How We Launched

Garrett

Our launch of the Proof of Concept (P.O.C.) in a limited market (Denver), was successful as defined by our goals outlined in part 1.

Goal #1: Gauge Interest. We posted links to our site on Denver’s subreddit and a 14ers.com camping forum, and saw tremendous interest- our post on reddit was the top post in Denver for almost 2 days! We had over 2,500 unique sessions that day, and easily surpassing 3K over 2 days. It was safe to say people in Denver were interested in finding a product that solved their camping problem.

Launch week traffic

Direct/Reddit dominated our traffic sources during launch week.

Goal #2: Verify the Problem-Solution Fit. Admittedly, this was harder to prove at this stage. We could hear what people were saying about the site, but could we see what they were doing?

Roughly 2 weeks after the initial P.O.C. launch

Returning visitors were our best metric at this point. Users who were returning to the site likely felt it was providing enough value to be worthy of a re-visit.

We were excited to see a good chunk of our users were returning, even though our initial product was pretty limited in data and was essentially a single feature (a pin on a map).

Goal #3: Get Feedback

Glen

Reddit Is Full of Lovable Assholes

As a Redditor, I suggested that we post on a couple subreddits after our initial launch. I thought this would benefit us in two ways:

Lots of Views

There was a good chance that Reddit would bring some eye balls to the site. We started with /r/Denver because it has a large community that is active on the site and active in outdoor activities (our target demo).

Brutal Honesty

Reddit is really great. It’s also full of assholes (hi guys!). Every time I post anything to Reddit, I mentally brace myself for negative or pedantic feedback. Usually there’s a kernel of truth in almost every comment, so it’s really a win-win scenario, but I knew we had to have a thick skin in order to sift through the few Negative Nacys that would inevitably throw shade.

The most valuable result we could get from this P.O.C. launch was constructive criticism. What improvement would make the biggest impact to our users? Reddit would surely deliver some critiques.

Shifting Through The Noise

After a few hours, we got a ton of feedback.

Praise:

Suggestions:

We had lots of positive feedback, which helped validate the idea and confirm it was a problem many people were having. We also received some good feedback on what future development could entail:

More info per camp site

Filters on the map

More camp sites (better coverage)

Then, Something Surprising Happened

A new use-case emerged: some people didn’t want their campsites listed on the site where others could discover it.

I would consider these people outside of our initial target persona, but maybe I was wrong? Honestly we weren’t sure what to make of this problem at this stage, but it was interesting and we’ll definitely keep an eye on it.

It just shows what kinds of insights you can get from getting your product in front of users. We would have never anticipated camping enthusiasts being unwilling to share their camping spots, but in retrospect in makes totals sense.