Test Business Idea; We'll walk through a simple three-step process for testing a business idea with real-world customers without investing a lot of time, energy, or money.
In fact, you can use this system even if you haven't finished developing your product or service. That way, you can get early feedback and actually improve your idea, increasing your chances of success.
Why is it important to test business idea or Product?
Before I get into the three steps, I'd like to discuss why testing is so important, because this isn't just about determining whether you have a good or bad idea.
- looking for opportunities to reduce risk.
- find out more.
- increase your chances of success.
As I mentioned earlier, the goal here is to figure out how to improve your business idea. So you want to get feedback as soon as possible.
You should begin focusing on marketing as soon as possible. So that's the general theme here. You're looking for ways to reduce risk, learn more, and, ultimately, improve your chances of success. So I'll go over these three steps quickly.
Steps to test your business idea
I'd like to give you a high-level overview of how this process works so you can understand how and why you should pursue it with your company.
- create a simple website to bring your concept to life.
- Collect early reactions to improve your messaging.
- Test your business idea with real customers.
1. The first step is to turn your idea into a simple website
The first step is to turn your concept into a simple website. You don't need to know anything about HTML, coding, or anything else to accomplish this.
You can use a simple online website visual builder such as Wix or Squarespace, or one of the many other options available.
However, the reason this is so important is that it is one of the simplest, quickest, and least expensive ways to bring your idea to life, allowing you to get genuine reactions from people, iterate and improve on your idea.
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Actually improve your ability to communicate your idea with potential customers, all of which helps move your business forward. So that's the basic idea here.
What we don't want to do is create a Kickstarter campaign or a blog describing what we intend to build or what we intend to create.
The goal here is to create a simple marketing website that appears to be 100% real and already exists.
That's what I meant when I said this is one of the quickest ways to bring your idea to life; we want to create a website that portrays the idea as if it already exists, as if customers can take advantage of it right now.
Whether it's a product or a service, whatever the case may be, you don't have to worry about fulfilling the product just yet because we'll have simple call to action buttons on the website.
Traditional buttons such as Buy Now, Sign Up, Register, Learn More, or whatever is appropriate for your specific business idea.
When customers click one of these buttons, they will be taken to another page that will explain that, unfortunately, this product or service is not currently available.
You can have a small form available for them to enter their email address if they want to be notified when it becomes available.
But you don't have to worry about customers clicking through and buying because you won't be accepting credit card payments and won't be claiming to be able to sell something you don't have at this point.
The main idea here is to simply communicate what you intend to sell, who it is for, and why people should be interested in purchasing it so that you can get reactions and see how people react to the idea.
2. Collect early reactions to improve your messaging
The second step is to collect early reactions in order to improve your messaging. This is critical because, as entrepreneurs, we may have a clear idea of what we're trying to create, who it's for, and why it might be useful to people.
There is usually a significant gap between that and our ability to effectively communicate that to potential customers.
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So you should fully expect your first attempt to create this marketing website to have some serious flaws in terms of articulating what it is in a way that customers understand and appreciate what you're offering.
Step two is to fine-tune your messaging by speaking with family, friends, and possibly some early potential customers.
If you have a close relationship with them, you should show them the website and get their honest reaction.
You want to see what they understand, where there may be confusion, and if they have any feedback or ideas about the product or service itself.
So you've reached step two; our primary goal is to improve the website and our ability to communicate the concept.
However, a valuable byproduct of this entire process is that you may receive some interesting feedback and ideas on how to actually improve the idea of the product or service itself, allowing you to improve it even before you build it.
So you're already thinking about how to take things to the next level without having to spend a small fortune building the first version of the product, or coding out the service, or whatever it is you're planning to create.
As a result, you're improving both the product and the way you describe it to others, and how you conduct these interviews.
These casual one-on-one interviews with family, friends, and potential customers, is critical because, as you can probably guess or imagine, most people, if they know you well, are hesitant to give you honest and critical feedback.
So, when we get into this a little more detail, we'll be borrowing some ideas from "Sprint."
Some ideas from "Sprint" by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
This is an excellent book for developing prototypes, gathering early feedback, and ensuring that your startup or new business is on the right track.
CNN.com is investigating how to conduct simple one-on-one interviews with prospective customers.
You'll sit in on basic interviews with people and show them your website on a tablet or laptop.
All you're doing is asking them open-ended questions to get a sense of what they're going through.
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Simply show them the website and ask them, "What do you think of this?" What do you think it's for? What do you think it does? What stands out to you the most on the page?
You're not looking for suggestions or feedback on how to improve the idea; you just want to hear their honest reaction in the moment.
Everything you say should be geared toward gathering more information from them, rather than attempting to guide them through it or explain why they should be interested in the product or service, or who it's for, whether they're family or friends or not.
Get an honest reaction
You don't want to explain why you're doing it or who will benefit from it; you just want their honest reaction.
What you're looking for here are any points of confusion, where they don't get it, don't know where to look, or don't understand what it's all about. They're perusing the page, unable to make sense of it.
Finally, this step is all about actually improving the website. It's gathering early reactions to improve your messaging, as the title suggests.
Instead of intervening to try to solve their problem, you should simply take notes.
3. Test your business idea with real customers
After we finish step two, once we've improved the website and are talking about the product and communicating it better, we'll move on to step three, which is to test your business idea with real customers.
So this is a very different step from the previous one. We're communicating with people who don't know you and have no vested interest in your success. All they care about is whether or not the product or service adds value to their lives.
Another significant difference between this and the previous step is that instead of conducting one-on-one casual interviews with family and friends, we'll be attracting real genuine customers online through simple marketing channels such as Facebook or Google ads.
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It doesn't have to be expensive; you can spend $100 or $200. Because you are not present in person, the website must be able to stand on its own. Even if you wanted to, you can't.
People must understand what you're offering, who it's for, and why they should care, as well as why or how it adds value to their lives.
How many people saw your ad and how many clicked on it. How many people visit the website and how long they stay there.
Then there's the question of how much time people spend clicking your call to action buttons. So that is the emphasis here. In step three, we want to track things like how much time people spend on your website.
Most people are not willing to make a purchase on their first encounter with a new company or brand.
When people click a Facebook ad for the first time, very few of them are immediately ready to click the Buy Now or Sign Up button and pull out their credit card, expecting to be able to purchase the product or service.
So you shouldn't expect a high conversion rate here, by which I mean people clicking through your ad, visiting the website, and then clicking to buy.
That is simply not a plausible scenario. But you should expect to see at least some people willing to click through, as well as some people willing to spend some time on your website.
Finally, some of those people will be willing to click on one of your call to action buttons to show genuine interest in your product or service.
Of course, if you have any momentum, you can improve your ability to create ads, increase your advertising budget, continue to improve your landing page, build out your product or service, and eventually add additional products and services to create even more value for potential customers and thus be able to spend even more to advertise and attract new customers.
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If you don't get a lot of early traction for whatever reason, that tells you something important: you probably need to adjust your product or service, adapt, learn more about what potential customers are interested in, and pivot your product to serve that audience.
Eventually, ideally, you'll gain traction, at which point you can begin to ramp things up. But that is the procedure.
Let me quickly go over the three steps. First and foremost, create a simple website to bring your concept to life. Second, collect early reactions to improve your messaging, and third, test your business idea with real customers.
If you have any questions, thoughts, or comments about this approach or how to Test Business Ideas With Real Customers, please leave them in the comments section below.
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