It’s been two months and too long since my last Weekly Site Review, and high time to resurrect this feature of this blog! This week’s microISV volunteer for the Weekly Site Review is Jason Miller, who’s company SilverCurve, LLC now has two products out, one of them the first 3rd party application for the Apple iPhone I’ve seen.

Overview:

ForeFlight iPhone Edition (launched last week) is an application for pilots that delivers airport diagrams, A/FD data, plain text weather and a variety of weather images right to your iPhone. It’s an excellent example of taking advantage of a new platform intelligently. SilverCurve’s older product, ForeFlight, runs on the desktop (Windows and Mac), and now has its own site.

Not being a pilot, I can’t tell you if ForeFlight hits the mark in delivering critical information for people who delight for some reason in flying. But what I can tell you is that SilverCurve has done an outstanding job of pitching its software, and you can learn a lot from how this site is constructed.

ScoreBoard:

Here’s how I rank SilverCurve’s site. (0 is missing, 5 is excellent.)

Let’s go through each of these areas, looking for the things other microISVs can learn from.

USP:

(The Unique Selling Proposition is both “the hook” that keeps the prospective customer on the site and the place where you establish your initial relevance, value and connection with a given possible buyer).

Here’s what Foreflight.com’s home page looks like:

What I get as this page’s USP is a two parter: “Airport and Weather Data now on your iPhone” This first part - all of eight words immediately connects - or not - with prospective buyers. If you care about airport and weather data (something us passengers devoutly hope pilots do care about!) and you own, or are interested in owning an iPhone, this page is worth your attention. If not, not.

The lesson of usability study after usability study (see Jacob Nielsen’s site at http://www.useit.com) is that you as the microISV have only a few seconds to give a new visitor to your site a reason to read on. No reason and they are gone. Jason is rightfully making a strong statement here to connect quickly to his very tightly defined market.

He then backs up the initial USP with “ForeFlight iPhone Edition is the first iPhone-centric way to get critical flight data right in the palm of your hand and on demand.” With this statement, he is offering the key value of his app - “critical flight data right in the palm of your hand” and dealing with the first objection prospective buyers must have - how do they get this info? It’s “on demand”.

Benefits/Features:

One mistake more than a few microISVs initially make is selling simplicity in a complex way. It doesn’t work to say that your framis is simple and easy to use, and then then hammer your visitor with 33 bulletpoints of complex features. Jason is selling simple - simple to use, on a platform all about simplicity and elegance. He has a grand total of eight sentences in the main area of his home page, arranged in an easy to digest quad layout. This is powerful.

Besides the Overview and the Purchase quarter, he hangs a handful of the most important features on two headlines that express the benefit of these features: Simplicity and Fast Access.

Visuals:

The site itself is attractive and professional, and I eagerly clicked on the Demo button, frankly hoping to see both Jason’s software and the iPhone. I was somewhat disappointed. The first thing you see in the iPhone-like javascript page is that a subscription is required. But I thought this was a demo!

I would recommend starting the demo somewhere in the meat of the program, not with a brick wall. I think in this one instance Jason succumbed to the coolness of running an imitation of an iPhone and took his eye off the ball.

For example, the text could read, “Let’s say you are based at Sacramento International Airport (SMF) flying to Long Beach (LGB). Click below to see how ForeFlight iPhone Edition could help you.” Then with each click, show and explain one important screen.

Lower tech than the fancy iPhone simulation? Definitely. But much more effective given that while there are private pilots out there who already own iPhones, there are in my opinion far many more pilots who if sold on the software would buy an iPhone. Considering the tens of thousands of dollars pilots spend on the upkeep of their birds, the cost of an iPhone is trivial. (An aside: never buy a boat, plane or a horse unless you really want to learn how expensive the word “upkeep” can be.)

As disappointing as the iPhone demo was, SilverCurve’s other product, ForeFlight for the desktop, has several excellent visuals, including this one that opens in a javascript window:

This is one of the best screenshots with callouts I’ve seen in a while.

Testimonials:

None for the ForeFlight iPhone Edition. I’m assuming this is because of the newness of the product (they launched last week), given that ForeFlight Desktop has testimonials. But I’d still like to see at least a prominent link somewhere on this page soon. Two points worth making re these lack of testimonials - your site is always a work in progress - plan on making changes/additions on a weekly basis. Secondly, having a process that generates testimonials on an ongoing basis is a very, very good idea.

Credibility Markers:

SilverCurve has three credibility markers not usually seen in microISV sites:

• ForeFlight iPhone Edition is sold as a subscription, for as little as $7.50 a month. This is dirt cheap, and speaks to the idea that SilverCurve didn’t just slap some code together but is going to be working hard to earn their pay, month by month. (A presentation at SIC 07 has really turned my head around about the Software as a (subscription) Service - more on that soon.)
• SilverCurve has two products out - and having more than one product definitely enhances the credibility of a microISV.
• For a limited time, if you buy ForeFlight iPhone Edition for a year, you’ll get a free iPhone cover ($29 value) from Zuluworks. This is credibility by association - and further reduces the risk to the buyer.

I’d like to see the About page - one of the four main tabs - have a slimmed down version ForeFlight Desktop’s About - pics of Jason Miller and Krista Miller in the cockpit makes a great statement as far as credibility to their target market. And, the buy page needs some standard verbiage re that this transaction will be processed by PayPal, that PayPal is etc. etc.

Blog:

ForeFlight has a brand new blog with as of now 3 posts. It’s too early to be too hard on this blog and they definitely get points in my book for blogging. But I’d recommend Jason turn the controls of the blog over to Krista, whose Blog, Pilot in Training, is very good. That, and find other things to post about other than ForeFlight! Product blogs succeed when they don’t talk about their products.

Overall:

Time will tell if SilverCurve’s iPhone play works out, but they’ve definitely achieved takeoff speed with their web site. I think the main takeaways for other microISVs are:

• Don’t be afraid to define your market narrowly.
• Show respect for that market with a USP that speaks to them, and only to them.
• If you are selling simplicity, sell it simply.
• Beware of doing something cool just because you can (the demo).
• Credibility can come through association - look for other (small) companies to sell with.

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The Weekly Site Review is a regular feature of 47hats.com. Please add your comments, rebuttals and opinions. If you’d like to volunteer your microISV’s web site for a free public review, email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com. MicroISV’s only need apply!
[tags]microISV, Weekly Site Review[/tags]

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