I'm not sure of what "Iron Conversions" is going to be, but it'll be depressing if this is another story of someone trying to build a product, and then failing, and then building a meta-product around building products and trying to sell that to people on HN who are still trying to build products. There seems to be a huge influx of things like this: books on how to sell books or build apps after their "real book" or "real app" failed to sell, sites for vetting ideas built by people whose "real idea" was bad, customer development tools for people who failed to do good customer development with their "real idea". I enjoy patio11's posts and talks immensely, but even he admits that most of his income is now from the product of teaching others how to build products, not building products himself. Necessity is the mother of invention, but the meta-product trend is getting tiresome. It kind of feels like an intellectual ponzi scheme at some point.
Well I mean, if your first app was an attempt to scratch your own itch, and if your first app fails, then your itch becomes how to build something that doesn't fail. It's only natural that you'd scratch that itch by jumping up one level of abstraction.
As someone developing a "customer development tool" (http://www.petriapp.com/) I'm confused why you would label this "meta"? I (for one) am not building it because I failed to do customer development in the past. I'm building it because I want to do much more of it, and there are large parts of the process that are tedious, time-consuming, and easily automated. Even more time-consuming is the process of educating and coaching others, which freelancers and consulting shops frequently end up doing.
Whenever someone can take one of these pieces of the start-up/product puzzle and simplify it with a tool or a pre-packaged or curated resource, that's a good thing. If it provides value, the rest of us can pay for it and re-invest the time we've saved doing "higher-level" (e.g. more domain-specific) work. If it doesn't provide value, we'll stop buying it.
I consider tools/books made explicitly to help with selling, marketing, or coming up with ideas for software products as per the startup-trend of the Lean Startup, etc, as meta-products. This isn't a bad qualifier on its own, mind you, it just means that its a tool to help sell products/bootstrap startups/etc.
I'm not willing to single out specific products (like yours) and criticize/praise them since that is getting into the weeds, I'm just pointing to the larger trend of tons of HN posts where the author tells a story about their failed startup and then you realize, no, they are not just telling a story and sharing their lessons, they are pitching you to buy their (unproven) product so you, humble entrepreneur, can avoid the same tragedy they did.
If something doesn't provide value and people stop buying it, that doesn't mean the (hypothetical) snake oil salesman doesn't make off with a mint before people realize the fact that it's smoke and mirrors and didn't provide any actual value. It doesn't even have to be malicious, it could just be someone making promises they end up being unable to keep and people giving them money in the hopes of those problems being solved. Everyone has the urge to try something for a few months to see if it works if they are struggling. Why should I trust any fresh-on-the-scene meta-product with even my time (nevermind my money) other than the ones that come from a credible source: someone who built and used it to launch a separate non-meta product.
(The problem, of course, is if someone really has a compelling solution to a problem that provides a competitive advantage, they are disincentivized from selling it!)
The name "Iron Conversions" sounds like some type of service to boost your user conversion. When seeking advice/services for converting users, I'm not sure I would look to the person who just blogged about failing to convert users. Maybe I'm wrong.
You're somewhat correct, I'm building Iron Conversions as a way to boost my trial-to-paid conversion rate for Rakasheets.
Without going into too much detail (I'm not 100% sure this is what I want it to do or how I want to word it) I'm building the tool to respond to Stripe webhooks[1] and other subscription events with dynamic[2] emails.
The goal is to prod my trial users into using the app more, or at the very least telling me why they won't use the app.
This is a problem for me because as it stands my trial users don't even use the app. They'll create an account and then just disappear, never to log in again.
"When seeking advice/services for converting users, I'm not sure I would look to the person who just blogged about failing to convert users. Maybe I'm wrong."
Perhaps because I've failed miserably at converting users, I know exactly what doesn't work (insert winky face here). That's up to you to decide. Of course, I'll be blogging about all of the progress I make with Rakasheets on the Iron Conversions website, follow along if you like.
I'll be honest, yes I plan to sell this service if it works. However, using it to get more conversions out of my trial users on Rakasheets is the main goal here. If IC is popular, then it's popular. If it's the stupidest tool in the world, it still serves my purpose.
(1) Can't I just make Rakasheets respond to my webhooks? Yes, it already does. The problem is I find it a hassle to have to open up my IDE, write a bunch of logic for this or that situation or webhook, and then add in the email html/copy on top of that.
Finally, when that's done I need to test all of the changes and push them to the server. It's a hassle I don't like to mess around with, and severely impacts my testing of these "dunning" emails to the point that I don't even test them anymore.
If you don't have these concerns, more power to you. It's just an itch I want to scratch for myself.
(2) Iron Conversions will query Rakasheets for that user's inventory data. For example, an email will be sent saying "Hey you're tracking 1500 foozles in Rakasheets, if your trial ends now you'll never see those foozles again". That's an exaggeration, but it gets the point across.
I'm talking about very specific types of "pickaxes" that make me cynically feel like there is no "there there." Instead of selling a book on something, sell a book on selling books. Instead of executing on an idea, sell a app that lets people talk about ideas others can execute on. Instead of going out there and doing the hard work of customer development, build a tool whose sales pitch is that it will do customer development for you. I mean, it's really no different than when you see "How to get rich" books in the book store: the way to get rich is to sell books telling people how to get rich.
I get scratching itches and selling those tools you create in the process, but there's just something that seems off about these products that are clearly pitched by failed entrepreneurs to the HN crowd of struggling entrepreneurs and conceived as an after-thought from a failed "real" product. (As a counterexample, 37signals' books etc on building things, are byproducts of building real, successful products, not their main focus of effort in-and-of-themselves.) If you have some tool you built that provided real leverage when building another "real" product, by all means, you should sell that sucker since it's validated as providing real value. But if you had no luck launching a real product and are building some tool that potentially could have helped you if you went back in time, it sounds like you are copping out of the struggle of finding product-market fit and trying to pitch to people going through similar struggles that there is a "quick fix."
There's a grey area here but basically it's the pornographic definition to me for what constitutes ponzi-products: I know it when I see it. Some people are selling actual useful pickaxes, which is great, but others might be just selling fictional treasure maps and Gold Rush 2013 t-shirts.
Oh boy - disagree with the premise. It's been four months since you started? You haven't failed. It looks like you've been trying to market it to the Internet at large and not targetting your likely user base. Go see some local businesses and see if they are in the mood for a better inventory management system. Get one business using it. Then another. Then another. Build your user base one person at a time. Businesses tend to talk to each other. You say have one paying customer? Great! That proves that somebody is willing to pay for it. Just reconfigure your marketing and target the people who are likely to do so - those with whom you already have a personal connection.
I agree. 4 months is way too short to call it quites and shift to a new product.
In terms of customer validation it sounds like you have some but it hasn't been exhaustive by any stretch. Trying to get Adwords-generated revenue with such a small budget isn't going to prove anything either way. Articles written by people from Fiverr.com isn't much better.
Pound the pavement and find 20 people who have inventory management problems, email 200 people who you think are in your target demographic. Find out what they hate about inventory management and if your solution can fix their problem.
I'd be happy to take articles that have already been researched and written by people on Fiverr and rewrite them using grammatically correct English while keeping the original SEO keywords. Contact me at the email address in my profile if interested.
I think it might be too early to talk about failure, I think 4 months from start to finish is a very short period of time for building and launching to deciding that no one wants your product.
Your product has been exposed to a tiny tiny tiny percentage of those who it could be. 1 customer out of 1,000 potential is a very low conversion but who's to say you're getting the right type of traffic?
Take a few days to speak to small business owners (in person maybe, or on the phone) and maybe consider a change of tack to a smaller niche that have a specific problem.
Maybe convert to a Shopify plugin? We pay for 3 for our business and they are both very feature light but they solve a specific need.
Also, look at companies who sell online but make product to order. Tracking raw materials against a final product sell is a real nightmare and not one that any of the big shopping cart players manage (3 years ago they didn't at least).
Absolutely, four months when compared to other SaaS products (or any product in general) is a laughably short amount of time to judge anything a success or failure.
I probably should have explained a bit more in depth about why I'm calling it a failure:
I'm simply not interested in the product I built anymore. Inventory for small businesses is something that doesn't hold my attention as it used to when I built the product, and I'm not sure it ever did.
Right now it's hard for me to load up my IDE and start working on the product. I feel like I don't know what to do with it as it is, and that stems from the lack of interest.
I'm taking a couple weeks to go over my options, and I think I've got a decent plan to revitalize it.
I haven't given up on the product itself, or the core problem it solves (inventory management). I've only given up on who it's marketed to.
Like you said, I think the best option is to change to a smaller niche. The one I have in mind will radically change how the product looks and functions, but it will still be inventory management.
This all sounds very familiar. I also built a SaaS for small business owners in France (professional filesharing) but I realized I didn't care enough about the product and the audience I was serving (among other problems)
For me, caring about the product and the people you're serving is the most important thing. Don't choose a project because it sounds like a good idea, but choose a project because it's a part of a bigger goal, a bigger mission.
However, there's also something to be said for persistence and not giving up at the first obstacle. Finding out where the limit lies is not easy.
Let me give you some advice from someone who's been on the customer side of SaaS inventory systems for the past couple years.
1. Inventory systems very rarely live in isolation. If you're a medium/large business, you quickly discover the need for integration with accounting, procurement and manufacturing or production. If you're a small business you may only need accounting -- but nevertheless selling this by itself might be difficult.
2. You're using strange terminology that unfamiliar to those dealing with inventory day-to-day. What is a 'sheet'? Why is more sheets better than less when it comes to pricing? Fix your terminology or at the very least clarify what it means.
3. You're charging too little. You're competing with a bunch of companies that won't even list prices on their websites (which means it's in the 5+ digit range per month). Your dirt cheap pricing gives the impression that you're a tiny app that has little value. I'd suggest you consider pricing based on number of users, similar to Atlassian.
4. Sorry to be blunt, but your website sucks. You need more screenshots. Pricing should be on the front page. There's an overwhelming amount of text on your front page, as a customer I probably won't read all that so don't bother.
5. Stop emphasizing that you're a one-man team. That is not attractive to business customers. They want to know that there is firepower behind the product and it's not a fly-by-night operation, both to handle issues when they come up as well as grow the product down the road.
Your big advantage here is transparency. Be up front about your pricing and your features, this sets you apart from your competition by leaps and bounds. Your competition requires a phone call with a sleazy salesperson and then they price based on your revenue. You're in a good market, but it will require you to be a lot larger than you think. You're actually competing in the ERP space. That's actually a good thing though, because nobody likes working with those companies, they're horrible. Use that to your advantage and sell your customers on your advantages.
1) I've quickly learned this point but for a long time I resisted adding any other "features" to the app. I considered it a waste of time, if I couldn't get more than one person paying for the product, why should I spend even more time building something that may never get used?
Suffice it to say I've changed my tune and building in all of the other modules is just something I'll have to deal with if I want to make any money.
2) The terminology is an antiquated reference to some very old copy. Originally a sheet was like an excel sheet, each one would do something different or track a different location, etc.
After going through a bunch of iterations on the copy, I just started referring to the product as a sheet, as in "inventory sheet". I agree 100% that this is confusing and needs to change.
3) One of the first things I'm going to do for rebuilding this app is charge far more. Businesses that scoff at paying more than $29 per month are probably not the kind of business that should be using the product.
4) I've tried a bunch of different designs and copy for the landing page, including a bunch of screenshots at one time. One big problem I've had is my failure to accurately track what was a success and what wasn't. What you see there is my last attempt before losing interest in the product. (I was going for "hybrid copy" for those of you that read CopyHackers).
5) In my latest iteration on the home page and other parts of the site I tried to go for a more "personal" approach instead of "corporate-y" like my competitors. Like the point above says, though, I have failed to accurately track what works and what doesn't beyond saying this iteration has been my most successful at getting trials.
One problem i can see is you build an isolated system. People when look for a solution like inventory, hopes that in the future they can intregrate it into a bigger system. Someone talk in this discussion about ERP, but i think that build an ERP require too much resources and time, about all for an startup, but is desirable to have a product that have more than just an inventory system. I think you have two ways, first integrate your system with some big alternatives of market [some one mention shopify] or create more systems and integrate them [consider see openerp or openbravo]...
Great advice. I admit I had no plan of action when I started building my product.
My line of thought was: "Okay, I'll build it. People will somehow hear about it and start using it. I'll make money which I can then put into marketing the product".
I'm now developing a clear plan of action before I take another step with my product. A lack of one in the first place was crippling.
This seems to be a common theme so I'll post this here instead of replying to each comment with the same thing:
I probably should have named the blog post "I've lost interest in my product" instead of calling the whole thing a failure, as that may have been more accurate.
To me it is a failure, but not because I've only gotten 1000 visitors over four months, or because I've only had one paying user.
Instead, I call Rakasheets (the product) a failure because I've lost interest in what it was built for. I built it to solve inventory management for small businesses, but small business inventory does not interest me any longer (if it ever did).
I find it hard to open the project in my IDE and work on it, or even to think about it at all.
With that said, however, I haven't given up on the problem I built it to solve (inventory management). Instead I've given up on who it was built for (small businesses).
I'd like to give more details about that but for now I'd rather build a plan of action before talking about what I'm going to do.
On another note, I completely agree that four months is far too short to call anything a success or a failure. If I were still interested in the product I'd never admit it was a failure simply out of pride.
(Also, thanks for commenting. I really appreciate the advice. If I didn't reply to you it's only because HN throttles comment submission rate. I was unaware.)
Seems to me like you would get customers for this sort of product the old fashioned way, by cold calling businesses and setting up meetings with businesses etc as opposed to internet marketing.
I have some ideas, but they are just ideas, probably more wrong than right.
Your site could probably use some a/b testing for conversion rate increase. see funnel charts. I wouldn't mind seeing a demo as a video either. I also wouldn't mind seeing a feature comparison chart (?) comparing your features to the top 3 inventory systems, and why yours beats theirs.
Or even for a free extra N sales, you can claim on your landing page, "the inventory system that blows SuperInventory1 out of the water!!" (if there was a competitor selling SuperInventory1). (and then of course you buy on all their adwords if you want to needle them a bit)
I think your ads are just hitting the wrong audience.
Instead of a blog talking about small business, you would probably do better in this space blogging about living a ridiculously baller lifestyle, and blogging about women and gambling... you want to attract customers with successful small businesses.
I can suggest marketing to a group of customers have a problem, say buying adwords for "sugarInventory bug" or "I hate inventory".
Maybe give out some licenses free to bloggers or small businesses? (like 10 as a test pilot? I am not sure)
My hunch is this industry is not consumer facing, and most industry stuff recommended is word of mouth, magazine, trade show, or by sales pitch. Typically a for-a-business product has a sales team, with people who hunt leads and make calls, not sure what you can do to beat the competitors who do this, but I would start on the phone.
First of all, declaring failure at this point is so ridiculous that I'm pretty sure that the only purpose of your blog post is to advertise that "Iron Conversion" thing.
Second, Reddit and adwords aren't the only marketing strategies out there, especially when it comes to small businesses. I mean, C'mon, how many small businesses owners turn to reddit in search for "inventory management app". Even more than that - how many business owners actually turn to the web to look for solutions?
I don't know how you imagine them, but small businesses owners aren't hackers.
They want solid solutions and they surely would be interested in something that solves a problem and is cheaper than their current solution.
As I see it, your only marketing strategy is phone calls. I mean, hundreds of them.
Just open Yellow pages and start making them calls.
Pitch your product, ask business owners about their problems with their current system, describe how yours would solve their problems. Try to get business owners interested, offer a free trial, ask for email addresses, do follow up -phone calls-.
I'll reiterate - small businesses owners aren't hackers.
Edit: I just saw this - "Online Inventory Management without the suck"? Seriously? I really want to know how you imagine your average customer (genuinely interested)
"Small business owners aren't hackers" is what I've learned recently, and I wish I learned it months ago. In hindsight I know I went about finding my problem-to-solve in the wrong way.
Instead of interacting with my potential customers, I only read what they were talking about from afar, and somehow divined that "real time inventory management" was the solution.
I didn't ask them what they thought, and I didn't validate the product. That was a big mistake and could have saved me months of effort building something I'm no longer interested in.
Re: "Online inventory management without the suck". All copy so far has been written in a vacuum. I have had literally zero feedback from random internet visitors (until today, from HN). My only way to gauge if my copy was working was by the amount of trial signups I was getting each week.
It happens that that was one of the last messages I tested before losing interest. Trust me, the copy has gone through numerous iterations over the last few months trying to find something that sticks.
I've tried long copy, short copy, "hybrid" copy, screenshots, no screenshots. I didn't just stick that message up there and call it good for a few months.
This might sound like I'm irritated or angry, I'm not. I genuinely appreciate all of the feedback I've been getting. Thank you!
Actually that was a bit that should have been cut out. I previously had a paragraph in there that said most of my mailing list subscribers were from India (according to MailChimp).
I then went on and said that the people on my mailing list weren't very interested in opening the emails I sent or responding to them. I took the line out however because there's no correlation between being Indian and not opening my autoresponders.
I've got Americans and Europeans on there too and they don't open or respond just as much as people from India.
Another sidenote, this probably suggests that what I'm sending isn't all that enticing to anybody and could use some work.
I've actually built a custom inventory system for a customer, so I know the challenges you face from the engineering side. I'm also (co-)founding a startup, so I know your challenges from the product development side. However, my gut tells me that neither of these are your problem. Your problem is very clearly your website.
Your first image is nice and somewhat explanatory, but there's no call to action until the user scrolls at least once, and even then it is small and rather unnoticeable. I would say that the worst part is the wall of text that follows. No screen shots, nothing to play with, just a wall of text listing the features.
You have to draw the customer in with your coolest and/or most useful or unique features first. If they want to learn more, have a way for them to do that (take them to a "features" page or something), but your current layout is just way too intimidating.
And to reiterate what others are saying here, small business owners aren't always the most tech-savvy. Maybe your angle should be how dead-simple easy it is to use (way easier than anything out there, of course :)
I hope this helps, and good luck should you attempt to revive this project!
I know little about the space or problem you are solving, but will echo the sentiment that although 4 months may seem like a long time (even given the effort) it really is a drop in the bucket of what it takes to build a successful product/company.
My unsolicited advice is this: don't write it off as a failure unless you really don't care about the problem you are solving -- in which case go work on something you do.
Before I ever got another pair of eyes on the product, I had built every single feature. It took nearly a month to get it all together and ready for users.
So the product has only been around for 4 months, it only took a month to piece it together and get it ready for the public? Doesn't sound like you've failed to me, you've only just started. Starting a new company with no rapport with anyone isn't just going to burst onto the scene and people throw large amounts of cash, trust and praise at it. Marketing to small businesses isn't easy, you've got to build trust first.
And by the way just by launching the product instead of burning through savings and investment capital for a couple of years you've succeeded in that I've seen tonnes of ideas and startups fail because they couldn't get a product finalised and out the door for people to use. You've launched something, be proud and keep working at it.
I agree, 4 months to build, market, and sell. That's nothing. Remove the dev time and you're looking at what, 1-2 months? And considering your marketing isn't very strong and its all new to you, you can't expect results that tae. Adwords alone costs at least a thousand just to start getting an idea. And at least 3-6 months of experience.
If someone was coding for only a few weeks you'd probably tell them they just have the basics at best. A bit more than hello world but not much. The same is true with marketing ;)
It took me a year just to figure out marketing. The overnight successes you see on techcrunxh are either very lucky, its not their first time around (ie lots of experience), or have been working at it for a long time and you only see the last and exiciting part. Don't be fooled into thinking you can build something AND sell it in a few months.
I think it's lovely that a startup can go from fruition to abject failure in 4 months. If you really don't believe in the product any more, that's that and you should be happy you got out so quickly.
That being said, 4 months isn't a lot of time although it sounds like you've spent considerable energy on this product. If the software works you might consider unwinding this business through a sale or a partnership. If what you need is sales, find a motivated sales person. I definitely agree with other posters that you could use a motivated marketing person as well; you might still be able to make a go of it.
When we were starting out we definitely fell victim to the custom request bug, but as you grow you'll realize that no client is worth upending your whole business.
Agreed, four months definitely is not enough time to be calling this a failure.
I've explained my motivations for calling it a failure elsewhere in this thread if you're interested. I probably should have named the post "I've lost interest in my product" as that may have been more accurate.
As for your other point, a motivated marketer would help me immensely. I'll be the first to admit that my marketing sucks. However, hiring another person to help with this project is simply beyond my meager income. I make enough to live comfortably with my girlfriend, but I can't afford too much beyond that.
Even with the issue of money aside, my core problem is that inventory management for small businesses no longer motivates me, I find it hard to work on the project as it is.
I think the problem here is that your just not good at marketing. I read your entire post, you mentioned that you were pivoting yet you failed to capture my attention or interests by not expanding on what the idea was. You also concluded your post without giving me an option to signup for your emails, I thought the post was done so I stopped reading at the thanks for reading section, which I didn't read. Only going back I saw that there was a signup box all the way at the bottom - if you want me to signup for your emails, make it easy for me to do so, don't make me hunt. Good read regardless.
Agreed, thanks for the feedback. I'm not a great writer, and my marketing skills definitely leave something to be desired. Nevertheless, it's something I've been trying to improve recently.
When comparing the copywriting I have on my product's website (Rakasheets, not Iron Conversions) it's leaps and bounds better than what it was when it first launched. Originally, my "copywriting" was a rant against using Excel sheets for inventory.
And personally, after re-reading this blog post I feel it was a bit jumbled and jumped around too much. Like I said, it's something I'm trying to improve.
The copy on the Rakasheets site also stood out to me as a problem. As hahla stated, your customer is likely not a hacker. The other vendors they give their money to do not say things like, "... without the suck" or "Benefits - lots of 'em."
The value of the inventory you're tracking could be a significant chunk of your customer's life savings, so I'd want to convey professionalism and trustworthiness.
Regarding copywriting in general, I've never tried it, but if you need help you might try something like https://draftin.com/
The "using Excel for inventory" seems to contradict what you originally said about customers wanting inventory plus something else. If they are already using Excel (or Access) just for inventory than they are already comfortable having inventory in a silo. You are offering "a fancy Excel sheet on the web" which has been successfully marketed by a number of SaaS companies in other problem domains. (Time and expense tracking for instance.)
The piece that seems wrong to me is your CPC with Adwords. 15-35 cents per click? It looks like Adwords is charging $3 - $6 per click for closely related terms. Yes, this is 10x what you're used to paying, but these are the customers who are the most likely to want exactly what you're selling.
Get a signup page in there and see what converts the best. For B2B, the sales cycle is longer than consumer-oriented businesses, so it's best to start by building some sort of relationship first: e-mail newsletter, free trial, etc. rather than tracking absolute sales based on the first click.
You're right, the online inventory management bidding for AdWords clicks averages far more than I spend per click. I haven't checked recently, but $3-$6 sounds about right.
I started to bid as cheap as I could, figuring it'd be better to get 15 clicks a day at 20 cents or whatever, instead of 2 clicks a day at $1 each.
My total AdWords budget is around $75 per month, and I spend $1.5 - $2.5 a day. My math is probably off here, I'd need to double check.
I don't know anything about inventory management but the idea of a free inventory management product is kind of interesting. What if you made it free, how could you make money off it? Would suppliers be able to bid for ads, so that when it came time to re-order their deals were shown preferentially? Who would find the information about the inventory of hundreds of small businesses commercially useful, and who would be willing to pay for that?
That is a interesting plan, it will require a few things though. Firstly you need a lot of clients to make it worth their while. Secondly you need the business ability to negotiate with medium to large companies.
Agree, it isn't without issues. But if you've built the app and there are lots of people wanting a free solution then that is two out of three (with the third, and only, missing piece the people willing to pay...which is kind of where he is now). Still, at scale this would give you a lot of interesting data I'm sure you could make money off of somehow - e.g. shorting P&G because you can see their orders are down 20% or something like that.
I like your article because you show "how to fail" instead of the common "how to win". We started a product/company (took a year to build), have a similar situation, and are still debating closing everything completely. If we do end up shuttering, I'll just try to sell to a competitor for a little computer money. Anyway, I think your product sounds cool (would b good for a bookstore) and I think your story could be ebook worthy.
Yeah, books might be a good niche for a product like this. There is a market for software targeting people selling through Amazon who really need just inventory management and not customer lists and the other features mentioned in the original article.
The custom barcode scan stuff is spot on, it would be interesting to have a Android or iPhone application that integrates potentially in real-time with a web app (look at the Roller demo that Google just released to see how simple integration can be) and is used as a barcode scanner. Supporting ISBN, QR, other custom barcode formats could be a valuable feature.
If you plan on just building a product and waiting for small business owners to float by your web site to buy it then you are wasting time. Small businesses, at least initially until you become a well known brand, need direct marketing. And that will mean you have to pick up the phone and start calling. If you have a particular niche you are targeting then getting list of those businesses should not be hard.
You seem to be a good writer and very articulate. However, therein lies your problem. Your blog, too long. Your product page ... way to long.
My suggesting is before throwing money at marketing, get some feedback from some local business managers on your product page. Cut it down to something that takes 1 min to get the gist of. Put more images/icons to help explain or highlight certain points.
Looks like standard engineer writing to me. I noticed "Mobile Ready!" takes the lead twice on the product page, but I don't think mobile is a tier-1 need for inventory management.
By a fluke I noticed that "mobile inventory management" and variants brought me tons and tons of clicks from AdWords for incredibly cheap.
Attempting to capitalize on that, I did my best to make the product "mobile ready" and started flinging some of the traffic at a special mobile landing page.
Having not converted any of that traffic, I've ascertained that they're probably looking for a native inventory app rather than a web app.
Edit: "tons and tons" is relative to the clicks I was getting before this discovery.
I'm just going to leave this here in the hope that @Rakathos reads it. It's all about why "small business owners" are a terrible market: http://www.erica.biz/2013/new-business-ideas/
I cite some good examples of markets in there, as well, so you can see the difference between a good market and a bad one.
That's what nearly all of the feedback I've gotten has been. "It needs to be like X or do Y".
I fought that for a long time but I've been forced to see that inventory management by itself is not something that many businesses can use. They need inventory + X.
Nuanced difference between what you're saying and what the GP is saying. GP isn't saying inventory + $random_feature, he's saying make it a complete solution.
OpenERP is great, but a full ERP needs a lot of people and sales, I just don't need to make a requisition for every thing I buy, neither do I need purchase orders, or so much as openerp offers. I just need GnuCash to manage inventory and thats all
I hate phone calls too, but you need to get over that. You don't need to cold call people - you can email first, set time for the call etc - but you can learn SO MUCH more about your potential customers from actually talking to them.
In person meetings are even better (and much more comfortable if you don't like calls) but they don't scale as well.
Your rite small business needs a complete package not focusing on automating one part of their business. I developed a crm/erp for the small business, covering from attendance, payroll, followups, lead management, production, vendor management, accounting, competitor analysis and many more feature that's is not avaliable in current crm/erp industry. www.bizsol.co and I'm from India
