Would you label your product "beta"?
I am curious why the need to label a product beta. I see many startups and companies do this - add beta next to the logo.
Is there any reason for doing this?
I am curious why the need to label a product beta. I see many startups and companies do this - add beta next to the logo.
Is there any reason for doing this?
I used to do that for https://baseline.is but then when I did a small promotion on reddit people started nagging about why I would charge for a "beta" product. I explained to them that I was validating the idea and the only way, to me at least, to do that was to see if people were willing to reach for their wallets. I ended up removing the "beta" label just to stop the discussion from getting sidetracked like that.
That makes sense. I think redditors, which I am one of, can be a little hard to deal without. They always want to check someone to see if they bend. I mean the whole idea of building is to make sales off of it.
When you removed the beta label, did they stop with drilling on the value vs cost? Or was the "why charge for this" entirely because of the beta label?
The "why charge for this" was entirely because of the beta label. They liked the product, they were just expecting beta to be free. Personally I'm not a fan of the whole bait and switch, where you sign up for a free product not knowing how much it will cost in the end when it's out of beta.
Nobody has mentioned anything about the price since then, except asking for a free tier. But you know, people are always looking for free stuff, it doesn't mean they will ever pay. Although I haven't been promoting it at all since it was just a MVP release back then, missing the most important feature that I'm trying to finish right now.
That's interesting. I recently launched murlist.com and looking to not implement free tier but 14 days trial due to cost.
You mentioned Reddit, I have always had troubles using Reddit as a marketing channel. Curious how you managed to pull that off.
Yeah same, I'm not implementing a free-tier, for several reasons like cost and just complication of the code. I am thinking about adding a trial though.
I don't really do anything special to pull off reddit, It's a bit hit and miss but I've been lucky that a lot of my posts got a lot of interest. There is Showoff Saturday on r/webdev that I like to post to. My last couple of posts didn't do so great but it was still alright.
I wouldn't. It's always in beta tbh lol. If you can get 10 people to pay for your product then you are out of beta!
I did it because if an app in Google Play is in the "open testing" beta track, people can't leave bad reviews and there's a warning "this app is under development" or similar. It also means a real credit card won't work with in-app payment screens only a test card. So I won't get accused of ripping anyone off but can still test the system to make sure it all works together.
Some people like beta products because it's cool to try new stuff and it hopefully encourages people to be a little more patient. Bad reviews in the app stores stick around forever and once the algorithms decide your app is rated too low its hard to recover. Beta lets people try the app while it's being developed and give people a cushion. It can give a startup an idea what it costs to run before opening the floodgate.
Everyone is different there's no right or wrong.
Does this feature works too for the Apple App Store?
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Thanks you very much for providing examples. I guess it is better to selectively onboard users while the product is in beta.