XERO
I’m really thrilled, and a little belated in announcing, that I’ve joined the advisory board of crack NZ start-up Xero. Put simply, Xero is the most exciting SaaS/Cloud native in the accounting space.
Why? Well, three reasons:
- Great team. Rod, Alastair, Phil and the crew are the best out there. I love the idea of working with great people, helping them, and growing in the process. They meet my first requirement for working with any start-up and that is, work with great, but nice people.
- Great product. I’ve started numerous businesses and been constantly frustrated by accounting packages. They are just too complex and too costly. The main costs have traditionally been in all the help you need to work and close the books. And, they are all “cloud immigrants”, migrating client apps to the cloud. This means they are slow, ugly, and browser/device dependent.
- Where the market is going. Xero is where all apps will go. So its a terrific opportunity to make that future a reality.
If you are in the US, you can start using Xero today. Let me know your thoughts.
Where Are Your Red Routes?
This is an interesting idea for any site. Driving your “red routes” has to be a good way to increase conversion.
Red routes describe frequent and critical activities
In defining red routes, it’s important to consider both the frequency and critical nature of the activity. Activities that customers carry out frequently are crucial to the success of the web site since they will determine customers’ perception of it. One example of a frequent activity might be search. In contrast, critical activities may be infrequent but users will hate your web site if these tasks are not well supported. An example of an infrequent but critical task might be editing my personal details stored on a web site. Finally, activities that are both frequent and critical are the web site’s bread and butter. Get these wrong and you may as well not be in business.
This is one of the few blogs I have hit in awhile that contains a wealth of great info. Worth a read. Enjoyed this as well.
social sites eclipse email
Nielsen measures interest in categories by the percentage of the web audience that regularly visit such sites. The latest statistics suggest that 65.1% of web users use web e-mail but 66.8% are turning up at social network sites.
This means, said Nielsen, that about one in every 11 minutes a web user is online is spent at one of the sites Nielsen counts in its "Member Communities" category which includes both blogs and social network sites.
Of these sites, Facebook has highest average time per user, found Nielsen.
The researchers also found that social networking sites are managing to reach a very broad swathe of web users. The fastest growing segment of users turning up and using social sites over the last year was among 35-49 year olds.
In particular, the report noted, almost a quarter of Facebook’s users were known to be over 50 years old.
Digital Trends
Steve has linked to a great paper from Edelman on digital trends. Well worth a read. The five trends are:
- Satisfaction Guaranteed – Customer care and PR are blending as consumers use social media to demand service. We are all over this at Dell – I believe Dell was the first F500 company to imbed a customer support team in its PR function.
- Media Reforestation – The media is in a constant state of reinvention as it transitions from atoms to bits. So is the PR profession.
- Less is the New More – Overload takes its toll. Gorging on media is out. Selective ignorance and friends as filters are in.
- Corporate All-Stars – Workers flock to social media to build their personal brands, yet offer employers an effective and credible way to market in the downturn
- The Power of Pull – Where push once ruled, it’s now equally important to create digital content that people discover through search
The one trend I would add is:
6. Here is Everywhere — Mobility changes everything. From iPhones to Netbooks, always-on mobile devices are changing the way information is accessed and consumed.
Michael Is Right
Twittering etc. is useful but it can’t compromise the kind of thinking that occurs in a blog. Michael is right with regard Scoble. Chattering and conversations are a way of discovering and forming ideas, but at some point hitting pause to assemble something more than a tweet is critical.
