Using Google Forms to Test Market

If you are interested in trying to start a new business venture, especially online, it is essential to test market your idea before sinking any serious funds into your project or seeking out debt or venture funding. Fortunately the web makes test marketing much cheaper, efficient and wide scale than it used to be. Approaches to testing a new product or service online generally includes a combination of setting up a landing page and using Google AdWords to drive traffic. If you have some basic HTML knowledge your landing page could cost you nothing but the hosting and domain regristration (approx. $8/month). If you need a little assistance, I have found that WYSIWIG HTML editors like www.squarespace.com are great for getting a basic landing page up and running (@$30/mth). After that plan on investing $150-250 in Google Adwords for traffic generation.

So now, how does Google Forms fit into the equation. When you start your test marketing, generally you do not actually have a product or service to provide. That’s the whole point behing the test marketing prior to investing in actually bring your product or service to market.  It would be nice though, if you could provide visitors to your site with something that might later help convert them to a sale once you actually have something you can deliver. Google Forms is part of Google Docs and allows you to collect data from website visitors, customers, clients, etc. and automatically pulls that data into a Google Spreadsheet for later analysis.

Using Google Forms you can setup an embeddable site survey for you visitors to collect information from them in addition to just testing interest in your product or service.  The way to set this up is to include the form either directly on the landing page or as a direct link from the landing page. It is important that you set the survey up so that first you show the site visitor what the asking price for you product or service will be, before directing them to complete the survey if they choose to ‘buy now’. This is so that you can actually test the price points you set up. Once they click to ‘buy now’ or whatever other wording you use, direct them to your form which will ask them to enter, name, email, phone, etc. You can also include options for them to opt into newsletter lists or request other feedback. Now you have contact information you can use to keep in contact with these prospective customers and hopefully follow up with after you launch your product or service. Also if you make use of Google Analytics now you can take the statistics from Analytics regarding site traffic and the number of survey responses to calculate a good estimate of your site conversion rate.

Obviously this strategy relies heavily on using Google’s array of web based tools. If you are unfamiliar with many of these the best thing to do is sign into or up for a Google account and go through the various tutorials to learn the ins and outs. Overall it’s a good investment in time if your test marketing helps you avoid pumping your hard earned savings into an idea that doesn’t test well or if it helps you pin point a real winner.

Try this Google Form

Open Source More Viable With the Advent of Cloud Computing

Open source solutions like Linux have promised to provide businesses with reliable computing platforms without the high cost of ownership that comes with standard software licensing agreements. However, many businesses have been fearful of adopting open source solutions because of concerns regarding compatibility and the learning curve of picking up a new operating system. It seems like with the growing trends in cloud computing, that many of the fears of open source computing may finally be laid to rest. If you are accessing your applications through the web, what does it matter if it’s from a PC running Windows, Mac or Linux. There will still be those applications that only run on certain operating systems that will require organizations to maintain desktops dedicated to those applications but with the prevalence of remote desktop options available this hardly seems to be a barrier.

If this proves to be the case, many small businesses can truly benefit from this shift. Linux typically has a lower occurrence and vulnerability to virus attacks and worms. It also is an extremely stable platform which translates into more uptime and productivity. Lastly, it spares the small business owner of the hassle of managing access licenses and the potential liability of having improperly licensed software. I have seen one case where an audit by the Business Software Alliance uncovered an improperly licensed copy of software that drove a small business into near bankruptcy after all the fines were assessed. One thing small businesses can do is start with a trial run using a dual boot installation of Linux which allows one PC to run both Windows and Linux. This allows the business to trial Linux in parallel first before committing. This may require the assistance of a technology consultant to implement, but considering the fact that the operating system is free, a relatively inexpensive pilot could be established before putting any real monetary resources into such a transition. If you feel brave enough to try this on your own (I am attempting this on my home network first) here are the instructions for doing a dual boot install for the Ubuntu distribution of Linux and a link to the download file for the Ubuntu operating system that you will need. I am wondering what successes or failures other businesses have had with making the move to open source and whether a cloud computing model remedied any problems?