How to Validate For e-Commerce SaaS?
I've joined Discord and Slack channels for e-commerce, and they stink. Basically bunch of people trying to help you start an e-commerce site, either agency or some other service.
My customers are e-commerce stores that are large enough to be leaving Shopify. Where do I go to validate my idea or reach these e-commerce customers? I know there is a need for what I'm making (social proof notifications) because there apps that exist for Shopify already. How do I reach these larger e-commerce customers?
Cold emailing to e-commerce has quite a low conversion - e-commerce stores get so much spam, definitely try it but you'll need to have a creative email drip to really try to trigger (make sure it's really different from the rest of the spammy marketing emails).
When I used to work in e-commerce I actually remember sales people cold calling and getting much more of my attention than with emails. Also try to get into networks of e-commerce people in your city (from personal experience, they hang out together A LOT) - learn from there, hang out with them, then try to sell. For e-commerce the website is the biggest asset so building trust is super important when it comes to sales and as you are targeting bigger organisations even more so.
I have worked with Shopify in the past and they actually have a Shopify pro plan which is for enterprises and some really big players are using it. From what I remember it's pretty good, but super expensive, and it has some limitations when it comes to coding languages, payments etc. I would advise to check out what they are doing and allow for more flexibility and price competitiveness - even e-commerce store making 3,5,10M/year don't want to end up spending 30k+/year on a Shopify website, at that point custom dev becomes worth it.
Thanks! This is really helpful advice! Do you know what kind of e-commerce store uses an agency to set stuff up or install apps? The agencies may also be a customer segment I could target, but I don't know context around when e-commerce stores would seek help from agencies. Maybe established retail stores that want to sell online?
From personal experience and those around me, the moment you start hitting 1M+ of revenue after COGS (gross profit) that's when between commissions and overhead costs of shopify (and similar) it starts to become really worth developing, whether inhouse or with an agency. I was mainly talking to food businesses, with retail I know the numbers need to be a little higher to get to that stage - just because margins are very different.
You need to find your angle with agencies, from what I've seen there are 2 kinds in the market: those that build everything custom made and make it very hard for the client to change anything without their involvement (aka -> they bind the client to their service), which is painful and expensive, and those that work with tools such as webflow, shopify (or similar), and many more user friendly tools allowing for the company to customize stuff themselves after. Happy to help if you have specific questions :)
Right now send out ten cold emails to eCommerce stores you think need your help. Propose your solution. If they're interested and are willing to pay, then you have validated your idea.