How much user feedback is 'enough' to validate prototype?
Hey IHs,
I built this prototype for my girlfriend who has a passion for pottery. You can check it out here: https://marvelapp.com/3f8c631
Her main problem is cataloging all her projects and with the relevant info and 'stages'.
My plan is to have her and myself talk to other folks in her pottery class and see if I can get any feedback.
My question though is at what point should I consider building it? I've thought about producing a landing page to capture emails and posting it on Reddit and other sites, but not sure if it's worth the trouble if say 10 people in her studio think it's helpful.
What do you all think?
You can replicate 99% of the functionality with a free version of Trello. My advice would be:
Good luck!
I like the 'Don't waste any time coding...' part. Thanks @louisswiss!
Hey @louisswiss!
So I've started talking to folks (step 1) and have gotten a few of them to say a price (step 2, albeit very low $1/mo for now) and have stopped short of step 3.
But I've fallen short of step 3 because I'm hung up on step 4: how do you get people to give money if I haven't already built a custom solution? Can you elaborate?
Same question for Paul Dessert below. Thanks!
Hi Tim,
Congrats on taking the next steps.
It's a bit more difficult in the B2C world I think. At $1/mo/user, I question whether you've really found product/market fit for a meaningful problem...
Have you thought about selling directly to the pottery class in a B2B SaaS model? By including referral programs, newsletters/notifications and perhaps a booking/reservation/ecommerce solution (later in the future), you might be able to get into the $50-100/mo/studio range with one sale, offloading the responsibility of onboarding individual users to the studio itself.
That would also make the sales process pre-product much easier as well - simply create a document/signup flow for the studios where they state 'when you provide us with a solution comprising features X, Y and Z, we will pay you $XX/month.' - bonus points for getting a credit card on file as well (you can pre-authorise with Stripe or a simple plugin like Paywhirl/Chargebee without actually taking payment).
Good luck and feel free to shoot me an email if you have any specific questions - my reply rate there is obviously much higher than here.
(Feedback from Paul is great as well)
First, research.
What do you want? 1$/mo is enough for pay your time?
Then Build it, with only one feature.
Ship it, make them pay for it. Repeat. Be brutal! But get your app on customers phone. Measure usage! Add feature, repeat. Don't waste time on think, do
p.s: my personal note: too much time wasted in think.
p.s.s: do real market/customer research is not thinking, there is an huge difference !
Thanks for the push, Vokail! I agree that doing is better than thinking sometimes. I tend to think a lot.
Same here!
But don't forget to listen what people is saying, feedback is valuable only when is understand
"but not sure if it's worth the trouble if say 10 people in her studio think it's helpful."
Ok, so let's say 10 people in her studio DO think it's helpful, and would pay for it.
Your research might show 7,000 small studios all over the country (or 700 or 70,000) that are similar in size and scope.
Sounds like a market to me :)
Good point. I think you're right - part of my anxiety of this project is it doesn't seem 'cool' enough. I think I need to get over it. Thanks Squiffy.
That all depends on your end goal. Are you going to do this for fun or do you want to turn it into a business?
If you're doing it for fun and experience, get started on it. You'll score some points with the GF ;)
If you're trying to turn it into a business, I'd recommend collecting payment up front. Or, at a minimum, collecting their email addresses. Just remember, the majority of people that say they are interested, will never buy.
Unfortunately, there is no magic number. Set up a landing page and drive some traffic to it. If you don't get a good response, try buying some targeted ad via Google Adsense or Facebook ads. Then, look at the numbers after a few days.
Good luck!
Hey Paul!
So I've talked to a few of my gf's fellow pottery students and did a little research on existing apps and it looks like there is definitely interest.
However, you're saying to try and collect payment upfront. How do I get people to pay upfront for something that isn't built? This feels like a chicken-egg situation. Thanks!
That's the hard part :)
Basically, be honest with the people you talk to. Let them know that you're developing the idea and need to get XX number of pre sales before you start to build. If the product doesn't ship, the money is refunded.
You'll need to give them something as an incentive to pre-order. Maybe 75% off. You just want them to enter their credit card info.
If you can get a few sales, great! If not, don't give up. A lot of people will be hesitant to pay up front. Although a strong indicator, it's not the only indicator.
I'd also collect email addresses. Say something like, "Notify me when it's ready". If you have a strong response, you might be on to something.
If you have zero response from both attempts, you might want to reconsider investing development time.
The key is testing. Try multiple angles. Get your data, then go with your gut.
Good luck!
Awesome, thanks Paul!