We're live with our first customer! What's next?

Hey! This is really neat. I've worked on something "close enough", that gives me a few kneejerk suggestions.

First your question:

Please share your experiences with getting your second and third customers in the comments below.

I posted on a few niche-specific forums. And waited. Eventually I had one customer; I would call this your classic innovator "early adopter". They were looking for exactly what I offered; gave me fast feedback; and had no problem rolling with changes.

The next thing that happened was they started using my product's URL, in their twitter, fb, etc. Sharing their link. No fancy integration or anything like that - they just started sharing it. I think after this, one of their competitors saw it and gave it a try. Branding for my product was light; it was part of the URL, and a small footer, but otherwise discrete.

This leads me to a few suggestions:

You've gotta make the SEO of your menu page template better for the business. The page title for The Vegan Street menu is "Fussy Fork"; it should be "<business name> menu". Add "Last updated <date>" somewhere as this is what Google uses to show dates in search. What's that URL path, a UUID? Why can't it be /vegan-street-sussex? Etc. You've got the meta tag / twitter card stuff (good). Bottom line - what else can you do to make this feel like their page, and get people sharing it - not yours?
I'd tweak the "© 2021 Fussy Fork. All rights reserved" at the bottom - what's it doing for you? - and instead put a short promotional that describes FF. "Simple restaurant menus, powered by Fussy Fork. <Get yours today.>" You can charge your customers to remove this, too!
Your signup flow is ridiculously fast - very cool. But It's almost... too fast! Might want to collect the customer email first so you can recapture. I dig a product that lets me use it all the way with zero signup - thats great if you're building an imgur, but I don't think it's your market. Any restauranteur that's going to stick with this, is probably going to forget how to log back in via a secret link and get confused. Just get their email, start marketing to them, and heck manually email them when they churn to find out what didn't work.

Just kneejerk quick feedback, take it or leave it. And good luck!

Say something nice to mstnorris…

2
Hey! This is really neat. I've worked on something "close enough", that gives me a few kneejerk suggestions.

First your question:

Please share your experiences with getting your second and third customers in the comments below.

I posted on a few niche-specific forums. And waited. Eventually I had one customer; I would call this your classic innovator "early adopter". They were looking for exactly what I offered; gave me fast feedback; and had no problem rolling with changes.

The next thing that happened was they started using my product's URL, in their twitter, fb, etc. Sharing their link. No fancy integration or anything like that - they just started sharing it. I think after this, one of their competitors saw it and gave it a try. Branding for my product was light; it was part of the URL, and a small footer, but otherwise discrete.

This leads me to a few suggestions:
- You've gotta make the SEO of your menu page template better for the business. The page title for The Vegan Street menu is "Fussy Fork"; it should be "<business name> menu". Add "Last updated <date>" somewhere as this is what Google uses to show dates in search. What's that URL path, a UUID? Why can't it be /vegan-street-sussex? Etc. You've got the meta tag / twitter card stuff (good). Bottom line - what else can you do to make this feel like their page, and get people sharing it - not yours?
- I'd tweak the "© 2021 Fussy Fork. All rights reserved" at the bottom - what's it doing for you? - and instead put a short promotional that describes FF. "Simple restaurant menus, powered by Fussy Fork. <Get yours today.>" You can charge your customers to remove this, too!
- Your signup flow is ridiculously fast - very cool. But It's almost... too fast! Might want to collect the customer email first so you can recapture. I dig a product that lets me use it all the way with zero signup - thats great if you're building an imgur, but I don't think it's your market. Any restauranteur that's going to stick with this, is probably going to forget how to log back in via a secret link and get confused. Just get their email, start marketing to them, and heck manually email them when they churn to find out what didn't work.
Just kneejerk quick feedback, take it or leave it. And good luck!
spikeytown

·
5 years ago
·