Hey, I'm Jed, a Cakephp developer basically. BTW I just shipped Tweet Caddy the most advanced tweet scheduler. Please check it out!
It’s almost a month now since I posted about my experience on Bodega Sale. Where I worked on the app for 1 year on the side and it did not sell to a single user. Remember this was a web app where we usually charge a recurring monthly or yearly fee. So the customer will really give it some thought before subscribing. And when they do subscribe, they will definitely use it.
I was really amazed how the traffic came from my post on Hacker News. But what I am grateful for are the advices and comments that I had received. Below are some of them:
From Jeff K: He said that my target markets are
I was really aiming for #2 because they were the ones who are established and they have a steady cash flow. But these well established small businesses will not let their sensitive records to be put on someones server who they don’t know.
But it’s possible, it’s 2011 you can now do businesses to people whom you’ve never met. Maybe if I started building their websites or uploading their products, I could establish a client relationship with them.
From Johnderk: He said “Detatch from Shopify.” I’m not sure if the problem was the platform. Because there were apps that are selling in Shopify. They claim to have 14,000 stores but I can’t tell how many of them pay for apps. This maybe a valid tip.
Travis Russi Great post. He woke me up with this one. He said
“BodegaSale looks like any other accounting product, just with some lipstick (i.e. Navy or Green themes).”
That is so true. My excuse here was that coding this project was really really boring. Working on an accounting software was all about imaginary money and products like pencil, notebook, staplers. I maybe subconsciously doing these decorations just for the sake of getting excited again to get back to work.
“If something takes 3 clicks to perform, figure out how to make it take only two clicks. If 2 clicks, get it to 1 click.”
This is what I had iterated during the project. And I probably iterated it too much. What is wrong with UX is that it disengages you with the reality that users will soon get used to it. Just like the TV remote, it has so many buttons but eventually everyone including grandma will get used to it. It just takes time.
Provide value for the customer first — something that will solve their problems — then UX will come second. I’m not a UX expert though so don’t take my advice personally.
With these lessons, I definitely learned a lot! A lot more than reading books or someone’s blog. The bottom-line for me and for us geeks is that marketing is shockingly difficult. Marketing is not just about that landing page, seo, ppc, social media marketing etc.. It is the entire business. It is understanding the market and their problems. And trust most importantly; Just how do a stranger on the internet establish trust with thousands of people? I’ll blog as soon as I found out!
