Ep. 146 - GoSquared’s James Gill on Product Design, Listening to Customers & Making it Easy

James Gill is founder and CEO of GoSquared, a simple, live analytics platform for websites. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, spoke with James about product trends, design, getting close to the customer and growing a company outside the Valley. Based in London, James started GoSquared with friends, while still in school. They found success in building websites, but soon were asked how the sites were performing. Very few tools existed at the time, to answer these questions. Since then, GoSquared has created simple analytics software, on a subscription basis, for small businesses around the world. What trends are allowing you to build new things? - No code applications. - Real-time and live response.  - Everyone today wants to have an online presence or small businesses. - We always wanted to work with small businesses and integrate into similar products like Go Daddy, Wordpress, Shopify, etc - Make it as easy as possible.  How do you decide what you develop? - Everyone has a different process depending on what works for each company. Some use tons of Data. Data creates lots of confidence in decisions. - We use our insights and engage with our customers. E.g., Onboarding - Do a lot of user testing. Make it fun. We show the visitors to your website instantly. Gamification. How do you introduce new products and services? - Software is being adopted from bottom up, before senior management even knows about it.  - Solving problems wins. Trend in B to B software. See small business/startups as early adopters. - Use new tools for Corporates that don’t need IT support. Cheaper and faster.  Ability to get close to the customer. - GoSquared changed dynamics to get immediate feedback from customers.  - Test out ideas immediately. E.g., Landing pages and Payments - Zapier and Airtable. What was it like to build a tech company outside of the Valley? - We didn’t make a choice. Left school and stayed in London. Thirty-seven signals/BaseCamp inspired us.  - We build great products and tell our story and what we’ve been learning. We don’t spend much on Marketing. We share what we learn. Building trust. Sharing what we learned on our Blog.  https://www.gosquared.com/blog/ What’s Next? - Training for the London Marathon in April - Introducing Free Tier soon - More new product improvement to help customers grow. For More Information For more information on James Gill or GoSquared see gosquared.com, @GoSquared or @Jamesjgill on Twitter.  If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy:  Ep. 130 – Canopy Insight’s Victoria Gerstman on Culture’s Influence on Brands & Semiotics; Ep. 129 – Paul Jarrett of Bulu on New Trends in Collaborative Marketing; Ep. 122 – Jeff Rohrs, Yext CEO and Author of Audience: Marketing in the age of subscribers, fans and followers; Ep. 114 – Canva’s Cameron Adams on Democratization of Design; and Ep. 113 – ProfitWell founder Patrick Campbell on Growth, Pricing and SaaS Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.   FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER Get the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HERE For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy