PayKickstart Wins Best UX and Rising Star 2019 Awards

When you’re building a business, a lot of what you do goes on behind the scenes. Most of the time, it’s thankless work.

People who are wiser and more successful than us have said it’s important to celebrate the little wins. If you don’t then you’ll be out of practice when the big victories roll around.

With that being said, I want to send a big thanks to the folks over at CompareCamp for recognizing all the hard work we’ve put in to build PayKickstart.

CompareCamp has quickly become an authority in authentic, in-depth SaaS reviews on software and applications, easily organized by category. They have conducted thousands of reviews and receive over 100,000 unique visitors each and every month for people looking for the best application for their needs.

In this article, I’d like to highlight the awards we got from CompareCamp and talk a little bit more about what they mean.

First, the awards

In order to deliver an honest review to their audience, CompareCamp tore PayKickstart apart and put it back together.

When the dust had settled they decided to give us two awards.

• Great User Experience Award
• Rising Star 2019 Award

I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting our own horn but it feels good to be recognized for what you’ve built. I’m sure, as an entrepreneur, you can relate.

When you first released your creation to the world, a lot of doubts were running through your head:

• Is it good enough
• Is there a ready market
• Will I get good reviews
• Will people stick around
• Insert any fear you’ve ever had

It’s natural.

An unbiased review from a third party that scores you helps put those fears to rest.

When they go a step farther and give you an actual award, it’s icing on the cake.

In fact, for a moment there I wanted to create PayKickstart shirts with an “S” on the front. It’s still in the pipeline

I digress.

Both of the rewards are exciting but I’m especially keen about the Great User Experience Award. Let me explain why.

The case for user experience

If you’ve used more than one piece of software to run your business or have tried multiple vendors in the same category then you know how important the user experience is.

Some apps just work. As soon as you log in you’re able to find the most important buttons and get right to work.

Other apps feel like they were built for a subset of the human species. They’re difficult to figure out, the features aren’t labeled in an easy to understand manner, and the knowledge base is lacking.

All of those things contribute to an overall poor user experience.

If you’ve ever been to Disney Land, you’ll understand the power of experiences. Everything from the rides, the food, to the staff contribute to the experience.

It was designed to make you go wow.

While we’re not trying to build a theme park this year, user experience is something we spend a lot of time on.

The term itself encompasses a lot of factors and one of the main things to consider is the design. In a recent study published by McKinsey, it was found that companies which focused on design increased their revenue at nearly twice the rate of their counterparts.

It’s like being rewarded for something you’re supposed to do.

PayKickstart has evolved over the years to get to the point where it is today. At first, it didn’t have the sexiest interface. Some items were hidden and you had to click a lot of buttons to get things done.

That couldn’t last. Once we got our first customers, we focused on understanding how they used the application and areas that needed improvement. We didn’t gather all that feedback and keep it in a file in our company Google Drive folder.

We took action on it.

When we implemented a change, we let the dust settle (there will always be kickback when you first implement a change) and asked our customers what they thought. If it was an improvement then it stayed. If it wasn’t, then it was scrapped.

No idea was too important.

The award from CompareCamp is confirmation that we’re on the right path. Don’t worry, everyone at PayKickstart knows there’s still a long way to go and are excited about the challenge.

Rising star

This award was a pleasant surprise. With user experience, it has been a focused effort to get better. The rising star award is a bit different.

When you start a SaaS company, there’s this long period where things don’t seem to be moving very fast. No matter how fast you grow, it’s not fast enough.

It’s the SaaS ramp of death.

Teamwork.com is doing roughly 12 million dollars a year in revenue. It made $13,000 in the first year.  

If you’re bootstrapped like PayKickstart, you can see your runway staring you in the face.

After you generate enough revenue and start turning a profit, things get really interesting. You’re able to invest in more channels for growth and in hiring good people.

That’s what happened.

There was never a meeting where everyone sat down and said, “This year is the year we’re recognized as a rising star.”

In fact, there are very few meetings at PayKickstart but when they do occur the focus is always on hitting your target.

I guess when you hit enough internal targets the world takes note.

PayKickstart has had the privilege and honor of serving entrepreneurs from all walks of life.

Some of them are online business veterans and some of them were able to earn their first dollar with PayKickstart.

We love showing off our people – we call them #salesboss because they’re awesome. It’s not easy to take the plunge into self-employment and they’ve done it. It deserves recognition.

Each one of our customers has taught us something and is part of what makes us a rising star. Without them, without you, we wouldn’t be here.

Though they’ve presented these awards to PayKickstart, the honor goes to everyone who’s helped mold it into what it is today. 

• The early critics
• The first customers
• The people who gave us feedback
• The ones who canceled
• Our founders

The list goes on.

In the end, all we can say is thank you and stay tuned, there are a lot of big changes coming to PayKickstart in the next few months that I’m sure you’ll love.

Daniel Ndukwu

Daniel Ndukwu is a regular contributor to the PayKickstart blog. He has extensive experience with online businesses, conversion optimization, and subscription revenue models. When he's not writing insightful content, he works with other entrepreneurs to help them grow their bottom line.

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