Register at http://www.groopskool.net
For more information about the HOW Interactive Design Conference, go to http://www.howinteractiveconference.com/

Our first ever “Groop Skool Video Newsletter”. All video newsletter covering updates, upcoming Groop Skool workshops and events.

Workshop 1: Inception
Defining your users, your brand & your goals
April 30th & May 1st

 
Learn The Groop’s entire brand driven, user experience process to building and launching a successful online business, website and digital platform.

Workshop 1 will cover:

- User Definition
- Brand Strategy
- Feature Prioritization

Whether you are an entrepreneur with a startup, a freelancer with a client project or an executive with a digital initiative these workshops will be invaluable. Through Workshop 1: Inception, you will gain an understanding of who you are, where you want to go and what you need to build..

For more information or to Sign up visit: www.GroopSkool.net

Next Tuesday, our guest on This Week in Web Design will be Razorfish Co-Founder and CEO of Dachis Group, Jeff Dachis. We are going to talk about his role in starting one of the first Digital Agencies in 1995 and now founding Dachis Group, the world’s largest social media consultancy after having Austin Ventures invest 50 million in his prediction that everything that can be social will be. We promise that this is going to be an amazing show. You can’t miss it.

This Week in Web Design

LIVE Every Tuesday

3pm PDT 6pm EST

www.ThisWeekIn.com

How to Launch your Website: The Secrets Revealed

February 10th, 2011, 7:30 am to 9:00 am
Akasha Restaurant
9543 Culver Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232

Meet the Panelists

Pete Mauro: Product Development Leader at Savings.com

Pete Mauro leads a world class product development team at Savings.com and helps fellow entrepreneurs at Lean Startup LA. He has 12 years experience bringing web, social media, mobile and PC products to market. He joined Savings.com in September 2008, focusing on consumer products, marketing and PR. Prior to Savings.com, Pete co-founded SceneTag, a social media company dedicated to creating the largest online collection of movie and TV quotes. Previously he managed product development and content licensing for Warner Bros. Mobile. Prior to that, Pete launched consumer products for several early stage tech startups including Event411.com and Cloud 9 Interactive. During his career, Pete has worked with popular entertainment brands and properties such as Looney Tunes, Harry Potter, The Matrix, The OC, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Nickelodeon and Disney.

Christopher Stauffer: CEO of Stauffer New Media Development

Christopher Stauffer has an extensive resume including experience as a CTO and managing teams of developers on all types of web projects from java-based mobile phone apps to advanced LAMP systems to senior level database management and configuration. His career began at Deloitte Consulting and since then he has contracted with companies like Toshiba, Nestle, Sony Music, Lexus, Fun Mobility, Fox, Associated Production Music, and InfoSpace where he has been managing mobile content storefronts for cellular phone service companies.

Tony Wong: Founder of Pointman Project Management and Leadership

Tony Wong is an innovator in the field of Software Development Project Management. Prior to founding his own consultancy, Tony was the Director of Project Management for Neudesic, one of Microsoft’s leading .NET professional service firms. Tony’s other industry experience includes senior level PMO Director, program management, project management for Disney, Toyota, Ogilvy, CAA, Fidelity National Financial, Honda, LSI Logic, Nestle, Weider Publications, Nissan, Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Apple Computers, Honda, Lexus and many, many others.

What is it?

An educational breakfast with a panel of industry experts sharing their experiences with the challenges of launching websites and digital products.

Who is it for?

Executives, project managers and entrepreneurs alike who need to know how to take their digital projects from Idea to Execution to Launch. How do you prepare for launch? How do you get users to adopt your product? And how do you learn, iterate and create a lasting, successful product?

What will I get?

You will get your questions answered by guest experts from some of LA’s top media and entertainment companies. They will share an insider’s look into the best practices of launching, releasing and iterating successful websites.

For full event details click on the link below:

Past Executive Breakfasts

Thank you to our guest expert JP Bedoya, Sr. Director of Product and User Experience at Citysearch, for helping explain what User Experience is and how it can help our viewers design their own successful websites. Below you will find our User Experience Presentation available for download.

In addition we want to thank YOU our viewers, for all the great questions and video responses you left on our weekly promos on The Groop’s youtube page. Our mission is to provide expert answers to your questions and this show wouldn’t be possible without you.

How can great project management help make running your web projects less painful?

 
On next week’s episode joining us will be Project Management guru Tony Wong, Founder of Pointman Project Management and Leadership. He will be helping us learn how to align your team towards the goals of your project and what it takes to get there; be sure to tune in.

This Week in Web Design
Tuesdays 3pm PST 6pm EST
www.ThisWeekIn.com

If you have any project management questions for Tony and I, get them answered LIVE on next week’s show by following the link below:
 

 

What is User Experience?

If you missed out on Groop Skool’s Executive Breakfast Series: “Digital ADD” Breaking Through, then don’t worry you’re in luck! Below is our Groop Skool Video #4 which will recap the event in three parts.

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Workbook

Part 3: Panel Highlights

Event Pictures

Digital ADD Workbook

“Digital ADD” Breaking Through

Tuesday, Sept. 14th
7:30am to 9:00am

 
1. Simple, actionable tools you can start using right away.

2. We will give you those tools for FREE! (for the price of breakfast). This would cost you $25,000 to $100,000 for a world class digital agency to do for you.

3. Panelists from LA’s top media and entertainment companies will be sharing their experiences and answering your questions.

4. The food will be top notch; provided by chef and artisan-style baker Akasha Richmond.

5. It’s fun! Groop events are known to be fun and engaging unlike some panels and training.

Click Here to Register

Meet the Panelists!

Mike Macadaan: VP, User Experience at MySpace

Mike has 12 years of experience leading companies in the context of User Experience and Design. His Experience spans design and product leadership for companies such as AOL, Tsavo Media, TechTV, Intuit, Go.com, and most recently as Vice President of UX+Design at MySpace. Mike and team are currently working on a complete redesign of MySpace which relaunches later this year. He is also actively involved with the SoCal start-up community as the founder of Twiistup.

JP Bedoya: Sr. Director of Product and User Experience at Citysearch

JP began his career at IBM holding various positions from marketing, brand management to sales. In 2003 he moved to the US to obtain his MBA at the University of Michigan. After graduation JP worked at Yahoo! as a Product Manager launching their first major redesign in 2006. He later moved to LA to work at Fox Broadcasting where he managed fox.com and all their primetime TV show websites. He currently manages citysearch.com and is responsible for product direction and user experience.

Noam Dromi: COO of TempleHome, Producer and Co-host of MIPtalk, Co-founder of Noco Media Group

Noam Dromi is a media and technology executive specializing in cross platform communications programs for corporations, brands and entertainment companies. He serves as acting COO of TempleHome, an architecture and design company developing an interactive media platform for the home improvement industry. He previously served as Executive Producer and Senior Vice President of New Media for CMP, a film and television advertising agency.

Charles Erdman: Sr. User Experience Designer

Charles is an award-winning, creative professional and entrepreneur who works to make screen-based experiences accessible and useful to its intended audience. In a collaborative, team environment, Charles employs a user-centered design approach to organize complex information into comprehensible and engaging digital user experiences. Charles has created solutions for American Express, The Disney Company, MySpace, UCLA and the US Olympic Committee. He has worked with great people at companies such as Ogilvy & Mather, Razorfish, The Designory, TBWA\Chiat\Day and The Groop.

Adrian Sexton: Co-founder & CEO of New Medici

Adrian is Co-Founder & CEO of New Medici LLC, a media strategy + lifestyle innovation network. As former digital head of two media companies, Lionsgate and Participant Media, and co-founding partner of TAG Strategic consultancy, Sexton brings a hybrid background in operational digital strategy, business planning, social and strategic marketing and distribution.

Moderators

Jose Caballer: Chief Visionary, CCO of The Groop

Jose Caballer is the Co-Founder of The Groop, an award winning digital agency in downtown Los Angeles specializing in interactive design solutions for Web, TV and Mobile. Throughout his career he’s had the opportunity to collaborate with media companies and lifestyle brands such as Wieden + Kennedy, Crispin Porter, NBC, ESPN, The French Laundry and Disney to create e-commerce, marketing and video platforms. While Jose is more driven by results than awards, he has taken home his share of hardware too, including Art Directors Club Young Guns 2004, HOW Magazine’s Interactive Best of Show, American Center for Design Web 100, and he has work in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Barrett Reiff-Morse: Chief Educator, Director of Strategy at The Groop

Mr. Reiff-Morse graduated with honors of the University of Southern California’s MBA program with emphases in New Venture Development as well as Marketing and has a BS from USC in Accounting and Information Systems. Barrett is focused on strategic development and business development for both The Groop and Groop clients. He has worked with clients in a variety of industries including entertainment, creative, medical, manufacturing, energy and personal services providing consulting on client acquisition and development, local and international market expansion, operational efficiency, marketing and financial strategy. In addition he co-chairs Reaching to Embrace Arts, a non-profit art organization focused on bringing art programs and creative inspiration across Los Angeles.
Click Here to Register

A must read for all start-ups.

Since our founding we have helped over 20 start-ups at different stages in their development and needless to say we have learned a lot from each of those experiences.

Important: You can find many if not all of essentials I am sharing around the web and in many books.
However the five that I have put together are based on my personal experience as a principal and strategist at The Groop. I can’t claim I am right, but it does genuinely pain me to see fellow entrepreneurs spend a lot of time and money to learn these same lessons.

If you are an entrepreneur, before you choose to work with The Groop please read this post. And read the books it recommends.

1. Build Less. Spend Less. Release More.

No matter how many features we have seen a start-up build into their software it has very little bearing on their success. For example in 2004-5 The Groop worked with Entrepreneur Zak Kahn to build TalentBoom. He spend a lot (a lot) of money to build then redesign and rebuild TalentBoom until it had enough features and he felt it was different enough from his competitors and had the right “design.”

Early on I told him to release (launch), release, release what he had so far and start monetizing it. He did not follow my advice.

Today the market leader is still Breakdown services and TalentBoom is still looking to gain traction.

Zak called me recently and let me know “You were right, I should have followed your advice.” More importantly he said that I could share my story with you.

I told him this before I had read Getting Real by 37signals the makers of the successful online project management tool BaseCamp. From Getting Real:

“If you want to build a company that follows, you might as well put down this book now.

So what to do then? The answer is less. Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to everyone else. Instead of oneupping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing.”
From Getting Real

If you have not read the book you should read it now.
Is it the absolute truth in how to do an online start-up? I don’t know, but BaseCamp is an extremely successful subscription service. We use it and pay for it, you might too.

2. Design does not matter.

Yes, I said that. And yes by trade I am a very well trained Graphic Designer who paid a lot of money to attend Art Center College of Design, one of the top design schools in the world. And yes The Groop has designed and built many beautiful websites for great brands over the 9 years of its existence. And yes Apple is an amazing example of how Design (big D) matters.

“So dude, why are you saying such blasphemy?!” you might ask.

First let’s make some important distinctions that will help:
By “Design” I mean visual language such as your logo and what exact color your links are and the style of photography you might use.
By “Does Not Matter” I mean “matters less than the whole” in the context of adoption and monetization. (People using your online product or service and you making money from it.)

So what matters?

The next three principles outline what matters. And to illustrate each point I will use one of the most important client relationships in my 15-year web career. One who happens to be in a business that many might not deem as “sexy”, but that is executing very well. I am talking about the coupon and deal site Savings.com .

3. Execute your business evenly and in the right order.

Like a rotisserie chicken. Don’t let one side cook too long before tending the other side. Your customers won’t like a half crispy and half raw chicken.

You have heard me call this “Total Brand Execution.”

Though Savings.com monetized well the Savings.com team who designed it felt it could be better both from a user experience point of view and from a brand identity point of view.

Savings.com generated revenue well and was growing. What allowed for that? The mechanics of its business model. It’s design (little d) or more accurately it’s user experience supported the affiliate business model sufficiently well, regardless of how it looked.

Before:

After:

Ebay in its heyday, MySpace in its heyday, Craigslist today are not the best looking sites and all three have been or are very successful.

I won’t even talk about Microsoft Windows, (predating Vista and 7) and a slew of other software products that succeed not on looks but on their business model and an acceptable if less than ideal user experience.

4. Have a business model and work from there.

Preferably one that your customers want or need urgently enough.

For Savings.com, brands and merchants need to sell more online and customers want deals on products/brands they need or desire. A customer who already has the intent to buy and is at the beginning or the end of the purchase funnel will be readily inclined to use a coupon or deal.

In other examples, people want to sell the contents of their garage, find a job or find workers, Craigslist brings them together. In these cases it involves one or both of the parties making money; in the case of Savings.com it involves saving money.

What does your online product provide your user?
Have you defined why your customer should care about your product?

More importantly what business model are you starting with?

And before you say I need a product before giving it a business model let me warn you that putting in place the mechanics of an affiliate model is far easier and far cheaper than building a product that looks awesome but is looking for a business model.

You can succeed either way but the latter will take a lot more capital and a lot longer. The heavier the rocket you want to launch the more fuel you need, it’s basic physics.

5. Know your user (singular) well. Delight them. Repeat.

The more type of users (customers) you can please the better your product will do.
That does sound right. Because more is better. Wrong. This mistake is replicated over, and over and over and over and over and over. And it’s wrong in so many ways. Let me count them.

- The more users you want to please, the more features you will need to create. Which violates the first essential principle in this list. Just like Issac Asimov’s rules for robotics.

-The more users you want to please the more confused they will be as to what makes you unique.

- The more users you want to please the more confusing your product will be to use. How many features do you use in Microsoft Excel?

And on and on.

Savings.com first focused on getting their core users to use the product more often. That is the first goal we were given in our brief. It also happens to be the first rule in sales, sell to your existing customer base first.

Together we segmented their users into three user profiles and aggressively aimed to delight the SMALLEST number but most INFLUENCIAL segment of their customers. Using essential principle number three above they executed evenly across social media, PR, design, user experience, content (and etc.) including the one place that matters most. The real world. They flew 30 of the most influential of their customers to San Francisco for a one day “Save Up” conference.

I can’t begin to express how successful that was.

Finally, until now I have not had the courage to urge my start-up clients to think radically different from their urge to follow and make “me to” decisions. Marty Nuemeir  in his book  ZAG, The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands explains it well:

“If nobody’s doing it, you’d be crazy to do it yourself, right? Wrong. In fact, if you’re looking to become the leader in a new market space, the rule is just the opposite. If ANYBODY’S doing it, you’d be crazy to do it yourself…”

…radical differentiation doesn’t test well in focus groups. When you ask people what they want, they’ll invariably say they want more of the same, only with better features, a lower price or both.”

Next:

You can read the entire Getting Real book online here:
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/

And you can start reading Zag here:
http://www.zagbook.com/