Do you do any market research before building a product?
Daniel Diosi
18 replies
Just being curious about what level of planning goes into your product concepts and what is your planning workflow.
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Junior Owolabi@prepsus
Yes, frequently, as others have said the speaking to potential customers in person and online, I’m learning (from user researchers) how better communicate with potential customers to convince them to participate in research studies on a consistent basis.
Im actually building a tool to help Product Managers (like myself) discover (on a consistent basis) the right features to build next. https://www.PrepxUs.com
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@rilwan_owolabi1 Hey, that's great. Then we are in the same business. We should connect to see if there are possibilities for any synergies. Cheers
Done quite a bit of research - but interested in what you mean by planning workflow....
@maxwellcdavis Thanks for your feedback. By workflow (could have used a better word like process) I meant the steps taken creating a product concept. Such as market research, competitive analysis, concept testing, MVP testing etc.
@ddiosi1 Right so we did the following:
1) Primary and Secondary research on our customers problem (which included some interviews)
2) Competitive Analysis - SWOT analysis, grabbing stats, but also using the competitors product and seeing where it has challenges. I also spent time seeing how our potential customers use it.
3) We're just about to go into our MVP testing
The most important part for me - understand what problems our customers have. For creating our product Uteach, we did a lot of customer interviews, and only after that began to give solutions to their problems.
@shushanik_shahbazyan I can second this, researching the target audience and conducting customer interviews, then building smth to address those pain points is the way I would approach this. Sometimes have to table discussions and ideas for products that simply do not have a market yet, so some level of researching is needed.
@shushanik_shahbazyan That's a very mature approach. BTW I just checked out Uteach and got a bit confused after reading the first few sentences on the website. Is this a website builder for teachers and coaches?
Website Builder for Creators
Simplify the teaching process
and become available for everybody
Who is Uteach for?
Uteach perfect for teachers, tutors, trainers, coaches, and any kind of education providers. This is for everybody who wants to have a personal e-teaching portal, regardless of their professional orientation.
Jupitrr
If one thing I wish I can learn early would be:
Research the problem better before building a solution. A bit of market research will also tell you how big is the problem, + market size and competitor.
@gouthamj Thanks, that's interesting. Secondary data and information you might find on websites is not the best way of doing a research. That data might be outdated, irrelevant and you can't even know the accuracy. In most cases, such secondary data should be used as a starting point. I love the "Mom's test" you said! That's a good one!
I've been focused on building one product for the last two years, but If I start again. First, I will start talking to my potential customer. I will try to do one-to-one online meetings, join their groups, and be there where they are. Then I will try to find the problem they have and I will try to solve the problem :)
@maciej_cupial Hi Maciej, yeah that's a good approach. I remember my first business success was pure luck due to good timing and offering and networking. I thought research is not necessary when starting the second and third businesses but those flopped. I agree that talking to potential customers is the best way. In my experience, if you involve potential customers in beta testing then the chance to convert them into customers later is very high.
Nope. A big nope. I'm a maker. I make whatever I want then maybe look around to see if someone else might like it. Obviously I tweak and adjust after the core project is done, but I basically build something of interest then I look around for a niche it might fit into.
In my case, no, I didn't do any market research before building my product. Reason was simple, I was running into the problem myself and I knew other programmers working with me were facing the same problem.
I think market research is needed when a product maker builds a product for others, meaning that they don't have any direct experience with that problem. For example, l am not a data analyst/scientist but I want to make a product for data analysts/scientists. In this situation, I would need to speak to data analysts/scientists to make sure that I am building a product that is really going to solve a real problem.