TrailheaDX
Salesforce held its first event just for software developers in San Francisco last week, TrailheaDX. Previously, the company relied on special sessions such as at Dreamforce to educate developers but Salesforce’s declared intention to train up to 100 million developers in its Salesforce Lightning development environment dictated taking additional action. The numbers vary but estimates […]
Integrating the Commerce Experience: Salesforce to Acquire Demandware
There’s a lot of good analysis coming out on Salesforce’s announcement last week on the intent to acquire Demandware and move into the commerce platform business. If you’re looking for some good reads, try this post by Paul Greenberg or this post from Ray Wang. I don’t intend to rehash what my colleagues have […]
Usability
Usability and overall user experience with a software product is one of the most significant factors in user satisfaction. At G2 Crowd, as a part of the product review process we capture 7 different satisfaction metrics including usability. The other metrics, ease of doing business, maintenance, meets requirements, net promoter (NPS), setup and support, will […]
Sliding revenues
Fun pic, no? Apple’s earnings disappointment thudded into view in the middle of an afternoon of briefings at Oracle’s Modern Marketing Experience conference in Las Vegas. In that context it gave me a lot to think about especially the difference between a one time earnings disappointment and something more serious. (1) I have a feeling […]
Five Functions of Online B2B Review Websites
Almost three months now as CRO at G2 Crowd, and quite a lot of immersive research later, I have developed a way to look at the B2B online review market that I think provides a somewhat different perspective on the business and on the value provided to its different constituents. I’ve also started to collect […]
Spotting Fake Online Reviews
Most of us rely on online reviews to helps us make a variety of decisions that range from where to have dinner to which business software to buy. Reviews have influence on our decisions and businesses are aware of that, or at least starting to see the value of the crowdsourced reviews. It’s so commonplace […]
Commoditizing software
For over 50 years, the IT industry has followed a well-known script associated with emerging and evolving paradigms. First a product or category is introduced, then it gains wide market acceptance (or dies on the vine) followed by a long period when vendors and customers seek out ever more efficient ways to produce the thing. […]
Comparing Software using Peer Reviews
The goal for a business software peer review site is to provide assistance to a buyer in researching and selecting an appropriate software solution (or at least it should be). There are many other uses for the review data once collected, and those uses may be a part of the way the site is funded, […]
A Deeper Look at Peer Networks
In my last post I talked about the new buying process for business software and the role of influencers. One of the new influencer types is peer networks, and since that post I’ve gotten quite a few questions on this category and how it operates. I want to spend some time talking about the general […]
Buying Business Software
Buying behavior has changed over the last decade. The free availability of rich information / content distributed by the Internet, the ability to connect easily to peers online and the emergence of platforms for crowdsourcing product evaluations all contribute to this change. If buying changes then by necessity marketing and sales behaviors must also change […]
