I just lost my first customer
One of those “I just won my first customer” posts inspired me to share my story too. I’m not writing this to be pessimistic or to drag other Indie Hackers down, but to share what what indie-hacking means to me at the time.
Last week, I lost my first and only customer of findbetterquestions.com. I’m actually not sure whether I should continue to spend my time on the product.
It’s been 3 months now. The last 1-2 have been focus on marketing, but in September I’ll double down and see what’s possible with the product.
I’m currently even working on an ebook to promote my business. It should allow me to burn a little money on ads. I’ll also repurpose all its content and only then will I decide how I’ll continue with it.
Winning the first customer is a huge motivation. Losing him wasn’t so much. But that’s no reason to give up 💪
Hey Emil,
This is a good opportunity to get in touch and ask for a quick 'Why?'. Those are extremely strong signals and will help your product immensely.
This might fix issues on the product site, let's look at your marketing and sales. I look at your site and on first glance, it's something I might actually use. I get a lot of business from Quora, so I'll actually download this and tell you what I think.
Was this your first paying customer or first ever user? If you had trial users before that didn't convert to paying, reach out as well and ask them why.
So, I just downloaded your software. First thing: I am on Mac and the fact that this software isn't loaded from App Store kind of leaves a bitter taste on my tongue.
First thing, you hit me in the face with a sign up form. God dammit mate, first thing I want to do is to get my hands dirty with some nice filters for Quora like you promised. Oh well, I'll do it.
You hit me again with an empty screen of 'Lists'. No explanation whatsoever (hint: you know these tutorial thingies where the whole screen gets a dark overlay and popups, add it.). I create a list and get asked for 'Sources'. Well, wtf are sources. I tab to Quora and type in a search term and put it in the field. I got a whole bunch of windows popping up. I log in, it closes and hits me with 'Something is going wrong while creating your list ☹️'.
At this point I'm slightly annoyed, but my buddy Emil said this is a cool tool, so I'll give it a second change (hint: you lost 70% of users at this point). Now I see the help field, I need to paste the URL of a question? Nice! I'm doing that and the task takes ages. I'm waiting for more than a minute, two minutes, and done.
Now I start to get it. I paste in a question and you show me similar ones. That's pretty neat. I'd love to have some more filters on this page, but that's cool. I'm not gonna pay $40 for this though. In 14 days, I'm gone.
To summarize:
Interview ALL your users
Make the onboarding smoother, I should never be confused. Also, add a real help page.
Bring that app size down. 150MB, god damn.
Overthink your pricing. The app is neat, but is it worth $40 per month? I doubt it, at least not yet.
I think you are onto something. I get tons of traffic and money from Quora and could use a companion tool. But listing a bunch of topics with the same tags is not worth $500 per year.
Task 1: Get more people to use the app by making the experience smoother
Task 2: Get your conversion rate up by personally reaching out to trial users.
Great reply @dqmonn - this is why I come to IH.
@EmilBruckner - read what @dqmonn has to say. This is very sound advice.
Nice reply @dqmonn
I have a question for you since you have written a detailed analysis on your ideas on Quora.
So, how about a service that analyses all the Quora data for that given week for your given keywords and gives you the list of top 20-30 questions that are gaining traction and are best to invest your time on that week. Kind of a weekly report with list of best questions that you can invest your time to answer instead of answering every random question.
Does that impress you? If yes, how much would you be willing to pay for such a service?
That's kind of what this tool is doing
Thank you so much for actually download the app to give me such an honest and we'll written feedback.
About the customer I lost: He didn't really use Quora in that timeframe, so I guess I'm better off talking to other customers (I did contact him though).
I have about 25 users who didn't convert (yet). I’ll definitely contact every single one of them.
Interesting to read that you prefer the App Store. I personally never use. But will consider publish the app there now.
The way you’ve written this really helps me understand where you struggle during the onboarding. Thanks!
I have my analytics in place, thanks God do I not loose 70% there.
Since you’re a potential customer: How would you price the tool? I think that the price drives quite many trial users away, so I might change it.
Definitely talk to your users.
As for pricing: I'm not sure. I get a little monetary value out of this, but it's not crucial for my success. Nice-to-have products always have it a little harder. I'd maybe go for annual pricing of $100/yr (around $8/month) and $10 for monthly pricing.
My thinking behind the pricing is that some people get a lot of value out of Quora, so the tool can be worth a lot more than 10$ per month.
If it’s just a game between 100 or 200 views per answer, I totally agree, no one would pay 39$ for that.
But I think that even if someone doesn’t have huge success on Quora, they should be able to use the tool.
I would prefer a very cheap and a pro plan, but I don’t know what people would think if a plan that only does a little more does 10x of the cheapest one …
Any take on that?
Your pricing isn't set in stone. Your app currently does one thing, and that one thing it does quite okay. Still, it's maybe a 50% improvements over just using the Quora search, and that's not enough to charge $40. There are other products which charge $40 per month (again, that is $500 per year!) but those provide crucial value.
People expect certain things from a $500/yr app. It has to be flawless and provide extreme value (more than 10x of what the app costs). If you're not there yet, you'll just lose the customers faster. Exactly what happened here. It's almost impossible to get them back once they are gone.
Start with ~$10 and see how it goes. You'll get more users which will help you refine your app. As the value of your application grows, you can scale your pricing accordingly. I'm very confident that you'll be back to charging $40 in no time as your application becomes a really useful Quora assistant.
Thanks for all your suggestions!
By the way, my customer didn’t use Quora at all in that time, so it’s quite obvious that he churned.
Seems to be a good idea to set the pricing lower now and just add new plans with new features and higher prices once they are out.
I just looked at your website. Interesting idea.
However, you simply don't tell me who I am, what my problem is and then how you are going to solve it for me.
The top third of your page should be all about me and my problems. You need to tell me who I am - and fast! - and why I need you and what you will deliver.
Only then should you go into the details of how your system works.
Tell me who I am
Tell me what I want to achieve and why
Tell me why you are the solution
Show me the solution
Your "visible third" isn't working hard enough for you at the moment.
You're right
Thanks for this.
This is a really solid framework to consider for landing page design. Thanks for sharing!
I just thought a little more about your comment, as I’m now rewriting the landing page.
I actually don’t really know what the #1 problem is.
Some people go to Quora for brand awareness, while others only think about traffic.
I’m not really sure how to best address this.
I also can’t really think of one person I’m talking to. I don’t really know what you want to achieve. Some people don’t care about traffic from Quora, some only think in numbers.
I also just posted a question about this here on IH: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/folks-using-quora-for-marketing-why-are-you-on-quora-7ffede45fb
So you tell people up front: "Whether you want to build brand awareness or simply to increase your traffic, you need ..."
The point is to keep the visitor to your site for long enough to showcase your product and get their interest. People have a limited attention span so you have to catch them fast.
When I say "tell people who they are and what they want", you're not looking to capture their life stories but just to tell them enough about their needs / objectives for them to give you their time.
Makes sense. I'll think about it. Thanks
Ha, there's a couple things worth considering, assuming your tool really works:
Sell a full-service to start: clients pay (more) for you to spend time answering questions and driving traffic/getting sales for them. If they see it working and want to cut costs by taking it in-house, they'll sign up for your SaaS.
Sell stuff yourself or make money via affiliated links; you'll have an advantage over the competition with your tool on Quora.
Regardless, these two things will force you to use your product a lot in a real-life setting - not an artificial fake test. Either you'll realize what functionality is missing, market demand for a social-media service, or you'll get a more quantitative sense of how effective your product is.
Thanks for the tip.
I actually built the initial version of this for myself, and I think once you get the hang of it, it does it’s job pretty well
The problem is probably rather to get people to get it (better support & onboarding)
Selling it as a service is also a great idea, thanks.
Any suggestions where to offer it?
In case you haven't tried this, have you tracked down companies that post tons of answers on Quora? You could likely contact the person that's making all these posts to make their existing workflow easier.
If they don't bite, you can go after their competitors that aren't on Quora. Seeing one company in that industry use Quora a lot validates that this approach works, and that your consultancy can get the ball rolling.
Did the first one, but your second tip is a great idea too!
Might try it when I find time. Thanks!
Curious. Is it possible to extend this tool to other networks? Sub-reddits? Facebook Groups?
Theoretically, yes
But I haven't looked into that yet
Hey Emil - thanks for being open to share this set back.
I saw that you've tried to contact this customer but he / she hasn't responded yet.
What other feedback have you received from users who go through the trial period (but don't convert)?
When going from 0 --> 1, feedback (the good, the bad, and the ugly) is one of our main life-lines to get closer to product-market fit.
(I'm going through that phase of the journey right now too!)
And separately, why is this an app I have to download? Why not a web app?
Cheers!
Jonathan
PS - happy to take this conversation private. If you want, email me (jonathan@tribefive.me)
The patterns I see so far for leaving trial users:
They don't really understand what to do with the app (I have to educate them on a higher level on what to do with the data won by the tool)
I loose about 15% during on onboarding. Definitely way to high.
Some people never actually answer any of the suggest questions. Mostly the don't answer any questions at all in that time, like my previous customer.
The price is too high.
Desktop vs web app:
This is definitely the #1 FAQ. People have to log into Quora, so I have to provide my own browser. It's a technical problem.
You can find my email on my profile
Hello Emil , My name is Edward J. Ross - WWW.linkedin.com/in/edward-j-ross-447b8214b
I am the Founder & CEO of SearchTile.com , a New York City based technology firm specializing in Product Design, Artificial Intelligence, Search Engine Technology, Robotics, and IOT.
SearchTile.com is The World’s 1st and Only fully 3-dimensional search engine , powered by IBM Watson - Which will launch on IH September 7th & PH on September 9th .
I liked the BASIC concept...however you page was so flat & colorless
and ..the price ...OYE !
The problem besides ......what Dqmonn said...
Is that your SEARCH TOOL only uses 1 source to generate revenue
yet , customers have a wealth of FREE information at their finger tips...VS. $ 39.00 per month for your service .
Which is kind of high just for a Quora assist tool .
That's what your competing against .
Expand what you offer...come up with more product options for users..then you can command that price point .
Trust me when I say , I have been working on search related concepts for the last 3 years .
Thanks for introducing yourself
I’d rather focus on getting a few things really well first, before adding more features.
Would probably be better to cut the price
Have you been able to get in touch with this customer and ask him why he left?
I’ve contacted him, but no response so far.
But it’s not too much of a surprise to me. He really didn’t use the tool. Most people used the tool more in trial than he did in two months.
If you take a look at my product, you’ll see that it’s something that you have to use actively. It doesn’t do anything for you in the background. Maybe that’s a bad thing …