Hi All,<p>A few months ago, I created a web application (gisconverter.com) that converts GIS files from one format to another. Initial market research led me to believe that there was a decent sized market for such an app. However, a month through advertising using google adwords shows that there is almost no market for this.<p>Since the core idea has no market, it makes sense to let this app die. However I am unable to let go and keep trying to find ways to pivot and come up with an alternate idea around this one. I know at some level its hard for me to let go after having invested time into this.<p>Any ideas on what I should do with this?<p>Much thanks for your time.
<i>a month through advertising using google adwords shows that there is almost no market for this.</i><p>No, it shows that there is no market <i>on Google Adwords</i>. I don't know anything about GIS, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a better way to reach potential customers.
Who would be your paying users? What kind of companies are we talking about? Is there a place where those people congregate on the web?<p>Adwords is a great way to spend your money, but it is not a guarantee to make any. My own business makes a fair amount, I've tried increasing it using adwords but it was a 100% waste of $, that does not mean the rest of the business is invalid. It just means that adwords and my target market do not overlap significantly.<p>I went through about $5K (without so much as a single sale!) on adwords before cluing in to that it wasn't the way I was spending money on adwords, it was just that it wasn't going to work at all.<p>So don't use adwords as the validation of your product, try other avenues to make sales.
It seems likely that you are underestimating the potential market due to the design of your site. A few points:<p>1. The video walkthrough has no audio, and the notes are too small to read at the video's default size.<p>2. The upload links on the left aren't obviously links. Someone who is in a hurry could easily overlook them. (And no, they won't read the instructions or watch the video.) I would probably incorporate them into the main content area under a heading like "GIS Converter can convert:"<p>3. There isn't a straightforward call-to-action on the home page. Even something as simple as a big "Convert My File" button might be helpful.<p>4. Though the overall appearance isn't that bad, dark sites seem to have a harder time gaining users' trust, especially in business. Changing the color scheme to something lighter would probably help.
Even if your target user thinks your tool is the greatest thing since sliced bread, do they have the authority to get out a company credit card and spend $10 on the spot?<p>Do people want to use a "beta" product for production work? (I assume very few people do GIS file conversions for fun.)<p>What happens if a customer gets a slightly different source file and needs to convert it again? Does that cost another $10? Instead of charging per-conversion, what if you offered a thirty-day "all-you-can-convert" plan?<p>In general, the website doesn't inspire confidence and it certainly isn't optimized for conversion. Payment information is lacking (yes, I see it's buried in your FAQ).
My last company (who did environmental modelling) would have paid for this. We and other people in our work network always needed something like this. I imagine university and government departments, mining companies, environmental consultancies would find this useful.<p>How did you do your initial market research? Unless this is the only tool you are thinking of selling, I wouldn't give up so easily as GIS is a huge market and the most popular software (ArcGIS and MapInfo) sucks in so many ways.<p>Have you spent any time on the ESRI forums? You might find some leads there, but more importantly will learn about people's pain points.
Is this just a nice GUI for ogr2ogr? I could be wrong (I certainly haven't done the market research) but my gut feeling is that most people who would need this service would also be technically savvy enough to use free tools like FWTools. That said, there could still be a use case (beginners?), in which case you'll have to do a great job in the SEO department. Also, $10/conversion seems very high: a flat monthly fee would be much better.
I'm not qualified to answer your main point, but I can tell you that a good next-step for an unsuccessful adwords campaign is to use disqualification marketing - if you haven't already.<p>In its most common form, it's basically listing, in the ad itself, as many of the things that are stopping people buying as you can. For example, if price was the sticking point, the common approach would be to hide the price while you sell the product so as not to scare people off while you're winning them over. The disqualification marketing technique would be to put that scary price right in the ad text, the idea being that those who click are not going to be scared off by the price, as they already know it.<p>This can do wonders in effectively multiplying your adwords spending - all those people who were never going to buy at that price stop using up your ad budget, leaving you more ad clicks for those who might buy despite the price.
$10 for an automatic conversion from one file format to another? For something that can be done with a handful of scripts? Or am I not seeing the added value here.
I work somewhat in the GIS space and I do a lot of conversions using a mix of apps and a few ugly hacks - so this would be immensely useful to me.<p>However, I guess price is your sticking point, but let me elaborate.<p>For people that work full time in GIS, many of the conversions you offer can be done with some very standard GIS apps that such full time professionals will likely already own. So in other words, your market is _exactly_ people like me who aren't completely immersed in GIS but make use of some simple mapping and GIS scripting from time to time.<p>And for people like me, $10 is asking to much - especially when we can piece together a few odds and ends and come up with a little script or an ugly conversion tool that does the job.<p>So, what is the perfect price point? You'll have to play around, but I guess at least a quarter of that would make it worthwhile. In fact, I would aim for something around the $1 mark - but that's up to you.<p>I'd suggest taking a look at the ocrterminal.com model. They offer a similar product, with a real easy registration process and a few free conversions each month.
Even if you don't want to pursue the idea any further, I would not let the app die, unless it costs you a significant amount of money to run the site. Why not keep it as showcase for WebStartupper?<p>Two comments on the page itself: $10 seems steep, how did you find that price point? Your layout does not use the available screen space and requires unnecessary scrolling. It also looks broken on the contact page.
I haven't touched GIS stuff in ages but last I worked with maps they were bought by the corporation and not quite cheap from what I've heard.<p>So I totally don't see somebody uploading the map to your server, not to mention they were rather huge, so not the kind of file you attached to an email.<p>This really needs to be some desktop tool although I see why you would do it as a website (no piracy).
Forget the word "pivot". It's too vague to be helpful.<p>Rather, I would look for another instance of the same class.<p>You believe that your instance (converting GIS files from Format A to Format B) has no market. That may or may not be true. But I firmly believe that the Class "converting <x> from <y> to <z>" does have many instances with huge potential. There are tons of people and businesses using something that they would prefer was something else. Maybe an older version, format, or implementation. It could be anything. It's up to you to find them and identify what they need.<p>You already have one instance of "morphing", but it's not quite what you want. Find the right one.
I don't know how your software works, so this may or may not be appropriate, but:<p>Open source the software. Promote it via a technical blog, Hacker News, meetups, and conferences. Become a thought leader in the GIS space. Keep running your service for people who don't want to worry about installing/running the software themselves. "Open Source for free, SaaS for pay" is a very valid business model, especially when selling to developers. Think of companies like Twilio or Sendgrid; I could set up my own Asterisk or SMTP server, or I could pay a low metered fee to have someone take away the headaches for me.<p>If you don't care enough about GIS to blog and speak about it, close up shop.
From a quick glance I would think also about changing your pricing structure. $10 a conversion sounds high, a better alternative might be to offer a subscription model with a free trial up front perhaps?<p>In terms of finding customers I would suggest you forget AdWords (too scattered) and start with direct contact with the major companies in the mapping field. For example, why not drop Ordnance Survey a line and explain about your product and ask if there's any way this could be useful to their users etc?<p><a href="http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/gisfiles/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/gisfiles/</a>
I have dabbled with GIS files a while back and certainly would've found your website useful but 10 dollars would've been too high a price. It was a hobby project and it took some considerable effort across three different OSes to find the right free software to help me out but ultimately I got the conversion right (map projections were annoying too).<p>I think there is definitely a market in GIS since the current tools are such a nuisance but the current price is too high for me to experiment with it.
I wouldnt give up on adwords yet.<p>(from your site)<p>If I want GPX to XLS or SHP to KML..thats what I will search for. I don't see your ad there.<p>Have volume discounts for someone doing a lot of processing.
No results from AdWords does not mean there isn't a market. Is nobody clicking or is nobody searching?<p>Maybe your market is other GIS software vendors, not end users.