Have you ever had a really big idea? I live for big ideas! The excitement, the research and the speed with which things happen initially is invigorating. I feel like I have big ideas all the time; but in the end very few of them come to fruition, and for good reason.

You may be working on a big idea right now ... I know I am! However, it's important to understand and appreciate an idea for what it is: nothing but a spark. It's a glorified plan, where the benefits are crystal clear and the hurdles have yet to be realized in full if at all. Until executed with precision, an idea has no value at all.

So many people see an idea as a stroke of luck for one or a few individuals who somehow achieved overnight success as a result. Seeing an idea through takes incredible fight, faith and perseverance. Most importantly it takes execution, for which successful entrepreneurs deserve all the credit.

Successful companies like Amazon.com, 37signals, Google, Tesla and so many others win not because they were the first with a specific idea, but because they execute better than anyone else.

As an entrepreneur, understanding the value of solid execution has made a huge difference in how I approach ideas. Take our app called Feed My Inbox, for example. The idea is not new or sexy, but no one was doing RSS to email well. In a little over a year, 60k+ customers and not a dime spent on advertising yet proves that you can succeed on solid execution.

You don't have to be the first with a game-changing idea; you only have to be the best at executing it.

Ideas are awesome. They can bring about innovation in an industry or even turn one upside down. But never bank on an idea getting you anywhere. Execution is and always will be the game-changer.

In a recent post, I boldly proclaimed that people not doing multi-variate testing on their websites are lazy. To prove that we drink our own kool-aid, I wanted to share the results of some tests we have been running on Linkpatch.com, a web application we built.

Through the use of Google analytics and website optimizer (both are free tools to use), we were able to increase account signups by 74% over a four-month period. Here are the three tests we ran:

1. Re-design the Tour Page

I learned pretty early on that the tour page was not helping us like it should. Early feedback from customers and friends that tested the software proved that the copy was wrong. We needed to explain exactly why we did not create a website crawler or link checker, and clearly outline the unique benefits of Linkpatch over every other available solution.

Some key metrics I was watching in analytics when testing the old tour page versus the new one were "Time on Site", "Bounce Rate" and "Exit Percentage". Here are the results:

Time on Site went up 35% as a result of this change, which is a great improvement in my opinion. Bounces went down 14%, and the Exit Percentage stayed about the same. There is still more to improve on there, but most importantly, the conversion rate for people that viewed this page went from 3.3% to 4.5%.

2. Test Headlines

Next was the main home page headline. A great headline is everything in my opinion, because an effective one will qualify our target audience and explain exactly how the app makes their life easier. Here are the three variations we tried:

Original- "Linkpatch reports broken links and images on your site, and provides all the information you need to fix them quickly."

Alt 1- "Linkpatch monitors your website for 404 errors, and provides all the information you need to fix them quickly."

Alt 2- "Linkpatch monitors your website for errors, so that you can be the first to know when users run into a problem."

As you can see, the differences in copy are subtle. Here's how they did over about a month of testing:

Alt 2 was the variation that proved to be the best headline for us to use. It resulted in a conversion rate of 5.28%, which was 11.6% better than the original we launched with.

3. Test Call to Action Button

The final test we worked on proved to be the most important, because it had the widest margin of difference between variations. Many people have debated the "right" language to use in a CTA button for a web app, and "Plans and Pricing" somehow became the de facto standard for most. However, the reason testing is important is because EVERY site is different. The same rules don't apply 99% of the time, so we decided to test the buttons for ourselves to see what converted best. Here are the buttons we used:

Of the four combinations, the "See our plans and pricing (free trial included)" button won:

As you can see, the winning button had a slight edge over the original one after testing for about a month. What is most important to note though, is the estimated conversion rate by the time the second test was over, compared to the estimated conversion rate in the first test. From beginning to end over those 4 months of testing, that's where we saw a 75% increase in conversions according to analytics:

How Long?

Although these 3 tests spanned about 4 months, it was all in my spare time. All in all it only took about 10-15 hours of work and study.

What's Next?

Keep at it! Re-work and re-test some other variations to see what works. As the site evolves and things change, there will always be plenty of things you can test on the site in search of a higher conversion rate.

Takeaway

The biggest takeaway for me is to quit fretting about small design and copy decisions prior to launching the site. Give it your best, then create multi-variate tests for anything you feel may impact conversions. There is no way to be right 100% of the time about this stuff, so take the pressure off and your users will tell you what works best.

One final note to keep in mind is that you can't test your website or get great quality feedback until it's launched. We see projects get delayed all the time while internal decision-makers contemplate what they think is best for the website. It should never be up to them if you are in the business of maximizing conversions. Just make an educated guess so you can launch and start testing! That's the only way you can find the most accurate answer.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post outlining many of the tools we are using to run the business, work with clients and build websites. Of course a lot has changed since then. I'm always interested in what others are using, so hopefully some of you folks can benefit from this updated list.

By far my favorite app, the one that's most crucial to our work every day, is Dropbox. It stores all my files securely online, keeps backups and previous versions automatically, syncs everything across computers and even on my iPhone, allows me to share files and folders with my partners and does it all incredibly well without getting in the way.

Utilities

1Password (Mac/iPhone/Browser Plug-ins)

1Password is a useful application for keeping track of your logins/passwords. It makes great use of browser plug-ins to add new logins and sign you in quickly to sites it knows about.

Fluid (Mac)

This SSB (site-specific browser) allows you to use web apps like desktop apps, giving them a separate icon in your applications folder so it works independently of other apps. It's great to use for your favorite web apps.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M (Hardware and Mac)

This is the best document scanner you will ever own. It's so awesome that I got the small version for home and highly recommend both.

Pixel Tracker (Mac)

This app is incredibly useful when you need to find a hex value fast.

Snapz Pro X (Mac)

Very handy application for taking photos and videos of your screen

Creative

Sharpie and Paper

All our wireframes start with a blank sheet of paper and a sharpie! I recommend the Dot Grid Book for sketching.

OmniGraffle (Mac)

I create sitemaps using OmniGraffle, and sometimes wireframes if the project demands it. However, we prefer not to get more specific than the paper/sharpie method whenever possible.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 (Mac)

We use Fireworks, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop and the Media Encoder regularly.

Code

Textmate (Mac)

Text editor that's fantastic for coding, and I also prefer to blog/write using it

Textmate Zen Coding Bundles (Mac)

I recently started using this super cool bundle that makes writing HTML and CSS 100% faster using abbreviations and snippets. This article should get you started.

DiffMerge (Mac)

This is a free tool for comparing files and finding differences between the them.

Transmit (Mac)

Great FTP client, easy and reliable

Versions (Mac)

Beautifully designed subversion client, love it

Communication

Adium (Mac)

Great little open source instant messaging client that supports any well-known provider (AIM, Yahoo, gTalk, etc.)

Skype (Mac/PC/iPhone)

Skype is a swell app for VOIP phone calls and chat

Mail/iCal/Address Book (Mac)

They are not perfect, but I prefer the default OSX tools for email, calendar and contacts. I especially love the Letterbox Plug-in for mail.

CoTweet (Web App)

CoTweet is great for companies that have numerous people managing one twitter account.

Tweetie (Mac/iPhone)

Great twitter client, beautiful UI for both the Mac and iPhone

GoToMeeting (Mac/Web App)

We use this as a conference call number and also for client demos of all sorts.

Twuffer (Web App)

This is a nice little application to schedule tweets for the future.

Productivity

Evernote (Mac/iPhone)

I store all kinds of notes in this program, along with categorized bookmarks. If I don't know of a place to put or remember something, it goes in Evernote.

OmniFocus (Mac/iPhone)

EVERY task goes through this app, as I swear by the GTD methodology.

Behance Action Notebook

Great paper tool for taking notes in meetings and so forth

Financial

iBiz (Mac)

All our time tracking and invoicing takes place in this app. The clincher for us is creative control over the template design using HTML/CSS.

Quickbooks 2008 (Windows)

I'm looking for a reason to ditch Quickbooks, so I am not going to link it up here. It's just tough to find a system that is CPA-friendly and has the advanced features we use.

Ubersmith (Web App)

All recurring and credit/debit card billing goes through this system. It's primarily built for hosting providers, but we know the developers of this software and enjoy using it.

Firefox Plug-ins

Firebug

THE web developer tool of choice!

YSlow

Great firebug extension that helps developers optimize pages for speed, according to Yahoo's best practices

Google Page Speed

Another firebug extension that is great for optimizing and measuring web page loading time

Feedly

If you use Google Reader, Feedly is a sweet little tool that structures your feeds more like a newspaper. Sometimes I prefer using this instead of the reader interface. Cool idea!

MeasureIt

Simple little tool to measure the pixels on a web page

Screengrab

Neat tool for taking a full page screenshot, no matter how long the web page is

Xmarks

Sync your bookmarks across browsers and computers, or even view them online

Web Developer Toolbar

Lots of very useful tools for analyzing and building websites

Website Optimization and Monitoring

Clicktale (Web App)

This is a truly awesome tool where you can watch videos of people using your website and see very useful analytics. It's a great form of user testing because it is cheap and users don't know they are being monitored.

Crazy Egg (Web App)

A great way to visualize how visitors are interacting with individual pages on your website

Google Website Optimizer (Web App)

Comprehensive tool for doing A/B or multi-variate testing on your website

Google Analytics (Web App)

Definitely the most popular analytics platform, and you can't argue with the price

Pingdom (Web App)

Uptime and performance monitoring, which notifies us immediately via email and/or SMS the moment anything is funky on one of our servers

Linkpatch (Web App)

Our team created Linkpatch, and we use it to watch for broken links on our websites. If someone encounters a broken link on the website, we get an email with all the information necessary to fix the problem.

Other Apps

MailChimp (Web App)

We recommend this service to ALL our clients for email newsletters and marketing, they rock

Google Reader (Web App)

Really useful feed reader

Feed My Inbox (Email/Web App)

We created Feed My Inbox, which you can use to subscribe via email to any feed. It's very handy for people that don't use feed readers and want an easy way to follow their favorite sites.

MyFax (Web App)

I've never owned a fax machine, so this application gives me a number by which I can easily send/receive faxes via email.

Survs (Web App)

My very favorite way to conduct online surveys

Tripit (Web App/iPhone)

Automatically organizes your trip itenerary

What do your clients say about you when you are not around? Never mind the one-on-one communication ... what do your clients REALLY think of you? What are they telling others about your company?

Does the thought of this make you a little nervous? If you care about building a successful business on the web or anywhere else, this is the kind of feedback you need from clients on a regular basis. Our little company depends solely on referrals for our business, so if our clients are not raving, our phones aren't ringing!

Often times we think of surveys when doing website testing or helping a client implement new features. Just as they are effective at gathering feedback for those uses, surveys are also a powerful way to hear what your clients are thinking, but may not be willing to say. If you come up with good questions, it is also guaranteed to point out things you can do better.

So early this year, I swallowed my pride and got in touch with every person we worked with over the last two years. I asked them to participate in our first annual client survey. All responses were completely anonymous and confidential. The survey consisted of 34 total questions. Most of them were multiple choice (rate from 1-5), and some were open-ended requesting specific feedback.

After all was said and done, about 35% of our clients filled it out. Each of our 1-5 rating questions (5 being the best) got either a 4 or 5 over 85% of the time, which I was very pleased with. Some questions had too many 2's and 3's, and I am now much more aware that we have to do better on those things. Either way, the 1-5 rating questions were a great way to observe overall client satisfaction with a solid number.

I'm really glad each section of our survey also had a text box for specific comments or feedback. I went through and read every single comment. Some of them were encouraging, and some of them were downright mean. Read them with an open mind and "customer is always right" mindset, which means making excuses is a waste of time. Just do better! The best responses included helpful suggestions, which we immediately implemented as part of our business.

Overall, I am so glad we went through with the client survey. We found some things we can do better, and probably never would have known about without the survey. We also set a benchmark, which is something we can look to improve on in coming years.

For our survey we used http://www.survs.com. They just launched their service publicly, and I had an incredibly positive experience using it. I have also heard nice things about http://www.surveymonkey.com. It's ugly, but is the current industry leader and seems to have additional features.

To view a copy of our survey in full, check out this page: project83.com/survey.