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

Hello Everyone.

We felt it was about time we shared a bit of an update with you to let you know what’s going on in MyProjectTracker world.

Where to begin… hmm!

Well, the beta testing is going well and we have had a great response from the folks who are “using it in anger” – of which there are a fair number. As expected, we have hit a few bumps in the road that we are working through at the moment, but thankfully nothing awkward – just a bit time consuming.

We are looking at our marketing site again. The message coming back is that it is brilliant in design but to subtle in its approach. We need it to be more like a shop than it is at the moment so we’re working hard to see what we can come up with. We’ll probably pop a couple of ideas up on Facebook at some point to see what you reckon – we’d love your opinions.

We were on the Irish version of Dragons Den the other day. Grateful for great editing. It was a fun experience and we’ll put up a post about it in due course.

What else. Ah yes, the road-map for the next while is effectively finished.  We have some exciting things in the pipeline and once we have our ball-park dates for when we are going to pop them into the product, we’ll let you know. If your using the product, let us know your thoughts for possible inclusion too!

We’re enjoying the blogging as well.  Hopefully you are as well. We tend to write a little about a lot of different things that come into our minds – but this means it’s from the heart and not contrived (we hope!). It also means we don’t run out of things to write about!

Commercial launch is approaching, but we need to iron out the bits and bobs first. We’ll keep you posted.

That’s about it. Looking for any information, sure let us know at info@myprojecttracker.com.

Best Regards

The MyProjectTracker Team.

Photo : Our own project on MyProjectTracker

Hi all,

Beta day, and for those signed up, a look into the new approach to business project management!

It’s taken some really hard work and not a small amount of drive and passion on behalf of the team to get to this point and this story will be told in future posts.

So what’s the plan for now?

We have had a huge number of requests to be part of the Beta process, which is great, and we would like to say a big thankyou for signing up.

We are going to introduce people over the next couple of weeks so don’t panic if you’ve signed up and not received the code just yet. Once we are happy with the way things are going, then we plan on opening up in earnest for a wider audience.

So what does beta mean?

It means different things to different people, but to us it means the following;

“Validating that the product holds true in the real world.”

Our market research says yes, but it’s always good to get this re-enforced!

For the beta testers it means you get to use our product for free until we feel ready to start charging for it – at which point you can stay on board with a chance to win a rather nice “to be announced” perk for your business for being a beta tester. The only thing we ask in return is that you provide some feedback (good or bad) via the feedback link at the bottom of each product page.

What about the product during beta?

From a project management and business management perspective, all of the key functions are in place. We have excluded some minor functions for the moment, but these will not limit the beta testers ability to use the product to help their business projects along.

You may see some aesthetic changes as we receive feedback and continue to include things that we want to see ourselves in the product.

In the interim, we hope you benefit from the product and like what you see!

And if I’m not signed up yet?

No problem. If you are not signed up for our Beta, but would like to be, just let us know by sending us a note to info@myprojecttracker.com and we will add you to the list. The more, the merrier in our view.