So I can return my attention back to my professional life and it is with great regret that one of my team members is leaving for pastures new. I have worked with David for over three years now and he is one of the best developers I have ever worked with. He joined us shortly after finishing university and he has been a great asset to the team ever since.

His skill set and confidence has increased hugely over his time with us and that got me thinking that one of the most important jobs of a manager is coaching and professional development. This is perhaps something I have not had a structured approach to in the past but it is essential for the following reasons:

• Better job satisfaction – this means people are more likely to stick around
• More productivity – the more tools people have the quicker they can get things done
• Better delegation – more skilled and experienced people are much easier to delegate to

With that in mind I started thinking about the best way to nurture and coach people:

1. Give feedback

The most important thing is to give feedback on specifics. I think it is important to give both encouraging and constructive feedback. Do not shy away from giving constructive feedback when things go wrong but you may decide to deliver it in private.

2. Regular professional reviews

Having a regular 30 minutes each week with each person where you can offering coaching and listen to any issues or problems they are having.

3. Career planning

Helping and supporting career development is a great way to build morale. Make sure you ask each person what direction they want to go in and then actively look for opportunities to help them achieve this.

4. MBWAL

By getting out into the office, walking around and listening you are more likely to spot aspects that need to be addressed and worked on. It is also a great opportunity to assess the morale and atmosphere in the office.

One thing that has helped me a lot when planning strategies for the start-ups I work with is the concept that there are four types of start-ups. Each of these types have a very different set of requirements to succeed. Steve argues that market type affects everything from customers, to sales, to finances and marketing.

The four types or market are:

1. Start-ups that are entering an existing market

If you are creating a product that is faster, quicker, or performs better than an existing product you are in this category. The good thing about this type is that customer and markets are known but so are the competitors. The basis of competing is all about the product and its features.

2. Start-ups that are creating an entirely new market

If you create a product that creates a large customer base who couldn’t do something before then you are in this market type. The first portable computer or first PDA are examples in this type. Feature set is almost irrelevant as there are no competitors, the bad news is that there is no market and a lot of customer education is required.

3. Start-ups that want to resegment an existing market as a low cost entrant

Resegmenting an existing market is a very common type and the first of these is a low cost entrant. This is customers at the low end who will buy performance that is just good enough.

4. Start-ups that want to resegment an existing market as a niche player

Niche resegmentation is slightly different. It involves products that address a particular part of the market and addresses only their needs. You need to convince customers that some characteristic of your product is radical enough to change the rules of the game.

If you have not read it I can really recommend Steve’s book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany. It is a complete road map explaining customer development with step-by-step lessons on how to achieve product market fit.

I have just listened to a short podcast with Lou Rosenfeld on analysing your internal search analytics i.e. the searches users perform once they are on your site. This seems like an interesting concept people are already familiar with looking at site analytics how can internal search analytics help you?

The main points I learned were:

1. Look at the most frequent queries

Rank the internal search terms by most frequent to least frequent and then you should:

• Optimize the most frequent queries
• Think about how to make better sign posts or navigation to the most requested content
• Perform the top queries yourself on your website and see if there is anything missing

2. Use the internal searches to determine your user’s intent

By looking at the search terms you can determine what your users are trying to do once they arrive on your site.

3. Use searches to influence meta data or taxonomy

If you see patterns in your searches this can influence your meta data or categorisation if you do a content overhaul. The example given was a mail order catalogue that did not have sku on their website and they noticed a lot of sku searches. They went into the field and found that users were getting the sku from their catalogue while browsing and trying to purchase online.

What is the GMAT?

The GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) is a computer adaptive test that business schools use to assess admissions for MBA programmes. If you want to apply to a business school chances are you will need to take this test.

It is a mammoth 4 hour exam, which places you under massive time pressure:

• 60 minutes – two essays of 30 minutes each, one is an analysis of an argument and one is an analysis of an issue. These are not a particularly important part of the exam
• Optional 8 minute break
• 75 minutes – 37 maths based questions on problem solving and data sufficiency
• Optional 8 minute break
• 75 minutes – 41 verbal questions on reading comprehension, critical reasoning and sentence correction

The test is adaptive so if you get a question wrong it gives you an easier question, if you get one right it gives you a harder question, in this way it tries to hone in on your level of knowledge. All of your answers and difficulty are weighted and you are given a total score at the end of the test. Most admissions require a score of at least 600.

Preparation is key

Do not underestimate the test; it is very taxing and you will need to be on top form to conquer it. Ideally you will need several months to prepare and learn the nuances of how the test works. I tried various books, tools and online resources some were good some were not so good.

The best way to prepare is to:

• Learn about the mechanics of the test
• Learn the syllabus of content
• Do lots of practice questions
• Practice mini timed tests
• Practice full-length timed tests

I bought several books but the ones I found most useful were:

• The Official Guide for GMAT Review – great for practice questions
• Kaplan GMAT 2010: Premier Live Online – superb for learning the maths syllabus
• Verbal Workout for the GMAT – great for verbal syllabus, it took my score from 50th to 88th percentile

The Kaplan live book gives you access to lots of online practice tests that helped me a great deal in preparing once I was comfortable with the syllabus.

There are many places to get access to full-length timed exams, the MBA.com  site has free preparation software that includes a couple of full length tests. Timing is everything on the GMAT and a couple of really key points I learned on timing were:

• Don’t time yourself on each question. Some questions are harder than others so you will naturally spend more time on some questions. I timed myself over a set of 10 questions so for the maths section I made sure that every 20 minutes I had done 10 questions.
• Don’t get behind. You will be heavily penalised if you do not complete all the questions. If you feel that you cannot do a question in the allotted time, use an educated guess and save your time for questions you can do.

In the month before the test I only did practice questions. By the last month the syllabus should be in-grained so you need to try as many different question styles as you can. After a while you will begin to see a pattern and this will help you a lot on test day.

Personally I like to relax the day before a test to make sure my mind and body are well rested, if you do not know something the day before it is unlikely you will learn it and be able to apply it under pressure in one day.

On the day of the test I had a good breakfast and started the test at 8.30am, I booked an early exam as I am at my best in the morning. There was no food or drink allowed in the exam so make sure you drink a lot beforehand and use the optional breaks to top up on water and snacks.

If you are taking the GMAT and have any questions please let me know and the best of luck on the big day.

1. Integration options

I have integrated most of the major payment engines and they all work differently but in principle there are two main methods:

Form Integration

This is the way that most websites integrate with a payment provider and is usually the only option if you are using eCommerce software. The basic premise is that you process the order on your site all the way up to the point the customer pays. At that point your customer is redirected to your payment provider’s secure payment page where they enter their credit card. The customer is then directed back to your website once they have completed their payment.

Pros:

• Very simple to do (most eCommerce software will do this for you)
• You do not need to store or process credit cards
• Customers may feel more secure as they are on a separate secure site

Cons:

• It can give a less professional or smaller shop feel
• Less design control over the checkout process

Integrated

In this method you take payments on your own site and pass them securely to your payment provider. The customer never leaves your site.

Pros:

• Perceived as more professional by customers
• A more streamlined checkout process
• More control over the design and workflow of the checkout

Cons:

• You will need to be PCI compliant (see below)
• You will need to have a secure method of storing credit cards
• You will need a SSL certificate (secure sockets layer, this is when you have a lock icon in your browser)

2. What about PCI compliance?

If you take payments online (or offline for that matter) then you need to be aware of PCI compliance. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. Which translates to if you process payment cards you need to make sure you keep the customer’s card information safe during the process.

There are different levels of compliance depending on how many transactions you process per year. Most merchants will fall into the lowest category which is level 4 (fewer than 20,000 transactions per year) and for this there is a self-certification questionnaire that needs to be filled in and the possibility of a scan of your site to determine any vulnerabilities. The higher the level the more work (and potentially an audit) there is to comply.

The key to remember is that if you take credit card payments in any form you need to be compliant. If you want to learn more this site is a great place to start: http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pcifaqs.php

3. Should I use 3D secure?

First of all if you do not know what 3D secure is. Verified by Visa and Mastercard Securecode helps to customer’s cards against unauthorised use when they shop online by requiring them to enter a personal password each time they buy. The customer only need to register once to create a password for each credit card they own.

There is no right or wrong answer to whether you should use 3D secure or not. Personally I like it as it means lower per transaction costs and less fraud. I think eventually that it will be mandatory for all online transactions so you may as well use it sooner rather than later.

Pros:

• Less fraud (which means less costly chargebacks)
• Lower transaction costs with your payment provider
• Makes the buyer feel more secure

Cons:

• It is an extra step for the customer to complete which increases the risk of them abandoning their purchase
• It is another password for them to remember (or perhaps forget)

That is the quick introduction to payments online, if you have any questions please add them in the comments.

1. What do you need to take payments online?

If you are new to taking payments this actually is more complicated than you might think. To accept online payments you need:

• A payment processing service (PSP) or ‘payment gateway’ – this service collects and sends payment details to the banking network.
• An internet merchant account (IMA) – All the payments you receive are paid into your merchant account before being transferred to another business account.
• A personal or business bank account where the funds from the IMA are transferred to.

Some providers provide just a PSP service so you need to source a separate IMA but I am going to concentrate the rest of the article on those providers that supply both services together.

2. How do you choose a payment provider?

There are lots of players in the market and a lot of choice so what sorts of things should you be looking for? My personal criteria for selection is the following:

1. Reliability – how reliable is the service, PayPay has suffered in the past from a bad reliability record and if your payment provider is down then you cannot take payments. If you are a high transaction business this can cost you a lot of money.
2. Integration options -  what are the different options to integrate payment onto your site, can you take payments on your own website or do you have to redirect to the payment providers site?
3. Support – how good are their support teams, what hours are they available, ecommerce is a 24/7 business.
4. Fees – what is their charging structure, do they offer volume discounts for large numbers of transactions? Fees vary a lot and a few % per transaction can affect your margins.
5. Perceived quality to the customer – if you use a well respected brand for payments this perceived quality will help put your customer’s minds at ease.
6. Fraud protection – what steps, procedures and tools do they offer to reduce fraudulent transactions?
7. How quickly funds are released – some providers hold funds for as long as 30 days which can hurt your cashflow.
8. Reporting – how easy is it to run reports for your business reporting?
9. Ease of use – how easy is it to issue refunds or check charge backs?

Other less important criteria might be:

• Can you take payments over the phone?
• Can you take multiple currencies?
• How much do they charge for fraudulent transactions or charge backs?
• Do they accept recurring payments (repeat transactions for subscription sites)?
• Do they accept PayPal payments? The large payment providers now accept PayPal as well as credit cards.
• How customisable are the payment pages?

3. What will it cost me? Who are the main players?

The total cost of accepting payments is the combination of payment processing charges (per transaction) and the internet merchant account (usually a fixed monthly fee). There will also be one off set-up costs and addons for extra fraud protection etc.

The per transaction costs vary quite a lot and depending on the volume of your business can be negotiated.

A lot of the best payment providers only cater to US business in the UK the the main players are:

• SagePay – formerly Protx and now owned by the accounting software company Sage. They offer a range of integration options at no extra charge, and they are personally my choice of payment provider.
  • £20 per month
  • Per transaction costs of 2.5% for credit cards and 40p for debit cards
  • No set up fees
  • No minimum contract term

• RBS WorldPay - recently purchased by RBS and offer a superb, reliable service with great technical support. They are also a great choice if you do not have a lot of trading history and need to be up and running quickly.The downside for me is that the payment pages cannot be customised as much as I would like.
  • £15 per month
  • 3.35% per transaction + 15p per transaction
  • £75 set up fee

• PayPal – have a long history taking payments and a brand that consumers trust. In my experience they are not as reliable as other services, testing your service is harder than it should be and the consumer experience is not as good as the previous choices.
  • £20 per month (or they have a free option if you do not want to take payments on your site)
  • Transaction charges are 1.4% – 3.4% plus 20p, depending on sales volume
  • No set up fees

The high street banks also have solutions, Barclays have ePDQ and HSBC have a solution (which when I last used it was very cumbersome to integrate).

So that is the quick overview to taking payments online. Next week I will be going through the various ways to integrate payments into your site once you have chosen a provider and what that means for your business.

I have worked on lots of ecommerce sites in my career but even if you have not, ecommerce is everywhere and most people will have made a purchase online.

It got me thinking that I do not hear people talk about ecommerce, people do not seem to get excited and innovate in this area. A lot of people want to build SAAS apps or apps that have no income at all, where as an online shop seems like a much easier business model if you are retail minded and can find a suitable niche.

Over the next few months I am going to be writing about the lessons I learn running an online shop.

If you can think of a great idea for an online shop let me know I would love to hear about them.

The people who work for you are one of the most important investments that you have in your company. You should spend a lot of time and investment to make sure you have a happy and productive team. Recently we have had a couple of people leave the team, for personal and professional reasons and this can be very hard to take if they are key to your business and it can feel like it will be impossible to replace them.

I was once fortunate enough to be given some great advice from Sir Ronald Cohen who said when someone leaves your company you should see it as an opportunity to replace them with someone even better. So if you lose a developer, replace them with an even better developer, in this way you find that the quality of your team will improve at a much faster rate. This is very good advice but it is easier said than done.

You can see the final product here: http://hosting.djangofoo.com/ not bad for three days work!

The idea

We are a Django shop and find it hard to get simple hosting for clients. What we needed was a simple point and click solution for people with no technical knowledge at all, so that is what we built.

Planning

The first step was the planning phase which took an hour and we did this one week before we started the project. Each person in the team was assigned an area of responsibility and the planning was around the high level design, features, investigating the technology and the existing competition. Then for the next few days we all did some thinking about our areas and let the ideas distil in our sub conscious.

Day 1: High level structure

Day 1 Design. The first iteration of the design has all the elements and a global design but the messaging hierarchy does not flow, it appears too jumbled.

The first day started at a crazy pace as the enthusiasm was at its highest. We had a quick briefing session in the morning and then we all set off to our assigned tasks. We had documented the high level features in advance so we all knew which tasks were our responsibility.

We were a three person team, spilt into three areas:

• Liza (an incredible designer) worked on the brand and the global styles of the interface
• Davo (super coder) worked on solving the huge technical problems of how to set up the server, permissions, limited file space, writing bash scripts to create accounts
• Me, I designed the data model, bootstrapped the project, wrote the models and set about coding the application

We communicated mostly by IM even though we were all in the same office, this helped us keep focused and keep our concentration.

Defining the features, proposition, wireframe and setting up the server, bootstrapping the code base, code snippets

By the end of day one we had completed:

• A rough interface and brand
• Wireframed all the pages
• A feature list assigned with priorities
• High level marketing messages
• The skeleton code structure
• The data model
• Server set up and configuration
• The ability for users to change Django version
• A basic auth systems for users to sign up and login

Day 2: The detail

Day 2: A more polished design with better message hierarchy. There is a real visual style that can be carried across the rest of the site.

The day started with the same amount of energy and we spent the first part of the day validating the logic we had come up with on day one.

We also made some changes to the data model based on the design decisions we have made whilst coding. It felt like more of a details day, there were lots of questions that came up and lots of small issues needed to be addressed.

A large part of the day was spent working on the visual style and making sure that the right messages and visual cues were delivered to the user.

By the end of the day we had completed:

• A more polished design, visual identity and brand
• All the text pages content
• All the user login pages, recover passwords etc
• The content and elements for the logged in user pages
• The ability for users to sign up and create their hosting environment, logins, FTP passwords etc
• Bash scripts to create new users and folders
• The base HTML and CSS styles
• Mod WSGI reload when changes are made to the source code

Day 3: The launch

Caption here

In true MVP style we have not yet implemented the payment system, we merely get an email if someone attempts to pay.

Throughout the project we decided that we wanted to be the “easiest Django hosting in the world” so this totally guided our decision making. For every feature we asked ourselves if that will help to make the app the easiest Django hosting in the world. I think the project was defined by what we did not include rather than what we included.

By the end of the day we had completed:

• All the HTML and CSS for all the pages
• Integration into PayPal
• Admin functions
• Manage.py tool
• View live logs
• Security patches

Lessons learned

I think the main lessons learned were actually nothing new but they re-affirmed a few things:

• Be ruthless with your features if it is not essential then move it to the wishlist
• If a feature is taking more than about 2 hours then find another way or abandon that feature
• A framework is a must, you do not have time to reinvent the wheel
• Small team (ideally two developers and one designer)
• It is very important for someone to co-ordinate the project
• Don’t worry about not meeting all your users needs you can always add things later
• Think of clever ways to get feedback and save time. When we looked at our tasks and times we thought payment integration would take quite a while so we skipped it and simply have an email alert if someone tries to upgrade

One of the biggest lessons I learned was to build your decision making around your core proposition, for us it was “The easiest Django hosting in the world’s”, anything that did not fit into this philosophy was removed, even at the cost of alienating more advanced users. Be bold and focus on your core customers don’t worry about being the solution for everyone. We knew from early on that people who wanted a high level of customisation and were advanced users would not want to use our service, that is ok we are not building a service for them.

Planning is guessing and guessing takes time, effort and ultimately does not help in making decisions. My mantra is think things through and then jump in and get on with it, make a prototype, launch that business, build that product you have been thinking about. If you have the right approach the time it takes you to actually build something is the same amount of time it would have taken you to plan it.

Build something, anything and then get real life customer feedback and validation. Then learn from that feedback and iterate again. Focus on one thing, do it, test it and decide quickly on the next iteration.

So try:

• Less planning
• Less documentation
• Less diagrams
• Less meetings
• Less strategy

Make it happen and you will learn a lot more than you ever will planning.