robwebb2k

Gear Burger: Turbocharged

Rob Webb — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:06:47 +0000

Gear Burger has been turbocharged. You can read about the improvements here.

Liftopia.

Rob Webb — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:44:36 +0000

A much needed update! I joined Liftopia back in November as VP of Product. My primary role is to lead the charge on the technology development side of things but as is the case with all startups, everyone does a bit of everything. I joined the team right as we were heading into our peak season and have spent the last six months trying to pump out features that would improve our season results and keep the wheels on the bus. We still have a long way to go but we had a great season, and when we have a great season that means we were able to help ski resorts have great seasons as well which is very cool. We’re now heading into a period of lower transactional volume which means we will be able to crank out a ton of development work, as we don’t have to worry as much about bug fixes, transaction processing optimization and customer support issues. I’ll post updates here as we release features and design changes. I’m also going to start blogging again (although Twitter is still sucking me away).

Side Benefit of User Testing: Team Unity

Rob Webb — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:18:19 +0000

For the last several months, we’ve been undergoing a large redesign of a critical and complex user flow at Adroll. At this point, several hundred hours of work have gone into the project. Our UX intern started the project with a company-wide customer identification exercise that got everyone focused on who we’re targeting with our product and who we should be designing for. We then conducted extensive user testing with target customers throughout development which resulted in radical shifts from what we thought would be the “right” solutions out of the gates. The result is not only a better and easier to use product, but also a unified team. User testing not only focused our team on our target users’ behavior but also virtually eliminated internal debate and the resulting tension regarding who thought what would be best for our users. In the long run it’s very possible that the side benefit of team unity will match the value of the much improved product.

Gear Burger: Outdoor gear deals straight to your inbox

Rob Webb — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:24:20 +0000

My buddy Chad and I launched Gear Burger a while back as a little side project. When you sign up for the service, you select your preferred gear type and gear brand preferences (e.g. men’s hiking and skiing gear made by Patagonia, Salomon and Volkl). Gear Burger then monitors one-deal-at-a-time sites like Steep and Cheap and Tramdock and sends you email alerts when an item that matches your preferences goes on sale. The sales we see are generally 10 – 20% cheaper than the cheapest sale prices on the web. You can also browse past deals within the catalog where you can also find individual products that you would like to follow and get alerts when they go on sale. The live deals section contains all of the deals we are seeing that are currently active. To date our system has seen 21,740 deals and tens of thousands of alerts. We find it super useful for snagging great gear deals and we hope you do too.

Better can beat better + cheaper

Rob Webb — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:49:42 +0000

I recently met a scrappy entrepreneur who is working on some very interesting technology that has potential to help large enterprises. He described his product as “ten times better and ten times cheaper than the competition.” It’s easy for entrepreneurs to slip into the mindset that their product needs to beat the competition on all fronts: price, service, technology, etc. The truth is that if you build something that really is 10x better than the competition, there is no reason to massively cut the price as well.

Busy Months

Rob Webb — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:00:06 +0000

It’s been a busy couple of months.

1. I started as Director of Product Management at Adroll
2. KnowledgeBid is cranking in a nicely automated manner
3. I’ve been posting a lot on twitter
4. Semi-regular posting will resume/continue…

How sticky is your signup?

Rob Webb — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:34:28 +0000

Nothing bugs me more than a bad signup process. The signup should be viewed as your site’s sales process. The ball is in your court to close the deal when someone starts the signup. Don’t blow it! A few things I try to keep in mind when analyzing or building a signup process…

Ask for the most interesting, fun, and relevant information from the user first. Ask for the most senstive, boring, and personal information from them last. Example: If you are trying to sell cake on your website, the first piece of information you should ask for is what kind of cake the user wants. This is why they are on your site. They will be happy and excited to give you this information. Much more happy than they would be to give you their email address, cell phone number, or credit card number.
Only ask for information when it is absolutely necessary. Every additional page you include in a signup process will result in attrition and on a smaller scale, every question you ask will do the same. Sure it would be great to know every users’ birthday so you could send them a happy birthday email, but if you’re selling cake do you REALLY need to know it? You can also break the information gathering process down into smaller pieces. Example: You only need payment and delivery information if they actually place an order that they need to pay for and have delivered….so ask for it only when they need to pay or have something delivered.
Break the process down into easy to swallow steps. We’ve all seen daunting signup forms that stretch below the fold. Nothing says “signup” like one of those guys. Ideally your users will feel like they are working on a project and not actually signing up for anything. Prompting users with one or two questions and a nice big button will move them through the process quickly and draw them in. Lumping them all together will cause gag reflexes. Of course too many steps will cause damage as well, but if you follow #2 you should be OK.
Only create barriers when abuse makes them necessary. If you’re building a consumer site, chances are you’ve had some sleepless nights thinking about fraud, abuse, etc. and how you can prevent those problems. This is important stuff to think about and plan for, but there is no need to build barriers to prevent problems that don’t exist. Example: making users verify their email address will prevent fraud…but if you have no users (and no fraud) there is no reason to create this barrier.
“Invite” and “share” only when appropriate and only after you have “sold” the user. Everyone now knows that inviting and sharing are how sites organically grow. That doesn’t mean you should ask your users to import their whole address book and share the news of their pending cake purchase. Instead carefully lead the user through the signup process and prompt them to share with relevant people once they have bought into the service and have something worth sharing.
Test, test, test. If you already have a signup process in place, try tweaking it towards a sticky system and see if it works. If your site is currently configured for a traditional non-sticky signup (email, password), take baby steps and measure along the way to see if you’re making progress. The counter argument to sticky signups is that users are comfortable with traditional signups. This is definitely true to some degree…however I’ve never met anyone that enjoyed them.

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Examples: Sticky & Simple

Anyvite: Juicy information up front, dry stuff in the back, super easy sharing.

Craigslist: The LAST bit of information asked for is your email address.

37 Signals Job Board: Clean and direct with relevant questions first.

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Examples: Sticky & Complex

Pageflakes: The page is already built and ready for you to personalize and claim.

Netvibes: Straight into the juicy info needed to build your personalized page.

Widgetbox: Build your widget first, then claim it if you want to.

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If you like geeking out about this stuff check out the gallery at Product Planner and easily examine the flow of your favorite sites.

My Picks: Top 5 Gadgets

Rob Webb — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:35:14 +0000

I was recently asked an interesting question. “What are five tech gadgets that you can’t live without?” Some of my picks aren’t really gadgets…I just went with the stuff I derive the most value from in a work context.

Blackberry + Tether: Email anywhere on the device and ~DSL connection anywhere on my laptop with the tether (can’t do this legally with an iPhone or android phone yet).

MacBook Pro: Sweet edgy laptop perfect for my coffee shop emo twitters. I just want to fit in. And it’s the best computer I have ever owned.

Belkin 4 Port USB Hub: 1 USB plug at my desk currently hubbing/organizing my printer, mouse, monitor and phone cords.

Refurbished <$200 22 inch LCD Monitor: Used flatscreen HP monitor from on Amazon – stays at my desk and allows me to have healthy ergonomics.

Molskine Notebook; Ruled, 5×8 : Some people get crazy with these. I find the best function is elimination of loose notes floating everywhere.

What am I missing?

Air and Simple Gifts

Rob Webb — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:39:28 +0000

I really enjoyed the John Williams arrangement “Air and Simple Gifts.” played today at the inauguration by Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet). The piece was largely based on a Shaker song written in 1848 called Simple Gifts which later inspried the hymn Lord of the Dance penned by Sydney Carter in 1963 which has been a lifelong favorite of mine.

Both Simple Gifts and Lord of the Dance are wonderful songs and very fitting for today. If you have a minute take a look at the lyrics below while listening to my favorite versions. Aaron Coplands’ Appalachian Spring is also worth a listen.

Lord of the Dance performed by The Christmas Revels

I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee,
But they would not dance and they would not follow me;
I danced for the fishermen, for James and John;
They came to me and the dance went on.

I danced on the sabbath when I cured the lame,
The holy people said it was a shame;
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high;
And they left me there on a cross to die.

I danced on a Friday and the sky turned black;
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back;
They buried my body and they thought I’d gone,
But I am the dance and I still go on.

They cut me down and I leapt up high,
I am the life that’ll never, never die;
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.

Simple Gifts performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Allison Krauss:

Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

2 years and 200 posts

Rob Webb — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:21:58 +0000

I started this blog 2 years and 200 posts ago. The time has flown by. I’m still having fun with it and no major missteps so I’m sticking to my plan. Just over 50,000 pages viewed so far. Thanks for reading! I’ll try to keep things interesting.