1. Keywords. Decide on a manageable number of keywords to weave into the content of your website (I chose 10). This falls into the category of art. You need to think of words that people would potentially use to search for what you're offering, similar to the process you go through when starting an AdWords campaign. You need to climb into the brain of your customer and understand how he or she might try to find you. For example, our company often refers to itself as a SaaS company. However, potential customers might first think of the words "online" or "hosted," instead of SaaS. Tools exist that can help with this, but the end goal is to list important keywords.
2. Site changes. Depending on what software or hosting services you use, you may need to tweak this process differently, but here are some general ways to influence how your site gets indexed:
• Page title. These are the words at the top of the browser window that describe the current page. Search engines look at these words. Be strategic here. For example, if you have a page devoted to a product that allows online document collaboration, don't use "Product" in the page title. Use "Online document collaboration" instead. Also, don't put your product name first. Search engines will hopefully already know what that is; they tend to look at the first three words, so make them the most important.
• H1 tags. Use the same strategy. Search engines prioritize H1 tags, so use important keywords here. Try to stick to one H1 tag per page.
• URLs. Same deal here: use keywords. For example, instead of http://mycompany.com/product, use http://mycompany.com/online-document-collaboration. Separating words with hyphens is best.
• Keyword density. Make sure to use your keywords in the body of your pages. Density is important; i.e. 2 keywords for every 5 words counts more than 2 for every 15.
• Meta description tags. This will sound redundant but... use keywords. This is also where you should put a 25-word description of your site. Search engines sometimes display this description under links in search results.
• Links. Link to other pages on your website, but (get ready for it!) use keywords. For our example, use "online document collaboration" as the link text, not "product name."
• Content. Create pages on your site that focus on your most important keywords and topics. And then link to those pages using the method described above. Do not copy content from other sites because this only confuses search engines.
3. Link love. We all know that the more inbound links pointing to your site, the better. Get people to write and comment about your business. We also know that the quality of the site linking to yours is very important. What you may not know is that the words in links are important, too. Try to ensure that the text in those inbound links contains keywords; for example, use "business collaboration software" (see how I'm learning) instead of something generic like "click here."

You can do other, more technical things, like create an XML site map and submit it to search engines. Our company brought in SEO experts, and that can be very beneficial if you need help in this area. Regardless, the entire process makes you really focus on what your company does and how you describe it. It isn't easy, but it can pay great dividends with leads and site traffic. How do you practice SEO? Any tips or strategies that I missed?

Mid-sized businesses knew significantly more about cloud services or were at least using them or planning to use them in the near future. Small businesses, on the other hand, were ill-informed, and 59% of those surveyed had no plans to use the cloud at all.

We spoke with Jonathan Bryce, co-founder of Mosso, a RackSpace company. He was surprised at this finding because, as he saw it, cloud computing is ideal for small businesses. The services are generally easy to get started with and don't require an IT staff or capital equipment. Also, small businesses usually have only one or two decision-makers, so the process should ostensibly be much easier than in larger companies.

Jonathan also noted that the hype surrounding the cloud (whether related to hosting, applications, computing, etc.) is confusing to people, particularly small-business owners. While I'm a little surprised at the size of the gap, small-business owners I know are not technically savvy and don't wake up in the morning wondering how they can cut costs by "leveraging the cloud." They keep things very simple and focus on the everyday tactical decisions to operate their business.

While cloud hosting would save them money, scale their business where needed, and remove headaches, these owners usually have other problems on their mind, like staying in business and keeping employees and customers happy.

Jonathan put his finger on how to change this trend. The small-business community needs more education on the specific solutions and benefits that the cloud provides. They need to see use cases and solutions that directly address their business needs if they are ever going to adopt it. For example, hosted application services probably wouldn't help them, but offering them a hosted billing and invoicing solution integrated with their purchasing system might grab their attention.

Small-business owners think in terms of what solves their problems (as we all should), and cloud providers like RackSpace will have to evolve towards offering specific solutions if they want to capture the small-business market.

(Cloud rack photo by Maximillian Dornseif.)

Disclosure: Rackspace is a RWW sponsor.

One of the few ways to address the problem is to adopt collaborative tools and processes that capture the information companies need to be able to thrive.

Every company in the world relies on the bits of information that live in its employees' heads. The accounts payable clerk may know a small nugget on how to negotiate the best price with an important vendor. A salesperson may repeat the same pitch when selling to a certain kind of customer that works every time. An engineer may be the only person who knows why software was originally built with ColdFusion. The branch manager may know the precise spot to kick the box compactor when it acts up.

All of these bits of knowledge add up to a vast amount of information that a healthy business requires. But the vast majority of companies do a poor job of gathering this information in a systematic way. When people leave, either by choice or not, what inevitably happens is that the company and its future employees are forced to relearn it all through trial and error. The cycle repeats over and over again. The scale of this problem is huge in the current environment.

So, what does a company do to address the problem?

1. Use tools and process. Companies must have infrastructure in place to encourage, or force, employees to share information. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it is at least marginally effective. Anything is better than nothing. How many managers around the world are at this moment digging through abandoned email folders trying to figure what their employees were working on and what they knew.

2. Measure collaboration. Again, it doesn't matter how, just do something that you think has a good chance of success. You could measure the number of contributions to a knowledge base, the frequency of mentoring sessions, the number of white papers written, whatever. What you measure is less important than doing it consistently over time and measuring improvement. Of course, the metrics are not irrelevant, but don't wait to choose the perfect ones to track. Start small and simply, and go from there.

3. Reward employees for sharing. If you don't measure and reward productive behavior, it isn't going to happen. Collaboration is a bit fuzzy and can't be measured like the number of phone calls answered per hour, but there are ways.

4. Focus on informal information. This is often where the best information resides. For example, many employees send emails back and forth answering questions and trading best practices. You need a way to harvest these nuggets of information.

None of this stuff is rocket science, but few companies nail this process. We recently spoke with David Coleman of Collaborative Strategies, who said only 10% of his clients focus on "back-end" collaboration. The majority have invested in front-end collaboration technology, like web conferencing, to save money and reduce travel. This is also important but doesn't help companies retain information when people leave. The current economic conditions put even more pressure on companies to wring as much information as possible from remaining and future employees. The important thing now, if you are a business owner or manager, is to do something before it is too late again.

We all know the kinds of conferences I'm talking about. They include SalesForce's DreamForce, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, user conferences, etc. These conferences can be very costly. In addition to the steep fees they demand for companies to qualify as sponsors, the travel and prep costs are often significant (unless you get lucky and the conference is in your town). Money aside, the amount of time spent on collateral, prep, logistics, and so on is a big investment. Granted, once we get to the conference, we usually find our time is worth it. We end up demoing to a large group of people who appear to be genuinely interested. We usually acquire a handful of customers by the time we work through the sales process, so there is a return on investment there.

However, when you add it all up, the ROI may not be worth it. Could we have spent our time and money on more fruitful endeavors? Maybe. There are ancillary benefits to these conferences. We usually meet writers, analysts, and others, so we get exposure and PR, but it is usually hit or miss. If a particular conference is a priority for your company, attending it certainly could change the equation.

Another big factor to consider these days is the economy. Attendance at conferences looks like it will fall sharply over the next few years. Companies are not going to spend money to send people to them unless absolutely necessary. Attendance at the CES conference dropped 30% this year, for example.

Even if you do find the right conference for your company, and it manages to pull in a decent crowd, the problem with sponsoring it is that the bulk of the attendees usually aren't there to purchase new solutions for their companies; they are there to learn, network, and have fun (all of which I vigorously support). This is the key to deciding which conferences to attend, at least for us. It is all about push-and-pull marketing. If the people who are going to the conference are there to buy, then it is a good conference to attend. If we are there to pull them in, rather than push ourselves out, then we love it. But if we are there amongst a sea of other booths and companies to display our wares, then no thanks. This is the main criterion we use to pick which conferences to invest in: are the attendees real buyers with real budgets? It sounds simple, but you would be surprised at how few companies really look at conferences this way.

One increasingly popular method of pricing software (especially SaaS) is based on the number of registered users of the product per month. SalesForce uses this model for most of its offerings and has a different price for each level (Professional, Enterprise, etc.). GroupSwim, the company I work for, also uses this model for collaboration.

For software that serves enterprise employees, the number of registered users is a good indicator of the value that a group derives from the product. Companies need only add the employees who will actually use the software, not everyone in the company. Metrics based on internal users have potential, but the application would need to be very specific. (Zoho uses a number of invoices to price its invoice module, which makes perfect sense.)

One downside to counting the number of users of a product is that people usually don't "quit" or unregister themselves. The onus is on the business to remove users who don't use the service regularly or who leave the company. It would surprise you how much trouble companies have managing this process. Money flies out the window when they don't manage subscriptions or licenses efficiently.

The other school of thought is to base prices on some kind of usage or activity metric. Lithium and GroupSwim Community are products for large external customer and partner communities; both companies use page views to charge customers. In theory, this metric is a good indicator of value because it reflects how much users are actually using the product or visiting the website, especially if you have a large number of users who use the product infrequently.

But there are disadvantages to this method, too. First, how do you measure page view? With the advent of AJAX, video, and other technologies, the page view doesn't always reflect how much users are using a product.

Secondly, a high page view doesn't necessarily mean that the customer is benefiting from the product. For example, many users could very well be clicking all over a website trying in vain to find certain information. Has this person derived value from the website or are they merely a frustrated user who could not find anything they were looking for?

One reason the usage model could make sense is that research has proven that the proportion of users who consistently use an external website tends to be small, relative to the entire community. A software company could try to identify these frequent users and charge only for their usage. But this is a rat hole. Rather, if a lot of people are visiting the website often, they are likely deriving value, and the customer would be charged accordingly. If the website is rarely visited, then it isn't adding value, and the price thus drops. Another company that has adopted usage-based pricing is Vertical Response; it charges based on the number of emails sent, not the number of users or administrators.

As you can see, there are many models to follow for pricing, especially with SaaS. No doubt, things will evolve in the coming years. As reporting and metrics continue to improve, pricing models will likely better reflect value and usage. What do you think?

Steve Jobs did a masterful job of rescuing Apple from near-certain demise and is clearly a driving force behind the company. There is no doubt he is the "Rock Star" CEO. Others that come to mind are Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, etc.. These three bear mentioning as they set their transition in place early and effectively. Both GE and Microsoft have not been unduly affected by the loss of their Rock Star CEOs. I would suspect Warren Buffett will plan and manage his eventual transition just as well.

In contrast, Steve Jobs has not impressed on his succession planning. He relishes the media and consumer attention, and this may have come back to bite him and Apple. Granted he has health issues and they tend to circumvent the best laid plans. However, what he should have started doing years ago is putting other management team members out there and sharing more of the credit and media focus. He may have been trying, but he didn't do enough. You can see Apple and its board desperately trying to convince us that Tim Cook is great, and I'm sure he is and will do fine. The problem is they should have been educating us about Tim years ago.

I predict Apple will do fine without Steve Jobs, whether he comes back in June, later, or not at all. They have great product lines, teams and business processes to continue executing. No doubt losing someone of Jobs' vision is difficult, but nobody is irreplaceable. In fact, having Jobs step away may be the best thing for the company in the long term. No company can succeed with such reliance on one person. It will be a very interesting process to watch unfold.

As an aside, I wish him well and hope he has a speedy recovery.

Let us know your thoughts on rock star CEOs in the comments.

The true cost of a licensed product is much higher than just the software. Here are other things to factor in:

• Hardware costs: You have to either buy machines or add your software to existing servers and manage them. If it is a mission-critical application, you will probably need dedicated machines and back-ups.
• Additional software costs: You will most likely need an OS, application server software, a database, monitoring software, etc. Many of these products are open source now, but there are still associated costs.
• Implementation costs: In my experience, the implementation costs associated with a behind-the-firewall solution are always higher than those of a SaaS application. There is simply more to do. You will either pay consultants or use your own valuable resources and time to worry about installing software, integrating it, building servers, configuration, etc.
• Maintenance labor: If you have in-house software, there is going to be some level of effort required to keep it happy. Your IT people will need to take care of it, which will keep them from doing more value-added activities.

Another huge factor here is the ability to get the latest and greatest technology. Once you install software in a data center, it becomes more difficult to upgrade and maintain it (especially if you customize it). In such a case, you will be stuck with old software that you will have to replace in the same time frame described above. In other words, unless you are absolutely sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your licensed software is going to meet your business needs for 5 years or more, then SaaS might make financial sense.

Let's look at a real-world example. A 100-person company has been sharing files via email and internal servers. The executives have finally concluded they need to join the 21st century and put a solution in place. One option is to implement SharePoint. Here is a rough estimate of what that might cost:

Year 1
MOSS server = $4,500
User client access license = $90
Hosting and maintenance = $5,000
Implementation and developer support = $20,000
Total = $29,590

Year 2 and on
Hosting and maintenance = $5,000
Developer support = $3,000
Total = $8,000

I know of a SaaS solution that has 80% of the file-collaboration functionality of SharePoint but charges $850 per month for 100 users.

Year 1
SaaS fees = $10,200
Implementation support = $10,000
Total = $20,200

Year 2 and on
SaaS fees = $10,200
Total = $10,200

It would take over 4 and a half years before the licensed software became cheaper. By that time, I'm quite sure there would be another solution that could replace SharePoint, and the cycle would start again. We can quibble about the numbers, but you get the point. Plus, the numbers don't reflect that the SaaS solution is likely to improve and innovate faster than the licensed software by a significant amount.

What do you think? Have you done this analysis, and what did you conclude?

I recently attended a Forrester Briefing and listened to comments by analyst Peter Burris, a very smart guy. The company has done a host of studies showing that technology will be a growing part of how businesses compete and differentiate themselves in the future.

While systems and software used to be very "behind the scenes" and often transaction-based, that is the case no longer. Consumers and businesses alike buy differently, consume differently, and recommend differently. Trends such as social networking, video on demand, and e-commerce will continue to force businesses to adapt to keep up with their customers. They cannot rely on systems that take years to implement, and most don't have the budgets to make large investments, at least they won't for the next couple of years.

The growing focus on SaaS, cloud computing, application platforms, etc. are all responses to this growing trend in the market. There will be other solutions in the future for mobile, etc. that we haven't even imagined. They all drive businesses to use systems that they can deploy, change, and retire quickly. In my main job, I remember meeting a venture capitalist who talked about how his firm looks for opportunities in which it sees lots of "wiggling." He couldn't describe what that really meant, or how one gets paid for wiggling. I thought he was a lunatic.

In retrospect, he does make a good point. Things happen quickly on the Internet and in this changing global economy. When a business sees wiggling (or opportunities), either positive or negative, they need agile systems to respond. One-size-fits-all software and packaging are going the way of the VCR. I think this will continue to grow in importance and focus as enterprises evaluate new systems and invest in new technology. What do you think?

According to a study done by the Sand Hill Group and Neochange, the most critical factor (70% listed it as number 1) for software success and return-on-investment is effective user adoption.

Software functionality came in at 1% surprisingly, with organization change at 16% and process alignment at 13%. This is a remarkable result.

You can have the best software in the world, with the most sophisticated features, analytics and integration, blah blah blah - but if people don't use it, it isn't going to add value. I can't tell you how many RFPs and software selection processes I've been involved with in prior lives that focus almost exclusively on tiny little features that few people will ever use. This study shows that focusing so much on features is missing the boat entirely.

This finding is very interesting for all kinds of applications, particularly enterprise apps but also consumer apps. Features very rarely make someone take to an application or not. Moreover, I doubt most software companies really take user adoption as a holistic approach into account when designing their applications.

If this trend is accurate (and my experience tells me it is), then I think it has very interesting ramifications on how software should be designed, sold and implemented. User adoption is typically something that comes at the end of a cycle. This says it should be one of the most important elements of the entire process. Please share any opinions or war stories that either confirm or refute this conclusion.

Jott moved to a paid model following a successful free beta. I spoke with Jott CEO John Pollard to learn how they did it and how it is working out for them.

Jott is a great tool if you haven't tried it. It is a voice-to-text service where you call a number on your phone, dictate a note, schedule a meeting, or write a to-do and the service transcribes your voice into the appropriate message type; it even creates an object on Outlook automatically. The service had been in "beta" status and completely free. Recently, they came out of beta and rolled out a paid model with multiple plans for different usage and features.

Jott still has free service, but it's been put together such that if you are a frequent Jott user, you'll be very tempted to upgrade. The upgrade itself is less than $4 so I suspect many people will go for it. Jott has a variety of plans to choose from including free, basic, pro, pay-as-you-go, etc.

The company based these plans largely on user behavior and lots of data. When they started the company, they knew they would ultimately have a free and paid version, but had to learn the rest along the way. For example, they had to find out if their customers were home makers, road warriors, students, professionals, etc.

Some of the factors they experimented with during the beta program included turnaround times, length of recordings, and features. By collecting data around user behavior and usage, they were able to model scenarios and identify trends. They then used focus groups, the Jott user group, and conjoint analysis (a very cool survey technique requiring users to make trade-offs on product features versus price) to come up with the different packages. They were very confident that some professionals wouldn't want an ad-supported service, and the research confirmed it.

As you can imagine, they overcame significant challenges along the way. While many users understand that Jott has to put food on the table, there were users who were shocked that a company dare ask for money. Personal note: this is both a common and ridiculous sentiment that has grown as more "free" things pelt us, but that is a conversation for another day.

John and company decided to be extremely transparent about the process and spent significant time in their forums, hitting the blogs, and using other marketing mechanisms to tell their story and let users know what was going on. John admitted they could improve on the communication front, but they did a solid job. The communication philosophy was to tell the users what was coming, tell them when it was coming, and explain why - as many times and in as many places as they could.

The company is very pleased with the conversion process so far. They are apparently hitting their goals and on plan. One pleasant surprise according to Jott is the percentage of people selecting annual plans; John said they are getting 10 times the number of annual subscribers that they expected. I'm not surprised as I'm sure a large percentage of Jott users are business customers, and this is the most efficient way to get something expensed; although this is pure speculation on my part.

John has good advice for other companies embarking on this journey. First, talk to your customers as much as possible. Really talk to them and understand the problem you are trying to solve and how they use the product or service. Second, utilize web-based tools like conjoint analysis to gather quantitative information to make decisions. Finally, try to be transparent and don't surprise your customers; they hate that. If you build something that people want and value, you can ask them for money and it is good business.

One theory of Getting Things Done (GTD) is that it is impossible to "really" concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Therefore, a system like GTD helps juggle the competing tasks to organize and prioritize them. As you can imagine, the bulk of the conversation centered on Office 2.0 type tools that can help facilitate this process. David is an avid user of Jott for example. He uses it to capture his thoughts while driving so he doesn't force his brain to keep a running list. What struck me after listening to him in the keynote and subsequent panel is that the tools are actually the least important part of successfully getting things done. Practitioners of GTD in the Enteprise world probably use an infinite number of tool combinations including Outlook Tasks, Jott, iPhones, Text notes, Lotus Notes, etc.; you get the idea. What is fundamentally more important is the discipline and commitment to do it.

We all have different levels of both and our respective individual success will vary. What I find interesting is to figure out how to make a group practice GTD consistently. There is no silver bullet but the following factors need to be addressed:

• Management commitment - There is no way that an entire group will practice GTD if the management team is not fully committed and emphasizes it every day. Managers (and team members) need to conduct meetings with GTD principles and plan work in the same way


• Training - GTD is a clever methodology that leverages alot of common sense. However, if a group is going to adopt it and use it in the course of business, they need training. For no other reason, the need to speak the same language with each other is critical. For example, if I tell you I'm going to put that task in my One Week Action List, you better know what I mean


• Incentives - People must have incentives to adopt this system in a consistent and lasting way. GTD could be baked into employee's MBOs, team goals, public recognition opportunities, whatever. There has to be incentives and measurement for true adoption


• Tools - As I mentioned earlier, the actual tools can vary widly. In the panel discussion I attended, there were several vendors (Enleiten, Mindjet, bllist) who utilize GTD concepts in their products and/or methodologies. There is even a GTD plug-in for FireFox. Whatever tool a company decides to use, they must use it consistently and ensure it fits into how people work. Otherwise, I guarantee it will fail

Product

1. Product worked well - I can't emphasize this enough. I know it seems obvious but we all can list examples of the opposite. Be very careful putting software out to the world to try if it doesn't work. You have one or two chances to impress someone, so you better nail it. Very rarely will the trial customer stick through a bad experience unless you happen to be in the enviable position of offering software someone has to buy and has no other options.
2. Ease of use - the product is very easy to use. It is simple and straightforward. Plus, they provide lots of videos to teach users how to use the product. I find this particularly helpful. It is great to have user manuals if you want to go deep, but a handful of simple, short videos is an awesome way to train new users with minimal effort.

Process

1. Rules of the game - they did a very good job designing what the pilot includes and what I would be able to do. In their case, I received 500 emails to try the product (I signed up through SalesForce AppExchange). There were no limitations on features or number of campaigns.
2. Provided true product experience - the trial provided functionality for the whole product suite and all features. I was able to fully understand what I would be purchasing and what I could do with it. I think other companies that provide trials, but only expose a percentage of the product features, are making a big mistake. In the case of Vertical Response, they make their money based on volume so it fits nicely in their model.
3. Sales person was awesome - I received a very polite phone call and email asking if I needed any help. When I talked to him, he invited me to a weekly webinar to learn about the product. (Small aside - this is a great strategy and one I plan to start with our company). He did a great job on the webinar and really helped me get the most of out of the product.
4. Make it easy to sign-up - Once I decided I wanted to use the service, it was very easy to enter my credit card and get started. It isn't always so easy with business software, but it should be to take as much friction out of the process as possible.

Marketing

1. Word of mouth - I had heard of this company from some of our customers, so I was already inclined to give them a fair shot. I can tell from my trial experience that they take care of their customers based on their responsiveness. Granted I was in their sales process at the time but I'm assuming the same responsiveness will apply as a customer. Bottom line - you HAVE to take care of your customers and delight them. If you pull this off, your customers start selling for you.
2. AppExchange - they have done a nice job of promoting themselves on AppExchange. It is very noisy in there, and tough to figure out which solutions to use. I thought they were able to rise above the noise effectively through their write-ups and obvious success.

Have you trialed any software lately? Any lessons learned you would like to share?