Our Favorite Twitter Takeaways from Traction Conf 2017

Traction Conference was exceptionally awesome this year! Which is no surprise, really; we had some of the smartest people in tech and growth marketing gathered together under one roof—how could it not be awesome?

Even if you weren’t at the conference (in which case, we won’t judge—but you should really plan to be there next year!), you could still follow along with a lot of the action on Twitter. The #TractionConf hashtag was one of Canada’s top-trending topics on Twitter during the conference, and you can read through those tweets to find a ton of takeaways on building your tech business.

To give you a taste of all the great information being passed around, here are seven of our favorite #TractionConf tweets:

1. This four-part series from Growth Advisor Casey Winters

If you’re looking to establish some ground rules for growing your business, you could do a lot worse than adopting these tips from Casey Winters (as summed up by the Traction social team). They almost make growth sound easy, don’t they?

Start by identifying and prioritizing traffic opportunities. This will help you to shape your strategy, and to make sure you’re not wasting time on low-yield tasks. Review this list and keep it up to date, as your best sources of traffic will change as your company grows.

Eliminating unnecessary steps helps you in two ways - it makes things more efficient on your end, and it removes friction on the user’s side of things. Don’t ask for a name when an email address will do, and don’t ask for an email address if you’re not going to reward the user for providing one. Ask yourself what the bare minimum requirements are for someone to sign up for your service, and go from there.

The final two tips have to do with data. It’s incredibly easy to collect data from your users. Use that data to your advantage! Your competitors certainly are - especially the successful ones. And remember that not all data is created equal. When you’re experimenting with your site, chase after the opportunities to make the biggest impacts on your bottom line.

2. This quote from Dribble founder Zack Onisko

Tweet

We absolutely love this quote because it matches our own philosophy so well. Designers do their best work when they put the end-user above all else. The entire user-experience field of design/development sprang out of this philosophy!

Putting themselves in the user’s shoes, thinking about things from their perspective; that’s where innovation comes from. If you’re focused on creating designs that look good and drive conversions, there’s really no better way to do it.

3. This reality check from Duolingo’s Gina Gotthilf

It’s so easy to let a vocal minority have a disproportionate effect on your business. But the truth is always in the data! It’s important to keep people happy, sure, but we’ve seen far too many cases where companies made big changes in order to appease complaining customers and ended up hurting their overall conversions.

Your data will show just how many happy customers you have. And the ones who are happy with you aren’t necessarily crowing about it on social media. People love to complain, especially about things that disrupt what they’re used to. When you’re testing changes to your site, remember to put your faith in the data and not the haters.

4. A double dose from Naomi Ionita, VP Growth at Invoice2go

Naomi packs so much knowledge into these two short quotes! Acceptance of failure is a key part of building a successful business (just see what Sarah Bird has to say about it further down this page). Nobody gets it right the first time, so just keep learning from your mistakes and making your product better.

Transparency helps build trust between a company and its audience. And trust leads to conversions. Audiences appreciate a brand that can be honest - admit to mistakes, be up front about your product, and avoid hiding information from your customers. Don’t claim to have a “silver bullet” product that can do all things for all people.

Combining qualitative and quantitative data gives you a holistic view of your performance. Echoing Gina Gotthilf’s thoughts in the earlier quote, it’s important to address user feedback and keep users happy, but it’s even more important to keep an eye on the data and get a big-picture view of your performance.

5. A little love for developers, from a developer

Code is creative! This fact is overlooked by far too many businesses, likely because those in charge don’t have a good understanding of how coding works. They don’t realize that coding is inherently about problem solving, just like any creative field. This is especially true outside of the tech/startup world, which is probably why most of the best developers are here with us!

Dev, design, and writing are all closely connected, and the best creative teams embrace that. Try giving them seats close together, allowing them to have some fun and make some noise, and see what happens.

6. Rocket science from Moz CEO Sarah Bird

No, we didn’t just include this because we like rockets!

We 100% agree with Sarah’s statement here. Building something great is an iterative process, and you’re going to end up seeing a lot of versions go up in flames. You can watch SpaceX take the literal approach to this, or you can think of it as a metaphor for your own brand and product. But the key is to plan for failure - know that it’s going to happen, and be ready to learn everything you can from it in order to make the next round a success.

7. Simple advice from AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal

It’s no wonder everyone was so excited to see Jyoti Bansal speak, since his presentation was packed with information-dense quotes like this! Basically, he’s saying to make things as simple as you can when it comes to teaching your customers about your product. Tell them exactly what problems you solve, and how that compares to your industry.

“We do this. Our competitors do not.” There’s no easier way to show your audience exactly what makes you different, and to help keep your team focused on what makes your brand stand out.

What was your favorite part of Traction?

Whether you were there in person or living vicariously through social media, let us know what moments stood out to you at Traction Conf 2017! (Especially if those moments involved dropping by the Redstamp booth!)