Starting a micro-SaaS - day 16

It's been quite a while since my last post. I had exams so I had to take some time off working on the business. They're done now, and I can invest significantly more time into this project.

I've had some time to think and have decided to scrap MyChoreTracker completely - it had too many problems. Sure I was getting traffic to the site, and sure some of those people were signing up but those sign ups were not converting to paying customers.

The niche I was targeting (families who argue about housework) was too broad, and reluctant to purchase a product on face value.

I've changed the way I think about business a lot, and am following a vastly different strategy for my next product which I'll get into now. I'll be leaving the MyChoreTracker site up - it's my first "proper" SaaS even if it didn't make money and it's dear to me.

For the next product, I've yet to write a single line of code. The marketing is where I failed on the last product, so the marketing is where I'm focussing this time. I'm also focusing on problem based thinking as I believe to be willing to pay money, you need to be adding concrete value to someones work/life.

I'm targeting the residential cleaning industry, and the problem's gone through a few iterations (I've been reading about Alexander Cowan's venture design process and have been experimenting with personas). The problem as it stands currently is that it is very difficult to measure quality in residential cleaning businesses, and it's difficult to verify customer complaints.

My current solution is a web-app that run's on an individual cleaner's phone. They can enter work they do and take a photo, say, mopping and then a picture of the clean floor.

Once they've completed the job their employer can see the work they've done, and an automatic email is sent to the client with the companies branding, detailing work done and picture evidence.

This adds value in 3 key ways:

Allows for QA in worker quality

Demonstrates value to clients, even after the house has become messy again

Cuts down on customer complaints, as the work done is clearly outlined and there is proof.

Now this has all been talk so far, on to the actual steps I've taken so far to turn this idea into a reality.

Today I found and reached out to 10 residential cleaning companies in my area, though I've yet to hear back from them on the weekend.

I've also joined some LinkedIn groups for people who run residential cleaning companies. I'm hoping to connect with and chat with potential customers to see if this is an issue they face - and more importantly one they'd pay to solve.

Once I've had a chat with some people who run these companies and done some initial validation, I'll set up a landing page to capture emails of interested parties to discuss further, test prototypes and hopefully have revenue on day one of launch.

Speaking of landing pages, let me take a second to talk about the way I'm planning on structuring the site (learnt from past mistakes).

With the MyChoreTracker site, the landing page and the app it self were all hosted at domain.com, it was a react SPA so SEO on the landing page was a nightmare. Additionally, I hosted a wordpress blog at domain . com / blog, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but all of these things made for analytics hell.

Firstly, the app itself was running on the exact same url as the landing page, which made tracking a nightmare, additionally the tracking used for the blog was running on the same domain, and these all conflicted in analytics.

Following from these lessons, I've decided to structure the new product such that:

domain is hosted at domain . com, blog at blog . domain . com, app at app . domain . com. This will allow me to track everything separately, and exclude users from the landing page analytics when I launch.

Also, the landing page is not going to be made with react. It's just overkill for a landing page, kills SEO (or so I've heard) and slows load time. If you have any suggestions for tools for building landing pages I'd love to hear them, otherwise I'll just make it in pure js, html and css.

Anyways, that's all for today. I'm aware that these posts are very long and it may be difficult to find the other days. I'm considering starting a blog so I can have them all in one place, with headings, pictures and all sorts of fun stuff. Would there be any interest in that?

I'd also love any and all feedback on my Ideas for the new product so far. All the best!