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Traditional business is simple. You create a product or service you think customers will want, and then spend money to drive people towards that product or service. If you’re lucky, some of those people will want to user your product or service and you’ll make money. This can be through direct charges or, in the case of content creation, selling this attention on to other companies.

During times of economic slowdowns, marketing budgets are usually the first things to be cut. However in doing so you reduce the number of people who’s attention you capture, reducing your potential market, and the whole things turns into a downward spiral. This is why most marketing pundits recommend that you increase your marketing budget during time of crisis, in order to shore up potential customer numbers.

Despite this obvious logic, there is a lack of liquidity in the market and budgets are going to be cut whether we like it or not. So product owners need to think of better, more effective ways of spending their money and maximising their return on investment.

The ironic thing about the preceding couple of paragraphs is that I’ve not actually mentioned the quality or suitability of the product or service, only the fact that marketing spend can drive attention. Yet we all know that it’s harder and more costly to acquire new customers than it is to satisfy existing ones. So rather than driving more traffic and hoping that some of those people will stick, we need to improve the core offering itself.

What does that mean? Well, first off, most websites are incredibly inefficient and converting customers, and can you blame them? Up until now it’s all been about volume rather than efficiency. As such sites are littered with usability problems that literally block your clients from spending money with you. In fact only this afternoon I abandoned a website for its competition because the site was so painful to use. You wouldn’t lay barriers in front of your customers in the real world, yet this is what we’re currently doing every day online. So the first step to slowdown success is to spend time removing these barriers and reducing your drop-out rates. This can be done quickly and for a fraction of what it would have cost to recruit those customers in the first place.

Next, we need to use our understanding of consumer psychology to promote our products more effectively. So rather than just laying out all our wares on the ground and hoping that somebody will wander past and buy something, we need to think about the purchasing process and make it more enticing for our users. This is the stuff that any marketing graduate will have learnt in their first year at school, yet for some reason it rarely seems to make it onto the web. This is largely because marketing departments don’t really get the web and either ignore it completely or shout at the top of their voices. However the web is full of discerning consumers who want to escape from overt marketing, so this stuff needs to be done subtly and with aplomb.

Lastly, we fundamentally need to rethink what we’re selling. Rather than coming up with a great new product and services and then hoping we find a market to sell it to, we need to learn about the needs of our customers and provide tools they actually want. So you need to go right back to basics and start talking to your customers to see what they need. Doing some smart research can show you’re where you’re currently falling down as well as opening up whole other opportunities you never even knew existed, simply by asking questions like “what do you wish this product did that you currently can’t do”. So surveys, customer interviews, and ethnographic studies can be a powerful tool in your business armoury.

One canny pundit once quipped, “people aren’t queuing up to buy your crappy product”, yet we keep trying to sell mediocre goods by upping the marketing spend. Instead, why not do what numerous other companies do and spend your money making your products better. By focussing your attention on building value in your products and providing an outstanding consumer experience you’ll create products that literally market themselves. Or to put it another way, it costs a lot less to market a good product than it does to market a crappy one.

So in order to weather this current economic downturn and come out ahead, we need to start thinking more strategically and less tactically, more about long term vision than short term success. Otherwise we’ll end up with a slash and burn mentality to driving online success. Instead, we need to build better products, we need remove the barriers to adoption, and we need to promote them more effectively. Doing any one of these things will significantly improve your conversion rates, but doing all three will see you weather the current storm and come out ahead. What are you waiting for?

So I’m very excited (and a little bit scared) to be speaking at Web Directions East in Tokyo this November. I’ve never been to Japan before, but it’s somewhere I’ve always dreamt of going. I’ve got around 10 days to explore, so would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and recommendations.

I obviously want to see Downtown Tokyo, including all the crazy Otaku haunts. I’m not one for Karaoke but definitely want to check out a cosplay bar or two! And before you ask, no I won’t be dressing up as my favourite manga character! I’m also keen to do a spot of “Lost in Translation” sightseeing as I kinda like the movie. Maybe just grabbing a drink at the hotel bar. Daft I know.

I’m equally keen to get out of Tokyo and explore the more traditional side of Japan. I’ve been a big fan of the rural, feudal face of Japan ever since seeing Shogun with Richard Chamberlain on TV in the 80s and then discovering the joy of Akira Kurosawa while at school. So any tips for traditional places to visit or stay would be most welcome. Oh, and I’m wondering if I’ll have time to see Mount Fuji and if in fact, it’s worth the trip.

So suggestions on a postcard please.

Silverback launched just over a month ago and what a roller coaster month that was. We launched towards the end of July and within the first couple of days the app had been downloaded 7,000 times. Thirty days on and well over 20,000 people have grabbed themselves a copy. Crikey!

For the first couple of weeks the whole company was hooked on the Twitter feedback. I had a Summize window permanently open and kept refreshing the search every few minutes. Messages were coming thick and fast and I was pretty bowled over by the feedback. The messages were so unbelievably positive I actually started to worry. After all it was just a little usability testing app and wasn’t going to cure hunger and bring about world peace.

Here is just a small selection of the comments we received…

Is so stoked about the utter incredibleness of @silverbackapp he can’t sleep. - @CliffSpence

Holy CRAP! Silverback (http://silverbackapp.com) is out and it rocked my world! - @erickaweb

Think @clearleft are on to a sure fire hit. Already my clients are asking about using Silverback, just a day after it’s release! - @paulrobertlloyd

Love silverback. so much love in the details. even the stupid ape is animated when you export a session. thank you so much @clearleft ! - @reimund

Has a major user-testing chubby over Silverback. This is fantastic and just what we needed for our upcoming sessions. - @gb

It’s been longer than I can remember that I found an application to fill such a gaping void in my work. @silverbackapp is oozing promise. - @niccai

Chubbies and gaping voids aside, that’s some pretty sweet praise. As people got over the initial rush of excitement and started playing around with the app, we started to get some more detailed reviews and a stack load of useful feedback.

• Silverback: Making Usability Testing That Much Cooler
• Silverback - Usability Testing for the Rest of Us
• Silverback - Guerrilla Usability Testing
• A Review of Silverback
• Initial Impressions of Silverback
• Silverback: Usability testing for apes
• A review of Clearleft’s Silverback
• Usability testing with Silverback
• Software Usability Testing for the Rest of Us

When designing Silverback our goal was to keep the interface as simple and intuitive as possible. We wanted to include features that the majority of people would use while removing features that were only of interest to a niche crowd. After all we were trying to create a lightweight guerilla usability testing app for the masses rather than a pro solution, so less Photoshop and more iPhoto. We also wanted to democratise usability testing and put it back in the hands of the creators, so price was going to be a key factor. As such we were careful not to include any features that were overly complicated to implement and could push the budget up. This is why playback got cut from the initial release and we didn’t include things like editing.

As this is just the first release, there is is a lot more functionality to come and we’ve already got a bit of a roadmap planned out. For instance we want to improve file management, add the ability to preview your session and export multiple sessions in one go. We also want to do more stuff around notes and chapter markers to name but a few.

However rather than packing the app full of features from the outset, we wanted to get the app out there and see exactly how people were using it. This process has been really insightful and we’ve had some some great ideas so far. In fact it’s really interesting to see how many different testing styles there are and which features benefit each style. If you’ve got a spare 5 minutes I’d love to hear how you run your tests and which features would make your lives easier.

One popular feature request is remote usability testing. As it happens the idea of remote moderated testing came up very early in the development cycle and was something I was keen to explore. However we’d need to build it on the back of protocols like VNC which would have been time consuming and costly. Also, if you’ve ever used VNC you’ll know how much bandwidth this requires. It could potentially work over a local network, but it would be pretty ropey across the web, especially if your test subject didn’t share the same fat pipe as you.

Remote testing is actually an interesting one. If we’re talking about testing over a local network so the moderator and clients can be in another room you’re actually moving away from the idea of guerilla testing and towards something more formal. As such, this really feels like a pro feature to me. If we’re talking about remote testing over the web, I wonder how many people would actually do this? It’s still a fairly niche activity so I’m unsure of the demand. I personally find it awkward having a video chat using Skype or iChat, so wouldn’t get the same sense of empathy as actually being in the same room as the person. That being said we’re definitely open minded about these things and may consider it for a future release, assuming the engineering and budget constraints aren’t too high.

As Silverback was our first desktop app, there were always going to be a few teething problems, and in all honesty I’m surprised there haven’t been more. However we did put a huge amount of effort into the testing phase of the project, which I’m sure helped a lot. There are a couple of intermittent exporting bugs which we hope to have fixed shortly, along with some minor UI issues. We’re also aware that the exporting speed, while similar to other apps in its class, is still a little slower than desired. So we’re currently working on that. If you do come across any issues please don’t be shy, and post them up to our get satisfaction page.

So I guess that’s about it for now. It’s been an absolutely fantastic month for our hairy friend (no I don’t mean Jeremy), and I’m really excited to see what the future holds. We’ve had all kinds of people using it from Apple to NASA and 20,000 downloads can’t be bad. It’s been amazing to hear from designers who have used the app to prove the value of usability to their boss, or universities who have decided to use the app on their interaction courses. But more importantly I’d love to hear you’re thoughts, experiences and suggestions.

Oh, and I believe Steve the Gorilla may be making a surprise appearance at dConstruct next week, so I’m sure he looks forward to seeing you there.