
Ask HN: We built a product that nobody wants. What’s next? - mrtsepelev
We built a product that nobody wants. Now we are curious — which way is the best to use our work?<p>Here is the story: in January we launched Landy.io, an automated personalization solution for websites. Everyone in industry who we talked with were pretty excited about our product, but in the end we found out that nobody desperately needs it. It was nice-to-have thing instead of a thing that solves-real-damn-problems.<p>We received some AWS credits from YC open office hours program and we can keep our project up and running. But now we are wondering — should we give up, open source our code and move to the next project or maybe there are some good alternatives that we should definitely give a try? Like, e.g, to find an experienced salesperson and give him a full freedom with selling our product.
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auganov
Can't find the documentation. Your site gives me no idea of how you actually
integrate it or how it works at all. Wouldn't sign up without that
information.

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mrtsepelev
Reasonable concern. We have a basic FAQ, but it does not say anything about
integration (which is actually pretty simple and require only to add our js
script). Will try to fix it.

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seekingcharlie
It's not so much the technical "integration" that your website needs to
communicate about vs how your product works.

I honestly have no idea what your product does. How is it different to Google
Analytics, Optimizely, Mixpanel, et al?

Apart from explaining more about what you do exactly, I'd recommend including
testimonials and results (if you have them) - "we helped X increase their ROI
by Y" for example.

Edit: 'Totally free until August 2016'? I'd recommend phrasing this as 'sign
up now and get our Business package FREE for the next 5 months'. 'Free until
August 2016' doesn't sound very appealing as a potential customer.

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going_to_800
Ok, can you share how you tried to market it?

When a product generates ROI, people will use it. Target the marketers who use
leadpages, unbounce, etc, if it works, they will use it.

Register to StackThatMoney forum, the biggest private affiliate marketing
forum, they work with landing pages all day long. Post your product there, I
guarantee 50 sales in 2 months from there.

You need to target people with high traffic on their landers, i think the
product is good(if it delivers), but you failed at sales and marketing....not
on the idea.

Nobody wants your product because you are targeting the wrong people, that's
my thought.

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mrtsepelev
Sure. Ofk we used PH & HN and Reddit in the beginning (and many others startup
platforms). Tried to reach industry bloggers (had some effect) and reporters
(did not succeed here). Tried a content (which brought high quality leads, but
quantity was pretty small), tried to reach some local marketing communities.
Also tried to reach agencies (failed here).

Even if we received very positive feedback on product / idea and plans on
integration - the process of generating hypothesis and creating different
variations was pretty time-consuming and in the end people did not complete
it.

Posting to StackThatMoney definitely sounds like something worth trying, and
we’ll give it a shot. Thank you!

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going_to_800
Guys, you need people that use landing pages all day long and have enough
traffic.

Your market is huge(I know that because I was selling products for this
niche), from solo internet marketers with big email lists to media buying
agencies. You just need a few case studies to show them it's working.

Do you have any case studies?

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mrtsepelev
We had some tests setup and run (some of them were a clear success, some --
not that much). And we're currently working with one huge Russian company, but
still could not publish a case yet (but surely will as soon as possible).

We know that cases are one of the most important things in this game, but the
problem is that the process is very slow (like starting a campaign could take
up to 2 months), so this makes everything a little bit complicated.

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tmaly
I think this is a great product. Most people may not be at the level where
they are ready for this, or they may not understand this in ways that can
create value for their business. I think you need to market it a little
differently. This has potential.

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mrtsepelev
And what do you mean by "market it a little differently". We played with
positioning/wording for a few months and while it affects our registration
numbers, it did not help to activate users.

Maybe we did it all wrong - we tried to build a slick product, collect leads,
carefully onboard them, nurture with content, optimize our funnels and so on.
Perhaps we should just concentrate on collecting phone numbers and selling
directly, but this is the thing that we tried to avoid all the time.

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tmaly
By "market it a little differently", could you pick a few specific markets.
Say for a landscape design company, maybe visitor A to their site is
interested in someone to cut their lawn on a regular basis. Visitor B is
interested in someone to maintain the flowers and mulch of the gardens in
their yard. Visitor C is interested in a new patio. These are entirely
different pieces of content, but they are highly specific to one industry.

You landing page approaches it more generally and does not target a specific
industry. You need multiple landing pages to give specific examples like this
for a set of industries you would like to target.

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rabidonrails
I think it would be pretty cool if you used it whenever someone visited your
site. For example, if I came to your homepage and then you showed me the other
versions that _I could have seen_ and explained why you showed me this one
that might prove that using your product works.

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sharemywin
I think you need to break your use cases up: 1\. Am I in ecommerce will this
work with a shopping cart? 2\. CMS or blogging platform? ad based? 3\.
Conversion funnel Saas or lead gen?

what if I have sever generated content will it work with my site?

Also, is this targeted at conversion experts? or novices?

Next, if I have all this content how do I get it into your system?

And, I think you need to spell out better the value prop.

Would you like to drop "the cost to get customers" like a rock?

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going_to_800
The thing with optimization tools is that they require some kind of expertise
and patience...and most people don't have that for a new, unknown product.

I was selling a tool similar to Optimizely in a different market. The only way
I get it going was to ditch the monthly plan and add use only anual plan,
target people with expertise in marketing and use outbound sales for bigger
clients.

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sharemywin
I have a website that generates leads. I have keywords, ads, landing page
text, question wizard. How much traffic do I need to optimize for this?

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mrtsepelev
The scheme is simple: the more -- the better. Though, you should not be put
back by the false assumption of your traffic flow being too weak -- give it a
try and see how it goes.

Usually it requires about 10k unique visitors per month to start with.
Concrete answer on your question hugely depends on your audience structure and
number of variations.

