Has anyone started with a beta and prelaunch plan
I am currently working on a platform that has three different types of user groups. I am pretty sure that I would need to test it out in Beta first, and then slowly start to market to each user group for growth.
I would love to hear anyone else's experience of where they started when they began to build a community from testing to growth, to launch! Mistakes and lessons learned (if any).
I started my last project, Focus plus with a community, then build a MVP and now I'm in beta.
The next step is to start a presales campaign, and then sell the v1.
Starting with a community was definitely a good idea BUT we probably started it too soon. It's super hard to keep a community alive when you have nothing to show for weeks.
Although, that's how we get our first feedback.
Now we're in beta, 100% focus on growing the community and iterating on the product.
We released a 0.2 version which close to something I dreamed of as a productivity tool, except the UI.
We're going to hire a designer and start the presales soon.
That's a VERY good point..once you start a community, you have tonkeel it alive. That might be some additional feedback that I need to consider for sure.
I have developed a milestone system that rewards posting. When milestones are hit, users can get items specifically in the mail.
Haven't thought of building a community around prelaunch. But have been building a waitlist for my product Flezr - No code tool to build websites/webapps with data from Google Sheets, Supabase, Airtable and other traditional data sources.
So far, hit 60+ people for the waitlist.
May I know how are you going to use beta? Are you building the waiting list for users?
I made a waiting list tool (http://getlaunchlist.com) to collect email addresses with referral management.
The problem with the beta launch is users lost interest or forget about your website if they are not invited in a day or two. The conversion rate is low as compared to directly signing up. I suggest communicating with the users on the waiting list to keep them interested.
That is a good point about conversion rate. However - if you amplify your brand/company then people are willing to wait. As long as the "hype" remains consistent.
I am using three different types of accounts and it is more as a supplier of news, commenter, and viewer. Similar to how Pinterest had to have its "inventory built" and it was built around bloggers at the time submitting content and eventually others had the ability to have accounts.
How you are manage three different types of accounts. As I have just 2 accounts for https://paintballfire.com but get quite confused and hectic. Kindly share you management tips so that I could learn something from it.
Managing three accounts? Each one has a specific user role. They have certain features. I started off with all features available and then I just restricted access for certain features depending on each account type.