how do I market test my idea for a website software

[rachelterra]

Hello all:

I'm eager to apply Tim's suggestions. My muse however is not a product such as those mentioned in the book. Instead it is a website that has software where people can create online a book and then print it.

How would I market test this idea without having to spend thousands on programming the actual site?

Any suggetions?

Thanks,
Rachel

[AshokanKid]

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Hi Rachel;

I am going to guess that it might not matter what you are looking to test., whether it be a product, service, software or web site., you still are going to need to DEFINE the product (service, SW, site etc.) and then DEFINE who your target audience / client / customer is going to be.

Once you have defined your target you will want to use whatever medium is going to get to them in the best way possible. Tim suggests online market testing via Google (and others) because nowadays it is so available and inexpensive comparatively speaking to the "older forms" of testing, such as direct mail pieces, magazine or newspaper ads. etc.,

Since you are going to be "selling" a web site based product anyway, this makes even more perfect sense for you, but again, you are going to first have to perfectly define your target and then tailor ads specifically focused to those potential customers. You will do this whether the actual product (in your case a site with appropriate code) is "ready" or not.

You can use the same testing methods, writing your ads and copy to bring potentials to your site and then walk them through the process that they would eventually go through once your "product" is ready, but in your case you will have to figure out a way to explain to them (once you have confirmed that they DO indeed intend to order), that this is not available at this time.

You can even use what many other sites use when they are down for maintenance by putting up a final order page notifying them that "due to technical difficulties" this portion of the site is currently unavailable and that you will send them an e-mail as soon as that functionality, capability or portion of your site is "back online" or repaired or whatever.

This is completely understandable as Hosts are constantly experiencing outages or you can just simply explain that "the functionality that you are attempting to access is currently unavailable" and that you apologize for the temporary malfunction and will notify them as soon as this capability is available and back in service.

One thing about SW code is that it DOES sometimes "break" or security issues are discovered or maintenance is performed and so this is not much different than telling a potential customer that you are "currently out of stock" of the item that they are requesting (because it has not even been produced yet) and to please check back later or some such thing.

Your idea sounds like a pretty cool one if I understand your precept correctly. Who are your potential customers likely to be? Are you planning on printing the books yourself? What quantities are you considering? Is this a "novelty item" (My kid wants to see himself / herself published and in print) or a practical commercial service, say printing 500 to 5,000 books?

First thing with any such venture is to DEFINE everything from the target client through to the delivery structure of your product, which can pretty much all be done BEFORE full product development takes place and you have spent very much of your own CA$H on the project.

Hope this helps get you started., :-)

SC

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[activekoi]

You could just see what the interest is by going to a user group and checking :) !

[outofbandii]

One of the major players in this market is lulu.com - check them out.