The importance of your first users
Last week we wrote about building a first version of a mobile product in Building a true mobile MVP. However, building the product is actually half the battle (I’d say even less than that, but “half the battle” sounds too good to pass up). Marketing your application, working on having a decent growth, getting your first users and keeping them engaged are a different story. A lot of successful entrepreneurs say that ideas are worthless, and that execution is key. You can have the best product in the world, but it won’t be successful if you have no users.
Pivot pivot pivot
Unless your product is out there, you will never know how users will or would use your product, which is why you need to move quickly and get that first version out in the stores. Focus on the core problem you are trying to solve and ship it! Your first users should define, or at least help you define, the direction in which your product is going. Do you know Justin.tv? Maybe. Do you know Twitch.tv? Probably. Did you know that Twitch came to life because the founders of Justin.tv noticed that a lot (if not the majority)of their users were using the platform to stream themselves playing video games? They decided to focus on that segment of users, and Twitch.tv was born. The faster you launch your product, the faster you will be able to get that kind of insights and make the required changes to (hopefully)get that hockey stick growth.
Version Updates
Being in close contact with your users also allows you to easily plan out your updates! When you buy a gift for a friend or a family member, is that gift based on the person’s interests or yours? Most of the time, it’s based on theirs. The same concept applies in product development. Why would you spend time (and money) building a new feature when you’re not even sure that is what your users truly want? What if there was a way of knowing what your users would like to see next? Well there is, you just have to interact with them.
Marketing
It is imperative that you pamper those early adopters and closely listen to what they have to say. If you do, those same people will become promoters for your app, and this is the best possible marketing you can get: word of mouth from happy customers. There is not a better way (or cheaper way!) of getting new app installs than having people who love your product AND your team to refer it to their friends.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, creating a product is about offering something of value to the customers. There are great tools available to learn more about your users’ behaviour, such as analytics, when you’ve reached a point where you cannot keep up with every single one of your users. In the beginning, you need to Do Things that Don’t Scale. But in the early stages, keeping it simple and interacting with your users can provide priceless information, which could be the main factor between a successful or unsuccessful business venture. And it’s free!
