Building and Promoting a Browser Extension — Part Seven: First Promotion Efforts
Part Seven — and the first part about promoting my extension. The extension in question is called Tabsets, it’s a browser extension helping you deal with the load of links you encounter every day.
I’d like to tell you about what I’ve done (so far) to get some attention for this piece of software. The good thing is that this writing is definitely not subject to the infamous survivorship bias — I have not been successful at all.
Yet :)
Expectations
First of all: I thought publishing the extension to the Chrome web store would create some traction. We all know the story of Linus Torvalds, publishing Linux over 30 years ago, and telling only a small group of people about it in a mailing list. You always have this in your head when you release a piece of software — somebody will notice, and one thing will lead to the next. Feedback is the most valuable thing you can get, but it is… hard to get.
Open source
It was always clear to me that the core part of Tabsets would be open source. This is one way to get feedback, and a good one. I did get some feedback, but not a lot. Happily addressing the issues somebody got I released new versions and told them about the changes, but they never came back to me after that. Probably they lost interest, but I cannot know why. Probably the interest would be even less in the first place if the extension was not open source.
Analytics
This is something you do once a day or more in the beginning (or if the numbers are great): you check the web store’s statistics:
There’s one peak at the beginning of March — and I will let you know where this came from in a second. Over the months, I was hoping for some growth, but as you can see, the interest seems to be at constant low levels. So, what can you do about it?
Advertisements
The thing is, I do not like advertisements. This is a last resort for me, and — again — I am hoping for some feedback, some other ideas, things I could try. Preferably things I do not have to pay for.
One of the possibilities I found out about was:
Product Hunt
You might know about this platform already, but let me give you a quick introduction: They let you describe and promote your product and let you find followers who are interested in a specific kind of product or functionality.
As you can see from the spike in the image above, it did make a difference (ok, a small one). If I had released a more mature product at that time, I guess, I’d gotten some more valuable feedback. Often, you might think: ok, if my product was better (fewer flaws, better UI, cooler…) at that time, the results would have been better. But you have to start somewhere.
I did a second launch at Product Hunt some days ago, and as you can see, it made some difference. You need to create new versions and talk about it every once in a while.
This brings me to this slogan:
Release early, release often
This is a well-known slogan. From my experience, “often” is good, “early” is… well, it depends. Let me put it like this: Nobody (nobody I know) wants to spend her time with bad software. Talking about ideas (in elevator pitches if it has to be) is fine, but dealing with a piece of software that is buggy, unintuitive, and with a bad UI is a time waster. For you and the ones you found to have a look at it.
So, my advice is: “Early”, as in “Release early” means that you have to have something which is already great. It does not have to be finished or even the final product. It can be a great pitch in the elevator, it can be a great video about an idea you have, or it can be a well-working piece of software that does not have all the functionality you promise yet. But it should already work and look nice.
I am not saying that I always listen to my own advice.
Landing Page & Website
Chances are, somebody will notice and wants to try your product. If she’s interested a bit, she will click some of your links and might end up at a page… — which is not really ready yet. Maybe your landing page is ok, but what about the doc pages? You need to have Terms of Services and Privacy pages as well — are they ready? Do you have a big yellow banner saying “This is beta software, try at your own risk” (like I did)?
Most probably, even if the new users were interested in the beginning, these experiences will let them think: Better come back when this is ready. And you lost them.
Social Media
If you have an account with some followers: talk about your idea or product. But do not talk about it too often.
Feedback Pages
One thing you should definitely do is set up a feedback page (like this). You can create them in no time using services like Google’s feedback forms.
Medium
Last but not least, there’s medium — the page you are reading this at. Up to now, I have to say that this medium (pun intended) was the most successful for me up to now. Why? I did not get very many page views or replies. But I got a very important one (hi Stefan): One reader was really interested and provided me with a lot of feedback and a couple of ideas of himself. In fact, I still haven’t incorporated all his ideas :)
Conclusion
I might come back with a new article about how to promote your extension or piece of software — when I know better what is successful. The bad thing is, that this knowledge might be applicable only to the context of my project, and your success factors might be different.
But one thing is for sure: you need to work to get your product promoted, and it might be more work to do this than the creation of your product itself.