[help] I've made a few small sales - is the idea validated? Need input on next most important thing
I've built a fairly simple app to build portfolios for developers and programmers. It's very rough at the moment, but I've made a few sales which is incredible. I always said that if I just got a sniff of success with one of my projects I'd be able to build on it. But I'm not sure what to focus on now....
Should I
1 - re-do the UX so that there's less steps and the user sees their portfolio quicker (already made some progress on this in a feature branch)
2 - either build some more designs, or pay someone to design some. At the moment there are just two, people probably want more choice (and better designs)
3 - Add a hosted option. At the moment, the app just spits a single HTML page at the user after they pay. This isn't idea and the user then has to figure out how to get it live on a domain they own, or their GitHub pages. The app SHOULD be able to deploy to their GitHub pages, should I work on that?
4 - Something else??
I've had massive encouragement from the community here and also in the Indiesprints Slack chat, would really appreciate some objective criticism as to what you guys think my next priority should be.
Cheers!
Contact the users who have already purchased and ask them:
Why they paid
Find out who they are specifically. It may be they are all PHP programmers for example
Then find a way to directly market to more of those people by selling them the benefits displayed in #1
Your ideas are all great but who knows if they'r even of value to the people who paid you money. Right now I'd keep it simple, get more people into the top of your funnel and then research those customers.
Mike sorry for the delayed reply but I've been keeping this tab open since you replied because I really want to do these 3 things!
Just last night I pushed an update that was blocking me for a while so I can finally move forward with some improvements to the app that capture users better and allow me to engage better before, during and after purchase.
Thanks for your comment it's genuienly helped a lot! :)
Chris
Congrats on your first sales, that's awesome to hear! I like the concept of your app and I think all 3 of your ideas are great next steps that would help round out your offering. In terms of what's next, I'm thinking probably 2, 1, 3 would be my order.
I think the hosted solution is a good idea, but will take some thought and probably experimentation with how that is priced. I would be kind of a nice feature to get an email from your app x days after adding a new github repo asking if I'd like to add it to my hosted portfolio site (and a nice way to have a positive touchpoint with your users). If you did that, I'd make it easy for users to opt-out of that suggestion feature.
I may have missed it when I ran through the app, but the ability to add custom entries would be nice (projects that aren't in github). I apologize if I just didn't see this as an option.
For #1 you could possibly auto select the top 4-5 most popular of their repos and land them on a preview page that also lets them select/deselect to get them to the preview faster.
Other thoughts... I personally wouldn't want my email posted like that. It would be nice to provide an alternative way to contact me without exposing it.
Have you talked to your first customers and asked them about their experience and how they are using the product?
Thanks a million for the reply Noah, really appreciate it.
Yep, I'm leaning this way myself. it's the hardest option though so I was hoping people would steer me away from this! But I know it has to be done. Eat the frog as they say.
Yes, absolutely, and a way for the app to suggest updates to your portfolio based on your activity (maybe you've learned a new language or library, for instance), would be a game changer I think.
Yep, absolutely, users should be able to add projects not in their GitHub, definitely, thanks for that
Yep was thinking this too, I may need a feature that lets visitors contact the developer without publishing their email... good point!
I've tried, but nobody has gotten back to me yet....
Thanks for the reply Noah it's gotten me thinking I was on the right track, now just have to execute. much appreciated!