4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you get users to try your MVP?

9 points by relaunched 8y ago

wjossey 8y ago
Really depends. If it’s a B2B product, just keep talking to everyone you know who is a buyer and try to get them to take a shot on you. If the product is far enough along to add value, make sure to charge. If it’s not, and you’re just looking for feedback, make sure to let them know you’ll be charging down the line but right now am looking for quality feedback. If it’s B2C, there’s a lot of ways to hustle. From stopping people on college campuses, running some light paid advertising just to get some feedback, posting on product hunt, posting on HN, posting in response to related questions on Quara... etc, etc. Sometimes meetups and networking are a good way to find early users. Talk about what your product does and hand out your card with a URL on it. Ask them to give it a shot and don’t be shy. Once again, all depends. Without knowing more about the product it’s hard to be specific.
muzani 8y ago
Your product should already have an "existing" market who hacked something together. Something social might have a dedicated forum, subreddit, FB group. A game might have a similar mod in another game. A web tool might be in the form of a spreadsheet somewhere. Find out where those early adopters are and tell them about your product. You should try to charge them as early as possible, as high as possible. The early target market is often willing to pay the most. Lower your price later and reward those early adopters afterwards.
- relaunched 8y ago
  Our MVP is general purpose. iPrompted.com helps you make sure the people around you get tasks done! However, maybe we should specialize early to focus on a group. Parents trying to manage kids' and their after school actitives, for example. Any thoughts, if we specialize for customer acquisition, if we should modify the product too, or keep it general purpose for now?
  - wjossey 8y ago
    Narrowing your focus and creating some "specific" landing pages might help if that's how you envision your market. Your homepage can be more broad, with subdomains or namespaces specific to a cohort. Also, some more examples on your homepage would help!
  - muzani 8y ago
    It's not clear what the product does. You'll probably have to define a use case and market that. Amazon started with selling books before selling everything. Facebook started with connecting college students, and then games, before connecting everyone. You can keep it general purpose like those companies did, but make it really clear what it does. One example is what https://www.recommend.my/ https://www.recommend.my/ does. They cover all kinds of services, including cakes and web design. But the website focuses heavily on home improvement because it had the lowest bounce rate and best margins.
  - beatgammit 8y ago
    Figure out who your ideal customer is and make sure your product fulfills that customer's needs. Be really specific about that, not just "project manager", but include age, marital status, hobbies, etc so you really get to know this person. You want to be able to know them so intimately that you could conceivably introduce them to a friend at a social gathering. The point here is to get into the mindset of the users of your product. What are you enabling them to do, how do they want to interact with it, and how much are they willing to pay for the service. You'll want 2-3 ideal customers to start off with to cover your target market. Once you have an idea of who that is, find them. You already know them well enough to know where they would be found, right?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lamanguste 8y ago
Ofcourse it needs specific promotion channels created based on what the product is about. Firstly a lnading page is to be created explaining why should an user even would invest time to taste the product. Once a landing page is created it has to be shared across forums and communities the prospective users are expected to frequently visit.
ecesena 8y ago
Start by sharing your link on Show HN.
- relaunched 8y ago
  I shared it once and it didn't seem to stick - probably b/c of the title. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19251031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19251031 When some new features are added and we update the homepage, we'll share it again.

9 points by relaunched 8y ago

Really depends. If it’s a B2B product, just keep talking to everyone you know who is a buyer and try to get them to take a shot on you. If the product is far enough along to add value, make sure to charge. If it’s not, and you’re just looking for feedback, make sure to let them know you’ll be charging down the line but right now am looking for quality feedback. If it’s B2C, there’s a lot of ways to hustle. From stopping people on college campuses, running some light paid advertising just to get some feedback, posting on product hunt, posting on HN, posting in response to related questions on Quara... etc, etc. Sometimes meetups and networking are a good way to find early users. Talk about what your product does and hand out your card with a URL on it. Ask them to give it a shot and don’t be shy. Once again, all depends. Without knowing more about the product it’s hard to be specific.

muzani 8y ago

Your product should already have an "existing" market who hacked something together. Something social might have a dedicated forum, subreddit, FB group. A game might have a similar mod in another game. A web tool might be in the form of a spreadsheet somewhere. Find out where those early adopters are and tell them about your product. You should try to charge them as early as possible, as high as possible. The early target market is often willing to pay the most. Lower your price later and reward those early adopters afterwards.

relaunched 8y ago
Our MVP is general purpose. iPrompted.com helps you make sure the people around you get tasks done! However, maybe we should specialize early to focus on a group. Parents trying to manage kids' and their after school actitives, for example. Any thoughts, if we specialize for customer acquisition, if we should modify the product too, or keep it general purpose for now?
- wjossey 8y ago
  Narrowing your focus and creating some "specific" landing pages might help if that's how you envision your market. Your homepage can be more broad, with subdomains or namespaces specific to a cohort. Also, some more examples on your homepage would help!
- muzani 8y ago
  It's not clear what the product does. You'll probably have to define a use case and market that. Amazon started with selling books before selling everything. Facebook started with connecting college students, and then games, before connecting everyone. You can keep it general purpose like those companies did, but make it really clear what it does. One example is what https://www.recommend.my/ https://www.recommend.my/ does. They cover all kinds of services, including cakes and web design. But the website focuses heavily on home improvement because it had the lowest bounce rate and best margins.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  Figure out who your ideal customer is and make sure your product fulfills that customer's needs. Be really specific about that, not just "project manager", but include age, marital status, hobbies, etc so you really get to know this person. You want to be able to know them so intimately that you could conceivably introduce them to a friend at a social gathering. The point here is to get into the mindset of the users of your product. What are you enabling them to do, how do they want to interact with it, and how much are they willing to pay for the service. You'll want 2-3 ideal customers to start off with to cover your target market. Once you have an idea of who that is, find them. You already know them well enough to know where they would be found, right?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

lamanguste 8y ago

Ofcourse it needs specific promotion channels created based on what the product is about. Firstly a lnading page is to be created explaining why should an user even would invest time to taste the product. Once a landing page is created it has to be shared across forums and communities the prospective users are expected to frequently visit.

ecesena 8y ago

Start by sharing your link on Show HN.

relaunched 8y ago
I shared it once and it didn't seem to stick - probably b/c of the title. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19251031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19251031 When some new features are added and we update the homepage, we'll share it again.