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Ask HN: Beta users flocking over to competitor

44 pointsby fezzlalmost 14 years ago
Hi all,<p>We recently discovered a competitor that launched much earlier than us and have more traction. We then even noticed that some of our earlier Beta users have also moved on to said competitor. We know, because we require a domain name to sign up for an account, and, since they use a stealth iframe pointer/redirect on their domain name, it's easy to find out what platform they are currently using. Think JanesCustomJewelry.com switching from Volusion to Shopify.<p>My question to all is: what next? Clearly our users are choosing our competitors because they have better features and more customization options, which are crucial for a white-label solution, even though their price point is higher. It will be hard to differentiate via a features battle; they have an army of developers.<p>Any advice? Or do we just do our thing, engage with our users, and reiterate until product/market fit? It's hard to ignore a competitor and very tempting to copy what they do. We have a feeling that whatever paying customers we have are only paying customers because they have not discovered our competitor. That is pathetic.<p>Update: <i>indirect</i> link to our site - http://www.fezzl.com

21 comments

mechanical_fishalmost 14 years ago
I am not your audience, so what I think is not that important, but I looked at your homepage.<p>Your opening pitch has too much jargon. I'll avoid using specific words (geez, you are trying to hide from <i>Google</i>? Good luck, Winston Smith!) but you sound like you're talking to a Techcrunch editor in an elevator. Pretend you are selling your product to people who don't know what it is and think it is made by elves.<p>Meanwhile a lot of the text on that page is <i>white on beige</i>, for the love of god. (In Safari/Mac, Flash blocked). Please hire a designer who can see. Or, rather, one who can't see so superhumanly well that they can <i>read completely invisible text</i> and not notice a problem.<p>Your homepage is dominated by a giant out-of-focus video preview image in what appears to be 120 by 120 pixel resolution. In other words, my first impression of your site is that you <i>literally</i> lack focus and polish.<p>Don't rely so much on the video and the clickable previews. I never click them. They tend to play sounds, which disturbs my fellow inmates. They tend to waste valuable seconds of my life. They take my mouse too far away from the back button. Sometimes they just don't work. Try to hook me in the first six seconds without any additional clicks.<p>I found what I bet is your competitor's homepage. (Google took me right to a bunch of great SEO, surprise surprise.) The page I found is full of reassuring pep talk about how their product is going to improve my business. Words like <i>audience</i> and <i>revenue</i> and <i>affinity</i>. They have helpful links to really basic FAQs about what is, after all, a brand-new fashion trend in business which a lot of people haven't heard of yet. Their design is clean and sharp. It's like an infomercial. I tend to roll my eyes when I read such stuff, but that's my <i>problem</i>: I read too much Techcrunch, I'm too cynical and I know too much about the web-services sausage factory, I am not your audience. Your audience probably appreciates being sold a product in terms that they understand, that they have heard before. It's no mystery to me why your competitor is cleaning up.<p>Finally, you've heard of A/B testing, right? Because I wouldn't assume that I'm not completely full of it, here. I'm just throwing out hypotheses [1], I'm just one guy, and I'm never going to buy your product anyway.<p>---<p>[1] Except for the white-on-beige thing. That is a <i>bug</i>, my friend. A <i>high priority</i> bug.
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nudgealmost 14 years ago
It's impossible to answer this properly without seeing your site. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts:<p>1. Features don't matter in the abstract. You can succeed with fewer features by being, for example, simpler. That's the 37signals "do less" line. You say features are crucial for your white-label solution. Are you so sure? Why do you think this is? How do you know this is why you are losing customers? ("Clearly" is a dangerous word). Who do you think your customers are? What if your customers were somebody else? (See point 3).<p>2. "...even though their price point is higher..." - this suggests you don't know that high price is often <i>precisely</i> why customers choose things. High prices suggest high quality, and in the absence of other ways of distinguishing between products, it's a very easy one for people to follow. Perhaps you charge so little that you give the impression of not being serious? And, relatedly, perhaps if you charged more you would be able to spend more to acquire users?<p>3. Pick a niche and own it. If your site works for user types X, Y and Z, just pick some subset of X to go after. Your product will be more targeted to them, which makes it easier for them to see it as something they could use, and it also should make it easier for you to market. See, for example, the many sites that offer build-your-own-websites for photographers, as opposed to simply just build-your-own-websites for everybody.<p>4. Win on design, on copywriting, on user experience, on humour, on speed, on sociality, on security, on reliability, on locality, on trust, on friendliness. Win on anything that's not what you can't win on. On the internet, there's room for more than one winner.<p>But, like I said, if we could see your site you'll get better answers.
jjmalmost 14 years ago
I'm going to take a guess because I'm obviously not part of your core team so I have no inside knowledge to how or what your doing.<p>As other have posted in classic purple cow speak [1], you build a better product and remember "your product is not THE product"[2]. Part of Ash's lean canvas[3] even has a spot for alternatives which may even include competitors. The focal point is you need to start testing everything so you can: create a customer feedback loop of _learning_[4][4b].<p>Ash's model is a variant of the original "Business Model Canvas" which is also very good. I would urge you and everyone to LOOK at the examples and iterations of these models on the main site[5].<p>Some of the questions you start asking in this exercise are: - What is the problem your solving, and what are the possible solutions? - How will you reach customers, who are the early adopters?<p>Its never too late, and like I said actually the beginning of the exercise.<p>Even if you 'know this already', I would urge you to re-test and re-focus on your previous lean canvases/models. Success is in the finer details. Remember, you never stop learning about the customer. You want a 'specific' customer? You develop a strategy - focused on the problem.<p>So there you go, a 'teaser' on building a better product. Now go read Eric Ries's[6] book[7], Steve Blank's book[8] for overall strategy. See the business model generation book and site[9] (there is an ipad app!) for more finer details. There is also a cheat sheet for Steve's book[10].<p>I myself am learning this as I recover from a failed startup attempt[11]. Yes, I'm for hire atm and would LOVE to join another team. Hit me up!<p>[1] <a href="http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/</a> [2] <a href="http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/06/your-product-is-not-the-product/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/06/your-product-is-not-the-pro...</a> [3] <a href="http://www.leancanvas.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.leancanvas.com/</a> [4] <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ashmaurya/running-lean-canvas" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/ashmaurya/running-lean-canvas</a> [4b] <a href="http://www.ashmaurya.com/2010/08/businessmodelcanvas/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ashmaurya.com/2010/08/businessmodelcanvas/</a> [5] <a href="http://thestartuptoolkit.com/" rel="nofollow">http://thestartuptoolkit.com/</a> [6] <a href="http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/</a> [7] <a href="http://lean.st/" rel="nofollow">http://lean.st/</a> [8] <a href="http://www.stevenblank.com/books.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.stevenblank.com/books.html</a> [9] <a href="http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/</a> [10] <a href="http://www.custdev.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.custdev.com/</a> [11] <a href="http://jasongiedymin.com/post/6040811222/even-more-start-up-failure-lessons-learned" rel="nofollow">http://jasongiedymin.com/post/6040811222/even-more-start-up-...</a>
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astrecalmost 14 years ago
<i>Clearly our users are choosing our competitors because they have better features and more customization options</i><p>How do you know? Did you ask? It doesn't sound to me like you asked: Go ask.
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dolinskyalmost 14 years ago
I'm currently getting the following error when I try to view your site:<p><pre><code> Over Quota This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later. </code></pre> That can't be good for business.
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Luytalmost 14 years ago
<a href="http://www.fezzl.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.fezzl.com</a> results in a page saying:<p><i>Over Quota<p>This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.</i><p>Not a good impression, if you ask me.
lazyllandalmost 14 years ago
The first thing to do is to shake of the "feeling" about your product. Don't forget about the fact that you have been able to get customers pay for some value you created.<p>Secondly, follow "nudge's" advice of picking a niche. No product can be all things to all people.<p>All the best, and soldier on ..
alinajafalmost 14 years ago
Sounds like a tough position to be in. I'm not sure that outright ignoring your major competitor is such a great idea. You could perhaps use them to differentiate yourself in the eyes of your customers?<p>For example I'm currently working on a language learning app that will be a direct competitor to (what once was) smart.fm. When I discovered their app (a long way into my project) I was at a loss because they have millions in funding and an army of developers.<p>I realized that their approach to language learning is prescriptive, i.e. they decide what you should learn. To differentiate myself from them, I'd have to go for the opposite approach, in other words, provide a much more exploratory experience for my users. There are a number of other fights I could have picked, but this is something that my users wanted and an easy way to set myself apart from my big hulking competitor.<p>Is there some fight along these lines that you can pick with them? Could you perhaps play the less/simpler features card instead of trying to compete on features? Is it that their marketing is just better?
troelsalmost 14 years ago
Engage with lost customers and ask them what made them leave and what would make them come back.
skrebbelalmost 14 years ago
Genuine (almost entirely off-topic) question: why the <i>indirect</i> link?
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foobarbazetcalmost 14 years ago
Build a better product. Pretend they don't exist.
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alexanderedgealmost 14 years ago
There's no alternative, you must build a better product.
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RandallBrownalmost 14 years ago
Figure out how you can differentiate from them. If you can't beat them feature to feature because you don't have the dev team then don't. Either fix a problem that they currently don't or just focus on something like usability and customer experience.
revoradalmost 14 years ago
Go out on the streets and talk directly to SMBs to acquire new customers.<p>Does your competitor offer data export? Offer free data import and huge discounts to their customers if they move to you.<p>Target businesses already featured on Groupon or other big daily deal sites. If they had successful runs with those, they will now have an email list they can advertise to directly.<p>Focus on one type of business?<p>Keep building a kickass product.<p>Stop blogging for a nerd audience. Blog about your customers' interests. Interview them. Get them featured on popular daily deal blogs like yipit's or Rocky Agrawal's (the guy who recently ripped groupon to pieces).
Tichyalmost 14 years ago
Would it be possible to ask some of them why they are switching. Could be some stupid issue.
TuaAmin13almost 14 years ago
just do our thing, engage with our users, and reiterate until product/market fit<p>^^ This.<p>It seems like you haven't considered the possibility that your users who haven't "jumped ship" so to speak actually use something that your competitor can't provide. You just have to figure out what that something is. Build a bunch of tests and try to gather data on what that something is.<p>Don't try to copy the competition. That difference could be your distinguishing characteristic.
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sapper2almost 14 years ago
I get a "This webpage is not availableThe server at www.youtube.com...". That looks unprofessional.<p>Get some free website monitoring at alertfox or pingdom.<p>This will not solve your main problem, but having a reliable website is a prerequisite for any success. For many users, especially website owners - your customers - such a "bug" makes the website look abandoned.
endtimealmost 14 years ago
Knowing about competitors who beat you to market, have traction, and have an 'army of developers' is probably something to do before you build a product.<p>At this point all you can do is work on your product. Maybe you can find a pain point of people using your competitor and cater to the users who are chafing under that pain point.
mpunaskaralmost 14 years ago
Add free survey widget by kiss metrics and ask visitors what do they want from your web app. This way you'll be able get insights from visitors<p>Get it here : <a href="http://www.kissinsights.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kissinsights.com/</a>
antiheroalmost 14 years ago
The logo looks an awful lot like twitter's.
sukingalmost 14 years ago
I would find a new business model - your competitor already has a ton of traction and after seeing Groupon's numbers it isn't even that attractive. Correct me if I'm wrong.