Do not trust market research..
Hi all!
Two years ago, while we were in lockdown, I had a brilliant idea for a small business.
The idea is simple: Allow people to 'swap' books with people nearby. Anyone could register and add their own books by just adding the title (no need for picture or anything else), the whole process takes 10 seconds. Then people could easily search for book nearby and ask to borrow it.. simple (so I thought)
As I have read many IH post, I was well aware that before starting a project I needed to make sure that my idea was good and that people were interested in it..
So I decided to run a couple of questionnaire and did some market research. I tried to reach people that I did not know and avoided friend and family.
The result was brilliant, with the help of all this people I was able to define the 'feature' that people wanted and developed the web app...
A few months later https://booksbank.co.uk was alive..
Unfortunately, all the hard work did not pay back as much as I wanted (bear in mind that the app is free and was not intented for revenue).
The usage of the app has been very slow. I did lots of advertisement and marketing, but even if people landed on the side and even if they registered on the site, no one actually was willing to add books.
As a last resource I reached out to the people that filled the questionnaire +most of which registered to the site), and asked what stopped them to add books to lent. I was trying to understand if the process or anything needed to change..
The answer was unfortunately not what I was expecting, or more importantly not something that I can fix. Everyone mentioned that they did not have time, or they would do it when they find time, etc...
Overall the project as it stand will fail as without people adding books (and lots of it) is not possible to start traffic and or usage...
I have learned an important lesson from this, next time, I will surely develop a very quick MVP or alpha and really see if people are interested in the idea!
If any of you has any good idea on helping me revive booksbank or want any further information please let me know as it would be great to see the system being used.
Simone
You say "small business" and later on you say "not intended for revenue". Which is it?
Anyway, this probably scratches someone's itch, you just didn't find them yet.
It is not for profit.. I said business as it was run and build as a product but it was not built with any monetarisation in mind..
I would try to look for partnerships who could add in lots of books that people might be interested in to get. Who knows, a book club, local library or similar book exchanges might be willing to cooperate.
I’ve learned from a friend with experience in entrepreneurship that an incentive is always necessary. Sometimes it is implicit in the very product or service, and sometimes it needs to be explicitly designed and implemented.
My thought is that you should find an incentive for people to add books. It doesn’t have to be monetary either, just something to make them care, and put the app in their minds.
Something as simple as those ‘streak’ counters that PH or Duolingo have, are incentives. I mean, I read way more on my iPad because Apple Books shows me my current streak.
Sit down for a minute and put yourself in the user’s shoes, and think what would make you WANT to add books, what would make the whole process enticing.
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Also, if they say they have no time, you could try making the process of adding books easier and quicker. Through integrations with other apps, a widget, a browser extension, something like that.
That’s too bad it didn’t work out! It sounds like what I’ve read where you ask people “would you use this?” Or “what do you think of the idea?” And they tell you they like it and would use it. I guess the only way to know in a lot of cases is to try.
So many ideas fail in the real world because of the extra steps that have to be taken to use them. There’s just too much friction to make it a regular thing people would use.
By the way, are you familiar with the little library system? It’s not quite what you described since it’s just boxes out in front of people’s houses where you can leave a book or take a book.
Yes I am and can you believe that I had already a call with one of their board member (it is a SAn Francisco charity), as they wanted to buy my idea!!! Ahahaha...
I turned them down as I did it for the people, but knowing that it did not work I should have said yes! Ahahaha