Most web startups are created by multiple founders, as creating a successful business from scratch is so hard that it helps to have someone to blame when things go wrong.

Or is that someone to share the load?  I’m not sure, I can never remember.

If you are running a startup chances are you have at least one other co-founder.  Often a developer will team up with a “business guy” in order to maximise the chances of success, with each bringing a different set of skills and experience to the relationship.

These differences include entirely different ways of communicating.  You say tomato…

It works the other way as well you know……

At least there is one thing we all agree on….

When you first launch your web application, there is one MASSIVE hurdle that stands in between you and enormous bundles of cash.  We weren’t initially aware of it ourselves, but over time it became clear.

It’s about conversions.

The path from interested prospect to paying customer is filled with so many holes, walls and mountains that it is a wonder that anyone, anywhere ever gives you any money.

You know that smooth “conversion funnel” you built to allow people to sign up and interact with your product?

It’s really only a funnel shape in your head.  It is not smooth, and it is most definitely NOT linear.  Customers don’t gleefully slide down it as they rush to give you their cash.

The path from prospect to paying customer is in fact a fetid swamp, inhabited by lightning sand, jets of flame and rodents of unusual size.  This swamp sits at the bottom of a deep chasm through which only the truly motivated cross.

If you think of it in this way rather than as a smooth funnel, then you will know how hard you have to work to convert prospects into customers.  Really hard.

Here then in all its glory is our conversion funnel (with apologies in advance to The Princess Bride).  In the interests of transparency, we have included REAL DATA from our performance from January to April 2010.

That’s right.  The percentages discussed at the bottom of this post are real live results from our actual business.

The players in this love story for the ages are the prospective customer (whom we shall call Westley) and the paying customer (Buttercup).

We want Westley to reach Buttercup and become a paying customer, but to get there he needs to travel through our conversion path.  If we start with 1,000 Westleys, how many can we help make a perfect match with Buttercup?

Westley starts his journey to find true love (i.e.  give us money!) on our website.  To get from our homepage to the account registration page, he must first traverse the dreaded Cliffs of Insanity.

Unfortunately, over 917 Westleys prove no match for the cliffs and are unable to find their way to our registration page.  However 83 brave souls do reach the top, where they are given the option of creating an account for our product.

Now you thought that creating an account was just a matter of filling in a form?  Afraid not.  To create an account Westley must face off against Inigo Montoya, the finest swordsman that ever lived.

While each Westley puts up a brave front, just over half are slayed at the registration page and do not make an account.  The 37 that do make it (none of whom were left handed), create an account and proceed onwards and upwards into the application.

Deep within the application, we now need our brave heroes to take action and create their first event!

Easy I hear you say? (Well yes with our interface it is very easy, but that’s another story).

Unfortunately, not all 37 adventurers create an event after signing up.  Some are thwarted by Fezzik:

while others fail the battle of wits test (yes……..we know………inconceivable).

Of our 37, just 10 are able to navigate the treacherous path and successfully create an event.

Our 10 Westleys are now just moments away from Buttercup (becoming a paying customer!), but have one last hurdle to overcome.  To enter their payment details, they must cross the dreaded fire swamp!

Finally, 3 brave Westleys emerge unscathed on the other side  of the fire swamp to become living, breathing, actual paying customers.

For those following along at home, we started with 1,000 Westleys and managed to convince 10 (or 1%) to create an event.    Only 3 (0.3%) become paying customers however, which is lower than the acceptable minimum of 1% paying customer conversion.

By the way.  If you read this article and did not immediately create an account and become a paying customer, all you did was make our conversion statistics worse!

Seriously we don’t know how you can live with yourself…go and signup now!

In an effort to increase our conversion rates we recently decided to redesign our sign-up page (again). The very first incarnation of this page involved six input fields. We realised this may have been a possible deterrent for users so we stripped it back.

Right back.

Maybe we went a little too far.

OK. We know. Hindsight is 20/20. We now realise it might have been a bit extreme, but we had our reasons at the time.

Pros

• Minimal fields
• Simplicity = no distractions

Cons

• Is this too sparse?
• This doesn’t look like the page I just came from. Where the heck am I?

We’re man enough to admit when we make a mistake (ie: we blamed it on the designer) so we went back and redesigned the page.

Noteworthy

• We get really positive feedback from people who have used Eventarc. We thought it would be good to share it with potential new users to assuage any concerns they might have about creating an account with us.
• We’re FREE to use for free events. This message bears repeating. FREE I says, FREE!
• You can now easily jump back into the rest of the website through the footer links
• Big fields. No more squinting.

So, what do YOU think of our new signup page?*

* commence the nervous wringing of hands

It’s true.

We built our startup in Flex, having spent six months wrestling with HTML/JavaScript and browser compatibility. Flex offered enormous advantages that we just couldn’t overlook, so we dumped six months of development effort and started again .

Adobe have been a great supporter of us for obvious reasons, and we presented during a keynote at one of their recent roadshows.  Like any startup we study the competition, but never did we think we would have to worry about Apple.

Apple vs Adobe

The current Apple vs. Adobe saga has us in a bit of a quandary. With each new revelation – culminating in the change to Section 3.3.1 of its Developer Licensing Agreement – it has become clear that Apple is not just dismissing Flash as buggy or slow.  Adobe can improve Flash and address the concerns of Apple all they want, but it won’t make a lick of difference..

Make no mistake – Apple is making a strategic business decision to bar Flash from the walled garden entirely.

The licensing change canned the new CS5 feature which allowed the Flash platform to compile to a native iPhone (or iPad) binary. It was Adobe’s attempt at an end-run around Apple’s earlier exclusion of the Flash runtime in not only the Mobile Safari web browser, but in any apps submitted for approval to the App Store.

Sorry Adobe.  Apple says No.

Why should we care?

Since launching the iPhone, and in particular the App Store, Apple has rapidly gained around 25% of the US smart phone market. Developers and end-users alike have flocked to the platform. Apple have continued this march on the mobile computing arena with the launch of the iPad.

Like many startups, we had plans to join that wave. Even though our primary user interface was written in Flex, we planned on developing an iPhone app available for our users as a key part of our strategy.

The Flash CS5 export feature seemed the perfect choice. We could write an app for the iPhone with a limited feature-set and Apple UI components, but for the iPad we could build an app very similar to our current rich internet application. That grand scheme came crashing to a halt when Apple changed the Developer Agreement.

But perhaps more important than our ability to easily compile our product into a working iPad/iPhone application is the future of Flash in general.  Apple’s star continues to rise with significant share of the mobile market, and it is fairly clear Flash plays no part in their plans.

This raises two burning questions:

Should we pivot and embrace an Apple friendly technology, before we get wiped out in the stampede of mobile devices?

and

Should new startups avoid Flash/Flex as a technology choice?

Before we answer, let’s consider why we chose Flex in the first place.

You chose Flex?  Are you nuts?

It was a conscious and educated decision to use Flex.  We don’t regret it.

Our decision to use Flex for our user interface was based on quite a few factors, including the Flash experience of our lead developer. Flex offered us the best opportunity to rapidly progress from an idea to a product. For a startup, this is critical.

The interface we were aiming for was advanced in terms of the functionality we wanted to deliver to the customer, and the interactivity of Flex was an excellent fit.

At first we were concerned about the availability of Flash.  It turns out however that Flash has made leaps and bounds in market penetration in recent years, hitting 98% penetration of internet connected computers. Compare this to the number of people using outdated browsers that makes rich internet application development in HTML/Javascript a compatibility nightmare, and Flex becomes a serious contender.

Right tool, right job.

We still had some concerns with Flex. We have always been proponents of open source platforms, doing nearly all of our server side web application development in PHP, MySQL, Linux, Kohana and Eclipse. Although most of Flex is open source, some is not (the Flex Builder application and of course the Flash Player itself). Add to this the fact that even we have our share of Adobe Support horror stories and you can see why we might have balked at implementing our baby on their platform.

Overall though we strongly believe we made the right choice.  Our speed of development has been quicker, our features richer and our browser testing regime smaller.  Flex was and is the right tool for our particular needs.

Flash does have a use by date however. Sooner or later, browsers will be able to do what previously needed a plugin. It has already begun with the adoption of of HTML5 by some browsers.

Is this use by date going to be in the next couple of years? It’s highly unlikely. While HTML5 is an exciting open standard in theory, in practice there are browser compatibility issues even amongst early adopters like Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

Okay you built it in Flex – what’s your next move?

If like us you built your startup in Flex or Flash, then you have at least five areas for which you need a solution.

Browser based via a Desktop Computer

You already have a solution, and it’s called your existing application.  Yes Flash has a use by date, but it’s not likely to be in the next five years.  Stick with what you have and build the best damn product you possibly can.  Focus on the customer, not the tech.

Status: No change required

Desktop Program

While not everyone needs to consider this, we think it has potential for our ticketing application.  Imagine processing entries to a music festival set in a farmers paddock – wouldn’t it be nice to do that on a desktop app and not have to worry about dodgy 3G connections?

Here our choice of Flex is in a class of its own.  It is relatively trivial to port our code base to an Air application, giving us the best of both words.

Status: No change required

Mobile device running Android

Android will support flash, and it is clear they intend to support it for the foreseeable future.  Like us you may be better off writing a specific mobile view for an android enabled device, but you would have had to do this anyway if you had written your app in HTML/JavaScript.

Status: No change required

iPhone

Here you have two possible scenarios.

1.  Write a dedicated app

2.  Write a specific web view

Either option requires development, but both also would have been required if you had written your app in JavaScript.  It is technically true the iPhone will render a native HTML/JS app right now, but anyone serious about this platform is doing the work to make it iPhone specific.

Status: Write a specific app or web view

iPad

This one has the potential for the most amount of rework.  The larger screen size makes it likely that an existing HTML/JavaScript web application will look perfectly fine on an iPad without any extra work.  Yours and our flex/flash apps will look completely pants.

In the interim, you can take the work you have already done on the iPhone (that you would have had to do anyway) and port that across.  Job done.

But you know what the real answer is?

iPad Schmipad.

It’s a device that has been out for under a month and is still only available in the US.  No-one but early adopters have one, and the actual success of the device is still up for grabs.

We’re not saying it has no chance of completely disrupting the laptop/mobile device market, only that you should wait until it does before making any critical development decisions.

Take the Public Enemy approach until the numbers are in.  Don’t believe the hype.

And if we are wrong about the lifespan of Flash?

We were wrong once back in 1991, but no-one remembers that and all records were suppressed.

But okay…on the off chance that we are wrong for the second time in our lives, the solution is easy.  We make a technology pivot, and move away from flash to whatever is the best fit for our model and our customers.

As we were developing our application, we paid special attention to how it interacted with the back end. From the start we felt the best way to do that was to create our own API, making even our own application interact with our data through the API. This left our Flex application as responsible for the user interface, not the application itself.

How does this help?

It allows us to change the interface if needed without a complete re-write. It also allows us to build complementary applications on other platforms – as we were intending for Apple’s iPhone. This should mean that even if Flex/Flash does have a shelf-life, we can adapt.

“There is no standing still on the web“.

What should others do?

If you already have a Flex/Flash app, be happy you got off your bum and launched something.  Good for you!  Flash remains  pervasive and will be for the foreseeable future, so unless mobile is your entire business model, stick with it.

If you are just starting out and still to choose your platform, our advice is this.  Choose the right tool for the right job.  Don’t just jump onto Ruby on Rails or HTML5 because all the cool kids are.  If you have a specific problem to solve, think about the best way to solve it and then pick the right tool.

If you don’t have a specific problem to solve, then you have much bigger problems and we can’t help you.  Go straight to the Deadpool, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Otherwise, enjoy startup life.  It’s never boring!

As a new startup, we often review what other successful companies are doing to see what we can learn.

Where have they put their call to action? What copy are they using on the pricing page? Where have they successfully reduced the friction between buyer and seller?

This constant review of “best practice” is enormously beneficial, and we have taken a lot of what we have learned and rolled it into Eventarc.

You need to be careful though.

There are things successful companies do because they are already successful and it NO LONGER MATTERS.  They get away with it, but if you tried the same thing you would die a quick and painful death.

Case in point?  Groupon.

Groupon is a phenomenally successful group buying site, rumored to be doing hundred of millions in revenue annually.  They made it to product to market fit, and are now scaling as fast as they can.

This is the homepage the Groupon site delivers to me.

Okay I don’t live in Honolulu, but they did their best to get as close to Melbourne as they could.

What stands out for me though is that they require you to sign up with your email address before you can access the site.  Lets just repeat that.

You have to give them your email address and subscribe, before you can even see the deal

Wow.

They get away with this because it no longer matters.  Their revenue is so large and their product so successful, that the customer abandonment from implementing this policy is probably negligible.

Not everything successful companies are doing is worth copying.

The SXSW Trade Show.  Over 400 vendors all competing for attention, all selling their wares.  Each have spent tens of thousands of dollars on their booth to make them look professional and successful.

The problem is, all 400 look the same.  Everyone has flashy signs, matching furniture, t-shirts to give away, brochures to take and free beer to drink.

You get to the end of the show and you cannot tell one from the other.  They all spend their budgets in order to stand out, but it has the opposite effect.  They blend in.

We came to the SXSW 2010 Trade Show as eight seperate start ups from Australia, with Eventarc being one of them.  We all have fantastic potential, but we don’t have the funds to compete with the big corporates in decking out our spot on the trade show floor.  So how do we stand out?

We do the opposite.

If everyone is shouting, try whispering.  If everyone is spending tens of thousands of dollars, try spending $200.  Instead of adding everything you can think of to the stand, go minimal.

If you do that, you end up with something that is memorable.  Something that stands out.  Something that people were literally taking photographs of because it was so unique.

They stopped, they stared and they discussed.

I present to you a creative concept from the great minds at Michi Girl.  Think minimalist art gallery with about $200 worth of materials.

The little touches helped.  Such as the couch.

and the footpath.

Sure we got some weird looks when we were setting up, but the proof is in the pudding yeah?  It worked.

When everyone else is zigging, you should probably zag.

We are a business who make online registration and ticketing software, and we do this with a small number of staff.

Large competitors have fully staffed call centres, retail outlets, business development managers, human resource consultants, lawyers, training departments, management layers and stupendously large marketing budgets.

We counter all of that with speed. Speed of execution. Speed of response. Speed of decision making.

When you call or email us, you are dealing with the people who actually made the software. The people who made the software are the same ones with the ability to say yes or no to almost any question you have.  We respond quickly and go the extra mile for our customers because it is how we will succeed in business.

Speed is our competitive advantage.

Let me illustrate this with an example.

Last night at 830pm we received a support email from a customer trying to setup a new event.  A large company mentality would have waited until the next day to respond, because work gets done within work hours.  As long as they meet their service levels, you can wait.

We don’t agree.  Within 60 minutes we had responded and delivered the customer a solution, and followed up again this morning with 2 or 3 more pieces of advice.  This type of service resulted in the following customer comments:

Thanks for all your immediate replies! Well done! That’s just awesome service that consumers don’t get to experience these days with most companies out there. Keep up the great work.

People expect lousy service these days because so many companies don’t care.  If you keep chipping away at it, then providing fantastic, rapid support can be enough to move your business from small to big.  From good to great.

Speed matters.