flefant
09-20-2007, 01:42 PM
How do you test the concept for an information product prior to stumping up the cash ($1000) for development? Allow me to explain...
Just to re-iterate the example for testing a shippable product as per the 4HWW testing the muse chapter:
Typically, if you were going to test the pricing of a shippable product e.g. a French sailor shirt on the internet you would have three pages on your site. 1) Landing Page 2) Pricing Page 3) Order Confirmation
After advertising on Google through pay per click, you could track the visitors to your site and see exactly what they did on each page e.g. you could see how many visitors left on the pricing page and could make any necessary adjustments with your pricing. The key point would be to identify how many visitors viewed the Order Page as this would give you an idea as to the number of people who would buy your product. In each case a message would be displayed to the buyer saying: "Our French sailor shirts are on back order - please allow 4 weeks to delivery - thank you for your patience". You could then order the necessary product and all this would have very little cost for you. Sweet.
However, with an information product e.g. eBook (or an audio book distributed in MP3 format) - the buyer is expecting something to be delivered immediately. So you cannot say that the 'product is on order’. So how do you test this in the same way without offering the product in a physical format?
I think being able to test an information based product using the process stated above would be interesting - so I’m looking for some options on how I could do sufficient testing on an information product (it must lend itself to scrutiny) using the above stated method. I want to avoid the example whereby a free product on the same subject is made available (60% is considered to be actual sales).
Failing that, would establishing the potential market size be sufficient prior to product development? E.g. I could use a keyword suggestion tool and search for various key words that would be relevant to the product and use the search volumes as a basis for testing. It seems pretty high level though and wouldn’t lend itself to scrutiny.
I'm a little wary that in the past I've created products without doing enough research on the relevant market and testing of the product. I want to avoid making the same mistakes.
Thank you.
Just to re-iterate the example for testing a shippable product as per the 4HWW testing the muse chapter:
Typically, if you were going to test the pricing of a shippable product e.g. a French sailor shirt on the internet you would have three pages on your site. 1) Landing Page 2) Pricing Page 3) Order Confirmation
After advertising on Google through pay per click, you could track the visitors to your site and see exactly what they did on each page e.g. you could see how many visitors left on the pricing page and could make any necessary adjustments with your pricing. The key point would be to identify how many visitors viewed the Order Page as this would give you an idea as to the number of people who would buy your product. In each case a message would be displayed to the buyer saying: "Our French sailor shirts are on back order - please allow 4 weeks to delivery - thank you for your patience". You could then order the necessary product and all this would have very little cost for you. Sweet.
However, with an information product e.g. eBook (or an audio book distributed in MP3 format) - the buyer is expecting something to be delivered immediately. So you cannot say that the 'product is on order’. So how do you test this in the same way without offering the product in a physical format?
I think being able to test an information based product using the process stated above would be interesting - so I’m looking for some options on how I could do sufficient testing on an information product (it must lend itself to scrutiny) using the above stated method. I want to avoid the example whereby a free product on the same subject is made available (60% is considered to be actual sales).
Failing that, would establishing the potential market size be sufficient prior to product development? E.g. I could use a keyword suggestion tool and search for various key words that would be relevant to the product and use the search volumes as a basis for testing. It seems pretty high level though and wouldn’t lend itself to scrutiny.
I'm a little wary that in the past I've created products without doing enough research on the relevant market and testing of the product. I want to avoid making the same mistakes.
Thank you.