Creately is an easy to use Online Diagramming software - purpose built for team collaboration. Powerful features and an intuitive interface make Creately ideal for teams working together on everything from Business Diagrams, Strategy Maps, Flowcharts, Web Mockups to UML designs.
Here we share our experiences and lessons learnt building a web-company.
When you are building a software solution to solve a particular problem, you would be very focused on solving the problem and solving it well. However, from time to time you need supporting components in your solution that are not directly related to the problem you are solving. These are components that are required to complete your solution.
Maybe its a payment system for your online greeting card service, or a spell checker component for your realtime note editor, you would rather look for something that’s already built and working well rather than building it yourself from scratch. This way you can focus on your “core competency”.
This is generally how everyone thinks. So did we. Here at Creately, we chose to use a third party solution to complete a product that we were working on. In the rush and excitement of getting the product out we signed up with the 3rd party service not considering some important factors that we should have. Even though the intention was to avoid reinventing the wheel and save time and effort, the out come was us spending double the time and effort to get the solution to work. Lesson learnt the hard way.
So I thought I would put together a simple flowchart to help us evaluate such situations in the future when such a need arises again. This flow chart explains the basic thinking, and the factors involved in making the decision can be found below.
Picking the most suitable solution
How well is my requirement met? Does the solution meet all the feature and functionality requirements I have? Does the solution meet the integration requirements I have?
Is the component build for me? Even if the solution meets all my functionality and feature requirements, one thing I have to watch out for is, if it does more than what I need. Will it complicate my product? or my users experience? or my integration process?
Is the integration and setup process straight forward? Time and effort required to setup and integrate?
What is the financial commitment?
Considering all factors above, compare the time, effort and cost involved in building the ideal solution against using the selected solution.
Assessing if the solution can be used to solve the problem
Can I use the existing features in the solution to make it do what I want it to do?
Can the solution be customized to fit my requirements?
What is the time and effort involved in customizing the solution for my need?
What is the financial cost involved in customizing the solution for my need?
Considering all factors above in A and B, compare the time, effort and cost involved in building the ideal solution against using the selected solution.
Finally time for the next post in this series. I know its been two months since the first one, and sorry for taking this long! Better late than never, and here we go! If you’ve missed the first one on Visitors Map Overlay, stop right here, and go read it.
We’ve mentioned the importance of Map Overlay in the first post, and this time its all about Goals in Google Analytics! Lets see what Goals are, why they’re important and how we set them.
What are Goals in Google Analytics?
Goals describe the completion of a desired task that you’d like your visitors to do!
By setting up Goals in Google Analytics, you can measure how often the desired tasks are completed, and this is called the conversion rate.
Before implementing Goals, identify what your website’s objectives are, and what visitor actions they correspond to. A goal can be anything from completing a contact form for generating leads to completing a purchase for driving revenue.
There are multiple ways to define goals, and here’s a great article written by Ian Spencer that gives more tips on Goals in Google Analytics.
And now, the Goal Funnel?
Accomplishing a Goal involves a sequence of steps. The sequence that leads up to the completion of a Goal make up the Goal Funnel. For each Goal, you will need to setup a Goal Funnel and like the Goal itself, each of these steps must correspond to a measurable action on a specific page.
For example, Creately visitors go through a sequence of steps before finally performing the desired Sign Up action. Assume that you land on the Creately UML Landing page (the first step towards the Goal), where you might choose to Try Creately Now without signing up, and then from the Creately application you could opt to Sign Up ‘cos you’re convinced.
This would direct you to the Plans & Pricing page, where you’d be expected to choose a preferred plan, then click on Sign Up to make the purchase. Once you complete the purchase, you’d be sent to the Thank you page (this marks the Goal). Now, this means the desired task is performed and the Goal is accomplished.
However, on the other hand if the website visitor only goes up to the plans page, and opts to leave without signing up. Then the Goal is not met and it’s considered to be abandoned! Thus, Goals and Conversion rates are important to measure the performance of a website.
We refer to the whole sequential process as a funnel - many people start at the top and fewer end up coming out to the bottom by accomplishing the Goal.
Check out the flowchart below to see the steps that correspond to a measurable action on different pages -
How to Set up Goals
Setting a goal is very simple. If you have administrative access, you can sign in to your Google Analytics. Then go to Analytics Settings and select a profile, click on edit, choose an unused goal ’slot’, and click on edit again.
You’ll need to then follow the steps and decide what your goal is and how you’ll be declaring a goal, then click to finish and you’ll start measuring the performance for your website.
Check out this video for more details on Setting Up Goals in Google Analytics
Today, we’re excited to announce Creately’s improved Import/Export capability made possible with our new Creately Document Markup Language (.cdml) and brand new Team Plans with great discounts for larger Teams. Lets jump straight into it.
Save your Diagrams Locally
First off, the new Import/Export capability. Team and Pro users can now backup all your Creately diagrams locally on your desktop by simply exporting a Creately Document Markup Language format file (*.cdml). These exported files can easily be imported back into Creately maintaining all embedded images and links at full-resolution.
We’ve significantly upgraded our upload and download infrastructure, so now you’ll be able to download CDML, PDF, PNG and JPEGs as well as import your own graphics into Creately at a blistering speed. This is great for all those mockups and presentations that need custom graphics. We know you’ll love this.
We’re most excited about the possibilities the new CDML format will present for our users and developers, so over the next few weeks , Hiraash will be putting up some ideas and examples of what you can do with our new diagram document format. Go ahead, export an image and open the CDML file with any text editor for a sneak peek.
Bulk User Plans!
After we announced our Team plans and Creately for Google Apps, we’ve been inunadated with requests from larger Teams looking to adopt Creately in their pursuit for more efficient project collaboration. We’ve heard you and we’re happy to announce fantastic bulk discounts for larger Teams.
With the new prices, you’ll pay $8/month each for the first 5 users. If you have a larger team of say 12 users, you’ll simply pay $8 for the first 5 users, then $6 for the next 5 and finally $5 for the last 2 users. So a 12 user team will be charged $80 / month ($40 + $30 + $10). That’s a 17% savings, straight off the bat.
Check out our plans page for more details. If you need more than a 100 users on Creately - call us we’re here to help.
These new discounts will make adopting Creately across your Google Apps domain excellent value for money. As always, we’ve got great discounts for Educators, Colleges and do-gooders - just reach out to us.
What to Expect
Over the coming weeks - expect some exciting new announcements that will Creately the best visual collaboration and diagramming application for software, design and support teams, including a new plugin for FogBugz and improvements in our software diagramming capability. Until then happy diagramming.
Here at Cinergix we’ve been working together from different office locations around the world to create, market and support the best online diagramming software - Creately. We spend hours sitting in front of our computers each day working across vast distances and timezones and it can sometimes be a challenge getting everyone on the team working together effectively.
So over the last year, we’ve experimented with a large number of online services to help us work better and support our customers in the best possible way. In each solution we looked for just the right amount of functionality to help us work better without drowning in too much process and too many systems.
Here we’ve distilled the top 5 tools (mostly online tools) that we’ve come to rely on to keep the Creately engine chugging along nicely. They cover everything from project management tools to customer support systems, but each one offers the ease of use and simplicity that we find so important in keeping our team focused on the job at hand.
Thanks to @Hiraash for his suggestions and I hope you’ll find these tools useful for your project teams. If you’ve got any other suggestions that you think will be useful for other web startups and project teams, we’d love to hear from you.
Wrike is a web-based project management tool, and the great thing about it is that it comes with a fantastic Gantt chart view that knocks the pants off any other web based PM tool. @Chandika is a big fan cos he loves the fact that the Gantt chart view gives everyone a good idea of the inter dependencies across the projects we work on here at Creately. Unlike most other recent web-base PM tools that have a strong social collaboration angle, Wrike offers a solid PM tool in the same vein as MS Project, but its pricing is a tad on the high side.
TeamViewer is an easy to use screen-sharing application that’s Free and works really well. I’ve tried sharing my screen with Skype and other web-services but none have performed as well as TeamViewer. Everyone I’ve recommended it to loves it. And it doesn’t just stop there. Teamviewer lets remotely control another computer - even through firewalls. This is an essential tool we use everyday at Creately. Thanks to @Aslam for bringing this to the team.
For the uninitiated, Creately is a web-based diagramming software that comes with built in tools for easy, secure collaboration. With an extensive library of shapes, Creately supports many diagram types. Naturally we use Creately in-house - mostly for concept diagrams, flowcharts and mockups. Its great for getting those ideas nailed down quickly in a diagram - and really helps bring clarity to the team.
PS - We released a beta version of a Creately Plugin for the Fogbugz platform this week, which makes it easy to add any type of diagram to your Fogbugz cases and Wiki to clearly explain requirements to your team. You can check it out here.
Zendesk provides a customer support portal solution includes email support with a built-in knowledge base. We chose it for it elegant interface and the ease with which we can track support support issues and deliver the type of customer service our customers talk about. It also worked great for providing 24/7 round the clock support that is being handled across 2 locations. There are a host of other customer support systems out there that actually deliver more functionality at a lower price, but we’re sold on their “Love your Helpdesk” theme.
Pivotal Tracker is a story-based project planning tool that the Dev Team here at Creately swears by. It is based on the Agile software development methodology and support sprints, velocity, etc but can also be used for other types of projects. If you’re a fan of Agile development - then you’ll love PT, as we affectionately call it.
Best part about PT - Its completely Free (as in beer).
What do you use in your teams? Have you tried any of these tools, and have you found them effective in your business?
So you’ve built a killer web application (lets call it “Killer App A”) and you’re ready to take over the world with it. Now what?
How exactly do you get the rest of this planet excited or even aware of your new whizz-bang Killer App A? How do you get it out there and build an audience for your product with a bootstrapped startup’s budget?
Just like conventional offline marketing, every startup marketer needs to understand the basic marketing tenets of Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning if you’re to succeed. Once you’ve identified your target segment and customer - you’ll need to find the best way to reach these target customers.
Unfortunately, simply knowing who your target customer is - isn’t going to be good enough because you don’t have the budget to hire marketing suits to help you reach these customers. Fortunately for all of us, the Internet today offers a host of options to get Killer App A out to the people who matter - it just takes a little work and a healthy dose of creativity to succeed.
3 Questions to ask about your target Customers?
Once you’ve identified your target customer - you’ll need to know where to find your target customer, or more specifically, where on the Internet your potential customers are spending their time and attention - so you can get “Killer App A” in front of them.
Typically you need to be able to answer the following questions about your target customers: 1) Which websites or blogs does a typical customer visit?
2) Who are the influencers or mover and shakers that your target customers are paying attention to?
3) Are there online Communities, Forums or Social Networks that your customers congregate at?
Answering these basic questions will help you formulate the most cost effective strategy for customer acquisition - allowing you to channel your limited resources towards the most relevant customer sources.
Start Here… Google Alerts
The first thing I’d recommend for anyone trying to reach their customers is to create a set of Google Alerts. Google Alerts are a great way to keep up to date with the latest on any topic on the Internet, and thats exactly what you want to do for the keywords (topics) that matter to you and your customers. You can set it up to receive daily alerts and once you’ve found a site thats relevant - you’ll want to Engage, Engage, Engage.
Here at Creately.com - we’re interested in customers who draw technical and business diagrams - so we’ve set up Google Alerts which point us to sites, blogs and online conversations where these are being discussed.
Then we engage in the blogs and forums that discuss these topics - initially by offering to help and providing useful information and resources to gain credibility in the community. And finally introducing your product/service where appropriate (Note: Posting about your product without engagement can be counter-productive). This is a great way to reach out! Once you’re known within the community, you can also send out direct emails to bloggers requesting them to review your startup - this sure beats a standardized email from an unknown startup.
Where are your competitors reaching customers? Another nifty trick is to set up Google Alerts for you competitor’s product or brand. If someone’s talking about your competitor on a website or blog - that probably means there’s a keen interest from the Blog’s author and readers in your particular space or product. As long as your product can add value to the discussion, there is no reason why you shouldn’t engage with this blog/site to put forward Killer App A.
Start-up Blogs
Another great source for potential customers is getting featured on one of the leading Technology blogs like TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb or Mashable. These sites can drive a lot of traffic to your website but simply relying on these tech blogs is not good enough to grow your startup’s web-presence (Read more about the Techcrunch bump here).
Besides these high traffic blogs there are a host of very useful niche blogs that may be relevant to your target customer base. But, how will you find these niche blogs? Marshall Kirkpatrick (from RWW fame) has a good post on finding the right sites on his blog.
Directories (Google Loves them)
Now, just as how review sites are paramount to any startup it is equally important to get listed in Directories. DMOZ is one such prestigious directory, and so is MakeUseOf.com, and KillerStartups.com. Bookmark these URLs and read these posts for useful tips for getting Killer App A listed on them:
Good backlinks from these reputable Tech Blogs and Directories help build your business’s reach and gain credibility in a very competitive startup environment. Besides being a great way of acquiring initial traffic, these listings improve your site’s Google Page Rank by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to your pages.
Content is King
Reviews and listings will drive good traffic, but to convert the traffic into customers there’s a lot more work to be done - we’ll discuss some strategies for conversion in another post. In the meantime, you need to be constantly engaging with the communities that will drive customers your way. Write blog posts that appeal to your target customer, always using appropriate titles to capture the attention of readers. The goals of your blog posts should be to educate, inform and to generate comments.
Social Media is your Friend
You’ve written your posts and published them - now its time to make sure you get the maximum leverage from your effort. Social media plays a key role here, so make sure you have profiles on popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and loads more. Submit your blog posts with a back link to your blog or site. Remember to make your interactions with members on social networks a 2-way dialogue by answering their questions and helping the community where possible.
And Yes, at Cinergix we do a lot of hardwork to create a buzz about Creately! We aim at having as many reviews, listings and social media presence as possible. These tips may not work all the time, but keep at it and I assure you it will pay off.
Here’s a simple diagram featuring Creately’s Reviews from 10 review sites.
We hope you’ve found this post useful for your own Killer App - we’d love to hear of other innovative things you do to get your product out to the world.
Picking the most suitable solution
Assessing if the solution can be used to solve the problem
