When is the right time?
We thought long and hard about going for an open beta test on MyProjectTracker. On the plus side we felt we’d get honest feedback from people who did not know us i.e. not the friends and family brigade. On the negative side, we were putting the product out there and leaving ourselves open to criticism.
We elected to go for it and opened up the product so anyone could sign up to and have a look around. We felt the benefits of open and honest feedback far outweighed the risk of exposing ourselves to potential criticisms.
We pushed the product for exactly one week directly to companies and via the usual social media channels. We decided to ease off once we had about 125 users signing up. We had a target of 20% of those people to actually go beyond the look around and actually get themselves setup and using the product in anger.
We hit our target in less than a fortnight – delighted. We got our sign-ups and our 20% of active users – a mix of businesses from single person consultancies to our largest, a company with 30+ employees. A good cross-section we felt.
We received some great feedback from people as well, both via email and also directly where users allowed us to sit with them and observe their interaction with the product. The open beta has given us the ability to see where people were going in the product, whether there were any stumbling points, how users were getting on setting themselves up, pretty much everything we needed to see.
We have benefited enormously and aspects that we have shared, such as the “shop” site needing to be clearer, are currently being re-worked prior to commercial launch.
Why are we doing the re-work before launch? Why not just go with what we have and tweak?
Well we could have done. However, negative experience is very difficult to overcome. If potential customers don’t want to move beyond the “shop” or are not happy with a user experience at a key point in the set-up process and leave us, they won’t be back.
It takes time to attract people to the site. We don’t want to waste that effort by putting them off after they arrive. We want to ensure that when potential customers arrive that we convert as many as we can. This is why, after we got our numbers for testing, we stopped pushing for sign-ups.
I am not sure there is a correct answer as to when the best time to show your wares to potential customers is. We have done it three times now; when we were defining the concept (market research), during a closed testing phase with selected customers and now the open beta. This has worked for us, but it may not be right for your business.
The one thing I would say is that you have to show your hand at some stage – putting it off because of nerves or concerns of negative criticism is most definitely not the right approach. If you do put it off, you may never open you shop door!
What experience have you had of proving your products and services to the market?
Photo : tasteful_tn
Tags: beta test, business management, customer feedback, Entrepeneur, MyProjectTracker.com, new product, product testing, Small Business
