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13 Comments

Got (and lost) my first paying customer

When I first launched the MVP for UseHoney back in September, there wasn't any type of paywall up front in the sign up flow. In the first month, about 20-30 people signed up, tinkered around with the product, and then ultimately disappeared. This was not unexpected, and to be honest I was just excited to have people interested enough to sign up, even if none of them would convert to paid customers.

Shortly after that, I started experimenting with the sign up flow, putting a credit card requirement up front with a 14 day free trial. Not unexpectedly, this resulted in an immediate drop off of signups.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, I got my first "paying" customer! Someone who was willing to put down a credit card upfront before starting the 14 day free trial. Unfortunately, I fumbled on a couple of things here. Most importantly, I didn't have the proper systems in place to notify me when customers were signing up. After the initial drop off in sign ups, I wasn't manually checking new user sign ups as frequently, and I didn't actually realize I had gotten a paying customer until the last day of their free trial!

Sadly, the person churned before I had a chance to actually reach out and figure out how they had found UseHoney, what they were interested in using the product for, and how I could hopefully improve the on-boarding experience.

Even though my first customer churned, the validation that someone was interested enough to sign up and pay is a huge motivation booster to keep pushing the project forward.

  1. 2

    This happened to me as well. In the first days after I soft-launched the MVP, a user signed up for the entry-level plan, but then churned. I had their email, but there was no reply when I wanted to reach out to ask about the experience. I plan full-fledged testing sessions with my planned audience soon though and hopefully get more insights this way.

    Congrats on your achievement so far and don't give up! Keep us updated with the progress ✌

  2. 1

    I'd still consider that a win, so congratulations on your first customer!

    You've indeed validated your business, and you probably feel justified now in continuing in building your product.

    Keep at it. I'm sure you'll get your next (and happy) customer real soon.

  3. 1

    No one likes a paywall in 2019.
    Haven't looked into your product yet, buy one would assume letting people tinker around with your product (and seeing what they do) is a great form of user feedback. Also extending the free trial! Get them hooked.

  4. 1

    Congrats on the first customer. It's great to have that validation for your product. You're not asking for advice, but I'll share something that I learned from getting a first customer. Make sure the payment flow works flawlessly. Test it like crazy. There's nothing worse than having a customer ready to buy and the payment flow isn't working.

  5. 1

    Did you ever get feedback from the initial signups?

    1. 1

      I did reach out to a few of the original sign ups just to ask about their use case as well as see if there was anything I could do to help them get started with the product, but unfortunately didn't get any responses back.

      1. 1

        I signed up and created a feedback form (very easy) but when it came to the embed it was a little confusing. I don't know who your target user is but most likely they'll be on a platform like Wix, Cardd, WordPress, Square Space, Webflow, etc... So maybe an FAQ dedicated to embedding on each? Or better yet intergrations/plugins.

        Also I noticed when I was logged in but went to the home page, the form builder is in the middle with the rest of the content.

        I think you should have the feedback form on your customers account and home page.

        I really like it but couldn't get it to work right out of the box. This may be the issue your facing.

        Happy to answer any follow up questions.

        1. 1

          @Marauder thanks so much for the great feedback! I'm actually working on a new homepage (https://usehoney.io/2) that I'm hoping will do a better job of demonstrating the embed process, as I agree it is not super clear at the moment. And definitely agree it would be a cool idea to work towards providing plugins &/or instructions for each popular platform, definitely something to keep on the roadmap. Thanks for the insight!

          1. 1

            No problem Zayne! If you need any user testing just send me an email and I’d be happy to give more feedback.

            I’m curious though, do you see stats on user usage?

  6. -1

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    1. 1

      Err I didn't mean this in a bad way. It just seemed funny.
      Like everyone else I still think it's great you got a customer. And I wish to be in the same place as you are in a few months. So right now I think it's amazing that you have your own product and people are interested.

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