Why I pivoted before I wrote a single line of code - thanks to IndieHackers

The First Idea
About two weeks ago, I had what I thought was an interesting idea for a product. It would be a web app that would allow founders and product owners to track their decisions, major milestones, and both large and small actions all in one place, fed by integrations with payment providers, server hosts, code repositories, and more. I called it ProductJournal. Following what I learned on IndieHackers, I decided to try validate my idea from potential customers BEFORE I started to write a single line of code - so I threw together some mockups using Sketch, made a landing page using LeadPages, then posted on IndieHackers, asking for feedback both on the landing page design as well as on the product idea itself. I was really happy to get two comments on the post that gave me important insights into the validity of my idea from my fellow IndieHackers.

Feedback
The first was from @maderalabs, who gave me great feedback using his design feedback app, reviewcycle.io.

He gave me some important copy changes I needed to make to my homepage, including some places where CTAs were sorely needed, some important details in the messaging that I was missing, and how I could improve the visual treatment of each component on the page. You can see his full notes here: https://reviewcycle.io/p/bde02a. It was really beneficial for me - not just because of the actionable points he gave, but also because it helped me to realize how much you can miss when you're the only one looking at something you've built.

The second insight was from both @nicomatico and the 121 users who viewed my landing page and didn't post anything to the thread, and the conversion rate of 0%. @nicomatico specifically said that they wouldn't use a product like mine because they would just put stuff like that into Google Analytics annotations.

[...] About the idea, I wouldn't be a user. I track this kind of info at Evernote tbh and when it comes to actions that affect traffic, I make Google Analytics notes. Not the fanciest but I don't think I need a tool for that. [...]

Honestly, that was the most important feedback I got. It helped me to realized that ProductJournal wasn't the right product to build at the moment. For one, it didn't seem to be sparking any kind of serious interest (although, tbh, I didn't try anywhere outside of IH), and secondly, when I really thought about it, it was more of a "Vitamin" than a "Pain Killer". That meant it would be a lot harder to sell - people probably weren't actively looking for ProductJournal to solve a problem they were facing. I decided that I needed to refocus my efforts, and build something that would target a more specific need, that would address an already existing pain point for potential customers.

Re-evaluating my initial idea

I thought hard about what made me want to create ProductJournal in the first place. I was trying to figure out why traffic on one of my web apps was not where I wanted it to be, but I kept forgetting exactly what could have caused the dropoff. When did I add those important new features? When did I start my last attempt at PPC marketing? When did I launch those latest redesigned landing pages that my designer created...

I knew I ideally would be writing those things down in Google Analytics annotations, but I loathed using them. They were just too limited (only 160 characters, no timestamps, and no way to organize them). I wished there was a way to improve those annotations, remove their limitations, and hopefully feed them data generated from other places. So, I searched for ways power users were using Google Analytics annotations... but it seemed like the only answers were "use a spreadsheet and take good notes"...

The Pivot

Well, everyone knows 90% of successful apps are just glorified spreadsheets 😂. So I happily "pivoted" - pre-launch, pre-building, pre-a-single-line-of-code! I was honestly so happy that I had just saved myself hours and hours of my precious free time - I never thought I would feel that way because an idea failed. All that I "wasted" was a few hours in Sketch and a few more building a landing page in LeadPages (which I highly recommend, btw).

So in the end, I took what was the original reason that I created ProductJournal, some "potential customer" feedback, and refocused on solving just one problem, and doing it well - making Google Analytics annotations better.

I'm starting over now by researching common complaints, learning how people are working around the limitations that GA's annotations have, and noting down ideas for getting potential early users for whatever I build. I've already built out a new landing page, incorporating @maderalabs's feedback, and what I learned from my latest "failure". Look out for an update about it soon on IH!

Thank you community members!

Thank you @maderalabs!
Thank you @nicomatico!

And of course, I'm so grateful to this wonderful community for already saving me what could have been weeks of wasted work - both by giving me the idea of product market validation before building, and by giving actual feedback on one of my ideas.

Thank you IH!