Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates
Not so long ago, Taskeo entered the beta tests phase. We signed up with BetaList. It was a huge moment for us and we were eagerly waiting for the results. Whether they were going to come as praise or critique, it didn’t matter that much. All we wanted was to hear people’s feedback. And so we are now – smarter than two weeks ago. Here is what we learned.
Our expectations before joining BetaList
We didn’t do it to hear how awesome our platform is. Putting Taskeo out there was a test for us. We wanted to see what’s wrong, what needs changes and what we can do better. We hoped for feedback that would guide our further work.
But above all else – it was an exercise before the upcoming Product Hunter launch.
While these two platforms are very different, we hoped that our experiences with BetaList would prepare us for the PH launch. We were ready to make mistakes and to trip over the regular pitfalls. And we were determined to learn from it (still are, by the way).
In the end, we’re not left disappointed. We’ve indeed discovered some things and as such – we achieved our primary goal: to learn and improve.
Our BetaList Launch in Numbers
Our beta tests phase brought us nearly 140 visits from the BetaList site and over 40 new Taskeo users in total. We want to say thank you to each and every one of them. We are happy to have you with us!
In the very beginning, we offered 1 year of free premium account to all those entrepreneurs who would agree to test Taskeo with their team and have a brief call with our CEO to discuss the impression. By the end of the testing period, one person has accepted the offer.
Finally, the total cost of our BetaList launch amounted to $139, which gives us the cost of single user acquisition on the level of $3.15.
What have we learned from our beta tests?
For more seasoned entrepreneurs and business owners, our results may not be all that impressive. But they matter a lot to us – we’re still on a learning stage. We have made several mistakes which we will surely learn from in order to make our Product Hunt launch better and more effective.
Some of the lessons learned include:
Check the media and graphics several times; we made a mistake of inquiring about the specific dimensions for the graphics, and we got stuck with blurry and stretched out screenshots for several days after launch.
Get ready to reply fast; contact with testers is important. We’ll do our best to upkeep the closely-knit relations with our users as we proceed with growing the product.
Engage with the community; when launching on BetaList we had little to no community to which we could announce our beta test. We’re planning to build a community of value and meaningful interactions before the Product Hunt Launch.
Outreach matters; having little to no community to speak of, we had limited choices of outreaching to new testers and users. Before PH launch, we aim to work on our promotion strategies.
All in all, here at Taskeo we’re happy we learned what we did, broadened our horizons and made mistakes sooner than later. Let us know in the comments what do you think and how, according to you, can we do better. We’re eager to hear you out!