Tag Archives: Demo

What are Effective Website Features and Metrics? Five Options

Situation: A CEO wants to revise his company’s website to be a more effective source of leads. What has worked well for others gaining leads from their companies’ websites? What has intrigued potential clients and prompted them to contact the company about its products and services? What are effective website features and metrics?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Have as much usable content as possible – useable by those who visit the site. This will drive traffic to the site. Traffic will produce leads from a certain percent of users who are impressed by the company’s capabilities.
  • Does the site meet the company’s target customers’ needs? If so, are the search terms optimized to attract them to the site when they perform searches?
  • Create an interactive demo on the site that will be of interest to the company’s current customers and potential customers.
  • Use the company’s customer extranet to create a “wow” experience that will create buzz within client companies and help to attract additional business from those companies.
    • An extranet is an intranet that can be partially accessed by authorized outside users, enabling businesses to exchange information over the internet securely.
  • Put a freebie tool on the public site and extranet that helps clients to solve a frequent problem. This helps to segue customers and potential customers from personal use to product or service choice.
  • Whatever tools are used, include a unique link to each approach or tool and offer the customer a modest discount for using the link.
    • Counting the frequency of links used is a simple way to determine which tools or features are most effective with customers.

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How Do You Optimize a Financing Pitch? Seven Suggestions

Situation: A company is drafting a pitch for their next round of funding. They want to reach both current and a new set of investors and highlight the improvements that they’ve made since their last round of funding. How do you optimize a financing pitch?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Work on a quick demo of the site. This is critical for a software company. The site must clearly and quickly show what differentiates you.
  • When you sit down with potential investors, start your pitch with a catchy statement, e.g., “We’ve all heard about ‘pay it forwards’. I want to talk to you about ‘Job-It Forward’.”
  • Start the presentation with an overview and a simple illustrative explanation so that the audience instantly gets what you are doing. For example, “we’re about generating social capital and here’s an example of how we do this.”
  • Be careful not to drown your audience in detail. Limit yourself to 3 bullets per page. Use graphics rather than words as much as possible. Most people can only absorb a limited amount of verbal information, but they remember pictures.
  • If you’ve already started talking to potential investors, what are your results? What feedback have you received to date? Analyze this and adjust your presentation and pitch accordingly.
  • Can you show a potential funder ROI? For example, if you give us $X, we will generate $Y in terms of return. You want to demonstrate IMPACT! Those who will support you want to see the advantage of investing in you vs. other options available to them.
  • Include a slide showing sources and uses of money spent to date. Show how you will use the money that you wish to raise.

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