[Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That! newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.] When we tried out Bigcommerce, an e-commerce software and shopping cart service, we were surprised by their remarkable customer service throughout […]
Newsletter #1009: The “Lessons from an Amazing Software Trial” Issue
October 9, 2014
Do you know what might be killing you?
May 16, 2014
I love this great new website we use to manage recruiting. It’s a huge step up from our old platform, with many more features. But it’s sloooooow. It makes the same job take twice as long. Which may be a deal-killer. I don’t have the time for better if it’s also more time-consuming. Creating the […]
This tech support fight could have been avoided
January 20, 2014
You know the story. You ask for tech support, and they tell you to pay first. OK, that’s fair. You can’t always expect lifetime free service. (You wouldn’t expect Ford to fix your car for free, forever. We have weird expectations about computer products.) Recently, I tried to get help on a disk drive product, […]
This might be the best software in the world …
January 6, 2014
… but as long as their website is this bad, nobody is going to believe them. Design matters. It speaks to the quality of your brand and the quality of your company. Neglecting your brand design is like having a filthy restaurant. The food might be great, but nobody is going to dare try it. […]
99.9% reliable isn’t very good
December 10, 2013
99.9% uptime means your service or website can go down once every 1,000 minutes. That’s every 16.67 hours — more than once per day. 99.99% is a failure every 167 hours — once a week. The real lesson: Don’t be fooled by statistics. Seemingly good numbers may be be hiding trouble.
Does the software make you grin?
December 31, 2012
“I love this! It’s so much fun to use.” That’s what I heard from a member of our team while testing new marketing platforms. I don’t care what it costs, we’re buying that one. Folks — the user experience is all that matters anymore. Your stuff might be better, more sophisticated, more intelligent, or more […]
You should get mad when software companies do this to you
April 9, 2011
Don’t tolerate it when software installs extra stuff on your computer without asking (or asking so sneakily that you didn’t know they asked). One day we found every computer in our office was now running McAfee anti-virus, even though Norton is what we use, because a sleazy Java update snuck it in and installed it. […]
Let them try it. They’ll like it. Then they’ll pay.
October 30, 2010
It’s easier to show than to sell. Let your prospects really use your product — it’s faster, cheaper, and more effective than trying to talk them into buying it. I’m trying out new online task managers. Read a ton, tried some features. But you have to pay to use most of the good ones. But […]
Why Microsoft Wins: Persistence
July 13, 2009
People always criticize Microsoft for shabby software, especially in new products. Their new software is so often so very bad. How do they end up with the most popular and successful software in the world? John Murrell nails it in this post from Good Morning Silicon Valley: But the thing about Microsoft is that on […]
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