Page 29 - The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch - PDFDrive.com

Email Opt-In/Beta Signup Totals Do Not Indicate Purchase Intent

Email signups are often considered the key indicator of whether an idea is sound.

With the first version of my analytics dashboard, I had 1,000 people sign up for
the beta (three months) and 1,200 people enter their email to be notified of
launch.

These may seem like small numbers, but it took five years to build up an email
list of 2,000 people in my last business. I really felt like I was onto a winner.

There is a very big difference between someone entering their email and
someone paying you each month for a product. I’ve consistently discovered that
once I launch a product, on page conversions go down. It’s easy for someone to
enter their email to be notified.

It’s much harder for someone to sign up, try, and use a new service.

People Saying “It’s a Good Idea” Doesn’t Mean It Is

As part of validating Buffer, Joel Gascoigne “simply tweeted the link and asked
people what they thought of the idea.”

His post on validating Buffer indicates that he read a lot into this:

“After a few people used it to give me their email and I got some useful
feedback via email and Twitter, I considered it validated. In the words of
Eric Ries, I had my first validated learning about customers”.

Really? A few of your mates said it was a good idea and therefore it’s
“validated?”

It turns out that Buffer was a good idea and a product that people were willing to
pay for. Does that mean the validation technique was a good one? I don’t think
so.

Here are some of the things that people around me said when I built Informly: