remove obstacle to adoption

remove_obstacles_to_adoption.md

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+Remove obstacles to adoption.
+=============================
+
+
+I'm working in a high profile project in the mobile advertising market.
+Everything was on schedule and moving at a good pace until I had 
+to integrate with a third party. Now I'm at least two days behind due to the integration.
+
+The issue: 
+
+    I need to get in contact with an ad-serving API, and need an API key.
+    The process to get the API key is to create an account and wait
+    until it is approved.
+
+
+This is some really bad sales design here. When the product is an API you want
+to remove all the possible obstacles that lower adoption rates. Right now, this
+company is sabotaging its success by making it hard for engineers to easily
+integrate with their API.
+
+As APIs grow in popularity, companies have to understand one thing:
+
+    Anytime spent waiting for an API key is time not spent integrating with you.
+
+
+####Do like Stripe.
+
+Stripe is one of those companies that *gets it*. Their API documentation is spot on.
+Full of code samples that are ready to use. But what really drives the adoption of Stripe
+is the follwing  bit:
+
+    Stripe has an open test account that anyone can use to integrate their product.
+
+No need to wait for approvals. No time wasted. Just take your API key, their testing account data
+and start integrating (with their sample code).
+
+Stripe::Simple. Love it.
+
+####Focus on simple processes.
+
+You need to realize that processes that are too complicated make
+people quit along the way. Meaning that only a percentage of the people
+that are intested in your product ever manage to make it through your process.
+
+Look at your processes. Run tests with real live users and make note of where
+people have problems. Measure the time it takes for a new user to register or use
+the product. 
+
+This is a real problem these days. A lot of online businesses don't seem to understand 
+that putting a *sign-up now!* button on the landing page is counter-productive.
+Instead, have people use a test version of your product. Get them emotionally 
+involved and invested before anything. 
+
+####The offline equivalent.
+
+Ever had a supermarket:
+
+- Ask your name.
+- Ask you to pick a password.
+- Fill in your credit card details.
+
+...before entering?
+
+No, because supermarkets *know* that if they complicate the process people will
+simply go and buy somewhere else. Its quite idiotic to do the same thing
+with online products. You walk into the supermarket, get the things you need, and
+*then* register with them (the checkout lane). Do you know why people wait in line
+to buy their groceries? Because they already went through the trouble of putting
+them inside the shopping cart. Even though they haven't payed, the products are already theirs.
+The emotional investment is done before they have to take out their hard earned money to pay.
+
+**But it wasn't always like that!**
+
+Before supermarkets existed people got their groceries from smaller stores.
+Back then, the store personnel (usually relatives of the owner) got the groceries
+for you. The role of the client was a passive one. Even though these stores controlled the amount of theft (shrinkage) they had not
+realized how many sales they were losing from people making impulse purchases. They even didn't know that children are a big factor on the grocery bill. 
+
+Grocery stores did what a lot of startups do these days. They put an obstacle right at the start of the buying process. Not knowing
+how many sales were being lost to it. The key words here are *buying process*. The way people buy is a process. Complicate it and less
+people buy. Simplify it and people can iterate quickly over it and be done in no time.
+
+Realize that this is similar to *Big O Notation*.
+
+    The Big-O is the formal method of expressing the upper bound of an algorithm's running time. It's a measure of the longest amount
+    of time it could possibly take for the algorithm to complete. [1]
+
+By simplyfying your buying process you are technically reducing the amount of time it takes for someone to buy something from you.
+The less time people waste on the buying process, the more time they can invest in buying from you.
+
+####PS.
+
+This does not apply to all businesses. Some benefit from *complicating* the process. Though these are generally in the
+luxury category, and are a very small group.
+
+<a href="http://orangethirty.github.com/marketing_bits">Don't miss the next Marketing Bits volume. Click here to request your free subscription. No spam. All securely handled by Mail Chimp.</a>
+
+
+[1] <a href="https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Data_Structures/Asymptotic_Notation#Big-O_Notation">Source</a>