How do you make a hosted wiki useful and attractive to businesses? How do you do it in a bad economy, and in an environment where businesses are concerned about the security and privacy of their information?

Chris Yeh, Vice President of Enterprise Marketing at PBwiki, showed me how the company is doing this, what they learned in 2008, and their plans for 2009. I first wrote about PBwiki in 2006, when I interviewed co-founder Ramit Sethi.

Since then, the company has grown to serve a customer base of over 500,000 individual wikis. In December 2008, InformationWeek’s Peter Hagopian said it was the best of the hosted wiki services currently available.

Chris and I discussed PBwiki’s growing focus on business customers. Throughout 2007, they saw steadily increasing business use, and in 2008 they made several key improvements in the company and product to better serve business’ needs.

• Pricing
  Chris says they’re pleased with the growth of the “freemium” pricing model in which customers can start with a free wiki, and pay for various upgrades as needed. For example, a free PBwiki comes with up to 2GB of storage space, and the lowest-tier paid PBwiki account provides 20GB of storage. This model gives people a chance to try a new tool without an immediate financial obligation, and pay as their use of the tool grows.
• Sales
  Traditionally, all sales at PBwiki were handled over the web. In 2008, the company hired several people to provide more direct contact and service for customers. Many orders are still processed on the web, but when new customers need to ask a question, or existing customers need something, they’ve got the option to talk with a person. This is important for business growth. Even though the web provides such an opportunity to automate processes and handle sales 24×7, nothing replaces a human presence when you need it.
• Support
  In the beginning of 2008, support was provided via online forums. A customer could ask a question, and get an answer in a matter of days. Now, the company aims to answer questions within one business day for free accounts, and several hours for paying customers. PBwiki provides support from Sunday-Friday to accommodate the company’s growing customer base outside North America.

What’s in Store for 2009?

Chris says PBwiki’s customers come from the most knowledge-work intensive industries, like design, law, and consulting. In 2009, the company plans to focus on understanding how customers are using PBwiki. Through conversations and surveying to understand what’s really changing businesses, PBwiki wants to better understand what common business problems customers are solving with the wiki, and how that know-how can be shared with other customers.

Two of PBwiki’s most requested features are nested folders and task management. People who have used folder-based organizing want this, and the company is working on how to provide a capability for organizing that satisfies people who are used to the folder paradigm, but also exposes them to newer organizing techniques, such as tagging. Customers have also asked for the ability to track tasks in the wiki, and the company is working on this as well.

RD2 – How a PBwiki Customer Uses Wikis for Design Workflow

RD2 is an interactive design firm in Dallas, Texas. The company uses PBwiki instances with each of its design clients instead of trading specs, design mockups, and conversation over email.

When RD2 begins work on a new website for a client, they set up a PBwiki instance to serve as a live mockup. Staff build out the skeleton of the site; each pbwiki page contains the draft info that will be on the final website. Once the skeleton is ready for client review and feedback, RD2 staff introduce the client to the wiki, give them login accounts, and ask them to go through the wiki and leave feedback using the comment feature.

Using the wiki as a live mockup and feedback tool reduces unnecessary volume of email, the potential for lost or mis-communication, and makes it easier for the client to review the draft as often as necessary, and at whatever time is convenient. Less time spent in meetings and on conference calls means RD2 staff can spend more time directly working on all client projects, and finishing them faster.

Once a client has reviewed information, offered feedback, and approved it for publishing to the live website, RD2 staff lock down the wiki pages from further editing so that they don’t have to worry about checking for additional changes before publishing the content. Once an iteration of content has been published on the live website, the wiki pages are unlocked so the staff and clients can revise and update the information as needed in preparation for the next iteration of the live website.

A wiki is excellent for this type of work because it serves as an easy to update staging area for a website. Clients don’t have to worry about dealing with complex HTML and other site code, or “breaking” anything on the live website when they want to update information.

The wiki also allows for both formal and informal feedback and approval mechanisms. Leaving comments on a page can serve as an excellent informal system while development is in process, and locking down pages from further editing indicates formal approval to publish the contents of that page.

A Note About SharePoint

Chris says 70% of PBwiki’s business customers also have SharePoint. He believes that’s good evidence that multiple products can – and should – co-exist. There’s no need to replace one with the other; instead it’s better to employ each one for its best uses.