11 Ways To Build Killer Sites By Listening To Your Users – The Marcus Nelson Interview
on Apr 2, 2009 - 4:31 PM PSTEver notice how successful Internet entrepreneurs keep saying that you should build your site by listening to your users? But no one ever explains how to get user feedback and how to integrate their ideas into your business.
That’s why I asked UserVoice‘s co-founder, Marcus Nelson, to come to Mixergy and teach how to build a startup with user feedback. UserVoice helps companies harness their users’ feedback. Here are edited excerpts from the Mixergy program he recorded:
1. Build your team
Having a team has everything to do with having more ears to listen to your audience. My personality is that I’m a social butterfly. And I’m constantly looking for the next flower to pollinate, so to speak. Not everybody is going to do that.
2. start with crap
Don’t be afraid to start with crap. Don’t be afraid of having it be too simple. The idea is just to get people using the product. They’re going to tell you how to make it better. At UserVoice, we started out with just a forum. We didn’t build these huge profile systems or heavy weight social media elements.
3. See the site with strangers
Your friends are going to try to make you feel good. They’re not going to say the hard things. One of the things that we did when we started is going out on Twitter. Any time we could find someone talking about customer feedback or building a product, I’d send them a message and say, “Hey, we’re putting this forum together. Maybe it’ll solve that issue for you.”
4. Offer an easy way to listen to feedback
You can’t just put a feedback button on your site and hope people will come. You have to promote it. You have to tell people you’re listening. If you get an idea on Twitter that you think is a good idea, Tweet it out to other people.
You can use UserVoice, ideascale, suggestionbox, fevote, userfix, getsatisfaction, etc.
5. Build for speed
You start with the core that people can see and say, “Yeah, that’s good. But what would make it better is putting the layers on.” At UserVoice, we started out giving customers one feedback forum for their users. Some people saw that and said, “We need a forum, but we don’t want anyone to see it. We want to use it just within the company.” As those little requests came in, we added features.
6. Release your beta
There’s value in letting people know that it’s not a finished product that we’re stumbling through this a little bit. But you don’t want to stretch it out. One of the mistakes that UserVoice made is we had a beta that lasted from April 17 to December 7th. We now have 7,000 non-paying accounts that came to us in the beta period and we have to transition them somehow to paid accounts.
7. Have everyone on the team sell
You need to start making money. And whether you’re doing it as a bootstrapped company or you’re going after venture funding, you still need cash flow. And that cash flow doesn’t have to be huge. If you don’t, you’re going to go crazy because you can’t afford this or can’t do that. It’s business. Straight up business. You have to start making money somehow and do it as quickly as you can.
8. Be capital efficient
Keep your day job. Don’t put yourself in a pressure situation where you have to make money–not right off the bat. But while you’re doing it, find other ways to cut your costs and sack away money as quickly as you can. Maybe that means moving with mom and dad, or do what we at UserVoice did. We all moved into the same house and shared the rent.
9. Get marquee accounts
You need to be able to say XYZ is using our company. NASA started using our service because I met a guy on Twitter who is helping setup the Open NASA platform. That’s basically a bunch of employees who work at NASA who are trying to step out of the box and have a public forum where people can have discussions. We partnered with them and gave them a free version. You find people who are high profile and give your service away. We made a mistake early on and tried to monetize every opportunity. Looking back it was a big mistake. We should have gone after some of those marquee accounts and not asked for money.
10. Stay lean and hungry
We have home cooked meals as many times as we can. Instead of stopping at Startbucks, Scott Rutherford, our CTO, will stop in the house for a cup of coffee that we’ll make for him which we bought it at Costco. We do everything we can to be efficient. Even here in the office, Richard White, our CEO, will go to Trader Joe’s and buy a bunch of burritos and that’s what we’ll eat. It costs us $3.50 to feed all 4 of us. How do you beat that?
11. Sell, sell, sell
Start out selling your product low if you have to. You can always charge more later.
Your turn. Marcus says to ask for feedback, so I’ll ask you for feedback on how I can make Mixergy more useful for you. Add it to the comments or the UserVoice tab on the right of this page.
“Right click” to download the FULL program
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April 2nd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
I just started the download for this one, I feel like saying this one is me hitting paydirt, but it doesn't really count since you're the one who did :) I wanted to introduce you to one of my projects that's been sitting idle for a while, it's http://www.yoyoshirts.com, a website which will target very specific niche market; that being the clothing aspect of the yo-yo industry. There is a dire need for clothing in the industry, especially clothing with cool designs, which there are virtually none of these days. At any rate, this looks like it might be just what I needed for this project! Cheers! :)
Mike
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Maybe a section that has a compilation of links to useful tools that have been talked about in your interviews?
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:16 am
I like the team concept. I am like Marcus, the Creative one, but you need a devil's advocate and an engineer. Nice work on this one!
Such an awesome concept. People always talk and this program puts their words out there so business's can listen and then take action. You see so many goofball companies and can clearly see what they are doing wrong; if only they could have access to people's thoughts and ideas and implement them.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 am
That was an amazing interview! I just got so many ideas thrown at me to try out… I'll probably start with 99designs.. :) I'm going to relisten to the interview tomorrow when I get the chance and see what else I can get, though, if i just read all the info you guys put together above I bet I'd get just as much.. haha :) Thanks for posting up another great interview!
Mike
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Michael, you're the most yo-yo obsessed person I've ever met. I love that
about you.
So, are these Mixergy programs helping your business? Anything
more/different I can do to get you the info you need?
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Yeah. Super-cheap work at 99designs.com.
You might also want to check out TemplateMonster.com to get some ideas.
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I used to love arguing with my brother when we were in business together.
I'd want to do everything and he'd keep showing me the constraints until we
found projects to work on that were both exciting and possible.
Thanks for the comment.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Once again an awesome Interview Andrew. I'm honestly learning a lot listening to all the advise from all the cool guys you interview. I love getting marketing tips, those are my favourite. I hope one day I can do an interview with you on how to build a successful internet company from outside the USA. Keep the good work!
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Thanks Jose.
I just clicked over to your site. I like your design. And smart move
launching a blog while you work on launching your site's app.
April 3rd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Hey Andrew -
Thank you for posting our chat – had a great time, and it looks like we might have struck a chord with folks. Perhaps we should do this again at a conference in the near future ;)
Take care & see you soon!
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Anyone who sees you at a conference should buy you a drink and talk to you
in person. (Or at least a Trader Joe's burrito.)
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Thank you Andrew! Just applying what I’ve learnt from guys like Jason Fried, Garret Dimon, etc, about marketing even before the launching, trying to build an audience, etc, and looking fordward to apply the lessons learnt from your interviews! ;)
April 4th, 2009 at 7:30 am
[...] 11 Ways To Build Killer Sites By Listening To Your Users – The Marcus Nelson Interview : Mixergy.com [...]
April 4th, 2009 at 7:40 am
If everyone bought Marcus a burrito… well… I'd just lose all purpose in my life ;)
April 4th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Nice interview Andrew, the one point Marcus made that I liked was the concept that you have to promote that you are listening. Let people know that you truly care, and on top of that, act on it too.
Well done guys,
AJ
April 4th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
How much are you going to love memories of those burrito runs after you guys
get huuuuuuuuuuuge?
April 4th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Thanks AJ.
I still get great emails about the interview you did here.
Can't wait for your new site to launch.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Hey Andrew, this is my favourite interview so far!
The points i think are awesome are about keeping it simple, getting marquee accounts and diving into Twitter.
Totally agree with AJ about listening to users and acting on it.
Im totally using this to drive my business on http://eventzi.com
Cheers guys!
April 8th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Did you catch how he got users by searching Twitter? Every once in a while I
do a search on twitter for “evite” and I see how many people tweet that they
hate it and wish there was an alternative. Wonder if it would help your
site.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Yeah, that will help, iv just started looking at lots of different search terms on Twitter.
Iv even got Tweetdeck set up the way Marcus said he has it, very clever, i wasnt aware you could setup search columns in Tweetdeck.
If theres anything I can help you with, im happy to help, thanks for the tip!
Cheers!
April 13th, 2009 at 11:13 am
WOW
This interview was so relevant for the times. I like the fact that Marcus had some input in the way the interview was geared and then from this you came up with some questions to home in on key points.
My finger tips are sore, from vigorously scribing notes, fueled with enthusiasm.
Thank you so much for making this information available to people for free.
Keep you the fantastic work
Remarkable :0)
April 13th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Marcus really put a lot of work into this interview.
Plus, he's a very good speaker. I kept asking him for examples for each of
his points. That's hard to come up with on the fly, but kept doing it.
We need to get him to speak at conference. I want more people to hear him.
April 13th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
[...] by being helpful. UserVoice lets companies harness their users’ feedback. (This is part of an interview I posted before. I’m re-posting it to highlight this [...]
July 14th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Thanks for the post. Very encouraging.We just added UserVoice to our site and it's awesome. Thanks, Marcus & co!
July 14th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I love the feedback I get on the site.
Andrew Warner
(sent from my mobile)
December 29th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Very nice lesson! Thanks 4 share!
December 29th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Very nice lesson! Thanks 4 share!
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:26 am
[...] feedback through UserVoice helps drive a lot of the changes and developments to the [...]
March 29th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
[...] [2] http://mixergy.com/listen-to-users/ [...]