Seattle 2.0 Blog

July 26, 2007

THU 26 JUL 2007

When creating the first version of your Startup website... By Marcelo Calbucci

 

    A lot of people are just starting to understand the Internet. I'm not talking about the low-tech mom, your accountant, or the car salesman across the street. Those people will never really understand how it works. I'm talking about techy-savvy engineers and entrepreneurs. They think they know everything because they understand HTTP, HTML and AJAX. But how many of those people can explain Google's PageRank? How many can explain how TechMeme works? How many know about Trackbacks and Pingbacks? Or even some basic SEO techniques. The reality is that most tech savvy people don't care much about it, but they should.

    Here are the 5 biggest mistakes I see (quite often) on websites of brand new startups, and some very well established companies as well:

 

Mistake #1: Homepage Redirect

    That is pretty bad in many levels. The smallest problem you have is that every time you redirect your homepage, it increases the time it takes for a user to see your site. If your user is on a low speed connection, like Dial-up or iPhone, they might get very annoyed.

    But that is not the worst of homepage redirect. Let's suppose you redirect your homepage to "http://mydomain.com/beta/start.htm" . Now, everybody that bookmarks your site, add to del.icio.us or write a blog post about it, will point to that link.  They will just copy and paste the link or use a Browser Toolbar button. This will affect you in two ways: First, you'll need to provide a redirect until the end of times, otherwise the web will be full of links that point nowhere on your site. Second, it might affect your PageRank on Google and on similar search engines.

 

    Always serve the content on your Homepage and don't redirect the user.

 

 

Mistake #2: No RSS Feed

 

    Just a tiny percentage of users get new content through feeds. But almost all sophisticated users and opinion makers use it, and in a future not so distant almost everybody will use it, knowingly or not. Sometimes you have just one chance to tell a user your site has a feed. He might never come back to your page, but if you have a feed, he can easily subscribe to it and be notified of new content.

   You don't have to have a blog to have a feed. You don't even have to have anything on your feed. Get somebody that understands RSS to build you a simple XML file that you drop on your site (feed.xml) and add a link on your Homepage to it (notice this is a <LINK> link, not a <A> link). That is enough to get started.

    If you didn't skip #1 above you should also know that a feed address is the Homepage address of your site with regards to syndication of content. Pick a name for your feed and never, ever rename it, otherwise people that subscribe to your feed will stop receiving content and they won't even know why.

 

 

Mistake #3: No mailing list

 

    Did I say that just a tiny amount of people use RSS today? Oh yeah, I did. So why force an alien technology upon people that are interested in what you are doing to let them know of news about your site/company?

    Do provide a way for users that are email-centric to get notification. At minimum, you can use Google Groups (when it works) or Yahoo Groups (w/ the annoying ads). Don't wait to create the list. Do it from the day 1, from the moment you buy the domain and put a single page up. Over time you'll be able to gather a few hundred email addresses that will be very valuable when you need your first beta (or alpha) testers.

Mistake #4: No contact information

    Credibility comes in many forms. If people search a website and can't find a person's name, like a founder or CEO, or they can't find a real physical address or a real phone number, it all affects the perception of how legitimate the business is.
    I recommend that you at least tell which city you're located and provide an email address for contact. A lot of partnerships and investment might get started just because the two sides are on the same city. It makes everything easier.


Mistake #5: No copyable/useful logo

    There was a time when you needed to be a member of the press and request a press kit to corporations to get screenshots, high resolution logos and other material. In a world where bloggers generate so much news, not having marketing material easily accessible on the site is just, well, stupid.
    I see quite a few companies that make their logo part of the background of the page. For any ordinary user that wouldn't make any difference, but for somebody that needs your logo for a blog post, they will try to right-click to save and it won't work. So, they either skip this step, and you lose the opportunity to have your brand displayed on somebody else's blog, or they will do a screen capture and butcher your brand.
    Do me a favor and go to www.sampa.com and right-click the logo. Surprised?


    The key lesson to take from these 5 tips is that some of the mistakes you make very early when you decide to setup a site for your startup can really be hard to fix later. There are too many things that can decrease your chances of success, the five above should not be on that list.

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