From Beta to Launch - How to approach our early users?
We are soon ready to move on from Beta after acquiring enough users using our solution.
The apps using it paid a small signup fee ($25) and are using the platform now without any charge.
We are soon ready to launch the "live" product with a monthly subscriptions model. What do you recommend to do with these users? Should we offer them a free three months? or make them pay like everyone? Do it by email or contact them individually?
We have informed upon signup that the price would increase after Beta.
I would love to hear what's considered a fair move or if you had any experience with that kind of move.
Start getting money as soon as possible. Free-only won't be very useful for product development.
Discounts are ok, but don't do -80%. If people don't pay reasonable price, than there is a problem with product's value
Consent in full! However it is not always possible to get a customer for an expensive service right away. Sometimes you have to try other methods.
Yes I think offering them some discount makes sense. It's good to treat the early users well.
Thanks for your opinion!
Consider making the product available to the selected user for free for a short period of time. Then we ask him about his feelings, collecting valuable feedback. If we decide that what he gave was valuable, we can, in return, offer him a great promotion for a 6-month or an annual package. 😊
We are now at the beta testing stage. We have developed a no-code builder for creating chatbots.
The main goal of our beta testing was to get feedback from the first users and to complete the constructor with the required functions. The tests started at the end of December. Within a month, we had gathered a lot of material for further work on the constructor's functionality. We built an audience of the first 500 users. In beta-testing, we managed to conclude six major collaborations, which brought our designer to another level.
There were no financial goals. We understood that it would be a waste. Still, it allowed us to research user expectations and adapt the designer to them.
The next step in expanding the platform's functionality will be the launch of boxed solutions from inqoob partners. And this is where we want to launch monetization and sell these boxed solutions.
Also, we will charge for the pricing of the constructor itself if anyone needs more advanced features.
Give your early customers a discount (25%) on the subscription price. Gratitude. and if they found value they would happily stay on.
I think you should consider just letting them keep using it for the original sign-up fee. Presumably there's not so many of them that it's going to make or break the business, and they paid via providing lots of feedback to help you get out of beta 😊
Thanks for your opinion. There are 80 of them 😅 I'm afraid we can't just let them keep using it for free. But we are looking for the right way to reward them.
We offered our 80 beta users a 50% discount when we took it out of beta and turned on paid plans, but we didn't charge them anything upfront to access the beta program.
My point was just that if you company is going to succeed you'll have thousands or millions of customers, at which point these 80 are irrelevant. If the revenue is key right now then I agree that you should see what you can do to get them paying. It's just that they've already paid you via money and early adopter feedback, both of which are valuable currency for early stage businesses, so make sure it's really generous to reflect that!
If I end up increasing the price of the WBE Space I will ask the members if they would be willing to pay more for it (explaining that it is crucial for the continuity of the community) but that I would also not make it mandatory so that they could always keep the initial price.
There's a quote among VC circles: "Ask for funding, get advice. Ask for advice, get funding".
I think you can apply this to early users as well. Sure, try asking directly for a sign-up, but also try asking for advice as well (and in order for someone to give you good advice they'll have to check out your product).
Oh this one worked for us! We have asked potential users to advice us then after checking our app, one of them even said he will promote our app to his community. Awesome
Broke everything down in detail on initial user acquisition - gum.co/10kroadmap
Relying too much on familiar acquisition channels can actually be a major disadvantage for startups. They may be missing out on opportunities to reach new customers through different channels. Additionally, they may not be able to keep up with the latest changes in technology and marketing that could help them grow their business.
We offer simple to use tools to get into the habit of promoting your startup and provide weekly insights on what's working for other startups.
You can sign up for our newsletter 100kMRRplan, If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.