Looking for advice from hackers with ecommerce experience
I'm working on a CRO product for e-commerce merchants and I'm looking for a little feedback on the concept.
The product serves as a 3rd-party gift with purchase platform. Merchants can offer relevant 3rd party rewards to shoppers as an incentive to complete their purchase. The platform handles promotional assets, fulfilling the reward and measuring the impact on conversion performance.
As an example, imagine if Lululemon.com gave users that spent $50 or more a free class at SoulCycle or a free month of ClassPass. This platform would manage embedding the offers on Lululemon's store and manage the SoulCycle class redemption process.
Looking forward to hearing everyone's feedback.
Most agencies are ran by guys and gals just like us on IndieHacker and they are typically really cool to connect and give feedback or test out your product. I wouldn't be overly formal when reaching out because they will think you are trying to sell something.
I hear ya Iain, I think with a product idea like this, I would reach out to agency partners of the major platforms. That's what I usually do when I want to kick an idea around. You can find a page like this ( https://partners.bigcommerce.com/directory/) for almost any SaaS e-commerce platforms with a quick Google search or by just going to the platforms website directly.
Simply shoot any agency you see on there a message via their contact form on their website and 9 times out of 10 someone will reply back with some feedback or pass your message to the appropriate team member / stakeholder.
Hi Iain, I think its not a bad idea. I have been working in the e-commerce space for the last decade , primarily focused on templates and products targeting SaaS e-commerce platforms such as Bigcommerce and Shopify. The users on these platforms are very receptive to any product they percieve as one that will increase conversions, and the merchants on SaaS e-commerce platforms are highly underserved by the dev community in my opinion. Or, I can say for certain , the SaaS e-commerce space is a very untapped market opportunity for any indie hacker. Is your background in the dev or marketing side? What advice are you seeking?
Hey Quintin, thanks for the reply. I really appreciate the feedback. I'm most curious about how e-commerce marketing managers would feel about a 3rd party incentive on their site, and whether or not they feel like it would improve performance.
I've been a developer for most of my career, but for the last 3 years I've been in a bizdev role building partnerships for a company that sells media subscriptions to consumers.
I think partnerships are really powerful, and I want to build a platform that makes it easier for brands to work together to grow their businesses. Generally I think there's a willingness from brands to collaborate, but it's tactically hard to execute. The integrations can be clunky, there's often dev priorities and legal complications, etc. The process is full of friction. If a platform can make it easy to execute partnerships and clearly measures the positive impact I think it's a solid business case.
However, I'm not a marketing manager of an e-commerce store, so I'm looking for the hard truth from someone who knows better.