While I definitely enjoyed the discussions on designing and development, I was most thrilled to see ‘testing’ get the attention and importance it deserves. Whether you have designed a website or coded a fabulous new application, the testers ensure that there are no crippling bugs and errors that will bring down the whole system and cause you immense loss of reputation and business.

This eco-system has to be carefully nurtured so that the young and energetic people can contribute meaningfully to their companies and enhance their personal careers in the process. I will be happy to help them in any way I can.

I introduced an interesting game that website owners can regularly play to increase the conversion of visitors to prospects and customers. For the benefit of those who could not make it to the conclave and to remind those who attended, here is how the game is played.

An interesting fact before we learn how to play this game – “People buy on emotion and justify with logic.” So if your prospect decides to buy your product or service from your web site, he does so because of some gut feeling after looking at your website. Now if he can successfully justify this with logic (again based on your web site content), he will go ahead and do so. If the information on the site does not help to justify this, he will abort the purchase.

Ok – let’s play…

1. Imagine you are your prospective customer. You have to make a mental picture of who are your typical customers and become one of them.

2. Now open your website in another window of this browser. Watch it load for a few seconds and switch back to this window. I will wait while you do so.

3. Back already? Great! If you want to spend some more time at the site, go ahead, I will be patiently waiting for you here.

4. What kind of emotions are running through your mind? Does that site look professional? Do you feel that this is a useful product for you? Can it provide you some benefits if you buy that? Is your life going to become easier? Improved productivity? Does the company look like one you can safely buy from?

5. Now let us assume, you feel like buying this product. However you will have to convince your accountant or purchase department or boss or wife – whoever – that it is useful to buy this. How will you do so? Go back to the site and collect information that will help you justify your purchasing decision.

Do they layout the benefits clearly? Can you see testimonials from other satisfied users? Any certifications? Is the cost justifiable? Guarantee? Refund policies? List out everything that you will use to convince your approval authority for allowing you to purchase it.

6. Let’s change the track now. We will assume that you do not get the emotional high that tells that you really need to buy this. Why? What went wrong? Go back to the site and find out what is missing.

Have they not explained the benefits clearly? Are they offering facts that are not verifiable? Something looks shady? No testimonials? Doubtful testimonials (like one from John, USA)? Price too high? Contact information missing or hidden somewhere deep? No photos? No case studies? It is just a me-too product with no clear differentiator from other products?

List out all the objections that drag you away from making the purchase NOW.

7. Ok – let’s stop pretending you are a prospect and check your website again.

You know what to do next. You will have to take up these issues one by one and update your website so that the good things are highlighted properly and the negative points are taken care of.

Generally it takes one week to play a round of this game. Next week you can again don the hat of Mr. Prospect and play one more round.

As you can predict, it becomes easier to make the first list and more difficult to make the second list as you progress. However you have already tasted success – your conversion rate is improving and more people are buying rather than just looking.

Keep playing and keep writing to me (by commenting below) how much you are enjoying this fun exercise. You have my best wishes!

Be a winner!

• Your need to hire an A-team to get on to a good start.
• You cannot do everything yourself; get people who are smart, will add value and may even be knowing more than you.
• Attitude with raw talent can outperform experience.
• Try to encourage a ‘no-sir’ culture. Encourage people who dare to say no-sir to your hypothesis based on their domain knowledge and will not meekly accept anything you say.
• Your consultants, partners and co-founders should always be debating and challenging you. This churning brings out the best ideas to the top.
• The right people can help you scale up much faster and higher.
• Maintaining the values of your organisation is an important challenge when scaling up. Trying to motivate 800 people is much harder than motivating 80-100 people. It is an entirely different HR challenge.
• In your organisation, while most of the people look at maintaining the momentum and doing routine things, there must be at least people who are willing to push the envelope.
• Experience has much lesser importance in the IT / Internet business. We need high IQ, raw talent and a burning desire to achieve results.
• Hire people for attitude and not experience.

I hope you enjoyed reading these takeaways. Please post a comment here if you have a rejoinder. I am sure there are other great notes that you have taken and I have missed. You are also welcome to post those. Thanks!

• With good innovation, brand and size limitations can be tackled.
• Intel has an app centre for Netbooks (www.appup.com).
• We are at crossroads – need to combine mobile usage with computing.
• Location based services are very important.

Here are some more notes from different sessions focussing on entrepreneurial spirit:

• Entrepreneurs need to have ability to do things in parallel (don’t spread yourself too thin though).
• 80/20 does work – don’t look for perfection – improve things gradually.
• Focus on the broad plan – all detailed business plans get haywire on the first contact with consumers.
• It is very important to have a good understanding of the consumer/customer psyche and needs/problems.
• A local contact in the geography you are serving, can be very important in understand the customers and improve the speed at which you succeed.
• Try to validate your key assumptions with customers. Fail fast, if you must.

Hope you will be able to employ some of these and improve your results with the implementation.

I have jotted down some important takeaways for the benefit of those who were not there and as a reminder to you if you were there.

Most of these come from the keynote session by Vinay Goel of Google.

• Mobile phone is your connection to your personal and professional world.
• There are 4.6 billion mobile phones, 3/4th in the developing world.
• Consumer innovation is going to lead the way as compared to the enterprises.
• Speed matters – the apps have to work fast.
• Google says Siterank considers site speed and uses it in ranking just like Pagerank.
• Google’s vision – the web is mobile. They follow the policy of Mobile first and some ofthe innovations for mobile may not ever make it to the desktop.
• Mobiles have reached volumes where these have become iconic.
• Web apps are cheaper and faste to build as compared to the native apps. (My note: I totally agree, that’s why we have started building mobile websites before building native apps).
• It is lot safer to have the data on the cloud rather than local storage.
• HTML 5 is big – lots of new stuff will be built with HTML 5.
• India has 30 million mobile Internet users as of now.

I will be posting more notes in another post. Keep watching this space.

The projects and research (thesis, surveys etc) that they participated in are very strong clues to the nature and capabilities. So if you have done the classic library management software, inventory control software, survey customer satisfaction levels and like, you do not have any special reason to be on the short-list.

However if you have developed a software or hardware product (even if it is not path-breaking), setup a blog where you comment on the industry developments, products being launched and like, we would conclude that you are aware of the current trends and have passion for developing some worthwhile products, given a chance.

These help you score valuable brownie points and put you at the head of the queue. Sorry but wearing Rupa Frontline vests won’t help (you would know what I mean if you have seen that ad).

So the take home is – build a CV over the entire duration of your studies, and not just write it when you have started looking for the job.

We had a hotly debated discussion with Abhijit and Subrata pretty much disillusioned by the young generation who would endlessly tweet (as in chat) but not take up a serious stand on the really important things that matter to the ‘India cause‘. Add to this the fact that there are less than 20000 Twitter users in India out of a total population of more than a billion. Looks like a really uphill battle.

On the other hand, Abhishek, Abhijit and I felt that we are definitely making small impact to the society by sharing our notes on Cricket, Politics and Movies (CPM – a term coined by Simar) and by acting as whistleblowers on corruption by tweeting when we find a deficiency in someone’s service or attitude.

Can we make a difference to the way India works? If you are talking about being able to change the way India works or the way India works, well no. But as one audience member put it – we are definitely making a small impact. And if we can change just one thing, we can consider repeating that performance over and over and soon, we will find people taking note and changing. This is the way big revolutions were started.

My message to you is – when you see something nice, appreciate. When you see something bad, complain – loudly. Share with your friends and Twitter followers. Some will take notice and you will be causing an impact – however small. And you will be pleased you did.

You should try your best to offer excellent customer service to your clients. However you should lay enough focus on understanding that they may be tensed when they are needing your help. You first need to reassure them that you are listening to their grievances with utmost attention and will do everything possible (within the limits of practicality) to help solve their issues. Then apply 100% efforts to help them – and then some more.

A delighted customer is the biggest asset a business can have and you should spare no effort to acquire as many delighted customers as you can. A significant portion of the marketing budget can be set aside for it as this exercise can result in very high ROI.

Please share your initiatives with the fellow readers through the comments below.

Are you undergoing any comprehensive health check-ups at least once a year? If not, please do so asap. I am sincerely hoping you will find everything is in order and will continue to go about your day to day work in the same earnest. However, if any trouble is brewing, you will get an early warning and be able to sort it out with the help of your physician before it develops into any big nuisance.

I am sure you understand the implications of ignoring this critical step. Not only you will suffer physically, you will have to spend more in solving the bigger problem later as well as lose time that you could invest in growing your business.

Talking of business, you need to undertake master health check ups for your business too. Identify the key points like number of clients, topline and bottomline, business per client, top 10 clients, top 10 products and like and monitor these regularly so that you can identify any problem signs before they become a serious threat.

You love yourself and your business, don’t you? Please don’t leave them to chance. Take a bold step – today!