the same with your paid plans. If your application helps people conduct business your users will be more receptive to upgrade their plans to a higher cost premium plan. If you have an app that people are using recreationally it will be much harder for you to convert them to higher paying plans.
So if you want to build a web application that makes you money, then build a web application to help make others money.
You styleme is a niche fashion advice community. Users can give and ask others for fashion advice. To help put the advice into context users can create ‘closets’. Closets showcase clothes that the user has uploaded or bookmarked. Its quite useful. If this app gains traction you can save shopping/browsing time simply by checking out the clothing recommendations of others.
To learn more about You StyleMe checkout this screencast on Youtube
Nitesh M. is a cofounder and he kindly shares some more info.
Q) What programming language did you use to create you styleme? And why did you choose this language?
You StyleMe is built on Ruby on Rails. We selected this language primarily because of it’s flexibility, development speed, and it’s incredible developer community. RoR has allowed us to utilize an agile development process. We are also in the process of building a facebook application that utilizes FBML.Q) Did you bootstrap you styleme? Did the app cost over 12K or under 12K to build?
You StyleMe is founded by entrepreneurs from Yahoo! and Gap, Inc. We are a husband and wife team that has experience in Social Media and Retail. The site costs more than $12K to build.
Q) Getting attention to a web app is difficult, how do you plan on marketing you styleme?
I agree with you, marketing You StyleMe is a challenge. We have a 3 prong strategy that I’d like to highlight.
- First, we focused heavily on building viral functionality into the product itself.
- Second, we are building a F8 application to take advantage of the massive distribution Facebook provides.
- And lastly, we are partnering with online retailers for cross promotion.
Q) Do you have a business model in mind? It looks like there are a lot of opportunities to partner with clothing retailers.
We plan to make money by
- Sponsorships by major and independent fashion retailers
- 2.) Affiliate and complimentary good sales
- 3.) Advertising at the point of purchase.
Q) What do you think is you styleme’s biggest challenge?
I think marketing is going to be challenge. The number of new startups each day surprises me and finding ways to standout from the crowd is becoming increasingly difficult.
Q) Do you have any tips to share with other people who are also creating web apps?
I have a few suggestions.
- Focus/Obsess about the user experience
- Develop a marketing the strategy the first day you write a single line of code
- Ask your friends outside of technology to provide feedback on your site at various points of development
- Consumer internet is a hit or miss industry so there’s going to be lots of up and downs so brace yourself and make sure you have enough runway to make your vision a reality.
- Have fun. Life is too short!
You Style me has potential. Its biggest challenge is going to be getting the word out and getting initial users into the system. The foundation is there for this to be a successful application. Its focused and there seems to be alot of opportunities for You StyleMe to generate income. Lets see how it does. Ill email Nitesh and try to post a follow up Q and A in a month or 2.
So Kevin Rose just unveiled his latest web app: Pownce. Based on his past success Pownce immediately gets picked up by Techcrunch, and ofcourse makes the frontpage of Digg with 1600+ diggs. Lets not forget the trickle down effect as the rest of the blogs pick up on this story.This is immediate and free traffic to Pownce. Isnt it nice to have a rush of traffic the instant your app launches. Every web app developer would pay large coin to get this type of advertising and coverage.
Now Im not debating whether a web app should get reviewed based solely upon the past success of its founders. Im illustrating that a web app *WILL* get reviewed based upon the past success of its founders.
Pownce began as Leah’s project. Clearly it would not have received the initial instant press without Kevin’s name behind this.
If you’re developing a web app keep the following in mind: For your web app there is very little middle ground between failure and success. That is, either your web app will be a bitter failure, or it will exceed even your lofty expectations. If you build a successful web application your next project will have an immediate leg up on other web apps because of the free advertising you will receive based upon your past success. So if you can cross this chasm congratulations you’re a made man. Things get easier not harder, your app should get instant press and funding.
We plan to release early and release often”, says the project manager. Many times, I don’t think this is the way to go. I agree with releasing often, you definitely need to iterate and improve your product quickly. But reconsider releasing early.
Here’s why:
For web applications the barriers to entry are so low. Anyone can spit out a web application in little time and on a minimal budget. That’s exactly what’s going on, we’re seeing an abundance of half baked web applications. There’s a group of entrepreneurs who are quickly putting out apps hoping “that it sticks”, and of course if it doesn’t its no big deal, since the time and cost associated with launching the app has been minimal.
Ok, but your app is different, you don’t have a trivial web application. You’ve put a lot of time, effort and money into this. Your early launch should be successful right?
Well, how do you think a casual viewer will feel about your app if you release before some of your distinctive features are in place and if you release too early that you haven’t had time to create a visually attractive application? Right your app will be lumped together with the “lets see if it sticks” type of apps.
It’s a much better strategy to take your time on the initial release and produce a stronger initial product.
So when should you release early?
If you app is in a position to capture first mover advantage or if its an open source project then it should be one of your top priorities.
There are pros and cons to every language and framework. We’ve already heard alot about the positives of Ruby on Rails, here are some cons. These comments were made by Alex P. a twitter developer.
All the convenience methods and syntactical sugar that
makes Rails such a pleasure for coders ends up being absolutely
punishing, performance-wise. Once you hit a certain threshold of
traffic, either you need to strip out all the costly neat stuff that
Rails does for you (RJS, ActiveRecord, ActiveSupport, etc.) or move
the slow parts of your application out of Rails, or both.It’s also worth mentioning that there shouldn’t be doubt in anybody’s
mind at this point that Ruby itself is slow. It’s great that people
are hard at work on faster implementations of the language, but right
now, it’s tough. If you’re looking to deploy a big web application
and you’re language-agnostic, realize that the same operation in Ruby
will take less time in Python. All of us working on Twitter are big
Ruby fans, but I think it’s worth being frank that this isn’t one of
those relativistic language issues. Ruby is slow.
These comments shouldnt discourage people from using Ruby On Rails, when your as popular as Twitter every language and framework is going to run into problems. However, its always good to stay informed and know about the issues other developers are facing.
Read the whole interview via radicalbehavior
what is HiTask?
Its a simple to use task management application. HiTask
Whats the work flow?
Basically you create a task in the main panel, and then you drag and drop that task into an appropriate “bucket”. You can drag tasks onto your calendar, your events list, different projects, and even drop them onto members of your team. You can click the task to edit and add meta data to it. Its not much more complicated than that. By the way drag and dropping was extremely smooth and lightweight. The whole app feels very snappy.
So ease of use is one of HiTask strong points?
Definitely, its one of those apps that seems to get out of your way and lets you do what you want to do.
Can HiTask be successful?
Its hard to say. There is so much competition in this space. HiTask is indirectly competing with the likes of backpack’s calendar, joyent’s calendar and google’s calendar. Its in a tough space. Having said that HiTask is definitely a worthy competitor simply because of its ease of use.
Does HiTask have a business plan?
They offer a free account but they also offer a paid plan. The paid plan is only $12 annually and it offers: unlimited projects, unlimited teammates, and no ads.
What else
This is the type of application that I like to write about. While its from a relatively unknown group of people, the app is well thought out and designed. This is an excellent first release. No doubt HiTask will continue to be evolved by its developers. HiTask also supports team use. You send tasks to each other, and even chat with each other. You could easily use this application as a light weight project management application. Signup is quick and painless. If you’re looking for a task manager I would definitely check out HiTask.
- Get the word out early On dec.21 2005, 37signals annouce their new project on their blog. Originally highrise was called sunrise.
- Keep them interested So 37signals initially announced highrise on December 2005 and it launched in March 2007, thats alot of in between time. To keep highrise on peoples mind they release little teaser posts on their blog every now and then. These type of posts can quickly turnoff readers, to combat this 37signals combine quality informative posts while at the same time relating it to highrise. Heres an example, 37signals talk about their design decisions, they mention highrise and thow in a screenshot. Now they offer their readers solid information while at the same time they are advertising their upcoming product.
- Show them the money Ok now its about 2-3 weeks before launch. Its time to release some hard details about highrise on their blog. They dont release 1 long post, instead they chunk their posts and release 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 previews.
- Kick in the permission marketing Ok people are interested, now its time to kick in the permission marketing. 37signals entice their readers to sign up for the highrise mailing list by offering ‘golden tickets’ to random people who sign up. ‘Golden ticket’ holders get access to highrise a few days before it launches. What a brilliant way to get people on the mailing list, offer them a chance to use it before anyone else does.
- Make the announcement Highrise launches, they send out an email to everyone on their mailing list and ofcourse they post it on their blog.
- Hold back a bit and generate goodwill A couple of days after the launch they generate goodwill by upping quotas. They also opened up some features (’cases’) that were previously only available on the higher paying plans. This is a pretty good strategy. Hold back (speculation) on a important feature at launch, let a few people complain and then open them up under the mantra ‘we’re listening to feedback’. The bottom line is it generates goodwill, and the users are happy.
- Make another announcement Lastly, They email everyone on their mailing list again to announce the upped quota.
Very few companies can pull off such a successful launch. It helps to know how people that are on top of their game orchestrate a successful launch.
What is Campfire?
Campfire is real time chat done right. It allows a group of people to easily communicate with each other in real time.
Once you sign up you can create a room and invite others to participate. You can also enable guest access so anyone who has the URL to your room can participate in the conversation. Having a permanent link to a real time chatroom gives the admin alot of flexibility. You can use campfire for alot of uses.
So how is campfire better than an Instant Messager?
IM is too intruisive, I find it difficult to work when my IM is running. Now that I have campfire I use IM for friends/personal and I mainly use campfire for business/serious communication.
Campfire is also alot more more reliable than IM. A bunch of us did a hockey pool over IM this year, and once in a while a user would get dropped. It was a real hassle getting that person back into the conversation. We switched to campfire and the conversation was flawless.
I guess the look and feel also helps with the overall user experience?
Definitely. Its a typical 37signals application. The design is fresh and clean. Im tempted to say that the user interface is intuitive (it is), but quite honestly chatting requires very minimal interface requirements, so in this case “intuitive interface” was very easy to satisfy.
Does Campfire archive your conversations?
Yes, you can access the archives by clicking the “Files and transcripts” tab. You can then search your conversations, or filter your conversation based on the Room, Person, or Day. You can also easily access any uploaded files from this page.
Ok archiving sounds good, but how about privacy issues, what if I want to keep some conversations private?
Easy. Admin’s have the option to “lock” the room. Once you lock the room, nobody else can enter the room and the conversation is held “off the record”, the conversation will not be archived if the room is locked.
What is OriginalSignal?
Its a feed aggregator. It gathers primarily technology feeds. It has a predefined list of sites that it regularily checks for new content.
Do you use it
Yeah, everyday. Its great because it saves you time. You dont have to goto individual sites and check for content. Its much simpler to goto originalSignal.
yeah but why not use something like bloglines. It will also check feeds for new content and plus you can add your own feeds as well.
OriginalSignal is just more quick and dirty. I dont have to worry about adding new feeds or deleting old ones. Sometimes a service such as bloglines can feel like work. You feel obligated to read all of the new content. This is not the case with OriginalSignal, OriginalSignal feels like a quick news fix.
What else do you like about OriginalSignal?
When you hover over a headline you get a small preview of the beginning of the article. Thats another little time saver. I also like the design, simple and fresh.
I also like to see what articles others are reading. You can do this by clicking the popular headlines icon. This will give you a list of “the most popular links today”, “the most popular this week” and “the most popular this month”. Its a nice feature to see what others are clicking.
Nice, any closing comments
Yeah, if you want to check the pulse of the net give OriginalSignal a try. Dont be surprised if it ends up being your new homepage.
What is ConceptShare?
ConceptShare allows people to collaborate on visual documents. So if you need to discuss the look and feel of a particluar mockup with a group of people you would consider using conceptshare.
OK, so who is the target audience?
Id say its geared towards but not limited to web designers and graphic artists.
Explain the typical workflow
OK its very basic. In a nutshell you upload an image and then you and your team can leave comments on that image. Its only a tad bit deeper than that. EG standard alerts are sent via email when a new comment is left, revision history is available, you can draw attention to certain areas of an image by drawing on it.
So a commenting on images application sounds pretty basic
Yeah its basic, but thats not a bad thing. It does its job very well and doesn’t try to do much more. Its very polished. There is nothing beta about the look and feel. It feels like a well thought out, well designed application.
What about the classic question, do you think companies would trust their documents to a 3rd party startup?
In this case yes. Im guessing companies will store originals on their servers and use conceptshare to collaborate.
And heres the kicker, you can run ConceptShare on your own servers.
Thats worth repeating, ConceptShare can be run on your own servers?
Yup, that truly is great, you dont see that much with web applications. Although I dont think they are advertising that fact just yet. For more information send them an email.
Whats the “Find an Expert” feature?
Yeah thats fairly intriguing. ConceptShare presents you with a list of “experts”. You can pick and choose who you want to invite into your workspace. Once invited these users can leave comments on your design documents. Its an interesting idea, if you wanted you can have complete strangers offer their advice and give feedback on your docs.
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