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use it for what it's best at: the ability to generate a slew of visitors very quickly, and to be turned off just as quickly.

With properly tracked conversions and an ad on Facebook

deal market for your applicati

another example, with AdWords you can learn in a hurry which keywords convert for you, and which don't

Option #1: Niche Advertising

Option #2: Google AdWords

Option #3: Facebook

10-15 cent clicks under the right circumstances.

The key to low cost Facebook clicks is having a high click through rate (CTR). The key to a high CTR is a combination of a powerful image, an engaging headline, and laser-focused targeting.

Target your demographic information so tightly that you can write a headline that addresses them specifically.

Start the ads with a modest budget of, say, $5-10 per ad per day

But since you've chosen a small group of people, they will start to tune out the ad rather quickly. At this point your CTR will drop and your cost will climb. Pause the ad, and start over with new cities, new images or new headlines.

It must have mattered. Look how bad it was. Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups

. It doesn’t prove design doesn’t matter, but it does suggest design may not be the deciding factor.

Can you see at what point in time we changed design?  No?  Must not have made a difference. Let’s look at time-on-site:

Nothing. But this is all superficial — what Really Matters is the Conversion Rate: are more or fewer people signing up each week:

Hmm. Looks like everything objective is saying “it doesn’t matter.” But as much as I respect and follow Lean Startup theory, objective measurements aren’t the only things that matter. Those customer emails matter too.

The other day we landed a large customer who said they could tell from our website that among our competitors we’re more mature and ready to handle a bigger customer like them. I can tell you — objectively — that we’re among the youngest of our competitors, and although I have a list of reasons why “we’re better,” the truth is that particular customer would probably be served just fine by several of those competitors. Was it the design that gave us that edge? Could be. Didn’t hurt, anyway.

Still, the more I look at the importance of design in the startups in my little career, the less it seems to matter.

Modern Lean Startup theory blares out from the red-tiled rooftops of Stanford: Seek the Data and Ye Shall Find! First the bounce-rate. If our website design was repulsive — literally — the bounce rate should now diminish. Here’s the data:

An even more extreme example comes from my second company ITWatchDogs. I displayed its old homepage at the magnificent Webstock design conference in Wellington earlier this year; the crowd whooped at our violent assault on the visual arts, complete with calliope menubar colors, two broken images tag above the fold, and a layout model that could be seen as a “grid” only after consuming a pillowcase of mushrooms:

But you’re anticipating the punch-line — ITWatchDogs grew every month, made millions of dollars, stole business from competitors with billion-dollar market caps (and professional-looking websites), and had a successful exit.

Of course it’s only fair to also point out some of the many instructive counter-examples: Hipmunk is the same thing as Orbitz or Travelocity — the only difference is amazing design, not just because it looks good but because it’s so useable. In the words of Joel Spoksly — the design “affords usability.” (P.S. Early Hipmunk team member Alexis Ohanian is so cool and smart and rich and funny and successful and good-looking that really he doesn’t deserve to be alive. (P.P.S. Hey flamers, for God’s sake it’s a joke! Don’t you realize I’m just sore from losing the Pecha Kucha competition to him?)) I always use and recommend Amy Hoy’s time zone tool only because it’s just nice to use and look at. (P.S. she also authors a terrific blog aimed at the solo entrepreneur.) Many people credit Mint’s smash success with their terrific design. Considering how many features were broken for how long, it’s hard to argue. 37signals documented — with data — how design changes results directly in more credit-card-swiping customers. It doesn’t get more “business value” than that. So where does that leave us in the “matters / doesn’t matter” question of design?

I think you can go either way, but you must decide whether or not you’re going to value design as core to your startup’s identity, and then act consistently. Here’s what I mean.

It’s clear from the outset that design is the only competitive advantage Hipmunk has over its competition. Specifically, by making the flight-search problem pleasurable and useable instead of feeling like you’re navigating pivot tables from Excel ’98.

They don’t have better data, better branding, better name, better SEO, or more money. Just better design, and not just easily-copyable incremental improvement, but a quantum leap better.

When design is that fundamental to the business — how it acquires and retains customers, garners attention and referrals, and distinguishes itself in the market — obviously design can be the most important thing.

Conversely, at ITWatchDogs the company’s internal and external culture was that we’re low-cost, friendly, approachable, regular guys, who understand exactly what you worry about, exactly what your budget is, and we nail it. The site might have looked bad, but our message couldn’t have been clearer.

But it is useful to decide where you come down on the question of design in your startup, because if it’s important you’d better work on that right now and develop a consistent culture of valuing design through-and-through, and if it’s not important you’d better decide what is important and nail those things all the harder, because you’ll be competing with people who are using superior design to cover up their lack of competency in those same areas.

So if brands aren’t necessarily going by their EA network score to judge their return on investment, how do they know if their time is well spent? Robert Scoble thinks it’s too early to say whether brands will see a major return on their EA investment. “It’s something fun to play around with, but that’s all I’d be doing right now if I were a company,” Scoble said. “That said, you could get a lot of PR by playing around with services in early stages of the game. Everyone remembers [the companies that were early to] blogging and Twitter. No one cares about the 3,000th one there.”

Intel is seeing results from being an early adopter. “As one of the first Fortune 50 brands on EA, we got first-mover credit,” explained Rhoads. “People noticed we were participating and were able to interact directly through the game with a very active, pre-existing community. It’s very satisfying to invest in that community and I think gratifying and perhaps surprising when a brand re-invests back in you. As far as results are concerned, it’s hard to tell.”

While larger companies are always among first adopters for new social networking sites because they have more resources and staff, the true test will be if smaller companies will flock to EA as they have to Facebook and Twitter. Most companies will likely need harder evidence of return on investment in order to justify getting into the game

The more we narrowed our focus the less motivated we became.  We went from looking at a massive addressable market to a subset of people and a minimal product offering.

Focusing, as difficult as it was, was necessary given the reality that we were two

Write everything down.

best ways to drastically narrow your scope, it’s easy to list four or five options but having to pick just one and describe it fully really focuses things.

Pitching everyday

it helps you to iterate much faster.

People tend to love your idea when it’s vague, as they develop their own picture of what it will really be.  -- What we found to really work well was building a baseline pitch deck and iterating on it every day based on what we had learned.

Take all the “ands” out. 

We help parents to fix the problems in their child's daily routine and to encourage them to try new things

We help parents to fix the one or two main problems in their child's daily routine. 

It’s tough to not start writing code after your first positive interview.

Not because we found the best problem/solution mix, but rather because we found one solution that we can quickly test and on which we can iterate.

Businesses can build stronger relationships with their stakeholders through their charitable endeavors. Helping others while helping themselves can lead businesses to bigger profits.

on’t forget your employees

Clarify your business’ values

Find out where your stakeholders are donating

First Steps

Picking a Charity

Determine the criteria for the potential charity

arrow it down: Search for charities that meet your criteria. Here is the tedious part. Giving USA cites there were more than 1 million charities in the United States in 2009. You may want to enlist another person or a committee to help with the selection process. GuideStar.org has a wonderful search function that allows you to pick through its database by criteria

Compare mission statements

Make sure organizations are registered

Transparency and accountability

Trustworthy non-profits will discuss their programs and finances

Give your partnership a trial run. Test your partnership by donating to a small project before doing a large campaign.

Charities are a fulfilling way to further the mission of your organization while helping the community in which you live and work. Keep these tips in mind the next time you conduct your next cause marketing or charitable campaign, and your organization will be sure to come out ahead.