What counts as having good traction for a web app?
Web app that is free initially to gain users.
What would count as meaningful traction? perhaps in terms of user growth or even number of users?
Web app that is free initially to gain users.
What would count as meaningful traction? perhaps in terms of user growth or even number of users?
It depends on the audience, 'traction' is a broad term.
I think the valley principal of something like 15% week on week growth is very aggressive. Indie hackers are generally not building AirBNBs or Ubers.
For an indie project, firstly getting new users continuously signing up, and actually using the tool is the best initial hallmark of traction, and then increasing numbers of paying customers.
Depends on the product category. I've heard the following metrics from a few VCs:
Great traction for social consumer is 12%-20% week over week (WoW).
Other categories, 7% week over week growth is doing really well. You're probably on to something valuable with a decent TAM in this case.
These benchmarks fall apart if you're selling something very expensive. Say, you're selling two $300,000 license a quarter. You're WoW growth is abysmal but you get a pass because you can make so much money on just a handful of customers.
Let's be realistic here: 7% WoW growth is equivalent of hitting multi-million lottery. A fantasy.
The reality for most products, even those that are eventually successful, is very slow initial growth. You have to fight for each new user.
People even gave this a name "long, slow SaaS ramp of death" https://baremetrics.com/blog/long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death
If you're looking to set expectations for your self, expect a lot of sales and marketing work to get single additional sales.
If you expect a strong, steady growth, you'll most certainly disappoint yourself.
What is the meaning of "good traction" for you? Do you mean to validate your idea, to prove product/market fit, to raise an investment?
User growth is generally a good number to start with, but you should always look at the ROI - how much are you investing into achieving that growth and how much is your (potential) return.
Here's some charts of user growth other than facebook:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/chart-where-yahoos-tumblr-ranks-next-to-twitter-instagram-and-pinterest/276017/
https://andrewchen.co/social-network-marketing-getting-from-zero-to-critical-mass/