pre-order as testing strategy

[skinut]

All,
So, I'm gearing up to launch and test my third muse, a fitness training information product for mountain bikers, and I have a question about a different way to test. In the book, Tim recommends setting up your landing, pricing, and confirmation page, on your test site, as if your product already exists. After thinking about his strategy, I began to think about why I couldn't offer the customer a chance to pre-order the product, with say a 10%-20% discount and perhaps a free dvd as teasers to entice them to purchase. There is ample demand through PPC and I also plan to run a 1/4 to 1/3 page ad in a popular but affordable mountain bike magazine in the spring.

It seems to me that people would love to take advantage of the discount and the free gift. I would benefit from the knowledge that I have definite customers before production.

Does anyone see any problems with this strategy? Has anyone else done this or seen anyone do this?

Skinut

[Sven]

I have done it but I offered a test version of a product. People that made a reservation could order at a very low price. Those that ordered without reserving payed almost twice that. Price of the resulting system was more than 3x the price of the reserved systems.

This was for testing the PRODUCT. It was probably not representative of the market. If I were to do it this way again I'd offer at say 30% discount with reservation. But it is difficult to say what level would be best.

As it turned out the test system sold very well but the sales numbers were a lot lower with the final model. This can be because of the different target group (willing to pay higher price) or the fact that the offer would end when all systems were sold.

So I guess it depend on you product but it is worth while to ponder about it.