Talk to users and ask if they would give you x$ for this.
Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
11–20 of 123 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#12You conduct a statistically valid survey among your target audience.
If you have the resources, conduct qualitative research like focus groups or individual interviews too.
There are thousand of market researchers like me that do this for a living. Find one you trust and ask them for help.
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#13If you want to create a B2B product, I would look for 1-star reviews in G2 and Capterra and see if you can solve these problems yourself. You could also check what people are complaining about / asking help for in relevant subreddits and see if you can build a product around that.
Have you actually done this approach? If so, I'd love to hear more. I ask because I often see the advice that people should look in the Shopify/Hubspot app stores for paid apps with lots of users/ratings and a low score, and while this sounds good, I've found very, very few apps that actually match these criteria. Typically a low score indicates a complaint that is outside of the technical scope that the app owners c…
Yes, I have used this for feature roadmaps.
I don’t do what you mentioned (ie. look for paid apps with lots of ratings & a low score), I look for any app with at least one 1 star or 2 star reviews and I also look for any problem (doesn’t have to be related to an app) in reddit or any forum.
To be fair, it’s quite a numbers game to dig for useful problems or insights.
A related video about the process is Amy Hoy’s Sales Safari: https://youtu.be/67JVkG4dpj4
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#14I know you didn't ask this way but I can tell you how NOT to do it and how to avoid a lot of pain.
Don't just build the product in the hopes that people will come to you. Aside from doing market Research et Al, it's equally important that you figure out if you will be able to "market" the product. If you don't have a thoroughly planned GTM strategy that's peer reviewed by people who understand your market, you might end up with a great solution but no access to potential buyers.
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#15I know you didn't ask this way but I can tell you how NOT to do it and how to avoid a lot of pain. Don't just build the product in the hopes that people will come to you. Aside from doing market Research et Al, it's equally important that you figure out if you will be able to "market" the product. If you don't have a thoroughly planned GTM strategy that's peer reviewed by people who understand your market, you might…
An example would be if you target enterprise but know that enterprises would never buy from you because you're too small or not trustworthy, you need a way to overcome this hurdle.
Or, you're targeting individuals but there's a competitor with $300M funding who owns all marketing channels. You might not be heard in the noise.
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#16Okay take this with a big bucket of salt, took a year off from work last year and my initial idea was build something(failed miserably, total disaster, will try again sometime in future) but since I was totally unaware of how the whole marketing and market research thing works, I tried summarizing [0] everything at a very high level to get started, it helped a bit both when trying to build whatever the heck i tried to build and also to have a general understanding of the steps. hope it helps :)
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#17Be very careful about how you ask questions because some forms of question solicit "approval" answers. It's culturally informed, some cultures try very very hard NOT to have to deliver a negative.
Thats why some UX uses matched-pair questions which have two approaches to the issue at hand, boolean opposites, so you can see if they move sliders, weight or answer both the "correct" way to align the response.
Separately:
"If I made a new service x would you like it" is not the same as "if I said it would cost you $5 to use new service x would you use it" is not the same as "do you think new service x would be useful" is not the same as "do you think anyone else wants new service x"
It's very easy to mistake these for "the same"
I am personally very skeptical of NPS and satisfaction scores in small communities. They may work for google scale entities, I don't think they do for <100 users. Many people canonicalise the results of 4-5 respondants. In my experience, if your primary job is to assess if they qualify for X or Y, and you ask them how much they liked your service delivery in denying them X or Y, they will be profoundly negative about the service, which is really not helpful because you may have written a simple direct and fast web service to deliver the negative outcome. And of course, the reverse is equally true.
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#18Just start selling it, even though you haven't built it yet. If it's successful then your first few customers will be disappointed because you don't deliver well, but by definition if the market demand exists there will be lots of other customers you can delight in the future. If the market demand doesn't exist (or you are bad at selling, etc...) this is the fastest way to find out.
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#19This really isn't something that can be answered easily in an Ask HN thread. This is a HUGE topic, about which many books have been written, many classes have been taught, etc. Any comments you get aren't even going to begin to start to scratch the surface of the surface.
That said, I'd suggest you start by reading The Four Steps to the Epiphany by @sgblank. His "Customer Development Process" is basically "market research" but by a different name, and with a slightly different focus than "traditional" market research.
While you're at it, I'd suggest also hitting up Alibris (or your favorite pirate e-book site, whatever) and pick up a cheap "Intro to Marketing" book. Doesn't matter which one, or what edition, but probably go for something written in the last 15 years or so. Even if it isn't super up to date, a lot of the basics will still be valid.
The book The Mom Test is also good and should probably be required reading at this stage.
If you want more, consider searching the HN archives, as a lot has been written on this topic here over the years.
Re: Ask HN: How to do market research for product?
#20Be very careful about how you ask questions because some forms of question solicit "approval" answers. It's culturally informed, some cultures try very very hard NOT to have to deliver a negative. Thats why some UX uses matched-pair questions which have two approaches to the issue at hand, boolean opposites, so you can see if they move sliders, weight or answer both the "correct" way to align the response. Separately…
The book “The Mom Test” is a really good read with similar advice.