What do affordable cars in Kenya and ultra wide band wireless chips have in common?
Pioneers of both were here with us today, helping shape and advise the teams with another superb day of mentors. Our mentor lineup included Jack Lang, Joel Jackson, Tracy Scribner, Tacis Gavoyannis, Phil Catterall, Andrey Kessel, Adil Mohammed, and Richard Newton, and their mix of experience made the day especially interesting.
'You were the highlight of my week', I heard one team say to Tacis as they were leaving the sessions, and other teams were buzzing about the mentors they clicked with particularly well. Once this week is complete, mentors and teams will start to narrow down who they buddy up with, as it would be rather permiscuous to speed date indefinitely.
In the afternoon, Dave Collins of Software Promotions very kindly joined us for a dual lesson on SEO and websites. First we covered how to drive more traffic to the website, and then crucially how to make more of that traffic convert to sales. Great excerpts included:
- You think about yourself quite differently than people look for you. Put time into researching appropriate keywords, look at your competitor's site and search terms, and optimise a page for only 1-2 keywords.
- Don't go too far in reassuring people because you'll only wind up scaring them (ie. smoke mask for safety in a hotel room will make someone worry more, not less). Best strategy is to offer a 30 day money back guarantee, no questions asked.
- Avoid long forms or registration details . If you start with a really small form, then you can email more Qs later and let people get back to you in their own time - you'd be surprised how much they open up to you later if you make it easy for them at the beginning.
- Converting web traffic is a lot like dating. Start with a smile, build up to a date, have some romance, and if you play your cards right you can get married and have children. There's an order to things, and you can't skip steps and start with a marriage proposal. At the same time, don't get stuck in small talk or you'll never get hitched.
There were many, many more lessons and hopefully teams can help each other avoid all '23 ways of getting it wrong'. Dave also bravely offered to be an SEO/web lifeline for teams over the next 10 weeks - braver than he realises - so everyone should have awesome sites by the end of July.
At 7pm the day was far from complete, with two evening events still to come. I managed to briefly attend a formal ideaSpace event, where we had a photo-filled Springboard poster on display, and had some speedy hello's with a room of terrific people. Cambridge Tech Meetup was also on, and Caroline represented us at the demos before we made it in greater numbers to the bar after-party.
Sounded like a fantastic mix of demos, from a fertility thermometer to a magical freebie app Magic Solver. We also downloaded Data Analyzer, a new app that anonymously analyses phone usage to help networks/manufacturers offer consumers better handsets and services based on real habits. Kudos to Daniel on his recent launch!
Looking at events on the horizon, we became an official venue for the Startup Lessons Learned 2011 Simulcast, wooo! We look forward to that this coming Monday - feel free to join us if you're in the Cambridge area - and plenty more packed into the next 48 hours before the weekend arrives.
@springboardnews
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