Re: Signing up during BETA period
At 12:00 AM 06/07/2002 -0500, Shaheer Cader wrote:
>During our development time we had a signup form which
>potential customers filled out. And they were told that
>they would be informed when we were up...Around 100 people
>did sign up.
>
>When we finally did go online. 3 months Later
>we emailed the 100 signups But Nobody signed up fully.
>
>We did get around 15 emails saying Thanks. but nothing Else.
Hmmm... that's completely the opposite of our experience.
We took the same approach over the same timeframe (3 month
from signup to launch) and had a 53% (!) final conversion
rate from the hundreds who applied, the majority of which
are still clients today (5 years later). (We were
expecting about a 10% conversion rate.)
During our Beta period we communicated *directly* with
each beta tester at least once/week.
These were not just "personalized" form letters, but instead
one-on-one messages asking each of them:
- questions about how our service was working for them,
- what could be improved,
- updates on what ideas have been implemented, and
- sharing tips passed on from other testers
It was a *lot* of work but resulted in a far better product
than we could have possibly developed "in a vacuum" and, more
importantly, a series of relationships that have lasted many
years.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
John Charlesworth
President - BellaCoola Software Corporation
http://www.bellacoola.com/?b
Received on Fri Jun 07 2002 - 11:05:14 CDT
