Andrew: Hey there, Freedom Fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I am the founder of Mixergy.com. Home of the ambitious upstart, and today I’ve got yet another interviewee who has heard me say that for so many times! He used to listen to these interviews as he was trying to figure out what’s next and now he’s here on Mixergy. Well, the question here that I have invited him to help us understand is what do you do when you create a great product and people are still not using it enough for it to really take off and be a tremendously huge success? That’s where today’s guest was and he found a way to get past that barrier that most people never break through. So I invited him here to talk about how he did it.
Today you’re about to meet Marc van Agteren. He is the CEO of Usabilla, which focuses on website email and in-app feedback. Let me explain what that means. You know how sometimes you take a look at your site and you see people aren’t doing what they should be or what you want them to do? Somewhere they are getting stuck. Well Usabilla allows you to see why they’re stuck and allows you to ask them for feedback and when you get that feedback, it comes back to you in this visual, clear easy to see what’s going on format. Well get into more of what the product does today.
But first I also have to thank my sponsor. My sponsor is AndrewsWelcomeGate.com. I took the number one best converting page on my site, the one that gets the most email addresses per hit and I made it into a page that you could use. If you want to use it, go to AndrewsWelcomeGate.com. And I should say, you can take the best web idea, the best landing page idea that you have and turn it into a page that you sell. If you want to do that, go to Mixergy.com/leadpages and you’ll see how to do it yourself and I will even help you sell it. Alright, but first, Mark, welcome.
Marc: Thank you.
Andrew: I think this product is going to be great, as people understand what Usabilla is. But let’s understand what it was. Can you give me an example of how Usabilla the first version, the early version was used?
Marc: Yes, of course. Well, it was a so-called remote usability test so far. So a customer basically did was uploaded a screen shot of their current website or a screen shot of their mark up or wire frames and they uploaded it in to the Usabilla system and ask a couple of questions. So where would you click in order to actually sign up, click on the things that we can make better on a website and they turn it into a survey, send it out to a couple of people and they would fill it out. We would aggregate all the data and make really cool heat maps of it. That is basically the initial Usabilla product.
Andrew: Great idea it makes total sense. People want to create mock-ups but they also want to make sure that the mock-ups make sense for the end user before building it out into a website. Great to send it out to users and get feedback. And frankly, even after creating a site, you allowed them to send that site out to potential users and get feedback on it. This sounds wonderful, the problems also associated with that kept you from really taking off are?
Marc: That’s a really good question. [??] We started creating in 2009 after a while, you find out certain patrons. So you know… so we knew that we were addressing a kind of niche market, so the Usabilla[??]. It’s a small niche market out there. Furthermore, we also found out that a lot of the [??] companies [??].
Andrew: Hang on. Let me pause here for a second. How do you feel about being on camera here with me on Mixergy?
Marc: I am fine if I relax a little bit, that’s okay.
Andrew: Do you want to take a shot? You’re in Europe. Right? So it’s late enough for you to take a shot at something isn’t it?
Marc: Oh yeah.
Andrew: I’ve got some good whiskey’s here. I wish I could send them to you via Skype.
Marc: I have bananas here.
Andrew: That’s not going to do it. Are you a drinker?
Marc: No. Occasionally, I’ve passed that stage.
Andrew: What country are you in now?
Marc: I live in southern Amsterdam.
Andrew: Are you a smoker then, I should ask?
Marc: No, not at all.
Andrew: I went to Amsterdam and I tried it and I wasn’t either. It really just didn’t do anything. I went in…
Marc: I’ve done it a couple of times in my life. It isn’t interesting.
Andrew: You know what got me when I was there? I met this guy at a hostel who introduced me to rolling cigarettes using rolling paper and loose tobacco and I just thought that was such a cowboy thing to do. I would sit at the bars, at the coffee shots, instead of rolling up joints, I’d just say, “I think I could get this next cigarette really good.” And then in order to get another try at it, I didn’t want to waste it, I would smoke the cigarette all the way down to the bottom and then go, “Now I get to make another,” which anyone who’s ever done this before knows is the worst thing to do because that makes you dizzy. That will knock you out.
So no, I’m not a smoker, I’m not a drinker, I understand. Alright, going back to the problem, you were… Take your time. Tell me what’s the issue that you had?
Marc: The issue that we had is we were addressing a rather small niche market.
Andrew: There aren’t a lot of people who want to get feedback on their websites?
Marc: Yeah, but back then it wasn’t really the feedback software as we currently have. It was remote usability testing software.
Andrew: I see so I guess what you’re saying is how many people in the world really want to send out a webpage or a screenshot of a webpage or a mock up and get feedback on it. Not that many, right?
Marc: Well, of course, there are, especially at the bigger companies, there are quite some usability specialists out there, but there are a couple of issues. One of the issues is budget. The usability specialist’s budget is always part, or most of the time part of the online market use budget so that is also what we actually did later. We basically broadened our markets so now we are addressing the budgets of the online marketers which are a little bit bigger.
Andrew: Okay, I see. You’re saying usability only had a small chunk of the online marketer’s budget. Now you’re going after a bigger chunk of it by creating a product that’s meant more towards marketing. What else was a problem? What about churn?
Marc: Well, churn rate that is also a good thing. These online servers that we created, we had a vision in mind initially when we thought people would create these surveys quickly because it was really simple software. You would upload your screenshot, define a couple of questions, create a test and you were actually done. But these bigger companies, you have multiple people want to have their actual say in about this survey before it goes live so that can take a couple of weeks even. Then you have to find people who will participate into your survey so we have had clients who’ve addressed all their twitter followers for example and they can get participants really quickly. We’ve also had companies who’ve wanted to actually buy participants.
They have companies for that who would have a big list of participants for them who could participate in such survey. And then you have the actual results which needed to be analyzed, and this could also take a time. So we had a thing in mind that we could create really simple, quick tests for really quick, simple changes on your website, but the whole process sometimes took weeks, sometimes even months. So instead of creating a product that is on an ongoing basis collecting feedback for you, it was more like a one off product, and that was the main…
Andrew: I see. It took them a long time to set it up because they had a lot of constituents, a lot of people to talk to within the company, and then once they did, not everyone had the following of a Mixergy which meant they couldn’t get enough people to take their survey so they had to find a way to either buy people or find them. And you’re also bringing up the one off problem which is they would sign up, try out the software and then say, “Alright, I got my feedback. I’m going to cancel.” And then the next time they needed to get more surveys, they would sign up again and you would have this very lumpy experience with your customers and very lumpy revenue. Makes total sense. This is where you were, and is it at this point that you joined the company?
Marc: No, I actually joined earlier already. I joined in early 2011, and we still have this current software by the way because it’s really powerful software and companies are still using it. I joined early 2011 and the product that we are currently getting our most revenue with, that product we released in summer of 2012. So, a bit more than a year later.
Andrew: And that’s the one that got you the big highs. What kind of revenue are you guys doing today? Let’s say 2014, where’s the revenue going to be?
Marc: Well. I’m not going to mention actual revenue numbers.
Andrew: Okay.
Marc: But, it is at least a million euro, plus. We had a revenue increase by about 500% last year. So that gives you a bit of an indication.
Andrew: Are you guys profitable?
Marc: Yes, for sure.
Andrew: Okay. All right. The idea in fact wasn’t yours, it was Paul’s. Paul came up with the idea where? Paul, what’s Paul’s last name?
Marc: Paul Voicker, Voigen, be uh, it’s.
Andrew: It’s Voigen. All right. How did Paul come up with the idea in 2008?
Marc: Back then he was still studying, and for a university course he had to create a kind of concept. He thought of a concept to quickly create and get feedback on a kind of image. On the visual. Back then you already had the survey solutions of course. Big names out there are Survey Monkey for example, but these are all textual based surveys. He wanted to create a more visual survey, and that was when he thought of the early usability concept.
Andrew: I see.
Marc: Back then which wasn’t named usability yet. Of course, because the company was created later.
Andrew: The original product was done as a university course project. He built it up. He realized that he had a project here, and he applied for a competition.
Marc: Correct.
Andrew: What’s the competition?
Marc: The competition back then was the ABN Amro it was a big [???]. Wait, my cat is in the way.
Andrew: I like that your cat is in the way. This is, are you doing the interview from home?
Marc: Yeah.
Andrew: Do you work from home still?
Marc: Sorry?
Andrew: Do you work from home still?
Marc: No. We have an office in Amsterdam, but on Wednesdays I’m always home taking care of my one and a half year daughter. Also in between, trying to work a bit.
Andrew: That’s a great idea. I’ve got friends here who the husband takes off on Thursday, and the wife takes off on Friday and that way they’re with the baby four days a week. All right, so he entered the competition, ABN Amro and how did he do?
Marc: It was an ABN Amro summer school prize. He had to pitch against ninety-nine other concepts. So in total there were one hundred concepts. He actually won there. It was summer of 2008. Then he actually had an idea, I think I’m actually on to something here.
Andrew: And he got 50,000 euro in prizes from that?
Marc: No, no. He got only, I think it was a very small prize. Only a couple of thousand euro in prize money.
Andrew: Where did the rest of the money come from then?
Marc: Well, because he actually won that concept he started pitching more and more. In early 2009 he got his first in-joint investment, and that was the first fifty-thousand.
Andrew: I see. All right. Okay, and then he took the money and spent it in Indonesia. What did he do in Indonesia?
Marc: He hired engineers there. So, instead of hiring people in the Netherlands which are rather expensive, he basically outsourced everything.
Andrew: All right. You’re the CTO. Or you came in as the CTO. Before you became the CTO. You guys were friends, and looking at the code he got back then what do you think of it?
Marc: Well, I think we have to go a little more back. I was the CTO Of the company, but I’m not a die-hard coder. I have both a technical background as well as a business background, but I’m not a real die-hard coder. So looking at the code, the code was quite okay. It just worked through. The whole software worked. The first concept worked. So, that was the main good thing about it.
Andrew: So, Mark. A lot of people say. If you’re going to be a tech company, and your product is going to be software. You can’t outsource the software to somewhere else because you’re outsourcing your core competency. You know? It’s like outsourcing sex to someone else in your marriage. That’s a core part of the relationship here. Right? And so the weird thing is Paul did it. It worked for Paul. It was a good idea. Do you think this is a good idea and we should reevaluate the way we’re think about outsourced developers?
Marc: Looking at our current company, no. We actually in source everything again.
Andrew: What about when you’re getting started? With your pulse level, and your new entrepreneur fresh out of school. You only have E50,000 to keep the business going and no customers yet. At that point should we consider outsourcers?
Marc: Well I would first consider to get a technical cofounder.
Andrew: For what team?
Marc: Paul was a business guy back then. What he’s actually a product guy? We need a product user experience and I. Although, he actually does coding nowadays, as well.
Andrew: I see. So, you’re saying you will happen to work for him but you are way better off finding a technical cofounder. Meanwhile, you at the time, weren’t his technical cofounder. So a few months later, you guys connected. What were you doing?
Marc: What I was doing back then? I’ve actually already known him since early 2003.
Andrew: Yeah. So you’ve known each other for about 10 years. No, for about five years before the business started. So what were you doing when he launched this business instead of being his technical cofounder?
Marc: I was working for a museum back then as an auditor.
Andrew: As an auditor, then you became the senior advisor and earned some. That’s when you are listening to some of them mixtured interviews
Marc: Yeah, that’s what I did. I always wanted to start my own company. Wanted to bring in value with richer people. I actually like to work with strangers was quite okay. I was actually bringing in value. And due to some personal reasons as well, I started a little bit later. Because Paul and I were have always been talking to each other.
Andrew: What’s the personal reason that kept you from jumping in and being a part of this company?
Marc: That’s a good question. Well first, two actually. My now wife, she is from Estonia. Do you know Estonia?
Andrew: Yeah. I know of it. What’s the significance here, that she is from Estonia?
Marc: Well, she is from Estonia. It’s a very small country just below New Finland. And we actually wanted to move in with each other. So I think early 2010, she actually moved in with me. I wanted to have a bit more stability. Instead of joining her startup-
Andrew: I see what you’re saying. Look, this woman did agree to move in with me. I need to have some money to be able to live this life and not look like a popper. I see. And that’s respect though. It was early in your relationship. She would have been okay, don’t you think? With you guys may be scraping by a little bit while you guys try to live your dream, or not?
Marc: I think back then that it wasn’t the right time. Another thing, I was doing business school back then. If I would have left the company back then, it would have cost me a lot of money as well. They actually kept me on that kind of leash there.
Andrew: I see. Okay. And as you are listening to these mixed interviews, where you getting inspired and saying I’m doing that one day. I know I’m going to earn some young right now?
Marc: Yeah. For sure. Because that was late 2010 or early 2011. And I joined Isabella in June 2011. So that basically says it all.
Andrew: Yeah, that says it all. So you go in there and at that point, Paul already raised about $1 million in funding.
Marc: Yes correct.
Andrew: So considering with what the idea was, before it was redone, before it was turned around the way were going to talk about it and a moment. Why do you think investors are willing to put $1 million into a site that did, and that give feedback on a lot of images and webpages? Basic feedback?
Marc: Yeah. Well, first of all, the company started making revenue in late 2010, I think, there really weren’t a lot of revenue numbers yet. Next to that, Paul has a very good picture, he is a guy who has a really clear vision. So, back then a couple of informal investors wanted to actually invest in that.
Andrew: Okay, so then Paul raises money and, as you said, he started charging for it. Originally, he started charging 49 bucks a year, is that it?
Mark: Yeah, that was the initial idea but he changed to a monthly revenue model.
Andrew: Yeah, I’m looking at a screenshot of what that old monthly revenue model was. He still for a while there kept the free account, which gave people one active test for free, 10 participants. That basically is not a free account, because ten participants is not giving you…but it’s a good way of getting people to try it out and register and then for 49 bucks a month they got one active test with 50 participants. And then there was an 89 dollar a month account and a 139 dollar a month, et cetera. Did you guys ever end up getting rid of the free plan?
Mark: Yes, we don’t have it anymore.
Andrew: It doesn’t help in business, does it, especially when you’re selling businesses?
Mark: In the start, it actually helped us, but it doesn’t any more. We can talk about it a little bit later because we also shift there a bit. Instead of going after the larger volumes and charging a little bit less a month, we are now doing a little bit less volume but we are charging more a month. We are now going after the enterprise clients.
Andrew: Fewer customers and much more valuable customers. You come in as a CTO and you immediately say, I’m going to take out what these Indonesian developers did and start from scratch?
Mark: No, Paul already did that in late 2010, I think. When I joined the company, Paul already had three technical people working for him.
Andrew: That brings us roughly to where we were at the start of this conversation. We understand now how you built up this business, well, how Paul did anyway and you joined in. The challenge was, as we said at the beginning, that people would sign up and leave. It would take them forever to use this software and they didn’t have all the resources they needed. You guys, even though you were making good revenue, you had to figure out what the next product is and, Mark, that is a challenge. A lot of us are sitting around saying “What’s next and how do we figure it out?” Show me one of the bad ideas you guys started with before we get to the good one. A bad idea was inspired by Pinterest. What did you do there?
Mark: It was in early 2012 so it was lifting [??] on the actual Pinterest line [?] Pinterest is a tool where you can actually pin images and we thought we can do that better. People might want to tack whole parts of a website, so instead of an image on a website they also want to tack full headers, tables or footers. We developed a tool called Usabilla Discover and we created a Chrome extension for it. What it basically did is: You could select any element on the page, you could rate it and we would create a spatial of it and we would place it in your personal account
Andrew: Okay, I see. So it’s not just for me to see, I could put it in my account and share it with the world. For example, if I look at your sales page and I really like the way you do testimonials, I could pin it on my Usabilla Discover board. If I like someone else’s prices or the way that they display their prices I could pin that on my Usabilla Discover board. Did you guys end up creating this business?
Mark: No, it was a B2C, too, from which we developed the whole selecting process, which we currently still use in our live feedback software. It was a B2C concept. When you come from B2B and you create a B2C product then you have to think of a business model around it. Back then, we were thinking we could create a business model around it but it would take us at least a year, maybe even a year and a half and it would still be a very big gamble if we could actually create business out of that. So that’s the reason why we then stopped actively developing it.
Andrew: That makes sense. I get the feeling that when, now I get the feeling. I remember back when Pinterest started to really take off there was Pinterest for men, Pinterest for cooks, Pinterest for, yeah. So you were smart enough to walk away from it. How then did you figure out what the right product was? Walk me through. What did you do to figure it out?
Marc: We always had a kind of vision that we wanted to launch a feedback tool where people could leave feedback on a live website. So instead of creating a survey, what our initial product was, just to have on an on-and-on basis that you could leave feedback on a live website.
Andrew: But why? Why would you want to do that?
Marc: You want to do that because you want to talk to your customer base, or to your potential customer base. There are a lot of websites out there which have a lot of bugs or missing things, and when people don’t have a very simple way to leave feedback, they may also leave your website and just go somewhere else. So that’s why we wanted to create a feedback tool. But we always have been a visual-oriented company. As well as the visual survey. So we wanted to, all of our solutions already had a feedback tab. And when you click on the feedback tab you could rate the site, you could just type some extra text, and that was actually it. We wanted to add a visual component to it. And that is where we basically took the whole visual tab technology that we created for our B2C products and added it into a new B2B product.
Andrew: And the way that works is, just as before, you were saying someone could be on a site and select just the testimonial and then share that on their board. On your version of Pinterest. Now the software allows me as the user to look at your site and say, this testimonial has a typo. Highlight the testimonial with the typo, and then tell the website owner, this is where the problem is so that they can fix it. Or highlight the part that’s confusing or doesn’t work and send feedback. That’s what you’re talking about, about repurposing.
Marc: Right, right.
Andrew: So what you’re saying is, you essentially, Mark, saw that other companies were creating a feedback tab. And saying we could do the same thing better, and our version of better would mean more visual.
Marc: Correct.
Andrew: Where, I forget what some of the sites are that do it, but there were multiple sites for a while there. I used to have them on my site, on Mixergy, that had a tab for leaving feedback. And you’re right, you’d leave feedback, and then you’d click that tab, and then you can type in your name, your email, and say, I would like to see more Bootstrap Entrepreneurs on Mixergy. Submit, and I would get that feedback. Those things didn’t take off though, Mark. I had it on my site and I removed it. Other people did on their sites and they all removed it. Why did you see that it was still promising even though by around the time you’re putting it up, people are starting to remove it?
Marc: We of course tested it on our site where we launched it in a beta version first. So that was in the summer of 2012 we actually handed out free licenses for it. So we had a couple of sites, also a couple of bigger sites actually, so larger traffic sites, where people would just install the actual feedback button on the side, and we saw a lot of traction over there. We saw a lot of things.
Andrew: Why would you even get it to the prototype level when you’re seeing sites like, who was it? It was User Voice used to have this tab. I’m on User Voice’s website right now. They don’t even have the tab anymore and they’re the ones who pioneered it. They’re the ones who got everyone to start using it. Why did you still see promise in something that others didn’t, and wanted to get rid of? What did you see differently?
Marc: Well, first of all I think User Voice, they shifted more from the feedback side, they shifted more to a CRM tool, or customer support tool.
Andrew: Help desk.
Marc: Help desk. Yes, help desk. The biggest competitor would be Zendesk, for example. We would see, because there are still bad websites out there. There are still a lot of things that can actually be done better on websites. And if you don’t have a solution on your website where your visitors could, in a really easy and simple way, leave feedback on your website, that is where we still saw value out there.
Andrew: You’re saying if they don’t have it then they won’t leave feedback, the same message that you gave me before, and, well, we asked you in the pre-interview, “If you could teach a class on anything, what would it be?” and your message is, “I would teach a class on listening to customers without listening to everything they say,” so did you listen to customers on this? Did you talk to them and say, “Here’s my idea, would you buy it? Here’s what I plan to build [??]?” You did.
Marc: Yes, for sure.
Andrew: You personally did it, Marc.
Marc: Yes.
Andrew: How would you do it?
Marc: Yes, I personally did it. Sorry?
Andrew: How? What was your process for doing it?
Marc: We, of course, had already quite a large customer base, so we had a lot of customers that are using our visual survey, so we were talking with a lot of big names out there already, so we just went out to them, talked to them, basically showed them the actual live product, and people immediately loved it.
Andrew: Okay.
Marc: And that’s when we thought, “Well, we’re actually onto something here. We have to – well, first of all, we have to make sure the software is ready for the companies,” and that is what, I think in the summer of 2012, we created the first beta version out of it, and if you look at the software, what it currently is and what it was back then, it was, back then, only the feedback tab, and you could select the elements, rate something, write some text, and that was basically it. So, now, it is a little bit more expanded, of course.
Andrew: I see.
Marc: So, we really talked to our customers. We really reached out, had our first – we have a pretty active blog as well, with a lot of readers, so we could push it out there as well. We got a lot of positive feedback on the new product.
Andrew: All right, so you built it out, you started selling it. How did the first sales go?
Marc: Well, I think a very good thing to mention as well – before, we didn’t do actually sales. The only sales we did were inbound. So a lot of people, through our blog for inbound marketing purposes, they just came to us and used our visual survey software. We hired a dedicated sales guy in September 2012. So –
Andrew: Around that time, you created this new feedback button that people can keep on their site.
Marc: Yes.
Andrew: That’s when you said, “We are going to hire a salesperson.”
Marc: Yes.
Andrew: And, when you hire a salesperson, you have to tell him who to call and what kind of people to go after. Who did you say we are going to go after with this product?
Marc: Mostly the actual online marketing people. So the people that are using Google Analytics, for example, or using – what kind of software you have there, A/B testing software, for example, Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer.
Andrew: Okay. And you can find people who are using Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely very easily.
Mark: Yes.
Andrew: So, he would just call them up and say, “I see you’re using Optimizely. I see you’re using Visual Website Optimizer . . . Google Analytics.” Well, Google Analytics everyone is. Say, “I have this new tool that will give you even more insight into your users. Can I give you a free trial account or something?”
Marc: Yes. That’s basically how we actually did it. A good thing to mention as well is that we earlier were really U.S. focused until late 2012. We were only U.S. focused on our website. We are an Amsterdam-located company, but our prices on our website are in actual dollars. But we also decided, because we hired a dedicated salesperson, we also wanted to focus more on our actual roots, so we could actually visit companies as well. We’d never visited companies. We had, once in a while, calls with companies, but we never actually visited them, and that is what –
Andrew: And by targeting [??] companies, you could visit them and see them in person.
Marc: Yes. Yes.
Andrew: That’s a pretty tough way to make sales, but it is a great way to learn about your customer. Am I right?
Marc: Yes, it is. It is.
Andrew: So what did you learn?
Marc: I am not sure if it is really tough. It is what I said earlier, we are now going for [??] use, as in the number of accounts. We are going for higher revenue per customer, and there you actually have to visit companies for that. Although sales that we are currently doing abroad, so in the U.K. or Germany or the United States, they are all done via these kind of Skype calls or GoToMeeting sessions.
Andrew: So what did you learn from them?
Marc: Customers?
Andrew: Yeah. From going in to customers and knocking on their doors – actually, you don’t knock on doors. You make a call, you send an e-mail, and you say, “Hey, I happen to live in in town. Can I come over and show you how this works, right?” You go in… Sorry, what’s the process?
Marc: We learned a couple of things.
Andrew: Yeah.
Marc: First of all, we learned that customers that were already using a feedback software, they’re not that satisfied with that feedback software. They’re missing things. For example, screenshots. We had a customer, for example, instead of doing a lot of testing on the website, when they got feedback, back then with their old feedback tool, they didn’t know in what kind of text the actual customer was.
So the customer gave feedback on a certain variant of the website, but they didn’t know which test it actually was. Now with our solution we create a full page screenshot, and they can immediately see, “Okay, this client gave feedback” and it wasn’t variant A. So that was more of the more practical things that we found out.
Nextly, we also found out that there were still a lot of companies that are not using feedback software yet, although in the Netherlands I think we’re known as the market leader in the Netherlands. So there are a lot of big companies that are likely using it, but there was still a market out there for us. We could actually say, if you don’t listen to your customers, then you don’t know where to, how to actually make your whole website better. And that’s what we did as well. We really listened to our customers. So the whole usable live product, we basically shaped it in the last two years based on our customer input.
Andrew: You know what? I see how that would be really useful feedback. When you’re starting actually to talk with customers and seeing that they don’t use an alternative yet, it’s a whole different sales process. It’s not like trying to convince them to stop using what they already have, it’s getting them to just try a new idea and get them to accept that idea. Yeah, I can imagine that someone that wants to create help desk software, for example, has to convince users to stop using ZenDesk which is tough, and convince them that their users aren’t going to be upset when they migrate over to a new product which is even tougher versus so on, something they never tried before.
Give us a little space on your site, and you’ll see how it’ll improve. All right. So that helped you. You keep saying, “I talk to customers. You’ll learn more. Everyone said that. Give me another specific example of how you learn more by talking to customers and listening to them.
Marc: Good question, good question. Let me just think of something. Another good thing, I was so nowadays what we call passive feedback. So it’s feedback set up on the side, so when you’re browsing the website, you bump into something. You want to get feedback. You click that feedback tab. Next to that we also have active measure to reach out. So we call them slide-out surveys, for example. So the survey slides out from the site where you have a full overlay.
Andrew: I see.
Marc: These are all things that we found out by just talking to our customer base. We found out that our customers, they wanted to… If they would release a new section on their website, they only wanted to ask people for feedback on that specific new section. So you could put a feedback button out there, and then a certain percentage of the visitors might click on the feedback button to give feedback. But they could also post an extra message on the website so actively reach out to them to get feedback on your new website section. So we can make that new released section better, and that’s something that we also learned by just talking to our customer base.
Of course, the customers that were already using our [??] software and I think that was in early 2013 we created that active mechanisms to actively reach out to your customers.
Andrew: I see it over here. I could slide out surveys, as you said. I could also do exit surveys. I can create custom buttons. I could customize the form. The interesting thing is that all those features that I just mentioned are available only to enterprise. Enterprise really gets the coolest features.
Marc: Yeah, correct.
Andrew: How did you decide what to put in for enterprise, and what to leave for everyone else?
Marc: We wanted to create, what I said earlier, we wanted to shift from the old line credit card encryption SaaS model which might work for a couple of big U.S. companies like ZenDesk, for example, although I know ZenDesk has a lot of sales people out there as well. And they are going after the bigger fish in the market. We are a smaller company so we really have to think – do we get in a thousand customers that pay $49.00 a month or do we get a couple of big fish out there which we hook up with a yearly contract, and we offer them all the different enterprise features? And that’s where we make the whole segmentation between the old line accounts where you can still get feedback, and you can still get a lot of value out of it. But the real enterprise features – the full customization of your feedback bottom, full customization of your feedback form, full support – that will only be available with enterprise accounts.
Andrew: You know what? I notice that a lot of people have multiple pricing options and then enterprise. And for everything except for enterprise, you can just click a button, sign up, put your credit card and use it within a couple of minutes. Enterprise has always contacted us which I am always surprised about. Why?
Marc: The reason is because we have different types of enterprise pricing. Basically, when you install our products on your website, on every button that is being displayed, there is a code being made to one of our servers. So, the more page views a website has, the higher our costs.
Andrew: So you want to know how many page views they have.
Marc: Correct.
Andrew: Do you also then, and do most people charge different prices based on how the customer reacts and what the customer is looking for? So by having them contact you, you have a sense of how big their budget is, and then charge more if their budget is bigger?
Marc: No. I don’t really think we are doing that. We really look at a couple of things – we are looking at the number of page views that a website has. Next to that, we are also looking to see if they have different teams handling all the feedback items. If you have dollar companies for example, a very concrete example – [??] Netherlands is a totally different company from [??] UK. So we could sell them one license for the [??] group, or we can sell one license for [??] Netherlands and one for {??] UK which totally makes sense in the whole enterprise world because we are dealing as well with a different team in the [??] Netherlands than the [??] UK, so our costs are also basically twice as high. And those are the two different [??] where we base our enterprise pricing model on.
Andrew: Where do I see the exit surveys? I’m really curious about what it looks like to send a survey to someone as they are leaving the site.
Marc: Go on the website and go to the products page.
Andrew: I’m in there.
Marc: [??].com/ products that is. If you wait for ten seconds and then move your mouse so your mouse cursor is outside the active browser window, then a full overlay will pop up.
Andrew: Okay. That is interesting to see.
Marc: And if you have already seen it, then a cookie, a functional cookie, has already been set, and it won’t show up anymore.
Andrew: I want to do incognito and [??]. You know, the part that I like a lot is the smiley faces with the chart. I think a lot of people measure success based on how many customers they have and how many hits they have. But you can really get, for a really crappy product, a lot of hits. You can get, even for a crappy products, a lot of customers if you write persuasive copy. But it doesn’t mean that people are happy, and unfortunately there aren’t a lot of ways to see if people are really happy with what you’ve built, and that’s why I like the smiley faces that you can pop-up, and you can get a chart that shows how happy or frustrated that people are with you. See, I’m trying to bring – oh there we go! ‘Hey, welcome to [??]’s exit survey, you’ve just triggered one of our [??] live campaigns features – a full exit survey. Do you understand how a full exit survey works?’ Yes. And I get to submit. Great. Oh, cool.
Marc: It’s a very simple exit survey, but you can get a lot of extensive serve out of that.
Andrew: I see, Okay. All right. That’s really cool. Yeah, I know that you can do a lot of exit email request pop-ups, but I like the idea of an exit-survey. What didn’t you like about our site or what didn’t work for you? What were you looking for? Alright, let me see. What share of the business do you own now?
Marc: That is also private. We have a lot of shareholders. Paul, the original founder is also still a shareholder. I’m, of course, as the current CEO, I’m also a shareholder. And our VP of sales basically. Our commercial guy who joined us in late 2012, he’s also a shareholder of the company now.
Andrew: Do you own more than 10 percent?
Marc: Approximately. Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. Do you ever get frustrated? Say, you know what, I should have teamed up with Paul before and then I would have owned a bigger share of the business? Back then I could have convinced him to split it maybe 50/50, 60/40.
Marc: [laughs] Well if you look at it, Paul made the initial, he actually started the company. Without Paul I wouldn’t be where I’m now currently at. So that’s something that I’m always keeping in mind. And of course we are now growing the company. Revenue goes higher and higher every year. So even if you have a smaller share, in the end your share can still be worth a lot.
Andrew: That’s a good way to look at it. All right, and you guys are continually growing. I see the email options, which are really cool. Now there’s a way to include a survey on the bottom of every email you send out. And people can click whatever smiley face they want or you can adjust it. And one of the best parts of Usabilla is the reports. The reports are just really pretty. If I look at one of the sample reports right now, I can see how many people submitted a survey very clearly. I can see by the big smiley face how happy people are. Right? So an example you have, the guy has a flat smiley face, but yesterday there was a big smile on his face. I can see a chart with the smiley faces, I can see an emotional trend line which is really helpful.
Marc: Our whole product is built around this emotional thinking. You really want to know the emotions that your current user has. If you use analytic software you know how many people are on your website, you know where they drop off, but you don’t know how they actually feel about your website. And that is also the part where our software comes in.
Andrew: So using one of the cheaper than enterprise versions, can someone put say, 4 smiley faces on every single page of their site and when someone clicks a smiley face keep track of how happy they are?
Marc: No, it is still incorporated into the feedback solution.
Andrew: It still has to be within the tab?
Marc: It still has to be in the tab. Although for the smaller accounts we also have the slide-outs messages. That way you can target your visitor who is visiting a specific part of the web site or you can target if they have visited x number of pages on the website. And then a message could slide out where you can [???] Sorry?
Andrew: I thought slide out was only for Enterprise? No?
Marc: That part of slide out is also available for on-line accounts. But the extensive more slide-out surveys, where you can actively ask questions inside the survey, those are only available for Enterprise clients.
Andrew: Alright, well.
Marc: We actually have clients who are not using the feed-back tab, but only using the exit surveys and the slide-out surveys. So that is also a very interesting find from us, is that still you can create a certain product, but your customers find all sorts of creative ways of using that software. And you need to think along with your clients. You need to facilitate that as well. We also have clients, for example, instead of using the slide-out survey, they use the slide-out message but they use it to invite people for their video streams, for example.
Andrew: I see that you guys use that. Instead of using it as a survey to just do a survey, you invite people for a webinar by having it slide out.
Marc: Yep.
Andrew: All right. You’ve done a lot here. Congratulations on building up this business. I’m trying to think if there’s anything here in my notes that I could have asked you. No, here! If you were listening to this interview back in the days when you were working at Earns and Young, and trying to learn more about what’s going on with other companies, and get some ideas from them, what would you have wanted to hear? From this conversation? What would the old you have wanted to hear from this conversation?
Marc: I think I wanted to get some practical advice on how to actually start. And if you start, and if you need to shift, what things you need to actually focus on.
Andrew: So you needed advice on what to even start, or how to start?
Marc: In my situation it was a little bit different, of course. Because I joined a company that was already started. But yeah, I needed to turn the company around.
Andrew: Right. I see. But back then you would have wanted to hear an interview with someone who was getting started from scratch, nothing but an idea or maybe not even an idea. That’s the kind of stuff you were looking for back then?
Marc: Yeah, no, of course, of course. That was it, but in my situation it just turned out differently. Although in the beginning of course Usabilla didn’t really feel as though I was owning the whole company. But now if you look at the company it’s totally different than what it was back then. So now luckily it really feels like it is my own company.
Andrew: Feels like you guys rebuilt it.
Marc: Yeah, we totally did. We totally did. Although we still have clients that we had early on. We still have the visual survey product that we created early on. But yeah, apart from that, the whole company changed basically.
Andrew: All right. Congratulations on the success, thanks for listening over the years, and thank you all for being a part of Mixergy. Bye everyone!
