I'm stuck after a break, any advice?
hello there
I've built nolly.io 10 months ago, took a break and had to focus on my career as a software engineer.
now I feel kinda stuck what to do next
I still believe in nolly's vision and it has a lot of potential
I still have no active users
Idk if I have to look for a marketing co founder since I think I suck at marketing and promoting things, I'm sure I can build great products but don't know how to sell
any advice would be really appreciated
Look, I am not a developer but I kinda am a technical person. But still I don't think I understand what this thing does. Maybe I am not your target market. And that's OK.
But...
But it seems nobody is your target market. Or there is an unalignment between your messaging and your target market. Hence zero active users.
And I am not gonna lie -- that homepage overwhelms me. It probably needs some kind of simplification. Bringing your USP to a more prominent position.
Giving any advice before seeing a lot of different things is very hard. Because the problem is unclear. Do you have traffic? Do you have sign ups? What is the conversion rate between the two? What is your heatmap tool saying? What is your page analytics saying? Did you try to talk with people who signed up? What are they saying?
You need to go to the root cause of the problem. Maybe try 5 Whys? Try to gather data to answer, reach to a root cause and move from there?
the thing is that I believe in he product and maybe bc english is my 3rd language I find hard times expressing what the problem will solve
that's why I said maybe I need a marketing co founder who can do that better than me since I'm a technical person
thanks for the review
I have nothing against your belief in your product. You should.
I am not saying you are better off abandoning the ship.
I am saying there is work to be done. By who is your decision. And maybe you need someone as a co-founder. But that's another beast, usually.
I agree with this. Though I was able to piece it together eventually, you should really update your landing page to have a clear and concise description of what your application does and what value it adds. Don't make potential customers guess. Tell them WHY they need it.
In a nutshell, Sell it! Make it simple, concise and clear..
I am in the same position. So, this may help.
Congrats on building and shipping a nice product :)
After checking out the site, there are two things that stood out to me.
First, I think the copy could be greatly improved. Have you heard the expression, "Sell the sizzle, not the steak"? I think your copy could actually use more steak. It never says in clear terms exactly what the product is. I understand that it is a tool for collecting user feedback, but I only know that from analyzing the images. If you removed all the screenshots, I don't think I'd know what you're selling. I would try taking all the copy into a notes app and rewrite it without any images until it stands up well on its own.
The other thing is that your market may be smaller than you realize. As someone with a recently launched product, I wouldn't have much use for your product yet, even though I wish I did. Only a small fraction of users are going to take the time to post feedback on a message board like this, and if I'm only getting 1-2 of these interactions per week, email works perfectly fine. I'm not so overwhelmed with emails that I can't take the time to respond to everyone. Again, I wish I could use your product, but I won't need it until I have tens of thousands of active users. I'm not saying you have to make your product for startups and small biz, but the market would be a lot bigger if you did. Only mid-to-large software companies would need this product the way it is, and I think that market is much tougher to reach. It could be a good opportunity to pivot.
Interesting product! I've seen a lot of product boards out there and yours seems to take an interesting experimentation approach (ex. user polls and such).
TBH - I don't think you need a marketing cofounder. Especially at a young state, I'd suggest keeping your costs to as little as possible. You could find many many marketing related tutorials and how-tos on Youtube and Google (that's how I learned tips and techniques fit for me). You could start small by participating in Reddit or other discussion forums. Then, you could try posting on Linkedin or cold emailing on LinkedIn. I think these are all great ways to get yourself out there.
The main thing that's got my previous startups moving is having a working ad channel running each day. Even if people are bouncing I've got something to optimise around. I like search because it forces me to optimise around something people are already searching for. E.g. "User Insights". If you reviewed all the competitors in your space you'll probably find what the most common terms they focus on are pretty quick as a starting point.
p.s. the tool looks great.
So you did use ads as a data gathering mechanism for an iterative approach? Interesting. Not a bad idea. But probably still a resource sink. If you have resources to back that, sure, why not.
Yeah basically iterating around a keyword until people would not bounce, then sign-up, then use it, then purchase. Each step is a new challenge. It's definitely a resource suck but it also builds a scalable acquisition channel if you can make it work.
Build something you really believe in.
If that's nolly then great, you already have.
Then split your time between building and marketing. You could for example do 1 week build, 1 week marketing. It's a shame you haven't been promoting nolly during your 10 month contract since (with all other things being equal) from scratch (no audience) it can easily take 6+ months to see signal in the noise.
Congrats on building and launching it! I like the design of your product and the concept!
I'm not good at marketing too, so I talk this carefully. Maybe it would be better if you add some use cases in the landing page or a YouTube video that shows how customers use this product.
Also, launching it on Product Hunt could be helpful..? if you didn't it yet. Actually, I just launched my product on Product Hunt yesterday. I'm realizing marketing is so hard.
Congrats on building and launching it. That's one of the toughest parts. I think you should only keep working on it if you really love and believe in this product and the problem you're solving.