You're the Boss Blog: Finding Alternatives to Building a Web Site

Generating revenue along with the buzz.

Over my last two columns, I’ve discussed how not to hire a Web developer and how to build a Website you love. But for some small businesses, there are other options — alternatives to building or refreshing a Web site.

One option is a one-page site. This is a specialty of Carbonsquare, a design shop that builds business sites of up to 10 pages using customized templates on the Weebly platform. One of Carbonsquare’s clients is a fashion-accessories retailer, Debra Wood, who has a mobile fashion boutique, DebiFashion. Ms. Wood decided a one-page site worked best for her side business. “It was so much work to constantly change my shopping-cart Web site, so for a $249 investment, I can make the changes I want and not break the bank,” she said.

For a basic 10-page site, Carbonsquare charges $549 plus a monthly hosting and maintenance fee that runs about $30. “We decided to use the Weebly system because it’s a simple drag-and-drop system,” said Christopher Rippie, founder of Carbonsquare. “We want to help our customers understand smart design. Too many people over-design their Web sites. We did not use the WordPress platform, because it takes more time to build a Web site, which drives the cost up. We are trying to eliminate the sticker shock in Web site design and give people something they can manage themselves after we build it.”

Carbonsquare does have some drawbacks. WordPress plug-ins won’t work with the Weebly platform, search-engine optimization functionality is not built in the way it is with WordPress, and if you are blogging heavily, the system has limitations. Mr. Rippie suggests building a blog in WordPress and integrating it with the Weebly Web site.

Another option is to use Tumblr, a very easy-to-use blogging platform, as your Web site. With more than 100 million bloggers, Tumblr has an active community of users who search for content based on keyword tags. This can make it easier to build an audience quickly. It allows users to post text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from a desktop or phone and from a  browser or through e-mail. A Tumblr page works best for visual businesses, such as retail, design, food, or fashion. Some small businesses use Tumblr in addition to a WordPress blog. Tumblr allows owners to link back to e-commerce sites with coupon codes, QR codes and links to other social media accounts. Its templates are easy to use and there’s nothing to download to get started.

Diane Souter of Absolutely Fabulous Unique Gifts and Décor in Huntington Beach, Calif., uses a Tumblr page to highlight her latest products and attract a younger audience. “Tumblr is so easy to do that I could do it,” she said. “I’m able to take a photo with my iPhone and upload it to Tumblr with the hashtags and keywords, within seconds literally, and it links to my Web site.”

Ms. Souter said that while the traffic from Tumblr leads to some sales, it mainly drives buzz. “It would be great if people could click on the picture and the price comes up with the ability to make a purchase through Tumblr,” she said. That might be a way Yahoo will attempt to monetize the site, now that it has bought it for more than $1 billion.

Three months ago, Innate Family Chiropractic, based in Pasadena, Calif., started using RebelMouse to host its Web site. RebelMouse allows companies to display the latest updates on their social media accounts on the company home page; in fact, those updates can be the homepage or they can an embedded addition. Users can customize a RebelMouse site or choose from previously designed theme pages. They can also post a full-text blog post directly to RebelMouse and then add an image or a video. And they can add RSS feeds from their own blog or from other blogs they read frequently.

Paul Berry, former chief technology officer of Huffington Post, says he created RebelMouse to save small-business owners time and frustration. “We just so saw so many people struggle with their Web site almost to the point of giving up,” he said. “We knew there was a simple solution that didn’t involve developers or designers. We wanted to make people’s content shine and amplify their social media efforts.” The service costs $10 a month and integrates seamlessly with MailChimp, the e-mail service.

Innate Family Chiropractic picked RebelMouse to save time with its Web marketing and because it wanted a central place to share content on pediatric chiropractic care. The three-year-old family wellness and chiropractic center uses Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest to share and generate health-related tips and articles. “I used to spend so much time educating clients and putting our content on all our social media accounts,” said Christopher Vargas, a chiropractor and owner of Innate Family. “Plugging everything into RebelMouse just made things easier.” The company pays $19.99 a month to use the service on two Web sites.

Melinda Emerson is founder and chief executive of Quintessence Multimedia, a social media strategy and content development company. You can follow her on Twitter.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 7, 2013

A previous version of this post referred incorrectly to the Web platform Weebly.

You're the Boss Blog: One Social Media Start-Up Rises From the Ashes of Another

The adventure of new ventures.

One of the hardest things for an entrepreneur to do is to admit defeat. But in the case of Apu Gupta and Nick Shiftan, failure was likely the best thing that could have happened to them.

In 2011, Mr. Gupta, 37, and Mr. Shiftan, 31, founded Storably, a company they billed as Airbnb for storage space. Anyone with spare space — in their basement, driveway, garage, closet — could rent it out to those in need. Storably facilitated the transaction, provided insurance and allowed users to post reviews.

Mr. Gupta and Mr. Shiftan raised $750,000 from the venture capital firms NEA, First Round Capital and MentorTech Ventures and introduced Storably in September 2011. Two months later, the founders knew it wasn’t working. The site was getting barely 3,000 visitors a month. “That’s the equivalent of opening a retail store and having crickets show up,” Mr. Gupta said. “It’s abysmal. By the time we shut down, only 23 people had used the site for a transaction.”

At that point, Mr. Gupta and Mr. Shiftan had burned through 25 percent of their money and felt they had two options, which they presented to their investors. “We said we can give 75 percent of your investment back and liquidate the company, or we can figure something else out,” Mr. Gupta said. “And they told us, ‘We didn’t invest in the idea, we invested in you guys. We don’t want our money back, so go figure something else out.’ It was an amazing thing to hear.”

Courtesy of Curalator After two months, Apu Gupta (left) and Nick Shiftan knew Storability was not working.

The pair — along with their first employee, Brendan Lowry — brainstormed for about a month, coming up with three or four ideas apiece each day. At the end of the month, they had about 70 ideas, seven of which they deemed promising. They tested a few, including DrinkedIn, an application for LinkedIn that would match users and send them to a bar to have a drink and network.

But the idea that rose to the top was a platform that allows companies to measure the impact of Pinterest and other visual social media. They called the company Curalate, and they introduced it in beta in March 2012 and for real two months later. Mr. Gupta said the rise of Pinterest last year looked similar to Twitter’s early days with brands “falling over themselves to get on board but reluctant to commit until they had some way to measure their presence on the platform.”

Enter Curalate, which created a way to listen and measure visual conversations. The company’s algorithm recognizes images using pixels and then matches it to a brand. “The platform tells companies the conversations people are having about their product,” Mr. Gupta said.

He told the story of a shoe offered by the department store H&M. The company’s Web site displayed the shoe in a bright neon color, but the shoe customers were “pinning” and describing in loving terms was a combination of beige and pink. “So there was a big discrepancy between what the brand thought people wanted versus what people actually wanted,” Mr. Gupta said. “And that’s the whole point behind what we’re doing. We reveal, by looking at their imagery, what consumers really care about.”

Here’s where the company stands now, roughly a year after its introduction.

Employees: 15

Location: Philadelphia

Pitch: “We are trying to help brands form meaningful relationships with their customers,” Mr. Gupta said. “You have to be able to understand your customers and if they speak to you visually, you need a platform for that. It’s not just about Pinterest, but a fundamental shift in consumer behavior. Consumers increasingly talk about brands using pictures rather than words. Even Facebook has become a more visual medium. We pin and reblog and Instagram our lives.”

Challenges: Finding the right talent — salespeople, developers and designers — has been an ongoing challenge. A more perplexing challenge, Mr. Gupta said, is staying focused. Curalate’s space is so wide open that the company can try just about anything, and that freedom has caused them to sometimes lose direction. “When a space is new, it’s easy to feel pulled in different directions by clients,” he said. “It’s easy to lose your own point of view. So we really have to figure out a road map. And sometimes that means we need to say, ‘this is what we build and it’s not right for everyone’ and we may have to turn some clients away.”

Traction: Mr. Gupta said Curalate was now used by 350 brands that paid a monthly fee for its software as a service, which included a suite of marketing tools in addition to analytics. The company recently added the ability to analyze Instagram images to its platform. “Pinterest is about the things people aspire to buy, the things they want,” Mr. Gupta said. “Instagram is people celebrating what they bought.”

Revenue: The company declined to discuss its revenue, but the typical brand spends about $1,500 a month for Curalate’s services.

Financing: After going through what was left of the original $750,000, the company raised another $3 million late last year from the same investors.

Competition: Repinly, Piquor and PinReach are a few companies operating in the space, but none of them “is doing anything across platforms or using image recognition,” Mr. Gupta said.

What’s Next? “We want to broaden the number of platforms we get insights from,” Mr. Gupta said. “Companies also want us to build things that encourage consumers to communicate visually more often.”

What do you think? Have Mr. Gupta and Mr. Shiftan hit upon the right idea this time?

You can follow Eilene Zimmerman on Twitter.

You're the Boss Blog: Putting a Dollar Value on a Facebook Fan

A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

Courtesy of Syncapse Michael Scissons

As noted in Monday’s Dashboard summary of the week’s small-business news, a social media marketing firm, Syncapse, has published a report that says the average value of a Facebook fan is $174.17. Seeking further details about the calculation and its potential impact on a small-business owner’s social media investment, we reached out to the company’s chief executive, Michael Scissons, and had the following conversation, which has been edited and condensed.

How can small-business owners figure out what their fans are worth?

The value of a Facebook fan is determined by comparing actual fans versus nonfans across key criteria that determine enterprise value. In our study, the fan value calculation considers: One, product spending within the past 12 months. Two, loyalty and purchase intent in the future. Three, the propensity to recommend the brand to other potential customers. Four, the media and messaging value that is inherent with fan membership. Five, the propensity for fans to organically lure more fans. And Six, the emotional draw felt by brands or brand affinity.

You surveyed 2,000 panelists. Would you recommend that small-business owners looking to understand the value of their fans undertake a similar exercise?

The scale and precision in our research requires an investment that is likely out of range of most small businesses. However, a small business could execute a lightweight version that attempts to measure the key value factors across its fans and nonfans. A benchmark is always helpful in understanding where you stand and if Facebook is a worthwhile investment for customer growth and loyalty.

Your survey found that 11 percent of Facebook brand fans are more likely to continue using the brands than a non-Facebook fan. Do you think this seems low?

The 11 percent is an average, so that number will be higher or lower depending on the brand. Regardless, we view 11 percent as significant, especially considering that brand fans also spend 43 percent more in respective categories versus nonfans, despite not having a higher income. Those numbers can have compounding impact on the long-term performance of a brand.

Can a similar methodology be applied to sites like Pinterest, LinkedIn or Twitter?

Our methodology can be applied to any sort of membership within a larger customer group.

Do you think a Facebook fan is more valuable than a LinkedIn Connection or a Twitter follower?

Our public study did not compare the average value of Facebook fans versus Twitter or LinkedIn connections. However, our experience working with many of the world’s largest global marketers shows that fan value varies among brands as well as networks. Many mass-market global brands with low price points may see a higher value with Facebook fans versus connections on other social networks, because that’s where their customers are. Conversely, high-end or luxury brands may see a higher fan value on LinkedIn, because that’s where their customers frequent. The key is to experiment and find out the facts for your own individual brand.

Are there three things you would suggest small businesses do to leverage the value of their Facebook fans?

First, it’s important to observe your customers and see how they use Facebook. If they are on Facebook, then you have an amazing opportunity to connect with them in a new way — as do your competitors. Second, you should experiment and learn firsthand. This is new territory, so trial-and-error and learning from others is key. As you scale up, you’ll want to designate formal accountability for the social marketing efforts, and that often falls under the person responsible for marketing and customer acquisition. The biggest barrier to success is the time investment. Third, connect social marketing to business outcome. That may be awareness, lead generation, trials or even cold, hard sales. State your goal, define the success criteria, measure, and invest accordingly.

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Green Bay Mayor to Goodell — You’re Crushing the Packers’ Shot at a Super Bowl

Green Bay Mayor to Commish
You're Crushing Packers' Shot at a Super Bowl

 

Green Bay Mayor James Schmitt fired off an angry letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell -- as promised -- claiming the labor dispute with referees is threatening the Packers on-field success ... AND putting the entire Wisconsin town in financial jeopardy.

TMZ obtained a copy of the letter ... in which the Mayor claims the NFL's elite status is being "threatened by less than qualified officials who are not quite at the same level as the rest of the league's representatives."

Mayor Schmitt, who's also a shareholder of the publicly owned Green Bay Packers, continues ... "last night's game creates a negative perception on the NFL brand, which in turn jeopardizes the Packers' chance for success as well as the potential to negatively affect our local economy."

All in all, it's a pretty polite way of saying the fact that replacement refs cost the Packers a victory last night ... totally sucks.