10 Reasons Nobody Uses Your Web App

web app failSo you built and launched your app, but so far you only have a handful of signups. The big problem though is that one of those is your mother and the others are your close friends and colleagues – and not one of them is paying a dime. So where did it all go wrong?

  1. You had an idea and jumped into the build

    But at what point did you canvass your target market, or stop to see who was already in the marketplace? Often if there’s no competitors to your app then you’ve got it monumentally wrong. Granted, you may have just found an untapped goldmine but those moments are few and far between, often being eternally elusive. Before you build your app, make sure there are people that will genuinly use it – and that means asking people you don’t know.

  2. You looked at an existing product and improved it

    Which is great, but you forgot one very important factor: market share. You can create the best email client the world has ever seen tomorrow, but do you think you’ll take users from Gmail or Hotmail anytime soon? Of course you won’t.

  3. UI was secondary to the code build

    Just because your app is great, doesn’t make it usable. UI should be one of your top priorities right from the beginning of the project – there’s nothing worse than getting frustrated trying to perform a task that on the face of it looks simple to action. Sometimes it’s easier to find that cancel button.

  4. You don’t offer a free/trial plan

    Sorry, but screenshots and your own opinions won’t convince me of how fantastic your product is. Let me get in without a credit card and see for myself.

  5. Your plans cost too much

    You produced a great app, marketed it well and have a nice design – but guess what? it’s not worth what you think it is. You need to split test signups with different pricing and see which is more sticky. Would you rather 10 customers paying $50/mo or 500 paying $10/mo?

  6. Your featurelist sucks

    Unless you’re 37signals, you’ll be hard pushed to convince anyone that the reason your app is the best is because it does the least. Sure feature bloat is just as bad, but you still need to ramp up your core features to satisfy 90% of the people 100% of the time.

  7. You still have a beta label on your logo

    You launched 6 months ago, but you still claim to be in beta? I think I’d rather wait and start paying for your app when you let me know its production ready, kthx.

  8. You planned to have massive viral growth

    Oops, maybe you should have planned for normal growth and hoped for virality instead, huh? Unless you’re doing something totally awesome, I’m not going to hound my buddies with links to your web app I’m afraid.

  9. You were too slow

    You saw an untapped niche, bought a great domain and started building your app. Little did you know that so did 3 other teams, and while you launched within six months, they launched in three. Sorry my friend, but you missed the boat… time to get back to the drawing board.

  10. You found a problem that doesn’t exist

    Probably the most common faux par of them all. You built an app that solved a problem you didn’t have. Not only that, but you didn’t know anyone else that had the problem either, you simply assumed that the problem was wide-spread. Remember, to assume make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and… well, just you really.

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