Archive for February, 2010

Buzz Building for Social Commerce Camp DC – Network, Learn & Engage

Social Commerce Camp DC is just  one week away!  Put away those shovels and snow shoes and get ready to network with other small businesses and learn and discuss social media, small business, ecommerce, online stores, PR and marketing.

In case you have not heard, KikScore, Network Solutions, MyBusinessAssistant.com, and Mayer Brown will be putting on a first of its kind event in Washington DC on Saturday, February 20, 2010 from 8am-noon.  Its Social Commerce Camp DC. This first time FREE event is generating some serious buzz and just this week was covered by Techcocktail and the Washington Examiner.

Social Commerce Camp DC is great for small businesses, online merchants and entrepreneurs who want to get online and grow their business.  The morning long session will be moderated by Network Solutions Social Media Swami and DC Tech Titan, Shashi Bellamkonda, and will feature two industry experts, Shonali Burke (recently named Top 25 Women that Rock Social Media) and social media and movie producer Steve Fisher, each of  them focusing on discussing real and practical ways of building and growing a small business.

Here is the agenda for Social Commerce Camp DC on February 20, 2010:

8 a.m to 9 a.m:  Continental breakfast , registration and networking

9 a.m to 9.45:  Session 1 – Social Media 101 for Small Business – Shashi Bellamkonda – Social Media Swami – Network Solutions

10.00 to 10.45:  Session 2 – Creating a Killer Social User Experience with your e-Commerce Site – Steve Fisher –browncoatsmovie.com

10.45 to 11.15:  Check your Twitter account/ blogging time

11.15 to Noon:  Session 3 – PR tips and best practices for small business – Shonali Burke president IABC DC , Principal Shonali Burke Consulting & Editor https://womengrowbusiness.com

Sign up details are right here for Social Commerce Camp DC.  Space is very limited and its filling up fast.  We had over 10 signups just yesterday!

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Archive for February, 2010

American Idol and Our New Start-Up

I’m sitting on the couch, watching the latest American Idol episode.  Two things cross my mind.  First, if Simon Cowell is going to leave, I only plan on tuning in next year if Howard Stern is the “honest” judge.  And, by all accounts, there’s a decent chance that may happen.  The second thing that occurs to me is that there are some decent correlations between start-ups and American Idol.  What are they?  Here’s a fun list:

1.  Talent is only Half the Battle:  In Adam Smith’s finest hour, efficient markets rule the day and ours is a completely idea/concept driven economy.  But this isn’t Mr. Smith’s ideal economy and style often overrules substance.  Often times with American Idol, those with the best voices don’t advance.  Instead, those with a “story” or a “hook” advance.  The best example of this is Sanjaya — no real talent other than creating buzz that advance far into the competition.  The same is true with start-ups.  You can have the best concept/product in the room, but it won’t matter unless you have an excellent marketing plan.

2.  Hurry Up and Wait —  People stand in line for days to audition for 30 sec0nds.  Painful boredom leading up to small windows of defining moments –you live or die within those moments.  The same is true for new businesses.  Your concept lives or dies by how you do in a call or meeting. 

3.  Balance of personalities.  You have Randy Jackson (the technician), Kara (the nicer one) and Simon (the honest voice).  Most businesses have a similar balance of views — as no single view can best handle all situations. 

4.  Talent Comes from Anywhere — Kelly Clarkson was an unknown before AI — she is now an industry force because of the opportunity given to her.  Similar with business, Silicon Valley doesn’t have a monopoly on technology or new concepts.  The next big thing can come from anywhere, including Farg0-Moorhead.

Those are my 4 paralells — feel free to share other similarities.

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Archive for February, 2010

Issues Escalation and Support Guidelines in a start-up environment

You may have noticed a pattern here at KikScore where feedback and the question of when is a product ‘ready’  are hot topics. So, how do you define, measure, and enforce quality in a start up product? Once the product is ‘live’, how can you effectively support your product and react to customer issues and concerns? There are a few key software quality assurance guidelines to follow that apply to products of all shapes and sizes.

During the development phase you must test, test and retest. Depending upon the complexity of the software being developed, this could be a short or lengthy venture. Testing in phases, as pieces of the application become available, is highly recommended. This allows you to not only find major issues early, but also helps ensure you aren’t building upon sub-par code as the product continues through the life-cycle. Also, find a means to track and report status on any and all issues found during the test cycles. A spreadsheet can work if you don’t have a bug tracking system and there are a few free/easy to use ones available.

Even if you had ample time to test everything you could think of, upon release to the general user community, they will find issues you never dreamed of. Once you are ‘live’, your team needs to gauge the severity of any issue that is uncovered or reported to assess the impact and allocate resource(s) accordingly to address it. This is critical in the case where there are limited development resources and you need to prioritize their work so as not to affect other focus growth areas.

Severity can be broken into 3 levels – this also gives the entire team a common terminology when discussing issues.

Severity 1

— Core functionality is not working.
— There is no available work-around to perform the requested action.
— Error messages are displayed.

Severity 2

— Basic functionality is in question.
— There is a work-around to gain access and perform the requested action.
— The system handles the situation gracefully, either with a general ‘logged out’ message or other user-friendly notification.

Severity 3

— General usability items.
— Application is functioning fine, but confusion is raised throughout the display or general system navigation.

Once you’ve qualified the issue, how do you support it through the process and keep the customer informed?
Let’s assume you have a Severity 1 – how do you deal with it? In a small start-up shop, where most of the team has day jobs, creating an on-call or support tier works wonders.

1. Create a weekly on-call support staff that rotates and consists of 2 resources per week.
On a weekly call (or other avenue that applies) — Identify the 2 on-call resources per 1 week interval

2. During the support week, the 2 resources on-call are responsible for researching issues reported and be point of contact for:
— responding to the customer(s) who reported the issue
— involving other team members as needed to escalate/resolve the issue(s)

3. Support resources are required to provide daily updates to the rest of the team on progress of reported issues.

4. Where a code change or update is required, the support resource(s) schedule a team call to outline next steps and expectations

5. If 4 happens, the entire team should discuss the response back to customer(s) on the fix.

The Golden Rule – If a customer found the issue and actively complains – always treat as Severity 1. Be open and honest with your customers surrounding errors that are found and get a fix released in a timely manner. This builds trust in not only your product and support but builds integrity into your brand. What is your quality cycle or lessons learned?

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Archive for February, 2010

KikScore's New Look: Don't Go Changin' Unless It's A Lot Better

So we launched KikScore a few months ago and we had, in our minds, a pretty good marketing site.  But in our own echo-chamber, all of our ideas sound great.  We then did something that was truly smart — we started listening to people outside our own company.  We asked for feedback from friends and family, customers and industry professionals.  We even used a cool site called usertesting.com — which allows you to watch strangers review your site (you hear their comments and see how they navigate the pages).

We gathered up the feedback and the trends were eye-opening.  They broke out along the general categories of: (a) how is your product different; (b) where do you sign up; and (c) what exactly does the service work.  So we went back to the drawing board (and when I say we, I mean our partner, Joel, went spent countless hours on the re-design).

Our new marketing site is out (www.KikScore.com).  In a post coming soon, Joel will provide his thoughts on design and the evolution of messaging.  But until then, we’re going to continue to solicit feedback…as we can always get better.  Please take a look at our new site and provide us your thoughts.

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Archive for February, 2010

Isa Brito, owner of Isa's Restoratives shares her small business story with KikScore

We discovered Isa Brito and her natural skin care line Isa’s Restoratives from a recent Shustir  blog post.  Isa is active in marketing her Hand Crafted Skin Care and Health Products on Shustir and on her own website. Thanks Isa for sharing your small business success story with KikScore!

1. Tell us about Isa’s Restoratives and who you focus on serving?

I have always been interested in natural food, in the 5 years I have been studying herbalism with a few great herbalists in the region. Much has changed in our lifestyle at home, from cooking techniques to making our own house cleaning products and of course skin care and herbal remedies. When my daughter who is now almost 14 started being interested in products, I started making them at home and soon her friends and mine wanted some too. I focus on serving the person interested in taking charge  of their own health and knowing that their skin care products are pure and freshly made.

2. How did you get your started selling online?

I started selling online because as word of mouth spread I started receiving calls from friends of friends of friends that wanted to purchase creams and tinctures and I felt that it was time to have an online store to keep organized and give my customers  a place to read about and see the products.

3. Where will Isa’s Restoratives focus most of its energy in 2010?

This year will be focused on advertising and finding stores selling like-minded products.

4. If you had 2 lessons learned from your business that you could pass on to others about selling online, what are those?

My business is very young, but I can already say that keeping organized is key. From the start, I sought advice on small business set up and I am very glad that won’t have to back paddled later. Also keeping an eye on costs.

5. As 2010 begins, what do you see as 2 new trends in your business this year?

The natural skin care and herbal remedies business is becoming very popular, I see it just growing. More people are becoming aware of the amount chemicals they put in and on their bodies, and are looking for more natural alternatives. A lot of people also appreciate a certain level of personal relationship, and I try to respond to everyone’s comments and questions.

6. If your business/store could be any movie or movie character, what movie/movie character would it be and why?

Maude  from Harold and Maude. I love her free spirit, playfulness and idiosyncratic wisdom.

7. If Isa’s Restoratives could have a dream spokesperson for your company who would it be and why?

Christy Turlington comes to mind as a wholesome, strong woman.

8. How do the folks at Isa’s Restoratives let loose after a busy day working?

Time in the kitchen with as my daughter sits nearby and does her homework. This winter we are both doing knitting projects that we have never tried before. And we like playing chess.

9. Do you have any parting thoughts for our readers and the small business community?

It is a lot of hard work, but working for yourself it is so much fun!!

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Archive for February, 2010

Super Bowl Sunday & Baby Outfits (Cute Picture Included)

Its Super Bowl Sunday!!!  And my Cleveland Browns are once again not in the Super Bowl.  Again the refrain rings in my head that I have heard over and over again the last 30 some years….”There is always next year!”  Luckily, with a new front office in Cleveland there is now indeed hope.  I am also filled with hope because if the Saints can make it to the Super Bowl, my Cleveland Browns certainly can. For those unaware of the history of near misses of this great franchises, here is a video history of the Browns.

That brings me to the picture.  My six-week old daughter does not have a Browns outfit yet (though she does have a Lebron one thanks to my buddy Sanjiv) so she doesn’t have football outfit to wear for the big game tonight.  So the next best thing is she is going to wear a KikScore onesie today as she watches her first Super Bowl.  Thanks to our dear friends the Kashkaris (who also share our love for the Browns) for the outfit and Rush Dufner at Design2Print for the super cute outfit.  Check Design2Print out for all your printing and promotional products. We got our KikScore hats there.

Happy watching tonight!  Go Browns…I mean Saints.

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Archive for February, 2010

KikScore Update: Acting on Feedback, Our Product Enhancements for Online Sellers & Ecommerce Stores

As a startup with  a new product, we at Kikscore have mentioned here a number of times the importance that we and others have stressed on taking user feedback and comments and then acting on them.   If your business and management stick your head in the ground and think you know the market better than your customers, you have a very low chance of succeeding as a business, especially a startup.  We know our product may not be perfect, but as we mentioned earlier this week instead of waiting for perfection we decided as a company that we wanted to push Kikscore out to market in beta form in late 2009 so we could get feedback from online sellers and e-commerce users that had stores.

So here we are in early 2010.  Where are we with the KikScore product? Well here is an update on some of the recent key changes and enhancements we have made to the KikScore product.  These changes came directly from our users, the community and other generous friends, family members and colleagues that took the time to sign up and use our product or take a look at live users of the KikScore product.

1. Load & Uptime Improvements – We improved response and load times of every KikScore seal and KikReport that resides on an online seller’s site.   Uptime for the seals is now the best it has ever been and we will continue to monitor KikScore seal uptimes as we know the importance that has for our customers.

2. Updated User Interface & Look and Feel – We updated the look and feel of the tabs on the KikReport.  This included making the look and feel of Management and Shopping Security tabs easier to read and to include even more easy to use information about a seller’s business, website, background and track record of trustworthiness.  The user interface for the KikReport and some of these tabs was also updated based on feedback so shoppers could easily recognize and interpret the information and data presented in the KikReport of a seller.

3. Updated Comment Platform – We modified and enhanced the comment management platform on the merchant’s KikReport making it even easier for comments about a shopper’s experience to be displayed to online visitors to a small business website.

4. Updated Seal – The KikScore seal has been updated based on both seller and shopper feedback to make the initial KikScore seal that resides on a seller’s website easier to read and interpret.

5. Easier Sign-Up– We listened to our beta users and have made the KikScore sign-up process for merchants more intuitive and easy for merchants.

6. Scoring Model Updates – Based on the data and feedback we continue to receive, we are also making enhancements along with updates to our scoring model that analyzes the trustworthiness and reliability of small businesses, online sellers and merchants.

These are just some of the enhancements and updates to the KikScore product.  We continue to solicit and receive feedback.  During the coming months, you will not only see more enhancements and updates but also much more.  We cannot go into too much detail in the “much more” but the next few months will be exciting for our customers, new customers, the community and the market (and us too!).

Let us know what you think about our enhancements and updates. Also feel free to send us more feedback on KikScore. We love it.

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Archive for February, 2010

Top 5 (and a half) Reasons You Should Attend the Social Commerce Camp

Do you love lists?  Do you want to learn more about the Social Commerce Camp (February 20th) in D.C.?  Do you wish Steven Segal would do another Hard to Kill movie (not related to this post, but I really miss those awesome Steven Segal movies).  Well do I have something for you…here are the Top Five (and a half) reasons you need to come to the Social Commerce Camp (sponsored by Network Solutions, Mayer Brown, KikScore and MyBusinessAssistant):

5.  Learn the Social Commerce landscape and trends from Shashi B. — a top mover and shaker in D.C.’s tech community (and social guru for Network Solutions);

4.  Let Steven Fisher walk you through how to set up website for your business — and ask him about his movie (at www.browncoatsmovie.com)

3.  Wondering how to get some positive publicity?  That’s Shonali Burke’s specialty, as she’s a  leadingPR professional and editor of WomenGrowBusiness.com  . 

2. Did we mention free breakfast pastries and coffee?

1.  Network with similarly minded small business owners looking to  tap into social commerce to start and/or grow their business. 

1A.  Sign a petition to Steven Segal and implore him to begin working on a new karate movie.

Looking forward to seeing you at the Social Commerce Camp — I know it’s a Saturday morning, but if you stay up all night, it will feel like the middle of the afternoon.

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Archive for February, 2010

Should Start-Up Companies and Small Businesses Release Their New Software Early or Wait Until it is Perfected?

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Archive for February, 2010

Small Business Interview with SJ Trotter from Exclusive Clothing Retail (www.exclusiveclothingretail.com)

What best defines ecommerce? The lack of boundaries in searching for the best goods/services at the best price.  We here at KikScore came across www.exclusiveclothingretail.com  and its owner, S.J. Trotter on Twitter and have been following ECR for a while (despite the fact we’re on the opposite side of the Atlantic).  We’re a fan of ECR and asked Mr. Trotter to give us a few minutes to talk about the economy, lessons on business, and who is his favorite Beatle.  He obliged.  Here’s our interview:

1. How did you get started with your store and selling online?

As soon as we started our company, Exclusive Ent, we knew we wanted to start by selling online, with the amount of free advertising you can gain from social networks an online store is a must.

2. How would you summarize your survival strategy for the past two years?

Not throwing money into the company! One thing we agreed from the start was to slowly build up our company and not take out a massive loan to try and kick start it. Word of mouth and social network promotion was our route rather than spending thousands on advertising. Resulting in us being in 0 debt at this current time which I believe is an achievement.

3. Have you seen any recent uptick in business activity

Because we are a fairly new company we have had a steady increase in sales since we began 2 years ago.

4. What will be your focus for 2010?

Artist’s endorsements & finalizing plans to open our own flagship shop.

5. What are 2 things that you would pass along as guidance for a business just starting out today?

Just do not allow yourself to built up a large amount of debt. As good as your idea is to you, your never ever know if it will be a reality and sell well so test the waters for a while before you start piling money into your business. Also take full advantage of all social network and free Internet advertising.

6. Have you seen any sales deriving from social media?

50% of our sales come from social networking sites, the chain reaction you can achieve from them is priceless.

7. If you could have dinner with any person, present or past, who would it be and why?

Richard Branson, I think I could write a list of 100 questions to ask him in seconds!

8. Better Artist: John Lennon or Paul McCartney?

John Lennon for simply ‘Imagine’, But really I’m not sure you can pick between them they are both world class

9. One informal economic indicator that you watch more closely than anything else?

Although it may not be an economic indicator what I watch closer than anything is my competitions prices, not necessarily so we are always cheaper but more that we show our customers that we have more value for money.

10. Any favorite piece of advice you’ve received?

Built your company with what you earn, not what you can borrow

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