You want to avoid putting lots of effort into building a product and business just to realize one year later that there is no or merely low demand for it.

The solution is to validate your thoughts and hypothesis regarding your business idea before you start.

How it works:

  1. You define your assumptions about your product. Like, what problem it solves, for whom this is valuable.
  2. You gather evidence around your assumptions through experimentation (like a survey) to make fast, informed and low-risk decisions.

If your hypothesis gets debunked you should adjust your assumptions and continue with tests, till you get proof that your product is worth building.

The Internet offers a variety of ways to find useful feedback. For example, online forums such as reddit.com.
Reddit is an online forum that has subheadings for all sorts of topics. In this way, you can communicate your project to the community in thematic sub-headings. This gives you feedback and insights into the thoughts of your target group.

A business idea can be implemented professionally with your own landing page. You can set up a website that clearly describes your plan. In other words, include product descriptions, images, prices, etc. The aim is to create the impression that the described products exist, although this may not be the case in reality.

If the visitor is convinced by your product, he is instructed to deposit his e-mail address on the website (e-mail signup) to be informed as soon as the product is available.

The proportion of website visitors and actual people who gave their e-mail address out of interest in the product provides information about how attractive the product is.

Therefore, the higher the conversion, the hotter the product. Ideally, the conversion is over 2% (ie. 100 visitors lead to 2 interested customers who provide their e-mail address).

If the conversion is positive, then further conception and implementation of the product can proceed.
The reason for this validation is to obtain the most meaningful understanding with as little effort as possible to determine actual market demand. The goal is to test hypotheses as effectively as possible.
Providers such as tally.so or wix.com make it easy to create a simple and attractive website without any programming knowledge.

Most of the product validation is complete upon creation of the website. The task now is to direct as many users as possible to the website to collect meaningful data.
It is appropriate to share the website link among your contacts, post it in public communities and do online marketing. With the help of online marketing, you can direct a large number of users to your website.

Example

In the example above, the idea of an innovative credit card is tested. The website explains all the essential features and asks the user to leave their email address to be notified when the credit card is available.


Ideally, the conversion from website visitors to e-mail entries is high. If this is low and altering the product properties does not lead to improvement, then the idea cannot be “valuable” enough.

About Andreas Schrade

Andreas is an IT company owner,  entrepreneur, software engineer, marketing strategist and unshakable optimist dedicated to helping you building an outstanding digital business.

He has studied technology AND marketing thoroughly. That's what sets him apart from others (who only understand one world).

Contact him and his team, or follow him on Social Media.

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