Private Alpha Launches?
I am intentionally keeping the private alpha of Perligo small so that I can get manageable, dedicated feedback. I launched the invite-only alpha last Friday and now have 16 people trying the platform.
So far, the feedback I’ve received is exactly what I hoped for. A mix of bugs and feature request with some UX sprinkled in.
Since I’m trying to keep Perligo an intentionally small product, I think this private alpha was a great fit. How do you all view private alphas?
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We took the same approach for yadayadayada.io | It was very useful for initial feedback, validation, and it also gave us a chance to build out content before moving to an open beta. It’s a great approach, just don’t stay there too long!
Very cool! How long did you keep your private alpha going?
I think it was 2 months or so. Basically long enough to validate and fix a few things and practices deployments in our new infrastructure. Once we ironed that out and built 30+ lists we opened it up. Ranking on search engines takes a while so you want crawlers to be able to reach everything, so we wanted to move to an open beta quickly.
Yeah that makes total sense. Thanks for sharing!
I am doing something similar, although it is out there, people can sign up, but nobody knows about it. :) I have reached out to people to give it a try, just to find out if they would use it. If they say that they would use it, I would tell them what is involved - join discord, provide feedback, etc. Manage the right expectations and keep them involved. Then their account is upgraded, so they use it daily.
This works well so far. I have a group of people who are interacting on discord, discussing new features and where it is heading, using it (it is a bit different time tracker) on a daily basis.
As a way to validate the product, it works. 👌
That seems like a great approach as well. Are you marketing the site or is it just out there? I know you said no one knows about it, but is that intentional or just because the marketing hasn’t worked yet?
No marketing done yet, the site is live and accessible. I post on twitter from time to time what I am working on, which renders DMs with people wanting to test it out. Preparing for official launch on 18.3. on PH, there might be some prelaunch date on some other platforms. One month to go, we will see. :)
Very cool! Good luck with it. I’m rooting for you!
Thank you, I am looking forward to seeing where you will take Perligo! 🙌
I’m doing this with TypePerf.com . I think it’s a good plan but there are definitely tradeoffs.
I’ve only got a handful of users at the moment. This means feedback (and revenue) is much slower. On the other hand, I can ship much faster without worrying by about annoying users. It’s tricky!
Being able to ship updates and fixes quickly is key. I’ve found in this first week of the private alpha, I could get personal, direct feedback from a user and ship an update based on that feedback same day. TypePerf looks cool!