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Hi all!
As a long time follower of /r/entrepreneur and an soon-to-be entrepreneur myself i finally decided to jump in and share with you fellow Redditors. Worst case scenario is i will be helping someone who is starting too so :)
First of all ill do a basic situation briefing: 1) What is your product or service - Simple answer: www.usertesting.com for my country (Spain) 2)what motivated you to start a business? - The long-life desire to be my own boss, work my a** off for my profit and being able to feel i got somewhere in life, in this business especially, my main motivation was that i strongly feel against inefficient processes (online shopping, tedious interfaces, etc) 3)How long have you been working on your startup - Approximately 1 year along with the co-founder, with on an offs since we both were in university (Bachelor in Business Admin - Both of us)
-In the 6 coming months (we are about to launch) we would like to establish ourselves as a new attractive opportunity in the "Usertesting" market (there are very few bad quality competitors out there- Source: own market analysis) So, once that´s been said.
Our objective: We would like to establish ourself as a innovative and disruptive method of optimising User Experience in the Spanish Market, up to now, the "only" way was through image consultancies and marketing agencies which offered slow and expensive solutions. (aside from the bad-quality competitors mentioned above)
Current situation: Almost ready to offer the service
The Challenges: (Reddit input greatly appreciated) Inbefore proposition: We cant hire a marketing company and we are low on cash
1)Clients *Note: Clients in "our" business are both Website owners (or webmasters, etc) and Mobile App owners (or distributors, etc) however the service has huge scalability onto anything that can be A/B Tester, Prototyped, etc., However we chose to dive first with App Testing(Android Smartphone Tablet) and Website Testing since is made the most sense -Source:own Market Analysis.
-As with every business this is the "hardest" part, we have done several Beta trials with some real clients and we have received extremely positive feedback (10/10), however, these business did not know what "User Experience" was before we actually knocked on their door and we told them what it was and how we could "fix" it.
Strategy: Right now the strategy we have decided to "fight" this challenge is to keep knocking business doors and hope they like the service and are willing to buy it. This however is not a very effective strategy in either the mid-long term run. To this respect we have although thought of "partnering" with image consultancies (as a value add-on to the service they provide or as a "reseller") and with Website + Mobile creation companies.
Threats to strategy: 1-Not really effective in the mid-long run 2-Hindering of our brand publicity/awareness 3-Reduction of profits (in case of resellers) 4-Business barely know what this "User Experience problems" are
2)Testers -As you can imagine one of the main pillars of this kind of business is having a extremely large and diverse panel of available and willing users. But as much as you would think that people would fight over "test this 20 mins and get 10€", its very far from reality from our experience, people say they would, but when posed with the option they usually don´t bother.(market analysis indicated the willingness was high)
Strategy: Our current strategy was the massive sharing of our Facebook page and posting not-so-regulary (just everytime we had something to say) however this dindt work too well (of all 1500 FB friends combined we both have, we received only 170 "likes") and most of them would not be willing to be testers, just signed up "for the sake of it"
The new strategy we have chosen to put into practice is by dividing population into age segments in order to be able to tackle them more easily a)18-25 (university students) -Segment Specific strategy: Attractive action-calling leaflets distributed among universities b)26-40(Workers) -Segment Specific Strategy: to be developed (<-- this is where reddit comes in :) ) c)50-60 (long life workers) -Segment Specific Strategy: to be developed (<-- this is where reddit comes in :) ) d)61 (soon-retired and higher) -Segment Specific Strategy: Attractive action-calling leaflets distributed among old-age centers
Threats to strategy: 1- Lack of strategy for b) c) segments -- Keep in mind both founders are finance-oriented 2-potential lack of success of leaflets if not done properly 3-Untester Effectiveness
3)UX Specialists -As you can imagine another of the main pillars of this kind of business is having a highly professional amount of User Experience Professionals
On to the good news, we have been doing fine with out little efforts in this section (first the users, then the clients, then the specialists)
Strategy: Post job vacancies linking to our webpage and explaining what we do, how we do it and what they get out of it
Threats: -Right now we have 3 User Experience professionals who are willing to work with us, due to the reduced number, we have been able to carefully analyse their CVs and validate them ourselves, however, we see this becoming a problem when we get large amounts of CVs to analyse.
4)Software -Finally, to be able to put all into action, we need the software that will make it work, a Web Platform and Screen recording software.
Strategy: Right now we are ready to offer services from Mac Computer, Android Tablet and Android Smartphone using Freely avaible software, however we still have to create the Web platform, which, as neuralgic center of our business, requires some work
Free Software: Windows Computer: to be decided (<-- this is where reddit comes in :) ) Linux Computer:to be decided (<-- this is where reddit comes in :) ) Mac Computer: Silverback2 --> http://ift.tt/1TIXRG4 Android Devices: http://ift.tt/1Tubx6s iOS Devices: to be decided (<-- this is where reddit comes in :) )
Threats: -Software going non-free -Not own software -Expensive Web Platform
--The End--
I think there is not much more to add and ill be willing to ask every question/comment help you redditors have!
Thank you very much (if you kept reading this far) and i hope this helps us and future redditors!
Cheers Garganteon
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