
Failing Fast Is Not Fun, Satisfying or Pleasant - joshuacc
http://tbbuck.com/failing-fast-is-not-fun-satisfying-or-pleasant/
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mechanical_fish
I can't figure out what this product does. What does "save" a site mean? What
does it mean to "contact" a site?

The site's frontpage seems to be designed to sell half of the designer's brain
to the other half of the designer's own brain. It might not actually take much
iteration to turn this into a product that would sell. We just need to know
what the hell it does.

~~~
markyc
After visiting the site on 2 separate occasions, I also still can't tell what
the site does and how it can help me right now.

Usually, if I don't find that the first 3-5 seconds upon visiting a site, I'm
outta there..

so my suggestions are: 1\. bigger headline (UVP) 2\. small subtitle clearly
explaining the main benefit 3\. picture on the right needs to better define
your product (add "marker notes" on the picture if necessary)

hope it helps!

~~~
markyc
also, none of the titles for the 4 benefits on the homepage mean anything to
me. they have to tell me specific things your product does to help me right
now.

good luck and i'd say don't give up yet. tweaking marketing and a/b testing
are relatively inexpensive (and imo a lot of fun) and who knows, you might
stumble on a winner!

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wisty
You are selling a product in an unvalidated marketspace. Want to sell a bug
tracker? Just call it a bug tracker. I don't know what the category of your
product is, so I don't know if I need one.

Why do I need to contact a website? Am I looking for a job, and cold calling
companies to look for openings? Am I marketing something? It's kind of a
lightweight CRM? But don't say CRM, because I don't know what a CRM is ;)
Maybe you could look at how 37 signals sells their CRM.

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jnovek
Tom, what do you do for a living?

You might consider targeting this application to specific professions that
would benefit from it, i.e. "CampaignBar: A sophisticated bookmark and contact
manager for blogging professionals" or whatever.

When a tool comes out of left field and solves a problem that I didn't know I
had, you need to show me that I have that problem in the first place. Give me
examples of how my way of getting work done right now is broken.

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grannyg00se
There's a potential problem with the "fail fast" mentality. Are you sure
you've looked at all of the reasons the product failed and attempted to
resolve them? You may be abandoning the project too quickly. In this case, it
might be worth bringing someone in to improve the communication of the landing
page. And it might also be worth doing some targeted marketing. How do you
know when you've failed after making a proper attempt, versus giving up too
quickly?

~~~
mootothemax
_Are you sure you've looked at all of the reasons the product failed and
attempted to resolve them? You may be abandoning the project too quickly_

This has absolutely been a concern - maybe I've just not put enough into the
marketing. I reached out to two target audiences: outsourced marketing; and
link builders. Plenty like the tool, but not enough to pay. My suspicion is
that it doesn't save enough time to bother paying for.

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rpeden
I think that a couple of weeks is far too soon to decide that something is a
failure. It's barely even enough time to gather enough data to decide what can
be adjusted and improved.

An article that has been posted here before comes to mind:

[http://www.sodaware.net/dev/articles/shareware-amateurs-
vs-s...](http://www.sodaware.net/dev/articles/shareware-amateurs-vs-shareware-
professionals.htm)

I tend to agree with it. If you're fairly certain there's a market for what
you're trying to sell, don't give up on it too soon. Instead, use the
information you've gathered to continually refine the product, and execute a
marketing plan to try to bring your product to the attention of people who are
going to use it. Keep on evaluating, refining, and executing.

In the end, it still might not work out. The danger in failing too quickly,
however, is that you'll give up on products that could be quite successful
just because they weren't successful right away.

~~~
mootothemax
_I think that a couple of weeks is far too soon to decide that something is a
failure_

Agreed. This was originally launched at the start of the year though.

 _An article that has been posted here before comes to mind_

I'm reading through that article now, thanks! :)

 _The danger in failing too quickly, however, is that you'll give up on
products that could be quite successful just because they weren't successful
right away._

I agree 100%. All I'm after some form of validation for the idea, not huge
success, and so far... well, there' not been a lot ;)

~~~
rpeden
My apologies; I must have misread something in your post.

Validation can be a strange thing. Sometimes you'll make a little change that
seems inconsequential, and it will make all the difference. If nothing else,
look at it as a fun opportunity to try to find those seemingly tiny
differences that end up being huge to potential users.

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aaronf
This is a great example of why people shouldn't give up and "fail fast". You
need to work on your marketing copy. We just launched LazyMeter on Friday
after months of questionable data - especially when we first went into beta,
we easily could have decided our idea was a failure. Eventually, we realized
our users had no idea what we were trying to do for them. We designed a new
website and wrote new copy (nice theme by the way! heh). We launched on Friday
and converted over 1/3 of our visitors, achieving thousands of users on our
first day. Keep at it!

~~~
aaronf
PS: Can someone please design some more SaaS wordpress themes? This is getting
ridiculous.

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fractallyte
Incidentally, on your CampaignBar website, one of the first (most important!)
headlines has a typo:

'Find websitse, save and manage their details.'

-> 'websites'

~~~
mootothemax
_Incidentally, on your CampaignBar website, one of the first (most important!)
headlines has a typo_

Damn, that's what you get for live updates. Thankfully caught within a minute
or two of going live, thanks :)

------
dolphenstein
I'm failing to see what value this adds to standard bookmarking.

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buckwild
The "fail fast" method is more of a learning style rather than a road to
success.

~~~
mootothemax
_The "fail fast" method is more of a learning style rather than a road to
success._

But surely it should help get you off the path to failure?

