Attracting End-Users to Your Web Service

Following my recent B2B marketing post, here is the follow-up post on attracting a critical mass of end-users to your web service. Below are some basic practices you can use to increase the chances of your web offering taking off, and possibly attaining that elusive viral traction everyone wants so badly. Some of these items may seem obvious or common-sensesical. However, in my experience, it is exactly those things that seem the simplest which are in fact the most difficult to implement, or where companies cut corners the most:

1. Build a great and simple product: ultimately, it is your product that will attract users before anything else. Throwing good dollars to try to market a bad product is like putting lipstick on a pig, as the saying goes. However, that doesn’t mean your product needs to do everything for everyone (lest, as the other expression goes, you become nothing to no one). A good product has a few main features that it does really well and strongly appeal to users. Everything else builds on that. For Google it was search that actually works and a simple yet powerful way to monetize it. For Facebook it was the revolutionary news feed, friend photo tagging, and general clean design that ultimately helped it take off the way it did. For Twitter it was the 140 character limit and the brilliant concept of not having to mutually follow each other. For Wordpress it’s the simplicity and user-friendliness of managing your blog. Find those killer features, refine them, and let them shine.
2. Make it easy to understand: everything about your product should be as straight-forward as possible to understand and join. Your homepage, marketing materials, and PR should immediately let potential users understand what you do:
   • Keep your homepage clean and simple, with a brief, clear, and visible description of what you offer. Your description is your 5-second elevator pitch; within a few sentences the user must understand all the key information about your product: what it does, why it’s useful, who it’s useful for, what’s the deal (free or not, etc.), and how to sign up.
   • Make the joining process simple and fool-proof, i.e limit the options to a minimum and keep it short. Your homepage should be dedicated to converting visitors to users or buyers. If users aren’t hooked within a few seconds they’ll drop out.
3. Educate Users: beyond the simplicity of your message and homepage, you need to make sure users can find all the info they might need about more complex features — otherwise they may get frustrated and choose your competitors. Use easy-to-understand descriptions, help buttons, tutorials, videos, FAQ’s, and images. Don’t leave any room for assumptions, and show step-by-step info that anyone can follow.
4. SEO: make sure people and search engines can easily find you. Follow instructions by search engines on friendly site design, site maps, and URLs; continuously analyze the keywords that users are most likely to search when looking for services like yours; properly title and tag all your content in a descriptive manner; encourage link-backs through engaging bloggers and partner sites (more later), and consider paid search ads if there’s a clear ROI measurement potential (i.e. don’t directly pay for traffic if you still can’t generate revenue from your users).
5. Make it easy to share: allow your users to easily recommend your service to others via email, social networks, social news sites, and more. Options also include creating facebook apps that will go on your user’s news feeds so all their friends can see, sharing on Twitter, direct access to iPhone address book, and more.
6. PR: there are lots of ways to get free PR for your web service: write to tech bloggers and relevant journalists about your new features and initiatives (but keep your language at eye-level — avoid mumbo-jumbo PR-Speak), get out there to conferences and meetups to show your wares; blog, twitter, YouTube, and Flickr about them; and, if relevant, publish case studies, white papers, and other research to become a quotable authority.
7. User-engagement: find ways to engage users through special events, competitions, user-generated content, surveys, and newsletters. There is an incredible number of people out there who will gladly contribute content, dedicate their time to participate in different initiatives, give you priceless yet free feedback –  and then tell their friends, thus increasing your exposure.
8. Partnerships: in some cases, you can find strategic partners that together your companies could add value to both your users, as well as achieve greater awareness. Sometimes startup-to-startup partnerships make sense, and in other cases a larger, more established media or tech partner can help gain traction. This may not be relevant in cases where your entire model relies on disinternediating those other companies, or if your concept is so new or different that these companies won’t even look your way (that is, till you’re big enough that they can’t ignore you anymore). However, if you can find the right partners in the right timing it can become a great stepping stone.

Once again, many of the above may seem obvious, but I’ve witnessed way too many products that continually overlook them. Implemeting these the right way can put you on the path to reaching critical mass.