While building a website you either have, or will, face the point where you have to design the acquisition funnel. Your web app is ready for prime time, you’ve poured everything into the development of your idea and you are convinced that you’ve created something valuable that your target market will love once they finally get their hands on it. In essence, this thing will promote itself.

That may sound naive, but many many web entrepreneurs expect this kind of success. There are many great startups out there, and yet many sit undiscovered and unloved because they have failed to communicate their value - they have a poor acquisition funnel.

How To Test Your Acquisition Funnel

I am currently testing my funnel in my own startup. The core product is complete, and works well. Before I begin to aggressively promote my app, I’ve started creating small, closed acquisition tests - and unfortunately the first few tests have been a huge disapointment. At first I was shocked, and couldn’t overcome my own developer’s hubris. My app kicks ass, I use it every day - how could people not see how valuable it is? My design is very simple and uncluttered, and I’ve created a demo video to show people how to use it, so why aren’t people completing my registration form?

I started out by drawing more attention to my registration button. I have an online marketing background, so I’m very familiar with tweaking my call-to-actions for the past 5+ years. I created a large, attractive “click here” style registration button and tried again with another sample of traffic. The results were ok, I did see about a 10% increase in registrations, but once these users registered, they still did not make full use of the service. In fact, many registered and never set up the service - they left and never returned. It was very frustrating.

At that point, it became obvious that I was approaching the problem in the wrong way. Optimizing conversions is no longer as simple as tweaking the visibility of my call-to-action. I started to analyze what data I had from my traffic tests, and found that my visitors were actually interacting with a free version of my web app that I’d made available through the homepage, but not with my registration form. I increased my tracking and found that my visitors did seem to enjoy using the free tool (even returning to use it later), and likely didn’t see the reason to fully register. I now have some information I can use to help solve my problem.

A Possible Solution: Gradual Engagement

I know my customers like to use the free version of my product, so I started to think of a way to combine the feature they are already using with the registration process so that after using the free tool, my customer only had to enter their contact information to complete their account setup. It was great timing to come across an article by superstar interface designer Luke Wroblewski, Principal Designer for Yahoo. Entitled “Sign Up Forms Must Die”, the excerpt from Luke’s forthcoming book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks discusses what Luke calls Gradual Engagement, or the process of only users for registration information as it is necessary, rather than forcing them to hand over their information up front.

Luke starts with an example of Jumpcut.com, which allows you to edit a movie in your browser, and only asks you for sign-up information once your movie has been created and you wish to distribute the result. He continues to profile Geni.com, which asks you for your email address, and then creates a username and password for you while you immediately begin the process of creating your family tree. Luke describes:

Once again through the process of gradual engagement, you learned what a web service does, and you did it without an explicit registration form requiring you to fork over a lot of information.

This is exactly what I was looking for, and I have now begun to redesign my acquisition funnel based on gradual engagement. While my visitors use my web app to make simple queries, I have begun to save their information so that once their action is complete, I can present them with the opportunity to activate a fully configured account simply by creating a username and password. The idea is that by this point, the customer has experienced the value of the tool and is now ready to create a full account to take advantage of all of the features of my web app.

Remember, This Is Gradual Engagement, Not Rapid Engagement!

One last point I’d like to make is that the process must be clear to the customer, especially once I am ready to create an account for them. I remember visiting a website in the past which tried their own form of gradual engagement, and appeared to log me into a fully functional account without ever asking me to create a username and password. I was very confused as to whether I had registered and how they were able to create an account for me, and ended up accidentally leaving before I had a chance to complete the setup, and lost my data.

Done correctly, gradual engagement accomplishes two goals for you - your customer learns how to use your product while they create their account. At then end, they have already become an active customer.

For more articles by Luke Wroblewski, check out his website.

The abundance of web applications is incredible. For most problems you will face online, a quick search in Google is very likely to turn up a web application that can solve the problem you are facing, on a wide range of platforms. If you are a hacker, dev, or SEO, and there ISN’T a solution to your problem, chances are you’re rushing to build one and claim the niche as your own. On the web, a problem is really an opportunity.

The popularity of APIs was a tremendous catalyst for the creation of web apps. For each popular web service that is released, a race begins to create every variation of widget, API extention and web tool that a smart developer can think of - it’s an amazing symbiotic relationship for both the company that releases the API, and the developers who can build companies from it.

This raises a question for the developers of web apps though - is your tool a monetizeable asset that you can build into a business, or simply a gift to the internet for which you will incur the costs? Is this tool going to become your startup, or just one in a number of tools you are launching? The best way to find out is to write a quick business plan that includes estimations of your costs, and revenues.

• Operating Expenses - hosting fees, API usage fees, marketing costs
• Revenues - advertising revenue, affiliate revenue, user fees, referral revenue

Most of these tools fall into one of several categories, see which one you should fall in, so that you can get the most out of your contribution.

100% Free

Most applications will (or should) fall into this category, because the market for most web apps tends to be small. Creators should be realistic about the size of their market. How large is the user base of the parent community? What percentage of those users will need to use your application? What percentage of that percentage will find your application through your marketing efforts? Creators of free apps can often benefit from their association with the application. A successful and useful web app is a good opportunity to promote yourself or your company for offering the service, and to use the referrals to your other core businesses to gain monetization. The notoriety that comes from running the application can make you an authority in the community, and can lead to profitable referrals or consulting work driven to your parent company or blog. A web app can be the thing that gains you credibility and name recognition, especially at conferences.

If the negative cost outweighs the benefits for you, then you should consider that you aren’t the right person to build this web application, and give your idea to the community where somebody else will pick it up. It is unfortunate when a good application is created, but eventually becomes slow and unusable when the developer cannot afford to support the traffic. Plan for this! While you may be excited to build your idea, is it worth it to become successful and then have to shut down?

Advertising Supported

Creators should put some consideration into whether to add advertising to their applications. While it is very easy to add Adsense to your application, consider whether your application lends itself to contextual advertising. Often a good application can be left unused because their developers have tried to place advertising on them in a way that doesn’t make sense, ruins the user experience, or makes the user feel like they are being taken advantage of. If you are going to build an application and you require advertising revenue to monetize it, make sure you plan for well placed advertisements which will benefit from high CTRs.

Advertising As A Business Model

Some of the most successful apps are mashups which combine a useful functionality with a CPA or revenue share point of sale. If you are developing this type of application, be sure that your idea is equally as useful to your users, as it is to you for making sales. A widget that sells books on Amazon will only be successful if it gives an added benefit to the people who use it. Just as a useful application should measure the amount of advertising it places, a good sales tool should measure the amount of benefit it adds to the user.

Case Study: TwitterCard

I recently became enamored with Twitter, and wanted to create a 125×125 graphic which would fit well into my blog design, and let others know about what I tweet about so that they can follow me. I couldn’t find any other widgets that did the job I wanted, so I registered TwitterCard.com.

At this point I quickly wrote out my estimated costs, and considered what monetization opportunities existed. I was sure that I did not want to include advertising on TwitterCard, as it will have a small market at best. I determined that hosting the app would be cheap enough that I could absorb the costs into my existing hosting fees. TwitterCard includes a link to my blog at the bottom, and a link to my Twitter profile as the example card, so the benefit I get from it is to make more contacts, and bring people into my blog.

More Reading: How Are We Going To Make Money? [howtosplitanatom.com]

Recently I removed AuctionAds from most sites on my network. After reporting problems, poor earnings and a complete lack of trust I’d had enough. Recently, beta access to their new ShoppingAds service has been passed around, and I have to wonder why I should give them a try?

Compared to WidgetBucks, their product is horrible. WidgetBucks manages to squeeze comparative shopping and attractive ads and product photos into their tiny ad units, while AuctionAds somehow looks worse then Adsense units used to. They are poorly aligned and hard to read.

The ShoppingAds service is a complete whitelabel of AuctionAds which sends shivers down my spine and does nothing to initiate trust in a new service. ShoppingAds brings nothing new to the table, and my traffic is too valuable to risk the many issues which plagued AuctionAds without acknowledgement or apology. And with the same company behind it, I’m sure I can expect the same slow and inculpable customer service I’m used to.

Until I read about some other affiliate’s amazing results, I’ll stick with my WidgetBucks which are currently out-performing Adsense. The most I’m willing to do is give a referral link to them.

Earlier this month, I gave WidgetBucks a try as a replacement for the failing AuctionAds (notice I’m not linking to them…) units I’d been running on Poker Underworld. While AuctionAds started out nicely, my earnings declined every month despite increasing traffic and I am convinced they simply lost everyone’s clicks and sales. It was very disappointing because ads that allowed Poker players to shop on eBay while they played did very well, and the customers enjoyed it.

So far, so good with WidgetBucks. In my first 10 days I’ve put through just over 125,000 impressions and seen around a $0.14 ECPM and $0.29 CPC which is nearly triple what Adsense typically pays - pretty good considering that the Poker impressions always show a low CTR and CPM. While $17 in 10 days doesn’t come close to how AuctionAds started out, it’s much better then it ended off and a nice complement to the other ad units on the site.

This year I have been building small websites in subjects that are fun for me to work on.  I try to build websites that are useful to me so that I know others will use them as well.  It’s given me a chance to really work on my SEO skills, and also gives me what is now a very small extra income, but could one day start to add up.

This is in addition to my main website, Poker Underworld, which is celebrating 8 months since it’s launch.

Kill The Zombies - Online Zombie Games
Kill The Zombies! came about after playing The Last Stand one night, and then collecting links to over 50+ zombie games.  I quickly realized that I could build a really great online zombie game website pretty quickly, and a quick search for competition turned up nothing.  Within 3 days, I’d created a template for my zombie site and filled it with what is now over 100+ zombie games.    Kill The Zombies! has grown very quickly, now with over 1000 unique visitors every day!  Unfortunately many competing zombie sites have shown up in the 3 months since I launched, often stealing games and ideas from me, but it’s fun and challenging to continue to improve and stand out from the rest.  I have also built Top Zombie Sites to rank the best zombie sites.

Toronto Maple Leafs Info
As the season was approaching, especially during free agency, I found myself reading at least 5 or 6 different blogs and news sources for my Leafs news.  This lead me to build a site featuring syndicated news from all of the blogs I was reading, plus my own blog which I update with my own Leafs opinions.  I was also the first to create an iCal feed for the Leafs schedule, which you can add to your Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook!  TML.info has grown pretty quickly in the past month, and I hope to really turn it into a great source of Leafs news, possibly adding pools to the site.

Stock Market Blogs Today
After building the Leafs news site, I decided to do the same for the many stock market blogs I was reading.   I had no idea what a great tool this would be for me because every day I get investment ideas from a very diverse selection of blogs, including bullish and bearish views on a large variety of sectors.  So far, there hasn’t been very much traffic to it - which is really a shame because it’s so handy and it can make you money.  I’ve also used Yahoo’s API to add quotes for the major indexes, and to allow each visitor to track their own 5 top stocks.  This has become my own way of checking my stock prices through the day, rather than having to type them into Yahoo Finance over and over.

Santa’s Arcade
Once I’d built Kill The Zombies!, I wanted to build more arcades since most of the work was already done.  Seeing that there aren’t too many sites for Christmas games, I decided to collect any games I could about Santa, snowmen, reindeer, elves and.. Yetis.  I think this site will be a lot of fun as Christmas draws nearer, and I really think it’s the best and easiest to use site for Christmas games.   I hope to add the ability to send games as e-Cards before November rolls around.

Redneck Jokes & Pictures
Redneck Jokes was a quick one to throw together, as a site to test my SEO skills and to try different ways to rank highly for the terms “redneck jokes” and “redneck pictures“.  Of all of the sites I’ve built this year, this is one I won’t be using myself very often.  I am also working on a Redneck Games site to go along with this one that’s got a really fun game where you stack deer on a… well… I’ll write about it when it’s done.

Poker Underworld
The first site I created this year was Poker Underworld, which is a free texas holdem poker game based on my friend at ProWagerSystems software.  The game centers around a social network which allows you to get to know your opponents at the poker table.  You can use these friends to share hand advice, and to add to your favorite competitors list so you can add comments about their playing and challenge them in the future.  The site is very intelligent, and uses sophisticated hand analysis to let you know what your playing habits are.  It ranks your best and worst hands, and ranks you against other players in the game.  Although I haven’t been able to improve Poker Underworld in many months, there are many new features in development which will really set it out as the best free poker game online.

Sexy Fucking Games
I was very tempted to leave this off the list (especially since I may know you) but it’s a great site and one of my more successful so far.  I wouldn’t say that I’m the type to create a collection of sex games, but once I had the gaming site template I couldn’t resist.  The site is a lot of fun and you should check it out — you can’t tell me you won’t enjoy it.  So far the earnings have been very low despite the nice traffic since adult ads are sold based on CPA and require very high volume to convert (especially when I’m giving away content for free!)

That’s it for now, although I have 3 other sites in various stages of development right now.   These new sites, like Poker Underworld, are actual services and not so much a collection of games or blogs like the sites I’ve made this summer, but with all I have learned about SEO and publishing ads, I’ve been much better prepared to launch new products in 2008.

Have fun checking out these links, and I’ll be back with more.

Ok, I’ve gone nuts. There is no longer method to my madness. I’m painting the roses noir…

Well, not really. After working in online gaming for 5 years, and after building websites for everybody but myself, I’ve finally burned the midnight oil and cranked out 2 pretty decent gaming websites this year. It’s been a very interesting year - so interesting that it’s hard to sit at my old job and simply create - I’ve fallen in love with growing a business.

The newest property is Kill The Zombies! - a bit of a step away from the types of website I’ve made in the past. It makes sense though, I love horror movies and I love online games.

It’s a collection of fun zombie games I’ve managed to find looking around online, and it was a lot of fun to build. Firstly, I was able to teach myself about Joomla! which allowed me to build the whole thing inside of a week. I’ve also been able to continue practicing SEO, which allowed me to raise my google ranking on many popular zombie keywords in just about 2 weeks. (In fact this article is a shameless SEO plug at heart.)

For anybody still reading about RYAN.. I’ll start posting again soon. This website is so dated, the design is 5 years old, made when I was 22, and is in desperate need of a refresh. I have a lot to say about Music, Technology, Writing and Politics so I’d like to come back with a better website that will get me back into my writing.

Thanks for reading!

I haven’t been writing for a while, but that’s because I’ve been hard at work. I thought rather than wait to have enough time to review the new Subtle album, I’d give you some info about Poker Underworld.

For about 2 years now I’ve been working on an idea for a free online Poker game. The idea for the game was to come up with an alternative to playing for real money that’s more then just “win as many points as you can”. There are a lot of free poker games out there but most of them make you play as much as possible to earn enough tickets to get into tournaments to win money. That’s great, but only the best players actually win the money and the rest just waste a whole bunch of time trying and don’t get much else out of it.

Our idea was to let the players build up a profile while they play. We let them comment on the hands they play almost like a blog, and have their own profile page where they can describe themselves, upload pictures of themselves, and show a list of their friends and comments. The profile page shows all of the comments that person has written on the hands they’ve played, and also ranks them on the site based on how much they participate - not just how much they win.

A great offshoot of all of this is that we can also tell you while you’re playing what other people have written about the hand you are dealt, and show you what your history with that particular hand has been. In fact, we’re hoping that the more people play, the more we can analyze their game history and tell them things about the way that they play.

This project has really ramped up since November. I sat on it for almost 2 years because I was busy and couldn’t find a good person to finish the artwork for the homepage. Now that it’s done, we’ve been working like crazy to get it live and we’ve already got a nice Alexa ranking!

So we’re hoping to launch in a week, but we’ve been saying that since December. There’s a lot to do and so far I’m the only one who can work on the programming parts. I suppose we could go on forever trying to perfect it, so we’re just ironing out bugs trying to go live for now. I’ll update here as I get closer, at least it’s better than not posting at all!

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to put a link to my Technorati Profile in order to let them know that I really own this blog.