Ask HN: Questions that scare every developer

[sqardius]

Hi everyone, hope you are doing well, this is the right place to get answers for the questions that scare any developer, at least they scare me and I'm sure that others will share the same feeling, these are the questions:

- 1 How can you let people know about your product?

- 2 How to get them to your website?

- 3 How can you get them to use your product?

- 4 How can you get feed-backs?

- 5 How can encourage them to tell their friends about it?

I know there are other questions, but please if you have any piece of information on the matter, share it us and we'll be grateful, and you are welcome to share your experience and how did you overcome this.

[kappaknight]

Honestly, none of these questions should scare you if you are building something people want.

1. If you are building a product for someone, you should know where those people hang out. You only run into problems if you are building a product for no one.

2. You can start with friends and family, but it's probably best to start where your customers hang out. Online forums, off line meetups, etc.

3. Again, if you're building something people want, they should be lining up to try it out.

4. If they're willing to try your product, they will tell you what needs to be improved.

5. Build real value into the product. When your product actually solves a problem, you won't need to include Facebook, Twitter and other sharing links for it to go viral (or WOM). If your product does nothing, adding those links won't get you any more users either.

[AznHisoka → kappaknight]

There are a lot of sites/apps out there that people want. Yet very few gain enough traction to be sustainable. It's not a meritocracy. It's not enough to just build something people want. The OP has valid concerns...

[kappaknight → AznHisoka]

Are you sure? I know there are lots of sites and apps but I find 99% of them completely useless. Being a biz dev person instead of a hacker, I don't always solve my problems with code.

This means while you CAN build an app, unless that app does something better than the traditional way of solving the problem, then it's not something people want. Most apps don't actually solve problems better or make them easier than their traditional solutions.

[sqardius → kappaknight]

Like AznHisoka said, there is a lots of apps that people need and want, but no one gives them attention, if you have a big company like Google, Apple .etc, you don't need something people want, you just put your name on it and it's sold. Just building something people want is not enough.

[kappaknight → sqardius]

While it's true larger companies can get press on their products easier, if they're not building something people will pay for, it will flop. Take Apple's Ping for instance. Even Steve Job's magic couldn't make that cool.

To get your product out there and carry the WOM effect - your thing really needs to be something people crave and will pay for.

[mgallivan]

Make your beta versions free to the initial clients / testers.