December 2014 - The KioskSimple Blog

How Do I Get Rid Of Fear as a Small Business Owner?

Seth Godin wrote a blog post How do I get rid of fear? and it inspired me to answer this same question, but from the viewpoint of a small business owner.

First a little background. My name is Andrew Savala and I’m the CEO / Owner of RedSwimmer a small software company specializing in kiosk software.

As a small business owner I have plenty of things to be afraid of. The following list comes to mind:

Fear of not having enough clients
Fear of not adding the “right” features to our software
Fear of pissing off our clients
Fear of getting out of my comfort zone to learn about sales, marketing and social networking
Fear of attention
Fear that someone (or everyone) will quit
Fear of letting everyone down
Fear that people will find out how unqualified I am to run a business

Continue reading “How Do I Get Rid Of Fear as a Small Business Owner?”

How Can I Run Chrome or Safari from My Kiosk?

Lately we’ve been getting a lot of requests to run Google Chrome from KioskSimple. In response to popular demand we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be adding support for WebKit in early 2015. In case you’re not familiar with WebKit, it’s the HTML rendering engine used in Apple Safari and a fork of the project is used in Google Chrome. The bottom line is, if you love the look and feel of Chrome or Safari, then you’ll love WebKit. Continue reading “How Can I Run Chrome or Safari from My Kiosk?”

How to Choose the Right Kiosk Clients – 22 Useful Vetting Questions

When a potential client reaches out to us to discuss their kiosk project I typically ask them a series of questions to determine if we’re a good fit for their project. My first objective is to understand their goals and requirements and my second objective is to determine if they have sufficient budget for what they want.

The goal of these questions is to get a feel for the scope of their kiosk project and create a very broad range estimate so I can vet the client. Feel free to use these questions in your sales process. Continue reading “How to Choose the Right Kiosk Clients – 22 Useful Vetting Questions”

How to Design a Responsive Kiosk User Interface – Part 2

Developing a kiosk user interface that’s both responsive and a pleasure to use is a critical component of any successful kiosk project. In this second part of my two-part series on developing a responsive kiosk user interface, we’ll focus on design considerations at the system level. Follow these tips to ensure that your kiosk user interface is quick to react to your customers’ touch. Continue reading “How to Design a Responsive Kiosk User Interface – Part 2”

How to Design a Responsive Kiosk User Interface – Part 1

A responsive kiosk user interface is a crucial component of developing a kiosk application that’s a pleasure for your customers to use. If your kiosk’s user interface appears sluggish, you can expect your customers will opt for interacting with a cashier, which defeats the purpose of having a self-service kiosk. This is a multi-faceted topic that includes design considerations at both the kiosk and system level. For this reason I’ll be breaking this article up into a 2-part series, the first of which will cover design considerations at the kiosk level. Continue reading “How to Design a Responsive Kiosk User Interface – Part 1”