Looking for inspiration.

Hi Casey, I feel your pain, being a solo founder myself, it can be quite challenging sometimes not having someone, who shares the same passion, to talk about ideas.

In Germany, we have a few price comparison sites like Idealo or Geizhals and I assume it's a quite competitive market with some big players.
An idea could be to limit your product to a specific product category, let's say products for babies or mountain bikes, so you start off in a niche. This way you could target a specific audience (new parents, mountain bikers) with Facebook ads, in forums, Reddit or whatever and maybe get some feedback. In general, I'd try narrowing down your target customer base as much as possible.

Hey Casey, going through the same phase with https://tribyo.com, i can feel you pain.

May be naive, but if you have the capital, targeting key works like "best price for X" on google probably works.

I personally google the product name to see different prices, it will probably attract my if i see "best price for X" as a first result.

Great product, I'm gonna use it. Keep it up 👌

Great ideas... Just remember to nudge every user to share on social media how much they saved using let's compass. Keep rocking.

Casey, solo founder here. I can relate to what you are going through. There are more solo founders than you think; shoot me a PM and I can invite you to a solo-founder WhatsApp group.

One thing you have going for you is that there are similar apps out there. So I don't think educating users will be a problem unless you want to target some completely untapped niche.

I'd focus on your second point - finding users who will love your product. I am going to assume your product is better than what is out there, because if not, then you have bigger problems.

One approach I have used at the very beginning is cold outreach. I found users on social media and bloggers who indicated that they use my competitor's product. I was lucky because many bloggers' emails were exposed for me, but you can also message on social media.

When you message them, I recommend not mentioning your product at all. You can say something like, "I noticed you use XYZ... I am doing research on price comparison apps and how they can better. What is one thing you would add to XYZ? etc..." A good book on this is The Mom Test.

Cold outreach takes a long time, but it gets you into conversations with people who already use apps like yours... a very valuable audience to learn from. Only after you have a better understand of your market should think about the traditional acquisition channels like SEO, content marketing, etc... otherwise, you are shooting in the dark.

Just my 2c. Good luck.

Hi Casey,
I agree with @sunshowerlisa's idea of finding communities that are interested in saving money. One that comes to mind is https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/.

You could suggest your product as a helpful solution to questions like the one below.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/8tk4ig/how_can_i_go_about_getting_the_best_deal_on_a/

I know reddit is very sensitive to spam or "shilling", but I think as long as you focus on being helpful and providing value to the community then you should be ok.

Hey Casey, eCommerce marketing manager and regular online stores user here. Just came across your extension and tried to test it immediately. My (very subjective) observations:

• As a customer I honestly can't see a real value in it. Tried a few random products (from shoes on Amazon to Drones on Ebay) and found better deals like 5 to 10% cheaper. It's seems like to much pf a hassle to use another website/register there/read their delivery conditions to save a few bucks.
  So I didn't quite understand - does this extension help me to save my money or my time? Or simply take away my frustrations 'what if somewhere there this product costs 20 or 30% cheaper and I just haven't found it?"
• Tried to compare the result Compass showed to the ones I have after a quick manual research. Was very disappointed. This is a product on Ebay and whay Compass showed me https://gyazo.com/c0aedc3211088c3cfad279669cde7b3c, found the same on Amazon but actually even cheaper and Walmart https://www.walmart.com/ip/Fujifilm-Instax-Hello-Kitty-Instant-Film-Camera-Pink-International-Version/146650127.
  Well after that surely I will have little or no trust in the Compass and probably won't use it again.
  What tweaks you can make in the product development strategy (again, very subjective)
• You can make it geo dependable. Your users are all over the world and some of the data that this app provide is simply useless for them. For example I live in Lisbon, Portugal, and a lot of global online stores simply don't deliver here (Target) or their delivery is ultra expensive (majority of stores on Ebay).
• Refer to certain professional needs. For example photographers and videographers always try to find great deals for equipment as it's always quite pricey. Compass delivers real value for them.
• No educational content on the landing page/weak benefits highlighted. I didn't understand if the extension is free and there's no additional features listed that I can get if I register than why I should give you my e-mail?
  Hope it helps. Good luck Casey!

Hey Casey,
Is this US only? Tried on a few UK websites (including amazon.co.uk) but had no luck.

I love this idea, especially for larger purchases.

The problem with trying to save money online, at least for me, is the thought of having to stop what you're doing and spend 10 minutes or more searching for cheaper options. Or going on dodgy promo sites to look for codes that don't work 99% of the time. I've been using Honey recently which has made things easier and means you literally have no interruptions.

But, when it doesn't, the thought of wasting 10 minutes repeatedly testing codes isn't worth it, unless I know I could save 10-20% or more on a purchase.

I think it would be good to know, on average, how much people have actually saved using the plugin. Compare that to the time effort required to show how it's worth it.

Some ideas:

• You could turn that into a blog post with a list of real products in April 2019 that, using your plugin, can be found cheaper elsewhere.
• Could you do a video/gif showing a real example of finding a cheaper product?

I will put from my personal perspective here, so IMHO.

I shop online a little, few times for year. Most of the time, I simply go to amazon and do a search. Onboarding is simple: I open my browser/mobile, go to a website and type. My pain point is most of the time, there is so much results that I lose interest and simply pick first item, I don't want to waste time on search and compare prices.
So your work fits on my pain point. BUT I need to use Chrome (I use Firefox) on desktop browser.
I'm trying right now to see if it is working, BUT:

1. do you popout with a registration (why on start? )
2. I've tried with amazon search on https://www.amazon.com/adidas-Mens-Seeley-Skate-Shoe/dp/B0106JK7S4/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=men+shoes+casual&qid=1554360868&s=gateway&sr=8-9 and found no better prices
   So I simply uninstall it and forget for now!

Now my analysis:

1. most of the people out there uses mobile phones, even for shopping (my wife does it): do you validate/search on this use case?
2. onboarding: I personally don't like too much drop my email around when I simply use a browser extension, you could ask it later (next day, week or so) to simplify onboarding
3. welcome page: https://www.letscompass.com/welcome I simply miss (without scrollling) examples!! I think examples should be on top, so anyone can understand quickly how it works. I found ui and ux perfect, but can confuse people if you don't provide a quick example
4. it is a browser extension: so you have to catch people with right browser (in your case Chrome): I think that is right decision, but I you are able to support more browsers (firefox or even Safari for macs?) this could open new markets
5. a lot of people I know uses amazon prime or services like that, so change online store is not always a good option: ecommerce stores are trying to force us to stay with them, but this is a trend, not a consideration.
6. is your extension working with game stores, like Steam ?

So in the end a target customer should:

1. know that your extension exist
2. use chrome for shopping
3. install extension with no problems
4. read/understand how it works
5. find on first/second search on a store a better price

Hope this could help :D

p.s.: have you tried to get feedback from women ? And observe how a woman uses all of this ? I mean a target group with little or no experience on computers but need to shop and find better prices ?

Oh, SAME though. Completely different space (cloud resources). But yeah, so many people think they're getting the appropriate price.

I wonder if there are communities around couponers? Some people get pretty intense about it, and it could be that you'd find a market there, esp if you can do some calculating shipping shenanigans to see if it's worth it for them to not buy through Amazon?

Hi Casey - I haven't looked at the product yet but I think I get the idea (sounds great). There's a site in the UK Money Saving Expert ( https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ ) which is pretty big. It's the perfect place to find people in your target market. I haven't been for a while but there are forums dedicated to saving ££. The other name which sprung to mind was Mr Money Moustache...I believe he has quite a following so not sure if there's a forum etc but people with the "thrifty" mindset is what I think you're trying to find. I guess the other group is people who love coupons - where do they congregate? Of course all of these groups will have subreddits full of ideas.
I'm sure you've thought of these before but good luck getting inspired - well done for getting s*@t done :-)