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Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

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Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#1

Post by buyfromfarm »

Hi, I am the founder of Buy From Farm (http://buyfrom.farm) - let people sell/buy produce from/to their neighbors. I believe vendors at farmers' markets would be my potential customers so I visited local farmers' markets at Austin, Texas. I talked about what our app can do, demoed the push notification features to show a vendor can reach people at farmer's markets in a real-time. I also noticed all of them are using smart phones, majority of them are android's. They understand what's push notification. They understood our app is free to download. I also talked to them when they were free, no customer there. I ended our conversion as quickly as I could while someone stopped by at their stands. I received very positive feedback. 19 of 20 I have talked likes the idea very much. The only one thought I was selling cell phones since we didn't really have conversion and they turned me down. I collected their business cards, also left a flyer with download instruction to each one I talked. And I sent followup emails to them next Monday.

But it turned out no single downloaded happened from this visit. 0 of 19 doesn't sound right.

What did I do wrong? Or there is something I missed.

Re: Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#3

Post by buyfromfarm »

Happy2Help wrote: post #2

This might be useful for you. The founder talks about the exact same problem - prospects say they like the idea but no conversions. https://medium.com/@michalbohanes/seven-lessons-i-learned-fr...

Thank you for sharing this. Even though my mind is telling me that my case is way different. I read through and will think hard. A followup question: what should I do? I am not gonna close my door without trying harder.

Re: Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#4

Post by 27182818284 »

I visit the farmer's markets here (not Austin) maybe once or twice a week and I'm not sure why I would want to use this app.

I'd recommend a lot more customer feedback development/interviews (to use the Steve Blank term) For example, It should be more like 5 to 10 people per day rather than 20 people in total. Farmers and people that visit farmer's markets, are generally polite. They're going to say yes to you and then just not download it, rather than say, "I hate this." You'll will have to dig deep, but politely dig, and do a lot more interviews.

For me personally, I just don't understand what value this gives me or what hair-on-fire problem I need this to solve. (I've also thought about building an app for the farmer's market too, but with a very different approach/business model focused on questions and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) problems I've encountered.)

Re: Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#5

Post by palidanx »

As a person who visits tons of farmer's markets (some food vendors are my clients across the nation), I'm not exactly sure if vendors at farmer's markets who sell produce would specifically be your niche.

Generally speaking a farmer hits X # of markets per week to sell their produce. Selling small scale to individual consumers wouldn't work well for their time.

However I have heard of some restaurants in LA where they accept extra produce from neighborhoods for their restaurant (not sure if they buy it necessarily).

Re: Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#7

Post by [deleted] »

buyfromfarm wrote: post #3
Happy2Help wrote: post #2

This might be useful for you. The founder talks about the exact same problem - prospects say they like the idea but no conversions. https://medium.com/@michalbohanes/seven-lessons-i-learned-fr...

Thank you for sharing this. Even though my mind is telling me that my case is way different. I read through and will think hard. A followup question: what should I do? I am not gonna close my door without trying harder.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#8

Post by MalcolmDiggs »

On my sites, visitor behavior never ceases to amaze me. Before you go re-thinking your business plan I would recommend watching your analytics closely (it looks like you're using GA, which is nice; you might wanna give Heap a try though, it's nice for this kind of use-case).

You wanna narrow down exactly where the problem is. Did people fail to visit the site at all? Did they visit then fail to follow the links to the app store? Did they go to the app store and then fail to download? These are all very different problems. Pay close attention to the browsers/devices people are actually using on your site, and make sure you're testing/emulating those experiences (so you can see what they see). There might be a bug somewhere. Once you rule these kinds of things out, then it might be worth revisiting your strategy/pitch, but I don't think you're quite there yet.

Re: Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#9

Post by JSeymourATL »

> what should I do? I am not gonna close my door without trying harder.

Repetition is key-- visit these same people again, and again. Get to know them and their business. Question: are the vendors the true decision-makers or just helpers?

Focus on getting just ONE conversion as a pilot project. Hold their hand till it gets traction. All the other vendors will take note if this thing works. Mindset is helpful, this is part of the market discovery process.

Re: Ask HN: Customers say “great idea and product” but they don't download

#10

Post by RogerL »

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but your site is pretty bad. The text reads like it was written by a non-native speaker. I had to puzzle just to figure out what some sentences were saying. Then the interaction was a bit wonky (sometimes things scroll up down, sometimes left right, sometimes popouts). The images behind the text made it extremely hard to read.

Putting myself in the mind of a vendor, I can't imagine wanting to try to enter anything significant via a phone. You don't seem to have any web presence besides this landing page. Do you have any customers, any traction? I probably already work from sun up to after sun down; do I really want to take extra time for this for completely unproven benefits? How many more people will I reach by just posting on Facebook? Why aren't you linked to Facebook? Do I have to do something on Facebook, then come to your app and do it again? No thanks. What if I get a bad review? Is it there forever? Can I protest it?

If it was already the one and only app for farmer markets, I could see maybe signing up. But putting all that effort and risk into a start up? Nah. What's in it for me vs going to Facebook?

As a customer - what is in it for me? I want to wander around and look, not be checking my phones for updates ('honey now 20% off. Come see our scones'). There is marginal value in discovering farmer's markets, but they are scheduled well in advance; a 10 second google tells me all the farmer's markets in my area. If there is one near me that I am interested in, I'll just 'like' it on Facebook.

Finally, the website confused me. You start by talking to the farmer. Then you seem to be saying consumers can sell their own extra produce. I'm not sure. Can I sell my garden vegetables? And this brings us back around to the poor English.

I'm not saying all those objections are correct, but I think you need pretty good answers to them if you want people to download your app.

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