First-time indie hacker needs feedback on validation strategy
I have a reasonably simple idea for a niche mobile app. I have a technical background, but don’t have a lot of business experience. There are existing (bad) apps in this small niche. My hypothesis is that a better designed and better marketed app with a few new features can gain market share. I have not written any code.
I want to validate this idea with the following strategy:
- Put up a simple but well-done landing page (following advice from @julian)
- Ask for preorders on the landing page: i.e. ask people to pay for the application and wait for it to be delivered. I don't want people to be like: yeah that seems cool, or I could use that maybe. I need to understand: will a person pay enough money to justify my time. The "value prop” of the app needs to be actually tested with money.
- Promote the app with a fixed ad budget to drive traffic to the site and test my value prop
- Collect emails through the preorder process / ad traffic using mail chimp. Email individual users manually to understand why they preordered, what software they are using etc. Use the mail list to do customer research
- If I have N preorders, go ahead and code it.
Questions:
- Any tips on point #2? How do I sell a preorder?
- Any tips on point #3? How can I pick an ad channel? I know only a very little about online ads. What kind of budget is reasonable?
- Any tips on point #5? How do I decide what N should be?
- Anything I am missing in this strategy? Anything I should be asking about but am not asking about?
Trending on Indie Hackers
I think these days it would be tough to ask for pre-orders of an unproven app built by an unproven team/business with so many choices already available as you mentioned in your space. If you are working in a crowded or competitive market, I think you would likely need to have the MVP available for users to see what makes you different or have at least some real influencers behind your product with quotes and testimonials to build trust / confidence in your offer.
You can ask for beta testers always to get feedback and help prove the product market fit.
I think whether or not pre-orders will work depend mainly on one thing:
How well-known and respected are you in the target community/market?
Ask yourself, "why would someone trust me as a company/person to deliver what they're paying their hard-earned money for?"
IMO, if you aren't a super popular / trusted person in your niche, then a more reasonable way to validate your idea would be to put up a landing page as you described, with buttons to sign up for your different price points. When a user clicks the button, you collect their email and display a message like "We're not ready yet for launch, we'll email you when we are". You at least filter out users who are purely looking for a free product, or those who aren't at all interested in your solution.
As an added bonus, you build a highly qualified list of leads from your early signups. You can start surveying the users whose emails you've collected, and determine their price sensitivity and willingness to pay, what they're looking for, and better figure out your product/market fit.
That is a really good idea. Thanks!