Nice. So one of the things that happened to me when I came to the Bay Area was I was working at Intel and I had to talk to a lot of marketing folks (who were talking to 'the public' about Intel's chips). I realized I didn't have a clue what they did.
I set out to correct that before I started my own company and looked for a job that would let me work closely with marketing but still be engineering based. I found one at Sun which was effectively a 'technical marketing engineer' although at the time I joined the marketing folks just needed an engineer to translate what the competition was doing into something they could argue about. I too was amazed at how much more complex it was than my simplistic assumptions had been. I moved over into the kernel group later (they too had offered me a spot when I had interviewed) and have been pure engineering ever since but never forgot the lessons of that time.
Things I learned,
1) Marketing is not sales - Sales is the process by which you convince someone with money to give it to you in exchange for a good or service. Marketing is the thing that happens before that which informs you why you might want to talk to a sales guy. A guy marketing a car will tell you that the car has the highest safety rating ever, the guy selling the car will tell you if you write a check right now he will take an additional $1,500 off the sticker price.
2) Marketing is about perception, and perception is personal. The job of a marketeer is to communicate an idea so that you can see it and perceive it the same way the marketeer does. That requires that you first discover the perceptual language of the target, then translate the message into that perceptual language, communicate it, and then test again for understanding. Marketing a car that smells like bacon to a vegetarian just doesn't work. If the biggest chunk of car buyers are vegetarians, and your car consistently smells of bacon, you need to translate that into something positive somehow. Not simple :-).
3) Marketing is ubiquitous - one of the interesting conversations with my daughter as a teen about what to wear, your clothes give others an impression of you, you cannot prevent that, all you can do is control it. People are constantly taking these bits of information in and reasoning about them consciously and unconsciously. To be successful you have to have influence over as many of those information channels as possible. Getting that influence can be tricky.
Basically, it isn't as easy as it looks like it should be was my conclusion.
I'd add that Marketing is about value creation ultimately. You have to start with the right mindset, i.e. that you product has no value per se, and that marketing is everything you are going to do around your product/service to create the perception of its value. Your customers don't know how time you spent on it, they don't care how complex it is, they don't even want to know how it works (at least not until they are interested to buy it). You have to somehow create the need (that may be either a true need, or a perceived need) and your product/service has to be a presented as perfect fit (whether true or not) for it. Sometimes products/services create new needs as well so you need additional engagement to focus on the need itself if it's not obvious.
Marketing done wrong is advertising an already conceived product.
Marketing done right is strategic. It's about segmenting a market, targeting the right niche, and looking for the right positioning within the niche. It's about guiding the product towards both stated and unstated needs. It should happen before, during and after development. And yes it should also involve generating demand.
Starting marketing after the fact is like building quality into an already created product. Quality is designed in.
Another Sun story. I was at the annual Sun employee conference way back in 2002. As engineers, we were raving about Java/Swing & the JDK. After a while, one of the audience members couldn't take it anymore & spoke up loudly - "WTF is Java ? It has never made a dime. We sell boxes. That's what makes money. We should be talking about that!"
He was a marketing guy for the Sparc workstations that was Sun's bread & butter. Atleast for a brief window of time, the Java server-side experience was actually better on a Sparc than anywhere else.
A few notes... Marketing for large enterprises is a different challenge than promoting a product on your own, so insights from working at SUN might not translate into street level marketing.
1) marketing is not sales - This is absolutely incorrect. Marketing is any communication that touches a prospect or customer. Copywriting is salesmanship in print. Sales is absolutely a key ingredient of marketing!
2) Marketing is about perception - Partially true... Branding is about perception, marketing is about much more than just perception.
3)Marketing is Ubiquitous - This time you got it right!!! Marketing is influencing every possible touchpoint with consumers.
"So now after years of neglecting anything to do with marketing. I get it. Marketing is hard. So crushingly hard.Also I was incredibly naive in thinking that the product was so good that the marketing would just snowball itself into action"
This right here ... a 1000 times. I've been a developer for years now and I always held onto the same fantasy of launching something so good that marketing would take care of itself. After building a couple of products and being involved in a startup or two I've found that getting software built is not usually as hard as marketing it successfully
I don't mean to reply with just a me too - but, absolutely agree with you through my own spend a year developing a product I can't market experiences...
I,oddly enough, had the opposite. Gave my software out to a few friends (wrote it for myself, as the others in its class sucked), Next thing I know I'm getting 100k d/l a month (paying for overages, fun) - and soon after have a few million users. Never have spent any money on advertising (even though the software DID make it on to a TV show in Denmark a few years later - and magazines, newspapers, etc.) Still getting downloads and new users.
Have also written tons of other stuff that this did NOT happen to :)
I'm currently in between a programmer and a marketing guy in a specific niche. My interpretation is slightly different:
With software, you can find a way to get it to work. Given the right knowledge, you can accomplish your goal. (Assuming a goal that other people of similar skill have achieved it, and not proving P=NP type stuff.)
With marketing, even if you do everything "right", there's still a huge chance at failure. Being experienced, knowledgeable, and focused doesn't mean you'll accomplish what you set out to do.
I think it's related to the fact that you control software when you write code. Marketing has so much outside of your control that even doing everything right still only results in a < 100% success rate.
Nice! Great to read your experience from creating a product to launching it. Also glad to win over another developer to not thinking that all marketing is BS ;-)
Some tips from a marketer:
+Get analytics set up! I see that you've only mentioned the top of the funnel (traffic) and the bottom of the funnel (downloads). I'm assuming you don't have tracking for the full flow (traffic > install > activation > day 1-30 retention > Sales). Get this set up pronto. It's crucial to understand where the bottlenecks are and to also segment traffic to know which efforts are working.
+Marketing starts before you launch. You'll get a far stronger reaction from blogs, sites, and other people when you contact them 2-3 weeks before launch. Creates a sense of exclusivity and plus gives you some momentum to develop an installed base from Day 1. In light of this, perhaps you should call the current app an 'alpha' and re-launch to get some buzz :-)
+Major sources for you to consider:
Organic: SEO
Referral: Blogs, 3rd Party App Stores, Tech Sites, Forums, Quora, Stack Overflow, and where ever people who have the problem you're trying to solve is asking for help.
Partner: App stores, resellers, etc...
Paid: Facebook, AdWords, LinkedIn, GDN (I advise you to do thorough research before starting. It's easy to launch poorly designed campaigns and get the misinformed idea that these channels don't work)
Viral: Add any social sharing anywhere you can.
+App Review sites review 100s of requests each day. I ran FreeiPadApps.net for 2-years and received 20+ app review requests/day. Mostly from indie developers, agencies, and bots. Try instead to reach out directly to an editor or writer by email/twitter/linkedin.
+SEO: Get up to best practice (title tags, headings, kw research and mapping to content), but don't bank on it. The gold rush for SEO growth circa 2007 is largely over :-(
+Look heavily into any type of 3rd party app stores for free promotion.
+Not sure of JIRA/Github has any 3rd party app pages. Worthwhile to look into this and seeing if you can get included.
With all that said, doing everything above will get you on par with what everyone else is doing. To separate yourself from the pack, the awesomeness of the product needs to take over :-)
- reddit can be a goldmine of traffic because it has so many subreddits that one is bound to cover your niche (IF you have a really niche product)
- have a blog, then write interesting things that may not necessarily have to do with your product in a direct way 42floors.com is a good example to follow.
- optimize said blog for SEO
- make sure you get email addresses from prospects that land on your site and use them, email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing software ... go here for how http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/05/31/can-i-get-your-email/
- make sure you have at least a twitter account and if you have the time, fish for people that could be interested in your product by finding tweets about competitors, or hashtags related to your product. engage these tweeters.
I hate to admit I'm mostly posting to remind myself of this comment but all of this advice is pure gold. You can almost never have too many metrics and you can always dial it back. Not knowing is the worst feeling and there's so many ways to track in apps like this, it always makes sense unless you pay per volume. Hitting that volume would most likely be a great problem to have anyway so there's very little to lose, I think.
Your website is a perfect demonstration of your title.
A nice funky starfield with a pretty logo taking up half of the page, and a partial screen shot taking up to the rest of my screen space (1920x1080).
Nothing about what it does instantly pops out. Then I realise there's more, so I scroll - Something, something, JIRA, GitHUB, FogBUGZ, something something.
Hmm, ok, based on that probably not something I'd need. Close the page (before even getting to any of the other stuff).
"I work on contract iOS jobs and I need to track my time to invoice my clients. It sucks using my web browser to start and stop the timer. "
And I think, this, yes, a thousand times yes, and am now downloading it to try it out.
The takeaway from all this, I shouldn't have to find out about that from a comment tucked away on HN, but your website is not arranged in a way that makes it immediately obvious that I want this product.
And now, the download finishes and I run it, and it turns out it won't run on Lion. It would have been nice to mention somewhere what versions of OSX it runs on.
This comes from an AdWords guy. Seriously, work on marketing to the community and with content, not with paid ads. Paid ads come in when you've identified a market, medium to reach them and what your message is. Have that nailed before you spend a dime :)
This looks like something I could actually use. I've just downloaded it.
My take from the website, there is no price on the main page. I have to click 'Buy Now' with no idea whether I want to actually purchase. Which is a commitment (in my head) that I'm not prepared to make without knowing the price.
I didn’t even realise it wasn’t free until reading your blog listing 'sales' separately to 'downloads'. Price needs to be way more obvious up the top. Only now just seeing it’ll cost $50, is a disappointment after thinking it was free.
I'm one of those people who downloaded the trial, ran it for a few days, and then deleted it. I liked a lot of things about the app, but there were a few bits that I found unintuitive—particularly around managing multiple projects from different sources.
I decided to pass, but I bookmarked it so that I'll be able to find it again in the future if I ever find that I really need a quick way to access my Jira issues from the desktop.
The $49 price is entirely reasonable considering the breadth of the feature set and the target audience, but it does put it outside the impulse purchase comfort zone. It might have been helpful to put it on sale at launch with a discounted price in order to build some traction and lower the barrier to adoption for people who are on the fence.
This is the second or third post I'm seeing today where a dev person could use some help with marketing their product. This is what I consult in, so I'd be happy to try and answer any questions you or anyone wishes to ask. Fire away!
If the answer requires more information then I'll ask you to email me instead.
1) The above the fold stuff sort of showed me what it describes itself as, but not what it really is. A looping animation or video would have been really helpful.
2) The below the fold stuff originally came across as separate products. Like I thought it was your catch-all page for a few other products you've made. So maybe you could make it clearer that they are all components of Bee.
3) Just my own reaction that I noticed - when you demonstrate compatibility with several outside services, there might be a weird disincentive to try it out if the potential customer doesn't use all of those services. Like I immediately had a suspicion that since I use Jira but not Github or Fogbugz, that the other focuses of the tool would get in the way or make it feel unwieldy. (I didn't download it to disprove that feeling.)
4) Time/task tracking is a REALLY crowded space, and I imagine it is really difficult to convince someone to try out a new tool, partly because of switching costs. For instance, for me, I use Quickbooks on the Mac, and I'm pretty married to Intuit's "My Time" since it's the only tool I know of on the Mac that will automatically transfer time records to Quickbooks, which I then use to make invoices. And then if someone asks me why I create my invoices from time records in Quickbooks, then... heck, I dunno, I made the decision at one point and it works for me. I could do a whole first-principles analysis I guess that might lead me to a completely different way of working that might lead me to being able to using a different time-tracking app like Bee, but... I don't like going that low on my e-Maslow's hierarchy very often.
5) No obvious mention of price on the front page... no obvious indicator of what clicking the "Buy" button will do or where it will take me. I moused over it, looked for an info tip, and didn't click. (I'm one to just buy rather than deal with download/try/maybe-buy.)
Basil - beautiful aesthetic. A few thoughts for you:
1. You are currently marketing the features of your application. Consider instead marketing the problem that you're solving. Demonstrate that you understand the problem and then show why Bee is the solution to it.
2. Which value proposition are you competing on? Clayton Christensen suggests that often markets move through functionality, reliability, convenience, and price. For software professionals, that probably looks like functionality, usability, reliability, convenience, and price.
3. As a gut reaction, your price to feature set seems off. How did you originally come up with the price? It's one of the hardest and most difficult things. If I were you, I'd set up an intro price of $19 while you're on HN front page, and advertise that right on the landing page.
Nice work. I've also recently released my first Mac app [0] and I'm working on getting the word out about it by making it free, the idea being that if it's known by people, it can be spread through word-of-mouth, especially if it becomes indispensable. GitHub's API currently reports 600 users, and I'm working on increasing that to 1000 before making it a paid app and marketing it.
Nice to see both approaches here; I wonder which truly works better in the long run.
Really liking the app. Also enjoyed the "free for a limited time", adds a bit of a time component where you download it quickly and then maybe get hooked to it for when you have to pay later on.
I've been using your app a little bit since I saw it mentioned on HN. Really well done. It's simple, intuitive, and gets out of the way as soon as I'm done using it. Thanks.
I love your landing page. I know exactly what it does, how it provides value, and will look it up again if I ever find myself creating lots of Github issues.
looks great! Love the simplicity of the landing page too. Though I'm a little unsure why you have the reddit page in your video? Did you mean that with your tool, you'd save lots of time (to waste?). I personally find it distracting and misleading.
I've been using Bee for the past week to avoid interacting with Jira's slow interface and it's been absolutely excellent. It's a polished app, and the one bug I encountered was fixed within a day. Just waiting for the trial to finish.
> Are people waiting for the trial to run out (14 day trial) ...?
People who buy your software usually do so during the first few days of a trial. Only a small percentage of those who let the trial go to the end will buy.
Source: My (and fellow [m]ISV's) experience over the years.
/edit:
Oh, btw: A search in the mac app store for "github issue tracker" (and other similar terms) won't show your app.
What I would like to read is why the OP put his time into building a task app. Not because the world doesn't need another one (I'm not being sarcastic here...)...but if you don't have much talent or time for marketing, then something must have been guiding you, right? I would think that without any other external guidance, it's the programmer himself who finds the product useful and uses it everyday as he develops it.
I work on contract iOS jobs and I need to track my time to invoice my clients. It sucks using my web browser to start and stop the timer. I also wanted quick access to all my tasks, past and present without going through a slower web UI.
Also the app comes in handy when I need to jot down a quick note or remember something.
Maybe I should incorporate some of that ^ on the site.
One small tip - your page links to the app page, but doesn't otherwise say anything about what it does, just calling it "this thing". That diary page is marketing too, include a summary of what it does there!
And it talks in the end about how users can't provide feedback, but the blog entry doesn't let you comment or even give a way to email, just a link to his twitter account.
Be careful about your plan to "…keep pushing out updates to the app to fill out the feature requests existing users have". It's easy to fall back to strengths – adding fun features, responding to tangible requests from existing customers. But clearly your priority should be getting the word out.
Maybe commit to yourself: no new features unless you're certain they will close new sales?
I recently read the book "Cashvertising". It's very good at breaking down how to sell in print. I recommend you read it. For example, your headline "Better task tracking on your Mac" offers no real benefit. What is good about task tracking? What is the benefit it offers? Make that answer your headline.
It looks like a great tool, but like others have mentioned, I just can't justify a $50 price point in my head. I don't really "need" a new app to update my issue tracker, I've already got the browser open which I'm using for other concurrent tasks (and a browser tab with a familiar HTML interface > learning a new tool and remembering to keep it open).
However, if you could pull out the "flight path" feature ONLY into a separate app at say a $10 price point, I would probably jump. Something unobtrusive in the menu bar that tracks my time on task AND automatically pulls up what I should work on next, quickly and easily, would be great.
Coincidentally just the other week I got stuck using Jira and it's abysmally slow/buggy interface.
FWIW I was very excited to see Bee but haven't done the work to setup a password for my account on our Jira ondemand instance.
I wonder if some of the slower adoption for you has been people like me using a google account to log into Jira and simply not having a real Jira credentials.
I'll get around to it but I suspect I'm not the only one that didn't feel like mucking around in the Jira account settings to setup credentials for Bee to connect with.
I assume there's no way to access the Jira API otherwise?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
I set out to correct that before I started my own company and looked for a job that would let me work closely with marketing but still be engineering based. I found one at Sun which was effectively a 'technical marketing engineer' although at the time I joined the marketing folks just needed an engineer to translate what the competition was doing into something they could argue about. I too was amazed at how much more complex it was than my simplistic assumptions had been. I moved over into the kernel group later (they too had offered me a spot when I had interviewed) and have been pure engineering ever since but never forgot the lessons of that time.
Things I learned,
1) Marketing is not sales - Sales is the process by which you convince someone with money to give it to you in exchange for a good or service. Marketing is the thing that happens before that which informs you why you might want to talk to a sales guy. A guy marketing a car will tell you that the car has the highest safety rating ever, the guy selling the car will tell you if you write a check right now he will take an additional $1,500 off the sticker price.
2) Marketing is about perception, and perception is personal. The job of a marketeer is to communicate an idea so that you can see it and perceive it the same way the marketeer does. That requires that you first discover the perceptual language of the target, then translate the message into that perceptual language, communicate it, and then test again for understanding. Marketing a car that smells like bacon to a vegetarian just doesn't work. If the biggest chunk of car buyers are vegetarians, and your car consistently smells of bacon, you need to translate that into something positive somehow. Not simple :-).
3) Marketing is ubiquitous - one of the interesting conversations with my daughter as a teen about what to wear, your clothes give others an impression of you, you cannot prevent that, all you can do is control it. People are constantly taking these bits of information in and reasoning about them consciously and unconsciously. To be successful you have to have influence over as many of those information channels as possible. Getting that influence can be tricky.
Basically, it isn't as easy as it looks like it should be was my conclusion.
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
Marketing done right is strategic. It's about segmenting a market, targeting the right niche, and looking for the right positioning within the niche. It's about guiding the product towards both stated and unstated needs. It should happen before, during and after development. And yes it should also involve generating demand.
Starting marketing after the fact is like building quality into an already created product. Quality is designed in.
[+] [-] dxbydt|12 years ago|reply
He was a marketing guy for the Sparc workstations that was Sun's bread & butter. Atleast for a brief window of time, the Java server-side experience was actually better on a Sparc than anywhere else.
[+] [-] davemel37|12 years ago|reply
1) marketing is not sales - This is absolutely incorrect. Marketing is any communication that touches a prospect or customer. Copywriting is salesmanship in print. Sales is absolutely a key ingredient of marketing!
2) Marketing is about perception - Partially true... Branding is about perception, marketing is about much more than just perception.
3)Marketing is Ubiquitous - This time you got it right!!! Marketing is influencing every possible touchpoint with consumers.
[+] [-] vertis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shredfvz|12 years ago|reply
If your marketing isn't helping you overcome objections, you need better marketing, because your marketing isn't selling.
[+] [-] trustfundbaby|12 years ago|reply
This right here ... a 1000 times. I've been a developer for years now and I always held onto the same fantasy of launching something so good that marketing would take care of itself. After building a couple of products and being involved in a startup or two I've found that getting software built is not usually as hard as marketing it successfully
[+] [-] quaffapint|12 years ago|reply
Software Development = Easy
Marketing that Software = Wicked Hard
[+] [-] gregrata|12 years ago|reply
Have also written tons of other stuff that this did NOT happen to :)
[+] [-] monkeyspaw|12 years ago|reply
With software, you can find a way to get it to work. Given the right knowledge, you can accomplish your goal. (Assuming a goal that other people of similar skill have achieved it, and not proving P=NP type stuff.)
With marketing, even if you do everything "right", there's still a huge chance at failure. Being experienced, knowledgeable, and focused doesn't mean you'll accomplish what you set out to do.
I think it's related to the fact that you control software when you write code. Marketing has so much outside of your control that even doing everything right still only results in a < 100% success rate.
[+] [-] wwwong|12 years ago|reply
Some tips from a marketer:
+Get analytics set up! I see that you've only mentioned the top of the funnel (traffic) and the bottom of the funnel (downloads). I'm assuming you don't have tracking for the full flow (traffic > install > activation > day 1-30 retention > Sales). Get this set up pronto. It's crucial to understand where the bottlenecks are and to also segment traffic to know which efforts are working.
+Marketing starts before you launch. You'll get a far stronger reaction from blogs, sites, and other people when you contact them 2-3 weeks before launch. Creates a sense of exclusivity and plus gives you some momentum to develop an installed base from Day 1. In light of this, perhaps you should call the current app an 'alpha' and re-launch to get some buzz :-)
+Major sources for you to consider: Organic: SEO Referral: Blogs, 3rd Party App Stores, Tech Sites, Forums, Quora, Stack Overflow, and where ever people who have the problem you're trying to solve is asking for help. Partner: App stores, resellers, etc... Paid: Facebook, AdWords, LinkedIn, GDN (I advise you to do thorough research before starting. It's easy to launch poorly designed campaigns and get the misinformed idea that these channels don't work) Viral: Add any social sharing anywhere you can.
+App Review sites review 100s of requests each day. I ran FreeiPadApps.net for 2-years and received 20+ app review requests/day. Mostly from indie developers, agencies, and bots. Try instead to reach out directly to an editor or writer by email/twitter/linkedin.
+SEO: Get up to best practice (title tags, headings, kw research and mapping to content), but don't bank on it. The gold rush for SEO growth circa 2007 is largely over :-(
+Look heavily into any type of 3rd party app stores for free promotion.
+Not sure of JIRA/Github has any 3rd party app pages. Worthwhile to look into this and seeing if you can get included.
With all that said, doing everything above will get you on par with what everyone else is doing. To separate yourself from the pack, the awesomeness of the product needs to take over :-)
Best of luck!
[+] [-] trustfundbaby|12 years ago|reply
- reddit can be a goldmine of traffic because it has so many subreddits that one is bound to cover your niche (IF you have a really niche product)
- have a blog, then write interesting things that may not necessarily have to do with your product in a direct way 42floors.com is a good example to follow.
- optimize said blog for SEO
- make sure you get email addresses from prospects that land on your site and use them, email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing software ... go here for how http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/05/31/can-i-get-your-email/
- make sure you have at least a twitter account and if you have the time, fish for people that could be interested in your product by finding tweets about competitors, or hashtags related to your product. engage these tweeters.
etc etc ad nauseam
[+] [-] w0rd-driven|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goeric|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imron|12 years ago|reply
A nice funky starfield with a pretty logo taking up half of the page, and a partial screen shot taking up to the rest of my screen space (1920x1080).
Nothing about what it does instantly pops out. Then I realise there's more, so I scroll - Something, something, JIRA, GitHUB, FogBUGZ, something something.
Hmm, ok, based on that probably not something I'd need. Close the page (before even getting to any of the other stuff).
Come here to read the comments, and buried away here, I found this comment by you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6686624, which says:
"I work on contract iOS jobs and I need to track my time to invoice my clients. It sucks using my web browser to start and stop the timer. "
And I think, this, yes, a thousand times yes, and am now downloading it to try it out.
The takeaway from all this, I shouldn't have to find out about that from a comment tucked away on HN, but your website is not arranged in a way that makes it immediately obvious that I want this product.
[+] [-] imron|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kposehn|12 years ago|reply
This comes from an AdWords guy. Seriously, work on marketing to the community and with content, not with paid ads. Paid ads come in when you've identified a market, medium to reach them and what your message is. Have that nailed before you spend a dime :)
[+] [-] vertis|12 years ago|reply
My take from the website, there is no price on the main page. I have to click 'Buy Now' with no idea whether I want to actually purchase. Which is a commitment (in my head) that I'm not prepared to make without knowing the price.
[+] [-] douglasheriot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jthomp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] segphault|12 years ago|reply
I decided to pass, but I bookmarked it so that I'll be able to find it again in the future if I ever find that I really need a quick way to access my Jira issues from the desktop.
The $49 price is entirely reasonable considering the breadth of the feature set and the target audience, but it does put it outside the impulse purchase comfort zone. It might have been helpful to put it on sale at launch with a discounted price in order to build some traction and lower the barrier to adoption for people who are on the fence.
[+] [-] gk1|12 years ago|reply
If the answer requires more information then I'll ask you to email me instead.
[+] [-] melloclello|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tunesmith|12 years ago|reply
1) The above the fold stuff sort of showed me what it describes itself as, but not what it really is. A looping animation or video would have been really helpful.
2) The below the fold stuff originally came across as separate products. Like I thought it was your catch-all page for a few other products you've made. So maybe you could make it clearer that they are all components of Bee.
3) Just my own reaction that I noticed - when you demonstrate compatibility with several outside services, there might be a weird disincentive to try it out if the potential customer doesn't use all of those services. Like I immediately had a suspicion that since I use Jira but not Github or Fogbugz, that the other focuses of the tool would get in the way or make it feel unwieldy. (I didn't download it to disprove that feeling.)
4) Time/task tracking is a REALLY crowded space, and I imagine it is really difficult to convince someone to try out a new tool, partly because of switching costs. For instance, for me, I use Quickbooks on the Mac, and I'm pretty married to Intuit's "My Time" since it's the only tool I know of on the Mac that will automatically transfer time records to Quickbooks, which I then use to make invoices. And then if someone asks me why I create my invoices from time records in Quickbooks, then... heck, I dunno, I made the decision at one point and it works for me. I could do a whole first-principles analysis I guess that might lead me to a completely different way of working that might lead me to being able to using a different time-tracking app like Bee, but... I don't like going that low on my e-Maslow's hierarchy very often.
5) No obvious mention of price on the front page... no obvious indicator of what clicking the "Buy" button will do or where it will take me. I moused over it, looked for an info tip, and didn't click. (I'm one to just buy rather than deal with download/try/maybe-buy.)
[+] [-] brandoncarl|12 years ago|reply
1. You are currently marketing the features of your application. Consider instead marketing the problem that you're solving. Demonstrate that you understand the problem and then show why Bee is the solution to it.
2. Which value proposition are you competing on? Clayton Christensen suggests that often markets move through functionality, reliability, convenience, and price. For software professionals, that probably looks like functionality, usability, reliability, convenience, and price.
3. As a gut reaction, your price to feature set seems off. How did you originally come up with the price? It's one of the hardest and most difficult things. If I were you, I'd set up an intro price of $19 while you're on HN front page, and advertise that right on the landing page.
[+] [-] markbao|12 years ago|reply
Nice to see both approaches here; I wonder which truly works better in the long run.
[0]: http://issuepostapp.com/
[+] [-] davidjairala|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpsc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _neil|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbokun|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crisnoble|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] focuser|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stu_k|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kybernetyk|12 years ago|reply
People who buy your software usually do so during the first few days of a trial. Only a small percentage of those who let the trial go to the end will buy.
Source: My (and fellow [m]ISV's) experience over the years.
/edit: Oh, btw: A search in the mac app store for "github issue tracker" (and other similar terms) won't show your app.
[+] [-] danso|12 years ago|reply
So, did the OP find his own product useful?
[+] [-] basil|12 years ago|reply
I work on contract iOS jobs and I need to track my time to invoice my clients. It sucks using my web browser to start and stop the timer. I also wanted quick access to all my tasks, past and present without going through a slower web UI.
Also the app comes in handy when I need to jot down a quick note or remember something.
Maybe I should incorporate some of that ^ on the site.
[+] [-] bcbrown|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icefox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gojomo|12 years ago|reply
Be careful about your plan to "…keep pushing out updates to the app to fill out the feature requests existing users have". It's easy to fall back to strengths – adding fun features, responding to tangible requests from existing customers. But clearly your priority should be getting the word out.
Maybe commit to yourself: no new features unless you're certain they will close new sales?
[+] [-] mattm|12 years ago|reply
Read the book. It helped me immensely.
[+] [-] robotys|12 years ago|reply
Reason marketing is effing hard (for us programmers) = human is fickle and feedback is sporadic.
[+] [-] pbnjay|12 years ago|reply
However, if you could pull out the "flight path" feature ONLY into a separate app at say a $10 price point, I would probably jump. Something unobtrusive in the menu bar that tracks my time on task AND automatically pulls up what I should work on next, quickly and easily, would be great.
[+] [-] mczepiel_|12 years ago|reply
FWIW I was very excited to see Bee but haven't done the work to setup a password for my account on our Jira ondemand instance.
I wonder if some of the slower adoption for you has been people like me using a google account to log into Jira and simply not having a real Jira credentials.
I'll get around to it but I suspect I'm not the only one that didn't feel like mucking around in the Jira account settings to setup credentials for Bee to connect with.
I assume there's no way to access the Jira API otherwise?