As a writer who is fairly new to the startup world, I had a lot of catching up to do. Gateways, coding and platforms were things I never thought I would write about. Don’t get me wrong, but not every aspiring journalist expects to get her start in technology.

Now I can honestly say I really enjoy my experience writing for startups. I may not be a guru, but I can hold my own. That being said, after a month of self-education, and a little help from your websites, I have a request for entrepreneurs who do their own writing; before you post it, ask your mom if she understands it.

The words on your website are just as important as the coding used to create it. And if every other word is jargon only you understand, that’s going to be a problem. You can’t acquire customers if they can’t make it past the homepage. If your target audience only includes tech-savvy entrepreneurs with advanced knowledge of your product, knock yourself out. Otherwise, you’re going to have to rethink your strategy.

Tips for your web writing

Know your audience

Who is looking at your site? Is it someone who works for Google or is it the small business owner down the street? Are they familiar with services you provide, or will they have to learn about it? These are questions you are going to have to tackle before you write.

Use jargon only where necessary

If it isn’t necessary to use technical terms, don’t. People are often intimidated by what they don’t understand. If you need to, offer a brief description. It will go a long way, I promise.

Use simple sentences

The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that you will confuse your reader. Don’t use 28 words when 5 will do. You should be able to describe what your business or software does in less than 5 sentences.

Be consistent

Once you use certain words and phrases to describe what you do, keep it the same throughout the site. The chances of customers understanding your services are much better.

Q&As are your friend

Think about what questions customers will certainly ask, and provide the answers right away. This is the easiest way to clarify details or provide more advanced information for people who have advanced knowledge.

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Ok, let’s be honest, I never really was any good at following directions. That’s probably why I’m an entrepreneur today. That’s also why I spent a few hours trying to find out why I kept getting this error when trying to talk to the CampaignMonitor API in the most basic way:

(101) Invalid ListID

Ok, yeah I didn’t read every line of the documentation. I’ve worked with countless API’s in the past and continue to do so. They’re all very simple on the surface but they all have their little nuances. It turns out that the CM API has one of the most annoying quirks that I’ve ever seen.

I’ll start at the beginning. I decided I wanted to use the API to add subscribers to a list on CM. That’s pretty straightforward, I thought. You know, some sort of authentication mechanism, then provide the email address in some REST-ful way. I glanced at the docs to see that there is a SOAP interface. I quickly decide on that since usually this bloated way of interacting with a simple API is the quickest to code. So, I fire up a SoapClient and throw the four parameters at it and I get that 101 error. Again and again, I try every different way I can think of. Same 101 error.

During the pulling-out-hair stage, I ran across this post: Using Zend_Soap_Client with the Campaign Monitor API which pointed toward the need for a special input header. That prompted me to write a wrapper. I’ll get to that in a sec. It turns out that the input header wasn’t required after all.

When I glanced at the CM API documentation, I saw that there are 3 parameters required for the Subscriber.Add call: ApiKey, ListID, Email. Easy enough. It took a sec to find the ApiKey. The Email parameter is easy. So is the ListID, or so I thought. To find that, I just clicked on the list name in the CM gui and then there, in the address bar, was exactly what I was looking for:

Nope. Its a ListID but not the ListID. No, I had to click on the “edit list name/type” link to find that. What a waste of half a day.

Alright, I’m done blaming CampaignMonitor for my inability to RTFM. I wrote a very quick wrapper around the Zend_Soap_Client class specifically for CampaignMonitor API oddities. Hopefully this will save someone else some headache. Download it here:

CampaignMonitor.php

Use it like so:

$cm = new CG_CampaignMonitor('yourApiKey', 'yourListID');
$result = $cm->AddSubscriber(array('Email'=>'test@example.com', 'Name'=>'Test Subscriber'));

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In my role in business development for Sproutbox I see a lot of entrepreneurs and business plans – some good, some not-so-good. Rather than give entrepreneurs a laundry list of suggestions on how to make a good application, I figured I’d borrow questions from one of my favorite authors on entrepreneurship, Amar Bhide.

Bhide believes(and I agree) that there are really three major questions that every entrepreneur must answer:

1. Are my goals well defined? This is the biggest thing I look at when I’m looking at a business plan, and also the place where I often see major mistakes. If you haven’t clearly defined your goals, even in broad terms, then you aren’t there yet with your business. We use our unique application process for new sprouts to review how an entrepreneur has thought about their goals. When I read a business plan or talk to an entrepreneur I’m usually looking for a few highlighted points under this question. For example, does the entrepreneur show that they have their heart in their business, but do they balance that with the need to earn revenue? Does the entrepreneur have a tolerance for risk? Does the entrepreneur know what it means to be scrappy to focus on the goals at hand? At Sproutbox we look for highly dedicated entrepreneurs who want to make money and will stay focused on the goals of their business in order to keep moving forward.

2. Do I have the right strategy? This is really one of my biggest jobs at the box. When an entrepreneur gets going they often haven’t been able to clearly define what the strategy is, how they’re going to grow the business and how they intend to sustain that growth. Sure, I’m biased, but this is one of the best things that Sproutbox offers our Sprouts. Once selected, we take long hard looks at the businesses, their market opportunities, the costs of customer retention and acquisition, and how, based on our experience, they can experience off-the-charts growth. We want our Sprouts to not just succeed, but to dominate their markets, so getting this right is unbelievably important.

3. Can I execute the strategy? At our foundation this is how we work with our Sprouts. There aren’t many good ideas that can be executed without a great team. We realize that our Sprouts don’t have the resources to build and launch their software on their own, and that’s the central service we provide in exchange for equity. Once the product is built, do you have the skills to build an organization and grow market share? If you can’t confidently answer this question, you may want to think about adding a co-founder with complimentary skills. At Sproutbox, our job is to look at an entrepreneur’s answers to these questions and to help them achieve their dreams via their responses. We’re here to help build, guide, and shape businesses for success.

So, have you thought about these questions? More importantly, do you have what it takes to make a new business grow? We hope so, and we hope you’ll apply to build your business with us. Applications are online at http://www.sproutbox.com/apply and will be open until December 5, 2009.

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