Failing Fast Is Not Fun, Satisfying or Pleasant | Hacker News Reader

Failing Fast Is Not Fun, Satisfying or Pleasant

tbbuck.com

26 pointsjoshuacc19 comments

I can't figure out what this product does. What does "save" a site mean? What does it mean to "contact" a site?

The site's frontpage seems to be designed to sell half of the designer's brain to the other half of the designer's own brain. It might not actually take much iteration to turn this into a product that would sell. We just need to know what the hell it does.

After visiting the site on 2 separate occasions, I also still can't tell what the site does and how it can help me right now.

Usually, if I don't find that the first 3-5 seconds upon visiting a site, I'm outta there..

so my suggestions are: 1. bigger headline (UVP) 2. small subtitle clearly explaining the main benefit 3. picture on the right needs to better define your product (add "marker notes" on the picture if necessary)

hope it helps!

also, none of the titles for the 4 benefits on the homepage mean anything to me. they have to tell me specific things your product does to help me right now.

good luck and i'd say don't give up yet. tweaking marketing and a/b testing are relatively inexpensive (and imo a lot of fun) and who knows, you might stumble on a winner!

I can't figure out what this product does

Heh, yes, this is definitely a problem. In this context "Save" means to record the website's address, along with the initial referrer. You can also record email addresses along with it. "Contact" is the act of reaching out to the website's operator to discuss - well, guest blog posts, exchanging links, compliment on their design or whatever is on your mind.

It might not actually take much iteration to turn this into a product that would sell

I'm definitely open to suggestions! :)

I'm sorry but what does that even mean and why should I care?

I can record a website's address easily: it is called a bookmark.

You are selling a product in an unvalidated marketspace. Want to sell a bug tracker? Just call it a bug tracker. I don't know what the category of your product is, so I don't know if I need one.

Why do I need to contact a website? Am I looking for a job, and cold calling companies to look for openings? Am I marketing something? It's kind of a lightweight CRM? But don't say CRM, because I don't know what a CRM is ;) Maybe you could look at how 37 signals sells their CRM.

Tom, what do you do for a living?

You might consider targeting this application to specific professions that would benefit from it, i.e. "CampaignBar: A sophisticated bookmark and contact manager for blogging professionals" or whatever.

When a tool comes out of left field and solves a problem that I didn't know I had, you need to show me that I have that problem in the first place. Give me examples of how my way of getting work done right now is broken.

There's a potential problem with the "fail fast" mentality. Are you sure you've looked at all of the reasons the product failed and attempted to resolve them? You may be abandoning the project too quickly. In this case, it might be worth bringing someone in to improve the communication of the landing page. And it might also be worth doing some targeted marketing. How do you know when you've failed after making a proper attempt, versus giving up too quickly?

Are you sure you've looked at all of the reasons the product failed and attempted to resolve them? You may be abandoning the project too quickly

This has absolutely been a concern - maybe I've just not put enough into the marketing. I reached out to two target audiences: outsourced marketing; and link builders. Plenty like the tool, but not enough to pay. My suspicion is that it doesn't save enough time to bother paying for.

I think that a couple of weeks is far too soon to decide that something is a failure. It's barely even enough time to gather enough data to decide what can be adjusted and improved.

An article that has been posted here before comes to mind:

http://www.sodaware.net/dev/articles/shareware-amateurs-vs-s...

I tend to agree with it. If you're fairly certain there's a market for what you're trying to sell, don't give up on it too soon. Instead, use the information you've gathered to continually refine the product, and execute a marketing plan to try to bring your product to the attention of people who are going to use it. Keep on evaluating, refining, and executing.

In the end, it still might not work out. The danger in failing too quickly, however, is that you'll give up on products that could be quite successful just because they weren't successful right away.

I think that a couple of weeks is far too soon to decide that something is a failure

Agreed. This was originally launched at the start of the year though.

An article that has been posted here before comes to mind

I'm reading through that article now, thanks! :)

The danger in failing too quickly, however, is that you'll give up on products that could be quite successful just because they weren't successful right away.

I agree 100%. All I'm after some form of validation for the idea, not huge success, and so far... well, there' not been a lot ;)

My apologies; I must have misread something in your post.

Validation can be a strange thing. Sometimes you'll make a little change that seems inconsequential, and it will make all the difference. If nothing else, look at it as a fun opportunity to try to find those seemingly tiny differences that end up being huge to potential users.

This is a great example of why people shouldn't give up and "fail fast". You need to work on your marketing copy. We just launched LazyMeter on Friday after months of questionable data - especially when we first went into beta, we easily could have decided our idea was a failure. Eventually, we realized our users had no idea what we were trying to do for them. We designed a new website and wrote new copy (nice theme by the way! heh). We launched on Friday and converted over 1/3 of our visitors, achieving thousands of users on our first day. Keep at it!

PS: Can someone please design some more SaaS wordpress themes? This is getting ridiculous.

Incidentally, on your CampaignBar website, one of the first (most important!) headlines has a typo:

'Find websitse, save and manage their details.'

-> 'websites'

Incidentally, on your CampaignBar website, one of the first (most important!) headlines has a typo

Damn, that's what you get for live updates. Thankfully caught within a minute or two of going live, thanks :)

I'm failing to see what value this adds to standard bookmarking.

The "fail fast" method is more of a learning style rather than a road to success.

The "fail fast" method is more of a learning style rather than a road to success.

But surely it should help get you off the path to failure?

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