Hello BFI,

It's been a while since I have been around here. I have mainly been spending quite a bit of time on reddit pushing my startup and helping other startups with some feedback when I can.

A while ago I posted a thread here talking about how I was inspired by an idea and wanted to execute it better than the person who did it before me.

I have taken my site through so many iterations and changed around my business strategy to finally arrive at this current state. Here is the site: BetaPunch.

I am really trying to focus on signing up and selling to startups. I feel like my site is drastically different from when I originally posted it on these forums.

I really focused on creating a clear call to action on my landing page. Originally I was working for a 2 sided market (beta testers and startups). Now I just want to pull in as many startups as possible and help them recruit beta testers that are willing to record quality screen casts for them.

Is my call to action / message clear? Is this a service that peeks your interest? Does my pricing make sense?

I am proud to announce that I have had my first batch of paying customers! As somebody who is really passionate about their startup this has been a terrific feeling. I hope everyone gets a chance to feel that feeling at some point in time. It was really such a challenge to get that first paying customer! I am not lighting the world on fire but it is a start!

I know there are still a ton of things to fix and improve. I have a list about 5 pages long of things I need to attend to. I would love to hear your suggestions for improvements and see if they compare with my own or if you can point out something I haven't thought of.

Hope everyone has been well, and look forward to hearing from you.

First, your logo is WAY TOO BIG. Remember, nobody cares who you are, and they don’t really care much what you do, i.e. beta testing… what they care most about is what you will do for them. The latter, what your product does for them, is your ‘benefit statement’ or phrase, which is completely lacking on your lander. I suggested “… you won’t lose customers” as a benefit (fear of loss), but you should try to come up with some alternative phrasing.

As to call-to-action, you’ll have to figure out what is most needed. I’m guessing the first action would be to watch the video, which you should try to shorten to less than 2 minutes, rather than a sign-up, but I think you need the sign-in on the landing page.

Anyway, here’s quick sketch of what I’m thinking:

"Get Quality Feedback For Your Startup" from who? VCs? Angels? Successful entrepreneurs?

I definitely don't want feedback from randoms on the internet with no track record.

Hey, thanks so much for your feedback. Please keep in mind that the video on the homepage is not an "explainer-video" describing how the site works. It's an actual beta test done be a real beta tester for one of our startups.

I know most "explainer-videos" are right around 1-2 minutes but the purpose of this video is to show that our beta testers spend a significant amount of time with their web applications. These aren't beta tests where they click a few links and say whether they like it or not.

I agree that the logo is a bit bigger than it should but don't quite agree with you on your suggested tag-line. Your suggested tag-line of

"Get quality feedback for your startup before you startup" - is a bit awkward sounding to me.

I do like what you are doing overall with this design though. I am not against it.

I really don't want people to watch the video as my main CTA. I want them to click my green button that says "Start Getting Beta Testers." That's why i have that button positioned to the left as that is where the eye starts for most people.

The feedback comes from our Beta Testers. I honestly thought this was kind of implied. I did add testimonials at the bottom of the page from startup founders who have tweeted about their positive experience with my service.

These aren't complete randoms on the internet. For people who purchase beta testers I personally select the users I want to conduct the beta tests depending on the startup.

If you go through some of the screen casts (which i put out in the open) potential customers (startups) can get a better idea of what we are offering in terms of testing.

i lold

@unquestionably - no thanks. I have made it this far without a "consultant" and have had very satisfied paying customers. I might not be lighting the world on fire, but I have a pretty good idea of what I need to improve on.

I have been very fortunate to have a lot of great mentors that have been willing to guide me in the right path.

gravity is luck

the site seems too in your face - get rid of the videos on the main page - no one cares to sit through 10 minute videos on the main page - throw them somewhere else....id prob just tighten up the site and look a little more professional

Yes it's really obvious I know.

This is interesting. I began development on my own web startup about a month ago. I only marginally help out my cofounders with the programming and design; a lot of my time right now is spent setting up the foundation for business development, product features, and marketing. I've invested a fair amount of time looking to see if I can outsource some aspects of our alpha test online, so I thought I'd pop in this thread and offer some feedback from someone who is very literally your target customer.

1.) You know this already, but you are competing with a lot of other services in this market. Here is a Quora thread highlighting a few:http://www.quora.com/Beta-Tests/What...oftware-launch A lot of startup founders are extremely picky and like to "optimize" their decisions, especially when forking over money, so you better spend a ton of effort standing out. I've spent 20 seconds on the homepage so far-seems like another site I'll add to my bookmarks/delicious along with the other 10 or so to check out later. Nothing initially strikes me as way better or worse than anything else I've come across. I can't find it right now, but I'm positive I have another site bookmarked that also lets beta testers record video of them trying your product. (edit: http://usertesting.com)

2.) I do like the simplicity and design of the landing page. The website of the "market leader" in this industry (Centercode imo) is SUPER confusing, way too text heavy, and I'm still not sure exactly what I'm getting when I sign with them. Another site I know is popular among the startup community is http://startuplift.com which looks scammy and depressing; yours looks professional and clean.

3.) Along with above, the best thing about the site for me is that the pricing model is reasonable and (relatively) prominently displayed. Conversely, a lot of other beta testing sites I've come across are either absurdly pricey or I have to dig around the website for too long to find pricing, and when I do, it's usually convoluted in some way or the other.

4.) Here's what would get me to immediately pay for your product: the ability to define some parameters in who my testers will be. Demographic for the most part (age, income, sex, etc). The popular trend among startups today, which makes some sense, is to beta test with users whom you think will become "early evangelists" for your product and will a.) look over possible bugs in the product and b.) find your product so useful they will do some early "word of mouth" marketing for you. So, the ability to select who your first users will be is pretty important imo. I don't see you offering this on your site...I know usertesting.com does. I'd very much like to hear how you think you positively differentiate yourself from them besides the lower price points.


If I weren't a 2p2 member, I think you'd still have some work to do to get me to pay for your product. When I'm ready to test in another couple of months or so, I'll definitely get in touch with you again. Best of luck.

You are trying to sell your services here for $100 an hour claiming to know some very OBVIOUS problems you can help OP with, yet have no proven track record and can't even write up a few insightful and FREE points to add value to the thread and throw OP a bone of your genius you expect him to pay for.

LOL

C'mon man....I wouldn't want to work with your sorry ass either, even if you were qualified.

Thanks so much for the awesome feedback! This is the type of stuff I love to read it really helps me get motivated to keep on improving my product.

Yes, usertesting.com is my big competitor obviously since we are essentially doing the same thing. I have dabbled on their site quite a bit and what I have discovered is that the only info they get about their testers is their sex / income / age range / how much time they spend on the web per day. They really aren't collecting a ton of data.

I am preparing an update where I ask the beta tester to basically write about their background a little bit in terms of their experience with Design, UX/UI, startups, business, site concepts etc. At the same time I am trying to get startups to describe more about what they want out of testers when they submit their startup. Hopefully this will help make the tests of much higher quality.

The paying customers I have had have all loved their screen casts. I am not lying when I say that each startup founder I have dealt with has personally taken the time to email me personally to say how much they loved watching the recordings. Here is an example for a startup we did that involves stock trading and our testers knew nothing about the subject:

One founder has even ordered 2 rounds of user tests. This has been encouraging to me and tells me I am doing something right which is enough to keep me going.

I want to better portray the fact that we are providing them with QUALITY over quantity. That's why I am showing recent beta tests on the homepage. In addition to these usability tests we do provide some features that help brand new startups get recognized / noticed. We do include them in a daily email blast to our over 800 subscribers and they remain on the site forever.

Many startups have requested the ability to make their listings on BetaPunch private and invite their own people to their listing to run tests from. So this is something I am planning on implementing very soon.

I just posted this on Reddit for you but I'll post here as well

- Having your blog on a separate domain isn't a good idea in my opinion, you want all the SEO value to be on your main domain name, make it part of your actual site!
- The blog should be styled inline with your actual website, so it feels part of it not a separate extension
- The blog needs easy access links to your actual website
- You have a great opportunity to write about new startups you like, this should get you lots of reads and help promote your service. People love reading about new startups I think, and it should be easy to get interviews and more information from the startups you like for your blog (new startups will take all the publicity they can get!)
- I would avoid using the blog as a news feed for new features where possible, I think a blogs main value comes from attracting new customers not catering for current ones.

Some good advice going in here IMO.

I couldn't agree more with Gullanian regarding your blog. I think it looks unprofessional having separate blog, particularly when your whole value proposition is basically about optimizing your client's websites. In my opinion, this takes away some of your creditability. It wouldn't be quite so bad if it was styled to a similar template with prominent links back to betapunch.com.

There's plenty of opportunity for you to get a decent following through your blog, which in turn will of course expose your service. I personally love reading about new startups (and not just the big one's Techcrunch etc feature).

Also, I mentioned on your Reddit thread about creating an email list. I can't actually find where to sign up to your newsletter, if I could find a form I'd actually use it. This may not be priority #1 now but the sooner you start building your list the better IMO.

As a prospective client of yours it kind of annoys me not having pricing on the get started/sign-up page. It's also not particularly intuitive to find on the homepage either.

How is your new homepage comparing to your old one? Have you thought about your funnel and got any stats to compare them both?

I had a little bit of time so i made a mockup of what I would consider doing. Excuse the messiness, bad font sizing and everything. Just the layout really.

This is really excellent feedback. Thank you very much for taking the time to map out an example for me. Your feedback is well taken. I have spent a ton of time experimenting with different layouts and such.

The most difficult part about my startup is that it is basically a 2 sided market. I need to attract not only startups, but beta testers as well. Initially I was trying to market to both sides equally. Once I built up a decent sized user-base (over 800 sign ups) I decided I needed to start monetizing and by selling specifically to startups.

I kind of took a bit from the page of usertesting.com's book and hid my "beta tester" sign up at the bottom of the site. The more I thought about it the more I agree that this is just the way it should be. My main thinking behind this is that I wan't beta testers to earn there way into my database. I feel like they should have to navigate around a bit and discover how to sign up.

I kind of want them to navigate my whole site just as they would navigate a startup's site they are beta testing for. People may not agree with this statement but I think it makes sense.

I did take previous advice from this thread in that I needed to make my logo much smaller and shift some things around. I think now there is some additional space to more prominently display a pricing link or info.

The points about my blog are well taken, i am going to have to figure out how to make my Tumblr better.