

Balsamiq is about to be on Mixergy live - vaksel
http://mixergy.com/live#

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patio11
Let's see, highlights as I go:

The "secret sauce" is the "golden puzzle": you build up things your
competitors can't possibly copy, one piece of awesomeness at the time.
Everything is a puzzle piece, from the EULA to each email to customers to the
feeling of joy in using the product.

Balsamiq gives out free licenses "like candy": 60+ a day, always to dogooders
-- OSS, bloggers, etc. Also gives two away to anyone who wants to do a
demo/presentation: one for them, one to give away to someone in the audience.
(That is _brilliant_. Stealing it.)

"There is one way to run a sustainable business based on advertising. Be
Google. Or, get bought by them."

Balsamiq on analytics: "I'm a product guy. I don't think I've ever said funnel
or conversion before this interview."

"I never intend for it to go beyond 2.0. It should never become bloatware."

"Adding an option to the software is a failure to me as a designer: I'm asking
the user to understand why there are two modes and [paraphrase: do the work
that I refused to do in identifying the 80% case]."

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AndrewWarner
Patrick, great bullets.

I thought he should talk to you about increasing conversions.

I understand that it's not his forte, but after hearing your interview, I'm
convinced that he'd be inspired by how much conversion optimization could
actually improve his product, not just sales.

~~~
patio11
I did a presentation on this topic a week and change ago in Osaka, actually:
Google Analytics makes my eyes glaze over, too, and I get very little valuable
out of it. I'll _never_ write customer accessible software again without
instrumenting it to within an inch of its life.

For example, the line Peldi said about having to make the hard decisions about
which cases are the 80% cases (and should be accommodated by the software) and
which are the 20% cases (which add complexity in excess of their value and so
should probably not be in the software unless you can handle them invisibly)
spoke to me.

However, the more I instrument features I develop, the more I find that I
_frequently_ misprioritize, even when listening to customers.

Here's that presentation: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/04/22/data-driven-
software-des...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/04/22/data-driven-software-
design-presentation-plus-bonus-interview/)

See slides 15 and 16. 15 is the big, ungodly customization dialog from heck.
16 is how much those options actually get used. See way at the bottom where
you can change the colors? That was my second most requested feature for
_three years._ I thought it was an eighty percenter -- after all, if customers
didn't want it, they'd be asking for something else. Empirically, only about 8
~ 10% of customers actually touch it.

That isn't classical conversion optimization, but I think even someone whose
software is as awesome as Mockups can achieve meaningful results for the
business and users by figuring out some goal for their first experience, and
then measuring what is getting in the way of customers achieving that goal.
(Mockups has a kick-butt first five minutes, by the way. It is probably the
best I've ever seen outside of WoW. I think it could be even better, though,
by taking the attention to detail they bring to the rest of the business and
figuring out to the mouseclick where some people stop believing that Mockups
is the most amazing thing they've touched this month.)

Great interview by the way, Andrew. I've read everything Peldi has written in
the last couple of years, twice, and I still picked up a trick or three from
it. (If there is anybody running an early stage startup here who hasn't read
Peldi's technique for contacting bloggers, drop what you're doing and go to
his "Startup Marketing Advice" blog post.)

~~~
balsamiq
You're too kind Patrick. I have mixed feelings about recording what users do,
it feels a bit invasive to me...do people know exactly how much of their
behaviour you're recording? Our Desktop app never calls home for that reason.
I realize expectations are different when using a web app, but still...I don't
know, maybe I'm old fashioned. I'm not saying that you need to listen to
customers at all costs, but I find that watching them use the tool (knowing
that they are being watched since you're right there or you asked them to run
an online usability tool) is a SUPER-valuable way to get info, very often
surprising, out-of-left-field, I-never-would-have-tested-for-that info.

I better go to bed. :)

------
aditya
Seems kaput - anyone know what's going on?

~~~
vaksel
AW had to reboot, back now

