If you don’t create the actual product, do you have methods to validate whether your idea is worth turning into a real product?
I would recommend checking first if there are any competitors in your niche. If there are, it’s a good sign because there seems to be enough customers.
This is very straightforward!
I usually start with a quick test using ads. I would direct the ads to a landing page that I created or a competitors landing page. But If I can’t even get a decent CPC or CTR on my ads, and I plan on heavily relying on ads to drive traffic, I abandon the idea.
If CPC and CTRs look good, then I would further build out the funnel to continue testing. This time for conversion rates and cost per acquisition.
Next step is the landing page. For a quick drag and drop page, you can use unbounce. Or if it’s an ecommerce shop, I use shopify.
I also have the entire backend payments set up to accept real orders. This is the best indicator of interest as opposed to an add to cart or an email sign up. If real orders do come in, I write the customer an email to explain that I’m out of stock or currently not selling, then refund the order.
Run some ads to the landing page in order to gather data quickly. If CPAs are near my targets, I move forward with developing the product. If CPAs are not near, but there is room for improvement (in the CTR of the ads, or the CVR of the landing page), I may make adjustments to the funnel and test again.
Thank you, great advice!
So, how many days will you continue this validation period?
Usually a minimum of 1 week so I can account for variance due to the days of the week. But this would depend on what metric I am using as my main KPI for the test, and my daily budget.
If CPA was my KPI, I am going to have less data than if I were analyzing based off of CPC. So in that case, I would be running my test for a longer period, or spending more budget to test.
You can use Google, every keywords people input Google represent their needs, if a keyword has large search volumes and upward trends in last 6 months, that’s mean the ideas is fit the users’ needs.
This is really a good method. Thank you for sharing.
Acutally, I built a App can show these data, you could try it: https://gotrends.app?c=reddit17vy
Looked pretty good. Any plans to support the WEB side?
Yes,there is a plan.
Do you have a iPhone/iPad or Mac?
Create a landing page for the product, include mock ups of what the product will look like, share it around. On the page allow them to sign up using an email and/or make a pre order. This will give you a good indication if you’re onto something good
Great advice! Thank you for sharing!
Ok. Let’s say I wanna build facebook marketplace or something similar but for a local market. I consider both commercial companies and some private sellers/buyers to be my potential audience. How do I need to build this landing page so that I can send it to these kind of users? Let’s say my product will provide some useful feature, and I’m gonna mention them in that landing page but how do I tell the private sellers/buyers to sign or just to leave their emails?
Good questions.
For many people, even if the landing page is created, how to reach potential users is a big problem.
Sometimes we can’t even be sure if it’s because the product has no market or because we haven’t reached potential users.