My wife and I were out this weekend for a little date. A friend had enthusiastically recommended a restaurant, Chevy’s, and Suzanne had eaten there before so she was eager to take me. One problem: any time someone “enthusiastically recommends” something, I’m automatically skeptical. Something in me simply balks at near-unbridled enthusiasm. So I went in with both eyes (critically) open.

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How do you create a great product, make money with it, and generate legions of happy customers? The folks at 37signals have a clue:

1. Make something that’s easy to use, easy to get, and a good value for the money.
2. Entice customers to come in with a freebie and then have them pay to trade-up to premium services (AKA “freemium“).
3. Write about your process and philosophy and sell this to your customers.

At this point, the book alone has generated about $175,000 in sales in just 75 days. Not bad at all.

Technorati Tags: 37signals, Getting Real, customer service

Last week I wrote about PC Magazine’s redesign of their print edition and some of the readers’ responses. The editors’ response to the feedback was encouraging as well, indicating that, yes, the publication was hearing readers loud and clear. Today I received an e-mail invitation to join PC Mag’s “advisory panel” — coincidence? The message included this paragraph:

Your feedback is incredibly useful to us as we bring you the most complete and exciting magazine devoted to technology and computing at home, at work and on the go. We only invite a small sample of readers to participate in the panel, so your participation is key to our accurately representing the preferences of our readers.

Once again, my hat’s off to this publication.

Technorati Tags: PC Magazine, readers, customer experience

I have two bottles of mouthwash in my bathroom. One is an anticavity rinse, the other a Listerine knock-off. Both are sold by Wal-Mart under the “Equate” brand and both have clearly labeled instructions for proper usage. Only one, though, makes it easy to follow the instructions.

The label on the anticavity rinse states that no more than 10 ml of the product should be used at once. To help ensure this, the cap has a line indicating 10 ml. Easy.

The Listeriney rinse, on the other hand, says 20 ml (or 2/3 of an ounce or 4 teaspoons) is sufficient but offers no measuring line in the cap. Why? How hard could this be?

Technorati Tags: mouthwash, Wal-Mart, Equate

Part 3: Setting up a blog with WordPress

This is the last installment in this opening “Getting on the Information Super Highway” series. In the first two parts, I discussed the process of setting up my hosting and purchasing domain names. Now that my space and domains were all set, I needed to get the site live with my blogging software.

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