Hot answers tagged research
28
Release your software earlier than you think you should. Then follow up with quick feature releases.
Software, like art, is never finished. But thankfully, due to the nature of software, what you put out theredoesn’t have to be static, especially if you are running a web-based business. It’s easy to roll out new feature updates after your launch.
Don’t ...
12
Here's a low-cost way:
Set up a single page that describes the product.
Include a sign-up form that says "Leave your name and email and we'll get back to you when it's ready (no spam!)"
If you need free form support, use Google Spreadsheets with Forms, or
Contact me directly because I know of another startup doing remote forms which would probably do it ...
5
Perhaps you should partner up with a technical co-founder that can build a prototype.
By the way, don't lock yourself up for one year! Release as early as possible (minimum viable product) and get customer feedback as soon as possible. You don't want to waste one year working on product features that no one cares about and leave out the most important ...
4
The answer is the minimum viable product. You should release with the goal of testing your assumptions. How can you get it 'right' without knowing what the marketplace wants? If you have already had successful products in this space, you may have a feel for what the marketplace wants but otherwise your guesses could be wrong.
Building a great architecture ...
4
Claus Schwarm has already given a good answer. In addition to this, I'd like to comment on a few sentiments from OP's post.
need to retain them for at least 6 months to break even on advertising costs
I'm speaking outside of what I have hands-on experience with here, but I wouldn't worry too much about this. Based on the cases I have read continuous ...
4
Releasing faster with bad architecture is definitely not advisable. You end up with support calls/bad name, migration issues etc etc. They just get added to waste/cost. I think the answer lies in getting a right balance between these two. From my experience i can say that more importance should be given to right architecture/performance etc rather than ...
4
Both are more important :)
It all depends of course. If you are launching your own product, you need to get it out and collect feedback, this is probably the single most important thing. If you delay it, you might be building something people don't want, and no matter how good the architecture, it will be a waste of effort and time.
On the other hand, you ...
4
The Google Keyword Tool could be what you are looking for. It will tell you a specific local and global search volume, and also cost per click for adwords.
There are also other 'keyword tools' out there if you want to search for that term.
Google Trends is a handy tool to see how terms are changing over time.
Also agree with Denis re building fast ...
4
Here's what I did in a previous life that seemed to work pretty well as a starter. Using your favourite drawing tool (e.g., Photoshop, Paint, Visio, etc) mock up the main screens for the product in rough form. Use PowerPoint (or similar) to string together a slide deck that shows the main workflows of the product, effectively simulating what the product ...
3
You can't really stereotype all women and then expect it to work in all cases. Everybody is different. So you'll want to narrow "women" down even further. Sounds like you're doing a dating site, so specifically, you're targeting single women ages between 25 & 55. Do you care about education? Divorcees? With Kids? Employed? Or perhaps you want to ...
3
I am a big fan of MVP and lean but please understand that creating a minimum viable product does not mean it only takes a month. Sometimes some projects have some fundamental complexity that needs to be solved before you can even get to create your product.
It really depends on what kind of features your are proposing to add. All too often people will just ...
3
I know of no where. And for that reason I would like to say:
What a great start-up business idea James!
I would love to visit the "wikipedia" of failed business and business plans. Academics would mine it and study it. Investors would mine it for under realized opportunities. Business schools would watch the failed companies flash introductory videos ...
3
I'd say that a CTR of 1-2% is pretty good. But you're right that on its own, it's not enough to rely on when researching a market. All a click-through means is that your ad was interesting, and what you want to measure is how interesting your idea as explained on the landing page is.
One thing I've heard recommended is to put a form on the front page ...
2
In my opinion releasing early and fast, with just enough features to catch user's attention and just as much bugs to not scare them off is better then waiting. Especially trying to polish the architecture is not that important.
Releasing a web application is a matter of balance, but architecture is something that could be fixed just any time. Focusing on ...
2
I like using Google Insights to gauge market interest of a product.
Here's my thumbnail guide on google insights:
Point your browser to: http://www.google.com/insights/search/
Type in a search term that you might use if you were searching for your product. The results basically give you statistics on searches for this term. They can be broken down into ...
2
It's a delicate balance, but with SaaS, I think you should release as fast as you possibly can without sacrificing the core quality of the product. Nothing is real until someone is paying for it. Once you're live, continue to make rapid releases -- preferably one release per feature -- to match the needs of your customers.
After you've got some customers on ...
2
Not only you need to release fast, and forget about features and scalable architecture...
First thing to do is to release a mockup and see what happens. Anybody finds your site? Anyone willing to leave her email address to receive a note when the product is released?
We do this, and we get hunderds, sometimes thousands of users before we even release ...
2
You may like to look at Ashley Qualls' story: She basically build her business on MySpace, IIRC.
If blogging also counts as "social media", there're some more examples in the following article: Top 30 Female Internet Entrepreneurs.
Hope this helps.
2
Building a successful product is hard - you are not going to be able to do it easily if you don't have any industry experience. The best approximation to having industry experience is to get feedback from industry insiders - so tell them everything (with regards to the problem and how your solution is going to work).
If you want to keep some stuff with you, ...
2
see this - http://www.quantcast.com/
Update :
Also see http://www.spyfu.com and http://www.compete.com (paid versions are really nice).
2
Best way depends on the town/city/environment/country - and the size of restaurants/franchise/etc.
Here are a few ways.
Association & townhall meetings - [You get a few at the same time]
Having a meal there on a weekday
Getting to know their main suppliers (Fresh food, wine resellers, et al)
Through a good real estate agents who cover the areas for ...
2
This is rather hard to answer. There are so many variables that influence success.
However, you should try to base your decision on data if possible. Therefore, your next action should be gathering more data (and better data) before you determine other actions.
Also, use a better metric -- for example, conversion rate. Your metric of acquisition costs to ...
2
Forget about getting the architecture right, especially forget about scability. Only thing you can't forget about is security, security problems can eat you alive.
First things first get it out. You can always fix it later. Also your customers will shape the product what if you spend scaling or designing "Y" feature and then see no one actually cares about ...
2
Outsource the gruntwork, not the thinking.
In other words, don;t expect to tell someone to get you a complete market research document without you knowing exactly what you want. Do the thinking yourself: What questions do you want answered, what data should be gathered, how the data will be interpreted, why will the data be valid, how big the samples ...
2
I think the easiest way is to go ahead and build a coming-soon page for your product or service (with a google analytics tracker attached). Ask visitors to leave their email address which might give you an audience of interested people to answer other questions about your product.
Then run a modest adwords campaign using the keywords you think are ...
2
Do you add any value or qualification to the "leads"? You might be able to sell it better with some initial level of "due diligence".
I think if I were an investor I would be leery of this kind of thing coming through a middleman - it would make me wonder why the business wasn't able to get a loan or money from their local bank.
You can probably look at ...
2
I've seen your demo, but you need to let people download the software regardless of the status (If you don't have an installation file, create one.). Tell anyone you know with a computer to go to your site. See how many download it. How many are willing to give feedback? Will they mention it to anyone else? It may seem like an exercise in finding out who ...
2
There is an organization called the Institute for Economic Development. Here is a link to their organization; IED. Based out of University of Texas at San Antonio, the IED services every SBDC center in the United States with economic research and data.
They can provide you with all the market research you could ever want. But, it is up to you to request ...
2
These sites like woot our groupon work by promising a certain number of sales based on previous site traffic.
They are essentially advertisers, so they would go to a particular company and say "we expect we can move X amount off product if you can give us Y% off". This site suggests groupon made quite a nice deal on their GAP offer.
It's not necessarily ...
2
If it is not patented, it is legal to use it (in most countries). Some (very big) companies have a lot of people working on reading research papers to sort out if something profitable can be done based on them.
However, most of the time it is cheaper to contract with the university/researcher in order to really understand how things are really done (most ...
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