I imagine, it might depend largely on what you're specifically looking for: configurability, design, turn-key readiness, drop-ship integration, sales tax automation, responsive support etc. If you have a preferred payment gateway or would like to use your own custom SSL cert, that will impact your choices as well. In the meantime, take a look at Volution, Bigcommerce, Corecommerce, Squarespace, Big Cartel, and Storenvy. If you're looking to build something in-house: check out SpreeCommerce and Magento.
Also, 8 hours of "work" vs. 8 hours of productivity is quite different. I use pomodoro timers to track my level of productivity and when they add up to 8 hours, my brain is totally done. I'd have to squeeze in a long run to shake myself out of it.
Yep. To be honest, since excluding television I worked out I'm maximally productive for about 25-30 hours a week. I've managed to get my working hours down to that from the standard 8 hour day by minimising politics and keeping collaboration tight as anything. Those hours may be over a 40-100 hour period though.
Obsessive tracking of the time is as unhealthy I found. I keep a work log but I never read it. It's mainly for other peoples' benefit.
Agree on lack of content. I'd like to know more about the actual coffee options and not too keen on providing my email just for that. Also, 'free shipping' sounds mighty tempting to me since I'm in the middle of nowhere in Spain :)
We've had this issue with our startup since our competitors are either a Goliath in the space or well-funded startups. Yet we probably get at least a few emails each week from users who just love what we do. We've also had a fair share of users email us asking us how they can give us money, because they don't want us to disappear. So, I guess, we're doing something right.
Do you have some sort of referral system in place? If people like you enough to email you, I bet they'd email their friends too if you give them a hint and way to do so.
Yup. People even earn silly badges for referring their friends and, actually, we do get a high conversion rate from user invites. There's just not enough eyeballs hitting the site outside of users that search for us directly.
Well, you need to work out how to convert "we're doing something right" into actually being popular and making buckets of money. There are countless companies that folded even though they were "doing something right". It's hard.
Gah... don't I know it. We're prepping for a major release that should give us a nice push. Could be the first step on the road to capital, albeit, another trying test in and of itself.
I followed their Get Lean program religiously for about 3 months, but I was already a daily runner to begin with so there wasn't much weight to lose. Although, I did get ridiculously toned. The cardio circuits in Nike Training could get downright challenging for a "game" and I followed the program on a schedule of 5-6x/week so the change was quickly noticeable.
Great post Ian! I can certainly relate on the lack of marketing experience but, I can't say that I agree 100% with your verdict that the success of a product rests solely on how specific a problem it solves. Depending on your product's niche, you might find yourself struggling with marketing a product because your potential paying customers are used to general purpose apps that solve most of their pain points, even if not all. Just because those general purpose apps, as you've put it, create such little friction.
For example, I'm working on a startup that caters specifically to runners. That's it. We analyze run data and create nifty little visualizations. The upsell is even cooler forms of analysis that someone like a track coach, amateur, or competitive athlete might use. It solves a very specific problem: "how can I tell that I'm improving as a runner?" and it has very specific answers like "you shaved 25 minutes off your 5K time based on your best runs over the last 90 days" or "in the last 30 days, you've spent 65% of your training at a pace faster than 7:30min/mi (your tempo pace) - you're in danger of overtraining or, worse, getting injured!" Although, I can't even begin to tell you how many people have told us to generalize our app. Include cycling, swimming, hiking. Maybe somehow tie it to nutrition or weight loss. Maybe also vie for the role of becoming the Facebook of fitness. And, of course, the number of times that we chose to turn down the temptation to diversify... I'm all for staying focused. Running is the first and last thing I think of each day, but I think it's also safe to say that being specific can sometimes equate to being esoteric and, that, can sometimes be a long and difficult road to follow. I'm not saying it's not worth it. I'm pretty happy. Although, it doesn't grease the wheels for success indefinitely.
Thanks, that's useful to hear! Agreed, I'm highlighting one potential "problem", but it's probably more complex and multidimensional than that: my aspirations for a general product, marketing experience, educating users about specific use cases.
Great to hear that you're gaining traction with runners and that you're resisting generalising your app. It must be tough, once you gain users, to decide on a roadmap.
I love this idea so much and you two really owned those clips! It's so rare to get a glimpse of how a startup went from day 1 to day 100 on this level. And it looks like you had fun! :)
