AdamCovati.com

“Turn ‘GAS COCK KNOB’ to PILOT index on gas flow regulator.” I’m sorry, what? This is actually one of the more decipherable lines within the owner manual for my water heater.

Earlier this week I had the misfortune of coming home to a flooding garage. It turns out my water heater was leaking. As part of the repair I turned off the gas and water for safety. I was at the point of turning it all back on and was befuddled by the help I was provided. It clearly wasn’t written for a layman.

Who needs your help?

The problem is that the people who understand jargon and complex contexts don’t need instructions. They can do this stuff in their sleep. Laymen like me need instructions. And the same is true for your application.

The people who need help on your site are lost, confused, and in need of soothing, practical, and readable advice.

Who writes your help?

There’s nothing wrong with industry jargon when used amongst others who speak it’s tongue – it’s a more succinct conversion for them. Jargon, when defined and used consistently can actually help an industry or vertical to mature as the collective group of people stand on common ground.

The problem is that it’s far too common to find help that was written within this jargon. While I’ll admit that this is the right place to introduce it, it’s not the right place to assume it’s already understood.

Simplifying help

Make help accessible to people who are new to your field or who may have been practicing in isolation. Don’t be afraid to use terms that are more common, or to provide asides that explain new concepts when they are introduced. It’s also a good idea to use alternative, friendly descriptions of objects to ensure that you are on the same page.

Here’s a good rule of thumb:

If a help topic read out loud to someone once is not understandable, and executable, then it is too complex.

I rewrote that line 4 times to reduce complexity and increase clarity. Because this whole blog post is a help topic, and you have to ensure readability of all help topics.

What next?

Here’s something we did in an industry group I worked on within the email community a little while back. We asked non-industry people, like your parents or friends outside of work, to review help and informational documents that we had created.

That made sure that it was something anyone could grasp, and we weren’t writing for experts who didn’t need help.

So keep in mind your target market and write some help that is actually helpful!

There’s been a recent spate of articles about how Groupon is losing money, how sales are declining in their longest standing markets, or how costly new deals are to come buy. And while this is concerning on its own, I figured it was worth addressing the larger issue of why their product just isn’t that compelling.

Group buying isn’t new

Group buying isn’t a new game. Groupon may have rebranded it with social media savvy, but it’s something people have been doing for years. Here are just a few examples in case the hype has made you a bit myopic:

• Warehouse Clubs – e.g. Costco, BJs, etc
• Deal-a-day sites – e.g. Woot.com, Tanga.com
• Life insurance programs

Get it? Yea, the model makes sense, it’s a good position for consumers. It’s like unionizing consumer goods purchasing.

But Groupon took a model that worked, and broke it.

The wrong offer at the wrong time

So why is that? Well, it’s got a lot to do with the fact that frankly, their model stinks. Let me break it down like a fraction:

(People like deals * People need stuff) / Groupon has deals on stuff = Sales!

But this is how the real world works:

(People need certain things * deals motivate a % of people) / Groupon has deals on one thing at a time = Coincidental Sales

Deals come along when groupon happens to get them, but there is no relation to when I might actually want or need them. Many of these deals aren’t actually limited by time, you can use them whenever you want. But that does little to actually motivate users to buy.

So if you apply this to a huge marketing list then you’ll get huge sales at first, but the novelty wares off. People get sick of checking a site that is hardly ever useful.

The other side of the coin is that they are trying to win over everyone, not just a few key verticals. And it’s tough to make everyone happy with one deal.

The running joke at our office is that Groupon would be great if I needed facials and photobooks. Maybe that’s the market they want, but it isn’t me, and isn’t most people…

Groupon Personalized Deals is an attempt to fix this, but it remains be seen if they can pull off this level of deal flow and variety. I’m not holding my breath.

Why group buying works elsewhere

Let’s pick two examples from the existing models above: Costco & Woot. These two have a good thing going for them, and they are squarely in the group buying deal space.

Costco makes it work because they offer most of the items you normally buy at good prices all the time. That’s pretty simple, lots of deals, always there when you need them.

Woot is a bit closer to groupon because they are (mostly) a deal-a-day site. But they have a niche, they have a good sized customer base who they understand and they know how to sell to. They have also fanned out into more of a deal site (deals.woot.com). This works because they have a vertical(ish) focus and they now offer more deals.

How to fix Groupon

Good question, I’m glad you asked. I may be wrong, I have been before, but I think they need to focus by offering more deals in their most profitable verticals along with offering more long-standing deals.

Groupon should be a place to find tons of deals on services, and that also has one crazy-hot deal-of-the-day, not a site that is solely focussed on that one deal.

What do you think?

I’ll be honest, I only skimmed Peter Shakman’s recent post Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert”. You know why? Because I don’t need to read the same old, boring diatribe along with a pile of generic social media advice.

This old line again?

If you’ve been in the social media field for a while you might have noticed an annoying trend. We’ve spent years doing two things:

1. Stop hiring interns to do an important job
2. Social media experts are bogus frauds

And guess what, most of the talking heads saying this stuff, they’re the experts, the actual ones – whether they like it or not. And this advice is crap. Peter will never need a social media expert because he is one. An actual one. Not a fake one. And you know what, there are a bunch out there.

Just as there are a bunch of experts in every field. They are the ones who know the most. They always exist, even if they don’t know it.

Want to know the truth? Experts often don’t realize what they are until long after they became experts.

When you need an expert

There are times when you need and expert, and it’s not to hard to see where and when. It’s when you need someone good to get the job done right. This is no different then when you plan on buying a bunch of companies, you hire an M&A expert. Here’s an easy way to tell if you need a social media expert:

• You know transparency and engagement, but aren’t sure what’s next
  Moving from concept to game-plan isn’t easy. It’s takes planning, knowledge and experience. Having someone on your side who has done it more than a couple of times is a huge help.
• If you want to make social media strategic
  I’m talking about core to your company strategic. I mean if you want social media to be essential to how you get leads and sales (e.g. Hubspot).
• If you need to engage with a large audience
  Like on the scale of Comcast, American Idol. This is a daunting task, hire someone who has been in the trenches, managed a team doing this stuff, and executed it with direction and purpose.
• If you have an image problem
  Just like how you’d hire a good PR agency to do damage control if you say, destroyed the gulf. You might want someone experience at the helm of SM when you are trying to win hearts and minds via SM.
• When you have no clue what you are doing
  This isn’t for everyone, and it may be more of a consulting deal. But if you are just getting started, and have the budget, then maybe you should hire an actual expert to get you going. Rather than stumble into it, find a person who can get you running with a strategy, the right tools, and the right team in place.

Makes sense, right?

I could keep going, but I think you get the point. Yes, there are a lot of charlatans out there claiming to be experts, but there are a lot of real ones who are ready to roll up their sleeves and help you get social media right. Don’t buy the hate and hype – especially when the experts are just deriding themselves.

Recently I was discussing distractions at Argyle, well we were discussing a very specific distraction, but that’s all details. A popular piece of common wisdom popped into my head:

One of the hardest parts about startups isn’t deciding what to do next; often it’s deciding what not to do at all.

But it’s almost too easy to trot that excuse out and try to wholesale avoid any potentially dangerous distractions. The problem with lines like the one above is that they can cause you to miss out on a huge opportunity.

Twitter was a side project at Odeo. Hell, Starbucks started off selling beans and espresso makers, they had no interest in brewing coffee. Today’s distraction could be tomorrow’s billion dollar idea.

These things can run the gambit, some provide alternate revenue streams, some just augment and existing offering, and other change the business you’re in.

So how do you decide whether that distraction is a potential game changer? I’m just thinking out loud, but here are a few tools we’ve employed to mull things over:

Market check

Are there people willing to pay for this potential waste of time? If not, it doesn’t mean the idea is dead in the water, but it does mean that you have to be willing to get flexible when it comes to monetizing.

Whether or not this idea is out of the realm of your existing customer base, it’s still worth working through the details of profitability. Even easy wins have hard costs.

Product Alignment

Does this idea dovetail with your existing offering at all? It might not be that much of a distraction if you can upsell/cross sell it to your existing customers or prospects.

Or maybe it can help fill feature gaps or competitive shortfalls you may have with your existing products. Think creatively about how this could be leveraged.

Company Impact

Ideas can solidify into reality quite quickly in this cloud driven world. You can be sitting pretty with a shiny new toy in a matter of days. But how will the rest of the company deal with it?

Marketing needs to know how to talk about it and who to push it to. Sales needs to know how to talk pretty about it and how to handle the objections. And don’t get me started with support.

Know who will be impacted and how before you go too far down that road.

Vigorous Debate

One of my favorites – you can almost always count on me to play a bit of devil’s advocate. If you’re not sure what to do then talk it out. And don’t be afraid to drag in some heavy hitters – whether that be investors, advisors, mentors, customers, or random people on the street. Sometimes a little outside perspective is the best thing you can bring to this discussion.

Why are you even considering this?

This might be the most important point. Why in the world are you even having this discussion? Did a big prospect ask for something crazy? Did you just stumble across some sort of technical easy win? Have you stumbled across a treasure trove of slightly skewed leads or uncovered a new unmet market need?

Whatever the reason, you better understand the full motivation behind it or it could get very painful very quickly.

Decide

So should you grab that distraction by the tail and turn it into a money maker or let it go? I don’t know, you’re just going to have to make a decision and keep on truckin. That’s life in a startup.

Here’s to yet another interesting business challenge that’ll keep you up at night!

Recently I’ve been asked a few times how close I am to done with the major feature-set at Argyle. While the question is laughable to me (and Eric), to the layman it probably makes sense.

The best answer I could come up with was on a scale of 1 to infinity I was probably at about 8.5 million. I mean, that’s really far, we’ve got a good product. But it’s not really anywhere near infinity.

You see, the whole premise is laughable to us because we know that in this space you’re never done. Really, I’ve never worked on a software product that I thought could be done. If you can finish your piece of software then you are building a feature, not a product.

There’s always more features, more things to add, heck, more things to remove. That’s the curse and the joy of good software, you can always do something else to it.