An unsuccessful competition and no growth (feedback wanted)
Just over a month ago I launched https://stripylobster.com to record fishing sessions and have really struggled to gain any momentum. I have run a competition for anyone who records a session during the month of June. With only a few days remaining the competition hasn't had the desired effect and the number of people signed up is still very low.
I have a Twitter and Facebook account and have posted about the competition on both, but I only have a few followers. I ran a Facebook advert which had lots of engagements but only a couple of people signed up and none of those went any further to actually use the site. The Facebook advert ran until the day before yesterday and yesterday's site traffic dropped to 0.
I would really like some feedback and ideas of where I should go from here. I'm not really happy with the finished application. There are so many ideas I haven't implemented but I feel they are not the most important thing given that people are not even creating an account to see what features are missing yet. The landing page could be better (I'm a full stack developer professionally but do very little design and mainly use frameworks like Bootstrap/Material) but I'm not sure exactly what I should do to make it better. The competition posts on Facebook are being seen but not enticing people to enter so perhaps the prize isn't good enough? Or is it clear enough what people need to do? Or perhaps the whole concept isn't right.
I would really appreciate any feedback or ideas you may have.
Thanks,
Ger
A few years back I was really into fishing and even used a few different crappy fish logs back then to track my catches. First off, I don't bring my phone with me when I go near water so needed something I can enter data in later. Second, it was just tedious to do all the time. The less I need to type the better. I think its a tough play just an isolated fishing journal. The whole reason I wanted to log my catches is so I could learn the best times to go to maximize my probability of catching something. Just logging the data didn't do much for me ultimately because in the end it was just that: a journal. I think it would be way more useful to me if it could look at the tides, the moon, the weather, and my history to tell me when to go fishing and what areas might be hotspots. Gimme a heat map of the shore in my area. I don't want to just log data. I just want to catch fish. Focus on how you can help me catch fish.
Yeah. +1 here. I honestly fish for about an hour every day (literally) for the last couple years. I would never use a fish journal.
What I do want to know though, is all the conditions present when I had a banger of a day.
Thanks for your feedback. I think it's clear from the feedback I'm getting is that I'm not describing the benefits clearly enough. The whole point of this is that it analyses the data for you, but I think my homepage reads more like it's just a log and the people who sign up have to trawl through their data themselves.
Your site peaked my interest, because I'm generally interested in data analysis. I'm not really the target audience. With that said...
Did your marketing send people to the main page or the competition page. If people come to the main page looking for a competition they maybe have gotten lost. When the site loads up there is nothing obvious and exciting telling me that there is a competition here. Perhaps adding a carousel of entries would also help get people to sign up. Is the prize something most fishermen find useful?
In terms of the pitch and content, I feel that the benefits or functions should be elaborated more. My take away right now is that I need to record and analyze data. Perhaps it would be better presented as the site will analyze data and provide recommendations to maximize your next fishing trip. Have a better catch with the power of crowdsource and machine learning.
Continuing from 2, perhaps the selling point here is a trip planning tool. User specfies the location, the tool provides recommendations. It can incorporate past catch data, the weather, pier and boat launch locations, local regulations, etc. Depending on the person's experience, more or less of this information can be helpful.
what is the purpose of the "Rigs" page?
Besides Twitter and FB, did you show your site to people in fishing groups on reddit or other fishing sites?
Thanks for your feedback, that's really helpful.
Some subreddits allow self-promotion as along as a post is tagged as such.
The rig page is a good approach. Perhaps there is a way to expand that. Maybe a blog or something. This post could give you some ideas:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-launched-my-product-on-reddit-to-get-1-500-sign-ups-and-300-000-page-views-133a6acd09
Thanks, there's lots of really good ideas in that post.
Great effort and site does looks interesting.
Speaking from POV of someone just landing on the site, I see myself asking - what does this solve for me as a fisherman? - e.g. remembering where my best catches were? understand bait vs. catch stats? having a place to show off my catches? improving catch rate / size? is this site for experienced fishers or beginners?
I think if things like that were spelled out, I think it would help with signups.
My suggestion to you is leverage existing communities of fishing enthusiasts. Reddit, FB, etc.
If there are none, then start one and invite your users to join.
I wanted to build something like this for a while, but then fishbrain came out. So if I were to ever do this again, it would require a major pivot. I'll tell you what I would do, since I'm finding success in another product and won't revisit it again any time soon.
As far as generating product market fit, I think you might want to change your target market.
Target fishing guides instead of the generic consumer. Allow guides to make profiles and then they could record catches of their clients. Maybe pictures and whatnot. Allow guides to create a profile that gets updated on real time and let them link the profile to their site. Maybe even make it embeddable and or give them the ability to make badges and put those on their site. Guides have little visibility and this could be a huge tool for them.
In addition to just "catch stats" record other valuable pieces of information. Use a weather api to input the weather at the time of catch - temperature, weather, wind, wind direction, etc. Use a tide/water api to input the tide, salinity, and water temperature and clarity (most of this is available via public api.
In the beginning, it starts as a good way to give guides viability without changing any of your functionality, then it can move into a data analysis tool that will help them make decisions on when and where to fish given certain conditions.
Thanks for your feedback. Until I had invested quite a lot of time into this I hadn't even heard of Fishbrain. In the last few months as I have been putting more research in / searching more fishing related terms in Google it seems like almost every other add I see online is theirs which is a little worrying.
The guides idea is a really interesting take on it and opens up opportunities I had not considered. Although it wouldn't be a massive pivot, I'm so limited by the time I can spend on it. I'm going to seriously consider how I can incorporate that without doing too much extra dev work. Thank you
Definitely the lading page needs some work, but the idea is good (haven't tried the product). I assume that you would ideally like to advance stripy lobster to an analytical tool for fishermen and hold competitions through the platform. The idea is good! I would like to know a bit more on that.
I think that the absence of traction is mainly based on the audience you are trying to approach. Facebook and Twitter posts, even though they might be inexpensive and easy, they are not targeting your ideal viewer. You have to find out where those fishermen interested to compete, are , and approach them directly. Maybe in communities or groups.
Furthermore, I would appeal to a recreational fishing group for further exposure and maybe I would ask them to help me with the competition and bring me some audience, in exchange for some Featured post or an SEO.
Thank you very much for your feedback. Running competitions though the platform is a very good idea that I hadn't considered (other than the current draw). I had thought about adding awards to gamify the experience, like get a badge when you catch your first fish etc. I could expand that to compare people's performance across the site.
The interesting thing about the Facebook posts are that the number of likes are often higher than the number of people who visited the site. So people are liking or sharing the post without even clicking it. I think you are right on the wrong audience comment. I'm going to spend some time contacting people who would be more interested.
What do you mean by "in exchange for some Featured post or an SEO"? Would this mean I would link to their site from mine in return to them promoting Stripy Lobster within their communities?
Yes, exactly. Furthermore, you can offer them to write some post or a blogpost to enhance their SEO, in exchange of some traction through referrals leveraging their platform.
"Do things that don't scale " Paul Graham
You need to talk to people who fish a lot and figure out whether they would need or use a tool like what you built. Only then you will know if you're gonna sink or swim. However, like the mom test book teaches be careful in how you formulate your question when you're doing discovery! Good luck!
If your social profiles are still pretty new, you won't get much reach there just yet.
Go spread the word in some existing online communities for fishing! Just on reddit you'll be able to easily reach more than a million fishing fans.
A couple of comments to this same tune and I couldn't agree more. As a YouTuber myself and someone who's also a fishing enthusiast, I'd try and see if you can't "hijack" some existing YouTube fishing channels audiences.
Reach out to some of these channels, show genuine interest in their content, give them some feedback on their channel then ask if they'd be willing to try out your product and give you some feedback.
We're always looking for new video ideas, incorporating your tech into their video might be interesting to them. Don't go after the mega channels, find channels >20K subs to start - their DMs are likely way less crowded!
Thank you, that's a great idea that I hadn't considered. I will find some channels to contact.
Some of my favorites although they vary in subs - some might be too big for this kind of thing, but hey, if nothing else I've provided you with some good YT content lol:
-https://www.youtube.com/c/NWFishingSecrets
-https://www.youtube.com/c/LowCountryFishing
-https://www.youtube.com/c/FishAholicTV
-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNqpN335uVY9Sx_ZK_WuOAA
-https://www.youtube.com/user/Landsharkfishingtv