Rick Perreault

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• What are the major things to think about when creating a homepage for my startup?

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    In the simplest way, communicate why you are special and different than anything else and make it super easy for those who care to get in to try your product/service.

• How can we do social media effectively? In my research on social media, I've found that while many companies have Fb, Twitter pages, etc., not many seem to get results from those. Those that do get results seem to offer a needed service through social media. At the moment, my plan is to approach social media by finding out what our customers and potential customers need and provide it through social media, thus drawing attention on our brand and company and building relationships. Good strategy?

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    Yes, use social media to have a conversation with the outside world. In my experience, you won’t see alot of direct conversions from Twitter & Facebook but your efforts will lead to lots of indirect new acquisitions. Read http://unbounce.com/social-media/measuring-social-media-roi-goal-conversions-with-google-analytics-5/ for some more insights on using and measuring social media.

• Are there particular fonts that are more effective on web pages?

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    legible ones. Avoid fonts that are hard to read. Same goes for font size.

• What does Google Analytics mean by "bounces"?

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    I’m not a Google Analytics expert but I believe it’s a % of visitors during a specific time period that left (bounced) without doing anything.

• What is the minimum information I need to provide on a landing page before hitting someone to sign up?

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    Simply, you need to answer “why should I care?”

• Should we have a different landing page for a first time user versus a returning one?

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    If you are tracking and segementing new vs returning, good for you! Your message would likely be different for someone who experiences your brand for the first time rather than someone who’s seen it before so yes you should.

• Do you think touch screens are going to increase in popularity? Should companies be thinking about this when they design their websites?

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    Good question and yes! I access more websites on my iphone than I do on my laptop.

• Is there a step-by-step approach to take in slowly immersing ones self in data, metrics around webpages? It seems a bit daunting to a non-technical person.

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    Start with conversion rate and cost of acquisition and work back from there. Then you can dig deeper into acquisition channels, user behavior, etc.

    I would highly recommend spending 90 watching this most comprehensive video on startup saas metrics by Mark MacLeod http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmSAiqxc9Ow

• Do you think startups should try to raise as much capital now even if they don't need it as it will be much harder when the bubble bursts?

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    Probably not the best one to answer this however, I have heard this. I will say that if you can raise more than you need on very favorable terms, go for it. Really comes down to how much of the company you and your co-founders are willing to give up.

• How did you validate your startup idea ? What made you think this would be a profitable business ?

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    I asked alot of prospective customers in my target market. Specifically, coming from the Marketing space, I knew 1) lots of money was being spent on online advertising
    2) targeted landing pages converted better than sending paid traffic to a homepage 3) in my experience, getting landing pages made for each new campaign was plagued with time and cost challenges

    So, I spoke to marketers that advertise online to see if the pain of getting landing pages made was universal.

    I didn’t know for sure that we would grow to a profitable business but knew that we were solving a real pressing pain.