Product management: 5 to 995 or engine failure to take off
Recently, I received a question from my friend about the following:
Good afternoon, Michael! Now I am engaged in one research work. Considering your professional experience, I would like to ask you to answer the question:
You have released a product that you have been making for a whole year, having spent all your investments on the development. Of the 1,000 first users, 995 removed it or stopped using it the very next day. Describe your actions.
Thank you in advance!!!
')
I started answering right in the Facebook window, but I realized that the answer is very voluminous and of a completely wrong format. In addition, I decided to share this information with everyone. I hope someone it will be useful.
In general, I formed the opinion that about the success of the product can be said in about six months. Marketing campaigns, PR and simply word of mouth - things are pretty long-term, and the information must have time to spread. However, if your product became successful from day one, it is immediately noticeable, but such products are the subject of a completely different article from the category of Success Story. We will talk about what to do if both engines failed to take off.
I will begin by saying that it is not worth spending a year of work and investment on a product without first evaluating the audience and at least some testing. In addition, understanding the audience of a product can greatly help even if the conversion was initially “5 to 995”.
For example, we very often put up a product for an early subscription. Those. We prepare all the materials for it in advance, but instead of the download button, we put the “Keep me posted” button, by clicking on which the potential client leaves his mail and name. After a product goes out (for example, in beta), we write messages (sometimes even personal ones) to such comrades, provide a product for testing, collect reviews, etc.
Accordingly, already in the middle of the road we know how popular our product is and how many potential customers we have who are interested in it so much to fill out a form on the site and leave your address.
The second is when you spend investments, do not forget about marketing and sales. If at the time of the start of sales the budget received from the investor is fully eaten, you are in serious trouble!
Suppose that such a situation did occur, and you, without a budget, were left with a product that is used by 0.5% of users from all those interested.
I see several options:
Those. those 995 people who did not use your product are not your customers. They do not have the problem, the pain that your product removes, or they hoped to solve some other problem with it.
A good example in this sense is the various-sized “fingerprint scanners” for the iPhone. They are downloaded in order to protect their data from outsiders, but, making sure that this is just a deft (and sometimes not very) fake, they are immediately demolished. Leave such a product to people whose task is just to have fun with friends. In fact, these are the people who like to show card tricks in the company.
In this case, there are two ways. The first of them is to try to understand what those 995 who were removing from your product expected, and then make changes in such a way as to interest them. Taking into account that the entire budget has already been spent, it is necessary either to negotiate with investors for a new round of financing (this can be done once), or “bootstrap”, i.e. tighten your belts, sell cars, garages and apartments, and finish the product yourself. However, no one guarantees that you will succeed again. According to statistics, only 10% of projects take off, so it's up to you.
The second way is to understand why these 5 people still left your product, who they are, what tasks they use to solve it and why they chose you. After analyzing these users, you can enter a completely different, sometimes completely unexpected market. For example, such a useful and widespread product as diapers was created during the war for the needs of the army. Diapers allowed the sniper to stay in one position for days without being distracted by natural needs. If you look at the market now, the main target audience of their manufacturers is not the Ministry of Defense.
Therefore, if you have flown with the target audience, do not despair, but search.
Again, the reasons why this happened can be many. For example, it is difficult to work with it, and 995 users simply could not figure out which buttons to press.
Consider that you may not notice this complexity, because This product is native to you, you know all its details and the smallest nuances. But look (and listen better!) To an accountant who has to type a SQL query string to get data, and you will understand everything. But for any programmer it will not be the slightest difficulty.
Products with a high entry threshold are almost doomed to low conversion and a very narrow niche.
Is it bad? Perhaps your product is truly unique (such as 3D Max or Autocad). But in this case, you need to revise the target audience (instead of a mass audience, we get professional singles who could not satisfy their perverted needs with products of competitors), price policy (the product goes into a very unique and expensive segment), as well as a sales strategy (go from mass promotion to focused work with individual customers).
I have friends who sell equipment for nuclear power plants. Do you know how many nuclear power plants in Russia? That's right, 10 active and 6 under construction , including one floating. And after all business goes and develops!
If your product does the same thing as everyone else, it’s just harder, you’ll have to recycle it. Make it easy. More wizards and fewer questions to the user. Do everything for it that you can, do not ask unnecessary questions and, for God's sake, do not force to enter SQL in the form to display data!
But what if everything is really bad?
Unfortunately, this also happens. The user deletes your product, and then for some time angrily pours out his attitude to this craft in every possible twitter and facebook.
I once wrote a long time ago how to evaluate a product from an emotional point of view and measure its “degree of pleasantness”, so I will not delve into psychology in this article, but go to the top.
I have been communicating with users of our products for a long time and I myself am the user of hundreds of products from other developers. Usually this feeling occurs in two cases:
First, most often, users are quite naturally emotional about the huge number of errors that prevent them from working. Indeed, imagine that your product throws out a window with “Unhandled Exception” every five minutes, without letting you save the result. Submitted? Will you use such a product or will you tear it down after several such falls?
Secondly, users often get out of the ordinary behavior of the product. For example, imagine that when you press Ctrl + S, the text editor closes the document instead of saving it. Or does not offer to save the document when switching to another mode, as the Report Builder for SSRS 2008 did by all (if someone came across this “feature”, you will immediately understand what I mean).
And finally - the biggest problem is when product creators just don’t think about users. I have a favorite feature in the state portal. services (in general, by the way, very useful), which perfectly illustrates this approach.
Who of you at least once transferred the difficult history of his professional life from a work record to a form for obtaining a foreign passport? Remember a session that is aging after 15 minutes, after which it is required to log in again, and all data is lost? I think it is made so that only students who have not worked anywhere or computer maniacs who perfectly master the blind-deaf-and-dumb 22-finger typing method can get a passport. Agree that it is terrible!
So, if your product is terrible - urgently look for the source of this horror and correct it. Otherwise, it will simply go to the garbage along with your efforts, the year of life, cubic meters of coffee, a dozen burning eyes and, by the way, investor money too.
“Well, analyze and be clever in every way” - you will say and you will be absolutely right - “You better tell me what to do now!”.
So, what to do when 995 users out of 1000 deleted your product.
Carefully analyze who downloads your product. What sites they come from, what search queries bring them to your site (if you haven’t yet screwed to Google Analytics, do it immediately!).
Based on this, it can be understood whether these people are your target audience, those you are waiting for.
For example, if you sell accounting systems, and 1000 people came to you from a banner to porn, then 5 stable users ¬ is just a giant conversion rate for traffic of this quality.
If they are obviously not going to those and not from there, then it’s not the product that sags you, but its promotion. Build relevant search keywords, think about promotion on specialized sites where you need to hang out, in general, do normal Internet marketing (or better, hire a team of professionals if you have at least some money left).
If people go from where you planned, you need to understand what they want. For this you need to get feedback from them.
In my opinion, one of the most important moments is to get feedback. Moreover, it will be much easier to get it from those five who use your product.
We use questionnaires. Moreover, not “for so”, but “for the present”. This is usually a certificate for Amazon. The amount of remuneration depends on our budget, the number of people surveyed, and how valuable this person is to you. We declared an interval of 10-25 dollars, depending on the completeness of the answer.
It is very important to consider the content of the questionnaire. Ask exactly the questions that you want to get answers to. Moreover, the clearer the questions are asked, the clearer the answers will be. Keep in mind that people have little time, and your $ 15 will be for most of them not a generous fee, but just a pleasant trifle. We use about such questionnaires for those who bought and those for those who refused to buy. By the way, according to statistics, only about 3-5% of those who sent questionnaires respond to such polls, so be morally ready for this.
In addition, we use another way to poll. When a product is deleted, the user is shown a dialog in the Uninstall form and is asked to choose the reason for the removal: installing a new version, rejecting the product due to lack of features (with the option to specify it), etc. All this information is recorded in our database and we periodically analyze it. Do not forget only that so many users will simply poke at the first option from the top, so something unlikely should be put there and then just ignore this option.
By the way, if during installation a user registered his product by entering a name or email address, then it can be easily “caught up” and personally discussed the reasons for removing the product. Of course, such a focus cannot be done with each user, but, in general, it works perfectly.
Well, the last way to get feedback is to automatically send error messages. You can, for example, wrap up all the unprocessed errors in a letter and offer to automatically send them to your server. Thus, you will receive complete (or almost complete) information about how often such errors occur. I will not say that, of course, it is impossible to transmit any personal information.
Based on the feedback, you can understand why users need your product, how they want to use it, and why they have failed. Draw conclusions, use different models, look for the market, concentrate on unique features.
Try different niches, different options. In the end, try to write another product;). The main thing - do not despair and go where you
conceived!
Successful products and high conversion!
Good afternoon, Michael! Now I am engaged in one research work. Considering your professional experience, I would like to ask you to answer the question:
You have released a product that you have been making for a whole year, having spent all your investments on the development. Of the 1,000 first users, 995 removed it or stopped using it the very next day. Describe your actions.
Thank you in advance!!!
')
I started answering right in the Facebook window, but I realized that the answer is very voluminous and of a completely wrong format. In addition, I decided to share this information with everyone. I hope someone it will be useful.In general, I formed the opinion that about the success of the product can be said in about six months. Marketing campaigns, PR and simply word of mouth - things are pretty long-term, and the information must have time to spread. However, if your product became successful from day one, it is immediately noticeable, but such products are the subject of a completely different article from the category of Success Story. We will talk about what to do if both engines failed to take off.
I will begin by saying that it is not worth spending a year of work and investment on a product without first evaluating the audience and at least some testing. In addition, understanding the audience of a product can greatly help even if the conversion was initially “5 to 995”.
Proof of concept
For example, we very often put up a product for an early subscription. Those. We prepare all the materials for it in advance, but instead of the download button, we put the “Keep me posted” button, by clicking on which the potential client leaves his mail and name. After a product goes out (for example, in beta), we write messages (sometimes even personal ones) to such comrades, provide a product for testing, collect reviews, etc.
Accordingly, already in the middle of the road we know how popular our product is and how many potential customers we have who are interested in it so much to fill out a form on the site and leave your address.
The second is when you spend investments, do not forget about marketing and sales. If at the time of the start of sales the budget received from the investor is fully eaten, you are in serious trouble!
Suppose that such a situation did occur, and you, without a budget, were left with a product that is used by 0.5% of users from all those interested.
I see several options:
You did not hit the target audience
Those. those 995 people who did not use your product are not your customers. They do not have the problem, the pain that your product removes, or they hoped to solve some other problem with it.
A good example in this sense is the various-sized “fingerprint scanners” for the iPhone. They are downloaded in order to protect their data from outsiders, but, making sure that this is just a deft (and sometimes not very) fake, they are immediately demolished. Leave such a product to people whose task is just to have fun with friends. In fact, these are the people who like to show card tricks in the company.
In this case, there are two ways. The first of them is to try to understand what those 995 who were removing from your product expected, and then make changes in such a way as to interest them. Taking into account that the entire budget has already been spent, it is necessary either to negotiate with investors for a new round of financing (this can be done once), or “bootstrap”, i.e. tighten your belts, sell cars, garages and apartments, and finish the product yourself. However, no one guarantees that you will succeed again. According to statistics, only 10% of projects take off, so it's up to you.
The second way is to understand why these 5 people still left your product, who they are, what tasks they use to solve it and why they chose you. After analyzing these users, you can enter a completely different, sometimes completely unexpected market. For example, such a useful and widespread product as diapers was created during the war for the needs of the army. Diapers allowed the sniper to stay in one position for days without being distracted by natural needs. If you look at the market now, the main target audience of their manufacturers is not the Ministry of Defense.
Therefore, if you have flown with the target audience, do not despair, but search.
Your product could not solve the problem that should be solved
Again, the reasons why this happened can be many. For example, it is difficult to work with it, and 995 users simply could not figure out which buttons to press.
Consider that you may not notice this complexity, because This product is native to you, you know all its details and the smallest nuances. But look (and listen better!) To an accountant who has to type a SQL query string to get data, and you will understand everything. But for any programmer it will not be the slightest difficulty.
Products with a high entry threshold are almost doomed to low conversion and a very narrow niche.
Is it bad? Perhaps your product is truly unique (such as 3D Max or Autocad). But in this case, you need to revise the target audience (instead of a mass audience, we get professional singles who could not satisfy their perverted needs with products of competitors), price policy (the product goes into a very unique and expensive segment), as well as a sales strategy (go from mass promotion to focused work with individual customers).
I have friends who sell equipment for nuclear power plants. Do you know how many nuclear power plants in Russia? That's right, 10 active and 6 under construction , including one floating. And after all business goes and develops!
If your product does the same thing as everyone else, it’s just harder, you’ll have to recycle it. Make it easy. More wizards and fewer questions to the user. Do everything for it that you can, do not ask unnecessary questions and, for God's sake, do not force to enter SQL in the form to display data!
But what if everything is really bad?
Your product is terrible
Unfortunately, this also happens. The user deletes your product, and then for some time angrily pours out his attitude to this craft in every possible twitter and facebook.I once wrote a long time ago how to evaluate a product from an emotional point of view and measure its “degree of pleasantness”, so I will not delve into psychology in this article, but go to the top.
I have been communicating with users of our products for a long time and I myself am the user of hundreds of products from other developers. Usually this feeling occurs in two cases:
First, most often, users are quite naturally emotional about the huge number of errors that prevent them from working. Indeed, imagine that your product throws out a window with “Unhandled Exception” every five minutes, without letting you save the result. Submitted? Will you use such a product or will you tear it down after several such falls?
Secondly, users often get out of the ordinary behavior of the product. For example, imagine that when you press Ctrl + S, the text editor closes the document instead of saving it. Or does not offer to save the document when switching to another mode, as the Report Builder for SSRS 2008 did by all (if someone came across this “feature”, you will immediately understand what I mean).
And finally - the biggest problem is when product creators just don’t think about users. I have a favorite feature in the state portal. services (in general, by the way, very useful), which perfectly illustrates this approach.
Who of you at least once transferred the difficult history of his professional life from a work record to a form for obtaining a foreign passport? Remember a session that is aging after 15 minutes, after which it is required to log in again, and all data is lost? I think it is made so that only students who have not worked anywhere or computer maniacs who perfectly master the blind-deaf-and-dumb 22-finger typing method can get a passport. Agree that it is terrible!
So, if your product is terrible - urgently look for the source of this horror and correct it. Otherwise, it will simply go to the garbage along with your efforts, the year of life, cubic meters of coffee, a dozen burning eyes and, by the way, investor money too.
What to do
“Well, analyze and be clever in every way” - you will say and you will be absolutely right - “You better tell me what to do now!”.
So, what to do when 995 users out of 1000 deleted your product.
We look at those who shakes
Carefully analyze who downloads your product. What sites they come from, what search queries bring them to your site (if you haven’t yet screwed to Google Analytics, do it immediately!).
Based on this, it can be understood whether these people are your target audience, those you are waiting for.
For example, if you sell accounting systems, and 1000 people came to you from a banner to porn, then 5 stable users ¬ is just a giant conversion rate for traffic of this quality.
If they are obviously not going to those and not from there, then it’s not the product that sags you, but its promotion. Build relevant search keywords, think about promotion on specialized sites where you need to hang out, in general, do normal Internet marketing (or better, hire a team of professionals if you have at least some money left).
If people go from where you planned, you need to understand what they want. For this you need to get feedback from them.
We get feedback
In my opinion, one of the most important moments is to get feedback. Moreover, it will be much easier to get it from those five who use your product.We use questionnaires. Moreover, not “for so”, but “for the present”. This is usually a certificate for Amazon. The amount of remuneration depends on our budget, the number of people surveyed, and how valuable this person is to you. We declared an interval of 10-25 dollars, depending on the completeness of the answer.
It is very important to consider the content of the questionnaire. Ask exactly the questions that you want to get answers to. Moreover, the clearer the questions are asked, the clearer the answers will be. Keep in mind that people have little time, and your $ 15 will be for most of them not a generous fee, but just a pleasant trifle. We use about such questionnaires for those who bought and those for those who refused to buy. By the way, according to statistics, only about 3-5% of those who sent questionnaires respond to such polls, so be morally ready for this.
In addition, we use another way to poll. When a product is deleted, the user is shown a dialog in the Uninstall form and is asked to choose the reason for the removal: installing a new version, rejecting the product due to lack of features (with the option to specify it), etc. All this information is recorded in our database and we periodically analyze it. Do not forget only that so many users will simply poke at the first option from the top, so something unlikely should be put there and then just ignore this option.
By the way, if during installation a user registered his product by entering a name or email address, then it can be easily “caught up” and personally discussed the reasons for removing the product. Of course, such a focus cannot be done with each user, but, in general, it works perfectly.
Well, the last way to get feedback is to automatically send error messages. You can, for example, wrap up all the unprocessed errors in a letter and offer to automatically send them to your server. Thus, you will receive complete (or almost complete) information about how often such errors occur. I will not say that, of course, it is impossible to transmit any personal information.
We try again
Based on the feedback, you can understand why users need your product, how they want to use it, and why they have failed. Draw conclusions, use different models, look for the market, concentrate on unique features.
Try different niches, different options. In the end, try to write another product;). The main thing - do not despair and go where you
conceived!
Successful products and high conversion!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181414/
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