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Startups: Create Press and Status Pages
Earlier this week, I noted on Twitter that every startup should have a press page. A page that includes: logos in multiple formats, short bio of the executives, photos of the team and/or executives, basic stats, contact information and links to other important information. Make it easy for writers to write about you. Check out my post about Peanut Labs – the logo in the post is the only size logo they have on the site. Wouldn’t it be great if I could embed a logo that was on a white background and much larger? What about including a photo of the CEO who I interviewed? Remember that you want to make it as easy as possible for someone to write about you – don’t make them do the work.
Another critical page should be a status page. This page should live outside the network of the startup and should house the current status information for the startup. I don’t care if it’s on a shared blogging platform like WordPress or SquareSpace, it’s an absolute must.
Known for it’s downtime, Twitter has no public status page. There’s a developer Google group which appears to house some of the updates when the service goes down, but nothing public and so all of the Twitter users are left wondering what’s up. If Twitter had more communication when there are unexpected issues, I think users would be more understanding.
Ning has a decent status page as does our host Mosso. Simple pages that provide customers a "what’s up" with the servers and services they depend on.
Here’s a current example — apparently video message board Seesmic was down last evening. Investor Michael Arrington posted a semi-marketing, semi-rant piece about the downtime where he explains how important communication is between service and its partners. I assume when Mike speaks about his company’s usage of Seesmic, he is actually referring to the 800+ sites using the tool (weren’t they down as well???). Last week, Seesmic partnered with Disqus to push the Seesmic video commenting tool to any sites using Disqus’ blog comment replacement tool. I suggested that it was too soon for a major partnership. The unfortunate thing is that so far CEO Loic LeMeur hasn’t posted about what happened, why it happened and what is being done to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Loic did note that he is working to make sure "it" doesn’t happen again.
As soon as you notice there is an issue, stick it on the status page. It can be something as simple as, "Mooprz is currently down, we are investigating," with a timestamp and a contact form. Once the issue has been resolved, note that as well. After any investigation has completed, come back with an explanation.
I know that when your product is not functioning correctly, you want to get it back working as quickly as possible. The moment you take to update the status page will keep your customers informed on what’s going on and reduce possible emails as well.
In my opinion, having a status page is a sign of trust between a company and its customers. Just make sure to put the status page outside of your network so if the network is down, the status page is still up!
great posts and help. i love the phrases these days. Twitter, square space, and motto. I think its a great idea to have status of a website or page to show the user. thanks for the great read
CN,
This is a great post that provides excellent advice. We are a very early stage startup, yet I feel that this type of service to our customers is a must have. We launched into private beta last Thursday, and our service is not as mission critical as Seesmic as far as the effects of downtime, but we do not offer phone tech support at the moment. So what kind of image are we giving our customers about the quality of our service, especially when they have no idea what is going on.
As far as press goes, we are constantly trying to find ways to boost our recognition by the press. It has been a consideration since day 1.
Sincerely,
Christopher Mancini
Co-Founder, http://www.propertystampede.com
Why not use this as a status page? It’s a third party, so can be trusted more that a “cooked” status page (like many host providers do): http://downornot.com/twitter
Let me clarify Anthony – what I meant is that companies should use SquareSpace to create their status pages. I had no idea you offered a status tool!
The widget downtime thing confuses our customers a LOT on Squarespace. Squarespace actually has a little feature built in that attempts to make widgets that use JS (like, all of them) asynchronously load, which a few are taking advantage of :)
Allen, these are very valid points. Of course, some of the most early-stage startups are not yet companies, but instead, engineering projects. It’s not unsurprising that at this stage, the developers are less focused on what’s considered traditional Marketing or PR, and instead, just want to get the product out the door and working.
“Status” is harder, but “Contact Us” and “Press Info” should be basic must-haves.
One company who has kinda a status page (CEO blog) is bluehost.com: http://mattheaton.com/ (this is the CEO page so I guess anyone can leave a feedback).
makes valid sense – too many startups only think of product and not the other things that surround it
Salesforce.com learned this lesson 2 years ago after some of the highest profile outages to date. Funny how history repeats itself….
How is a status page different from a blog? It sounds to me it is like trying to keep the blog up to date. If the server is down, post an entry there, once fixed it, post another entry explaining what happened and apology. Of course, the blog has to be on a different server so that it is still up when the main host is down. Is it a right way to think of a status page?
BTW, you mentioned that the status page should be outside of the network, but how could we do this when we use some web hosting? If the page is on the same host, in case the host has problem, the page won’t be accessible either. So, do you recommend creating some free blog (which is of course on a different server) just for this purpose?
But at the bottom line, I totally agree with this idea. This is nothing more frustrating when you come to your favorite website and just receive an error without knowing what happens and when you are expected to come back again.
Thanks, nice article.
Your points are very good and here is how I suggest we will communicate with partners and users in the future:
http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2008/05/how-seesmic-wil.html