HN Explorer

Ask HN: We built a product that nobody wants. What’s next?

12 points by mrtsepelev ↗ HN
We built a product that nobody wants. Now we are curious — which way is the best to use our work?

Here is the story: in January we launched Landy.io, an automated personalization solution for websites. Everyone in industry who we talked with were pretty excited about our product, but in the end we found out that nobody desperately needs it. It was nice-to-have thing instead of a thing that solves-real-damn-problems.

We received some AWS credits from YC open office hours program and we can keep our project up and running. But now we are wondering — should we give up, open source our code and move to the next project or maybe there are some good alternatives that we should definitely give a try? Like, e.g, to find an experienced salesperson and give him a full freedom with selling our product.

15 comments

[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 62.5 ms ] thread
sharemywin
I have a website that generates leads. I have keywords, ads, landing page text, question wizard. How much traffic do I need to optimize for this?
mrtsepelev
The scheme is simple: the more -- the better. Though, you should not be put back by the false assumption of your traffic flow being too weak -- give it a try and see how it goes.

Usually it requires about 10k unique visitors per month to start with. Concrete answer on your question hugely depends on your audience structure and number of variations.

tmaly
I think this is a great product. Most people may not be at the level where they are ready for this, or they may not understand this in ways that can create value for their business. I think you need to market it a little differently. This has potential.
mrtsepelev
And what do you mean by "market it a little differently". We played with positioning/wording for a few months and while it affects our registration numbers, it did not help to activate users.

Maybe we did it all wrong - we tried to build a slick product, collect leads, carefully onboard them, nurture with content, optimize our funnels and so on. Perhaps we should just concentrate on collecting phone numbers and selling directly, but this is the thing that we tried to avoid all the time.

tmaly
By "market it a little differently", could you pick a few specific markets. Say for a landscape design company, maybe visitor A to their site is interested in someone to cut their lawn on a regular basis. Visitor B is interested in someone to maintain the flowers and mulch of the gardens in their yard. Visitor C is interested in a new patio. These are entirely different pieces of content, but they are highly specific to one industry.

You landing page approaches it more generally and does not target a specific industry. You need multiple landing pages to give specific examples like this for a set of industries you would like to target.

rabidonrails
I think it would be pretty cool if you used it whenever someone visited your site. For example, if I came to your homepage and then you showed me the other versions that _I could have seen_ and explained why you showed me this one that might prove that using your product works.
going_to_800
Ok, can you share how you tried to market it?

When a product generates ROI, people will use it. Target the marketers who use leadpages, unbounce, etc, if it works, they will use it.

Register to StackThatMoney forum, the biggest private affiliate marketing forum, they work with landing pages all day long. Post your product there, I guarantee 50 sales in 2 months from there.

You need to target people with high traffic on their landers, i think the product is good(if it delivers), but you failed at sales and marketing....not on the idea.

Nobody wants your product because you are targeting the wrong people, that's my thought.

mrtsepelev
Sure. Ofk we used PH & HN and Reddit in the beginning (and many others startup platforms). Tried to reach industry bloggers (had some effect) and reporters (did not succeed here). Tried a content (which brought high quality leads, but quantity was pretty small), tried to reach some local marketing communities. Also tried to reach agencies (failed here).

Even if we received very positive feedback on product / idea and plans on integration - the process of generating hypothesis and creating different variations was pretty time-consuming and in the end people did not complete it.

Posting to StackThatMoney definitely sounds like something worth trying, and we’ll give it a shot. Thank you!

going_to_800
Guys, you need people that use landing pages all day long and have enough traffic.

Your market is huge(I know that because I was selling products for this niche), from solo internet marketers with big email lists to media buying agencies. You just need a few case studies to show them it's working.

Do you have any case studies?

mrtsepelev
We had some tests setup and run (some of them were a clear success, some -- not that much). And we're currently working with one huge Russian company, but still could not publish a case yet (but surely will as soon as possible).

We know that cases are one of the most important things in this game, but the problem is that the process is very slow (like starting a campaign could take up to 2 months), so this makes everything a little bit complicated.

auganov
Can't find the documentation. Your site gives me no idea of how you actually integrate it or how it works at all. Wouldn't sign up without that information.
mrtsepelev
Reasonable concern. We have a basic FAQ, but it does not say anything about integration (which is actually pretty simple and require only to add our js script). Will try to fix it.
seekingcharlie
It's not so much the technical "integration" that your website needs to communicate about vs how your product works.

I honestly have no idea what your product does. How is it different to Google Analytics, Optimizely, Mixpanel, et al?

Apart from explaining more about what you do exactly, I'd recommend including testimonials and results (if you have them) - "we helped X increase their ROI by Y" for example.

Edit: 'Totally free until August 2016'? I'd recommend phrasing this as 'sign up now and get our Business package FREE for the next 5 months'. 'Free until August 2016' doesn't sound very appealing as a potential customer.

sharemywin
I think you need to break your use cases up: 1. Am I in ecommerce will this work with a shopping cart? 2. CMS or blogging platform? ad based? 3. Conversion funnel Saas or lead gen?

what if I have sever generated content will it work with my site?

Also, is this targeted at conversion experts? or novices?

Next, if I have all this content how do I get it into your system?

And, I think you need to spell out better the value prop.

Would you like to drop "the cost to get customers" like a rock?

going_to_800
The thing with optimization tools is that they require some kind of expertise and patience...and most people don't have that for a new, unknown product.

I was selling a tool similar to Optimizely in a different market. The only way I get it going was to ditch the monthly plan and add use only anual plan, target people with expertise in marketing and use outbound sales for bigger clients.