Posts Tagged ‘online’

Customer Reviews and Blogs: Do They Matter?

There are a lot of websites and blogs that track the good and bad customer experiences with online sites and service providers.  The general notion is that these past experiences will help predict what future experiences will be.  The concept makes a lot of sense, but it presumes a few things to be true.  I just finished reading SuperFreakonomics, so I think I’m more than qualified to address these issues in a rigorous manner (did I mention that I am a scientist?  Yep, I graduated with a degree in political science, so you’re in good hands):

Sample Issues: The review sites and blogs are very much slanted towards those actually inclined to share their experiences, and those who actually know how to share them.   There is a large bloc of people not interested in telling the world about how they were ripped off by an unknown online seller (it’s called “loss avoidance” and most of us engage in it at some point…see I told you I was a scientist).  The sample of these comments are further vexed by the fact that some people don’t know how to voice their opinions (or which sites to do it with) — so the sample will likely skew towards more positive and be made by those familiar with technology/online industries.

Fraud: This is also a concern, and likely why most ratings skew overly positive…online sellers/service providers rate themselves (via fake accounts or their friends).  It’s not “fraud” in the sense of defrauding someone out of their money, but it’s not honest and defeats the purpose of customer reviews.  It’s similar to how I used to inscribe my own yearbook to make it seem like I had more friends.

Low Visibility/Little Negative Impact:  An online seller isn’t likely to promote their customer reviews unless  they are positive, so it takes a consumer extra effort to research the negative reviews.  And once you do come across those reviews, what do they mean?  If you’re about to save 20% on the new plasma t.v., it’s likely that you’ll take your chances — it’s likely the previous customers were just complainers. 

Time for the anecdotal: My wife bought a new light fixture online.  She receives it and finds out it can’t be used in a bathroom because of a potential fire hazard.  The contacts the owner of the site, he tells her “she should be fine putting it in the bathroom”).  After realizing she is not going to be able to return the item, she threatens to “blog about her experience”.  Of course, she has other things to worry about and in time she moves one — no negative review, no blog posting, no negative effect for the online seller.

Of course, we here at KikScore think we’ve solved the issue, but until we’re ubiquitous, we’ll have to determine whether customer reviews are helpful.  What are your thoughts?

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

Is your business a trail adventure?

A favorite route - Apex Trail

Living in Colorado is refreshing and rewarding… and can force one to tackle adventures with a free spirit. The assumption is that if you live in Colorado, you are hitting the slopes every weekend. Well, I’m not a skier, but give me a good pair of trail running shoes, a crisp morning and a trail that winds up a mountain or hillside – now that’s what I call adventure! Will there be the unavoidable tree root to navigate or an elevation change that I wasn’t quite prepared for? Maybe encounter a snake or snow/ice which forces one to slow down and proceed with caution. Starting a business is a similar adventure in putting on those running shoes, climbing up the mountain, yet not certain what you may encounter along the way.

When launching a new business, we are forced to be selective of which trail to tackle first and more importantly to keep track of where we’ve been so as not to make repeat mistakes. The path of a new business needs to be able to react and learn from last weekend’s trail run and plan accordingly for next week’s adventure. My favorite poem, Robert Frost’s The road not takencan be interpreted many ways. In the success of business, we over analyze which can paralyze… How complex should your beta launch be? How are we going to support customer inquiries/issues in a timely manner? What enhancements should we concentrate on? How will we measure success? I can go on…

In trail running, I cannot be afraid to take that challenging trail and have an incredible story to share from my adventure. In starting a business, we need to be brave enough to take that less travelled road that can pave the way for others to follow, which will be our loyal customers.

When in doubt, run uphill! What twists and turns, and unexpected elevation changes have your business taken you on? Share your experience with us.

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

Brett Favre and Business

I may be starting something I shouldn’t with this post, as most of us on the KikScore team are ardent professional football fans (except Raj, who likes the Cleveland Browns).  The first 20 minutes of our Monday meetings are consumed with rehashing Sunday games (we get a lot more done during baseball season).  This year my favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings, signed Brett Favre and, in turn, they are having a great season.  So, to the disgust of Mike Collins (my business partner and Green Bay fan), I’m going to write what Business lessons can learn from the Brett Favre acquisition.

Patience:

Everyone assumes that when you come out with a new product or service, it has to have immediate market success, as-is.  But as Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes clear in his book “The Black Swan”, one of the greatest strengths entrepreneurs have is the ability to tinker.  Tinkering with a concept until it suits the market is the whole point of business.  What’s the tie-in to Brett Favre?  Well, his first year in the NFL wasn’t notable.  He was a back-up quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons — and didn’t show any indications of being a future Hall of Famer that he is.  But over time, he changed his work-out methods, how he approached the game and now, at the age of 40, he’s having one of his best years ever (that’s after 20 years of tinkering).

Talent:

Last year, the Vikings had almost every member of the current team.  They lost in the first-round of the playoffs.  Now, who knows how it will end this year, but this year’s team is much different than last year.  The biggest difference is Brett Favre — his experience and talent.  The business lesson is pretty obvious.  You can have all the supporting pieces, but talented leadership (or lack of it) can raise or sink the level of everyone else around him/her.

Brains Over Brawn:

Somewhat related to patience, is the importance of experience/intelligence.  There are a lot of faster, younger players than Brett.  In fact, the Vikings have two younger/faster quarterbacks and they still chose to hire Mr. Favre at $14M/year.  When it comes to business, it may be tempting to promote the new HBS graduate — she knows all the cool Malcom Gladwell terminology and interned at some investment bank (that no longer exists).  But maybe you should look again at the company veteran, the one that knows your product and industry well.

This posting could go on and on…so out of interest of preserving my dignity, I’m going to now end my love-letter to Brett.  Feel free to send any jeers or life-sports lessons.

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

Small Business Funding: Tarp Banks, Goldman Sachs or Powerball?

We’ve posted earlier about funding a start-up, talking about whether to get venture or angel investment, or self fund.  So, if you go the self-funding route, small business owners face a question of dipping into their savings or seeking a small business loan.  But is that really a choice for small business owners?

A recent article examined small business lending by the banks that are the Top 22 TARP recipients — which just so happen to be the largest lenders to small businesses.  According to CNN, though TARP was intended to provide liquidity to small businesses as well as large, it’s just not happening.  The top TARP recipients have trimmed back lending to small business by over $8B.  Though the new administration required $15B be set aside for small business lending, that money has gone untouched.

So if a small business can’t get a loan, what about a charitable fund for small business?  Doesn’t exist, right?  Well, maybe not.  For 10,000 businesses, there is a chance for a cool $50k gift card…thanks to Goldman Sachs.  Goldman, with the encouragement Warren Buffet, has created a $500M fund to benefit 10,000 small businesses — providing access much needed liquidity.  Some media outlets are a bit cynical about Goldman’s motivations, but really what does it matter?  Goldman paid back its TARP funds and really didn’t have to create the small business fund. 

If your business can’t get a loan, and doesn’t luck out with the Goldman Sachs free money give-away, there is also the Powerball — with a 1:195M chance to win.  Or, you could do what KikScore is planning — a lemonade stand offering $100k organic lemonade.  It only takes one customer.

Let us know if your business has had any good or bad experience in obtaining a small business loan/credit line.

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

Is Cyber Monday the New Black Friday? And Will My Brother Get a New Coat?

An interesting phen0menon occurred during the kickoff of the holiday shopping season (two phenomenons, actually, if you count the fact that I found a sweater that doesn’t make me look fat).  With most of the focus on the bricks-and-mortar retail sales, which appear to be up very modestly, online sales on both “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” were very strong.  So there is a big question hanging out there (besides the question if 40 is really the new 30 — man, I hope so) — Is Cyber Monday the new Black Friday?

In terms of raw numbers, of course Cyber Monday hasn’t yet replaced the mall.  But in terms of predictiveness, which is more predictive?  Year over Year, offline sales for Black Friday were up 1.6%, with YOY online sales on Black Friday being up approximately 11%.  Then big event, Cyber Monday, showed a 5% increase from 2008 and is the biggest day of sales since tracking of this hallowed day began five years ago. 

So what gives? Are we going to have a flat or booming holiday season?  While the numbers cited above are interesting, there is only one way to handle this type of question in the blog world…anecdotal information!  My brother was in town and, according to my wife, his winter coat was from the 1980s.  While retro is good, you actually have to buy new clothes that look old…it just doesn’t work holding onto your old stuff. 

We hit the malls and it was busy, but according to the Nordstrom and Macy’s sales staff, the Black Friday crowd was similar to a normal Saturday crowd.  There’s not a lot of inventory for winter wear, so we head to REI.  We find the coat, but Dang! it’s pricey.  Being good shoppers, we use the time to find a jacket type my brother likes and my wife barely approves (he’s now moved up to the late 1990s). 

We then go home and hit the online sites for deals.  We find the coat on a great site, BackCountry.com, get 25% off with free shipping (you should check out their blog).  So the offline retail stores acted as a very expensive closet that then benefited the online site.  So, according to my exhaustive research, I think the initial numbers are misleading, and we will have a surprisingly good holiday season.

What are you seeing out there?  Also, is it time for you to update your winter wear?

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

Small Biz Thankful List

In honor of the day, we are doing our KikScore Small Business Thankful List.  These companies, tools and sites have been helpful for us or other start-up businesses we work with.  Clearly this isn’t an exhaustive list (and feel free to add your own in the comments).  So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we here at KikScore are thankful for:

1.  MyBusinessAssistant.com — helping out small businesses manage their, well, their business — via their virtual assistant service

2.  Shustir.com — creating a unique online marketplace and community for new and small businesses.

3.  Design2Print — did a great job on our marketing gear.

4.  Freeconference.com — Free and Conference, need I say more.

5.  WordPress — allowing small business to create an inexpensive way to spread the word.

6.  Twitter/Facebook — I’ll start talking about it soon enough, but social media has been wonderful for KikScore and Small Business in general.

7.  YouTube — allowing Small Biz to create and distribute their own commercials without buying a slew of server space.

8.  Google — providing research resources that 20 years ago would have cost thousands of dollars.

9.  iPhone — providing Small Biz a reasonable excuse for dropping calls (and it’s a pretty handy tool).

10.  oDesk — providing some relief to our development team, with providing a marketplace for Tech contractors.

11.  Minnesota Vikings — because Small Businesses love a winner (okay, i’m throwing that in there to see if anyone is actually reading this).

12.  MicroSoft BizSpark — providing KikScore and a lot of startups, a lot of free software (we really like groove…check it out)

Here’s hoping you’re having a great holiday…we’re most thankful for our readers and customers.

Team KikScore

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

When to Shut Up About Your Small Business

This post may seem a bit counter-intuitive, since we’ve been evangelizing about the need to promote your business on social media.  We’ve talked about how this blog, and our tweets, and facebook have led to good things for KikScore.  But there are times when you should stop sharing.

Keeping Your Competitive Advantage:  No matter what business you have, there are certain things that you do, or mistakes that you have learned from, that your competitors would love to know.  When we thought up the KikScore service, we took the time, prior to launching, to file a couple of patents.  But patents don’t completely protect your business.  To file a patent, you must disclose exactly what your competitive advantage is — prior to knowing if you’ll get the patent granted. That’s why Coke has never filed a patent on its secret formula…because they’d have to disclose the exact formula.  Same thing goes for your business.  If you do something better than your competitors, it’s a valuable trade secret.  And it’s not just your competitors you have to worry about…you also have to worry about people interested in investing in your business.  This article describes a recent example of a potential investor that, after learning about a business, deciding to forego the investment and just start a similar business.

Going From Enthusiasm to Annoyance:  We’re all excited about our businesses.  And we love to talk about to our family, friends, followers on Twitter, the guy at the bus-stop, and the deranged homeless man asking for money.  Generally, our enthusiasm is viewed in  a positive light.  But what is the fine line between our enthusiasm and becoming a spammer?  The other night, I was having dinner with friends and letting them know how easy it is to automate updates on my facebook page.  My good friend than said “If you go overboard, I’ll do what I’ve done with my other friends and just turn off your updates.”  I realized that I’ve got to make sure not to abuse my friends and over-promote our business, as it will hurt my brand and I will start losing friends.

Feel free to share other instances when you shouldn’t over-share about your business.

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

First Black Friday Report

Here’s the first KikScore report on the holiday shopping season. Based on our research, there should be an uptick in activity. What am I basing this on? The fact that DC airport is packed today and my flight was oversold. Also, I’m sitting on a plane right now and have asked a couple of folks if they are going to spend more money this year. They didn’t really respond to me, but I sensed that they plan on buying more. Except the weird guy in 10A. The only thing he looks like he’s in the market for is a shovel for all the bodies he likely has stashed in his basement.
Ok. Not very throrough research, but it will get better. Also, feel free to send in your non-scientific polling/economic data.

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Posts Tagged ‘online’

Social Media & Your Biz: Open Up So You Can Close

Though the Internet seems to be overflowing with blog posts, tweets, and Facebook updates, there are a good number of businesses that don’t use social media in any manner.  Initially, I wasn’t the biggest evangelist for social media.  In all fairness, others on the Team are much more sophisticated about how to properly use blogs and Twitter. My initial feeling on social media was “Why the hell would I want to read the thoughts of a complete stranger?”  The past 6 weeks, however, we’ve gone live with our site/service and my attitude has completely changed.  Initially, we did very informative, yet sterile, blog postings…ones that no one actually read.  My prejudice seemed to be confirmed.  We then became more candid and casual in our postings, linked them up to Twitter and Facebook and all sorts of good things started to happen:

1.  Our traffic and overall visibility to the site is growing exponentially

2. We have come across several companies that are reaching out to similar small business owners.  Two such partners are Shustir and MyBusinessAssistant — services that are helping small business grow faster and with less headaches.

3. We are getting direct feedback from the marketplace.

4.  Our customers have a good understand with whom they are doing business with — not just a slick website (though our site is pretty slick).

5.  I’ve been able to share my drinking stories and show pictures of my dog online under the guise of being helpful for small business.

We’re not just the only ones seeing the positive impact of opening up to social media.  One of our customers, www.17thandRiggs.com has a great blog and is active on Twitter https://twitter.com/RebeccaSM).  In under a year, Rebecca has transformed her site from a passionate hobby to a destination site for interior designers and those who want to keep up with the latest design trends (as well as a full-time business).  If you don’t like my anecdotal examples, do you prefer the Wall Street Journal’s anecdotal examples?  In a recent WSJ article, a featured small business discussed how her wedding planning business was significantly buoyed by using social media. 

Feel free to share your favorite social media success stories…or tips on using social media.

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Diary of a Tech Start-Up: Disagreement Over Product Features

Lord of the Flies

If you’re doing a start-up with other people, I guess it’s unavoidable to have disagreements with your team. If you’re lucky, the biggest disagreements center around where to go for happy hour. Personally, I like Chili’s. I know it’s not necessarily cool, but the chips and salsa is really good (very salty chips) and the margaritas are big (and unlike I’ve mentioned in previous postings, the glasses are very easy to hold onto). It’s also very unlikely that you’ll run into your competitors at Chili’s — as these weak-kneed companies can’t buck peer pressure and social convention and won’t be caught dead there.

Recently, our team has been caught up in a larger kerfuffle.  It centers around how we promote and/or explain the shopper experience that can be expected on our customer sites — via a numeric score. Some of the customer feedback is the concern that shoppers may equate an 820 (which is a really high score) with a “low B” rating (which would get you valedictorian status at my high school).

A contingent of our team believes that, because we already spell out the guidance of the numerical rating (“great experience”, “good experience” and “poor experience” expected), to remove customer confusion, we could eliminate the actual score. Other team members argue that the numeric rating shows the precision and sophistication of our scoring model (see posting on our algorithm), and it is something that our customers need to accept.  Take a look at one of our customer’s sites, at www.17thandriggs.com to see the current version of the user experience.

We’re working through how to please all the team members, but this disagreement doesn’t seem to have a clear mid-point. I guess that’s the point of working with the right team. If everyone has an opportunity to express their views, whether the decision goes the way a particular team member wants really isn’t important. It’s that there’s an underlying level belief that ultimately, with enough deliberation, the group can reach the best decision for the business and the customer.

On the other hand, instead of thoughtful deliberation, we’re also thinking of implementing Mixed Martial Arts in our team meetings. I may have a bit of a paunch, but I have a pretty good reach.

Feel free to give us your opinion in the comments below on your feedback on this issue.

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