Fake Store Page (Splitmetrics/ Storemaven/ Tryitapp): mobile product testing tools at the App Store/ Play Market stage
Purpose: Monitoring of new product competitive ability.
Essence: Reproduce the layout of the original pages, which look identical to the original. Spin up traffic and look at performance depending on what you want to test. If you conceived the product in the “red” ocean, it makes sense to reproduce the main competitor’s page in any of the services, look at the Facebook Ads Library latest UA creatives and purchase your CA on them, getting the approximate data of this part of the competitor’s funnel. This will help you get a foundation for analysis and comparison.
To correctly interpret the results on small amounts of traffic, it’s best to test one thing at a time. For example, if you’re testing creatives, the page that gets clicked on is the same for all creatives. Conversely, if the effective creatives are defined, you can test different pages.
If you’re entering the so-called “red ocean” but don’t know the market environment and aren’t sure if you can compete in it, you can make a copy of a competitor’s page and also spin off traffic. This will help clarify CPI, CTR and other important metrics and thus help you plan your budget and economic model for the product.
2. Pre-order in App Store and Pre-register in Play Market
Purpose: Checking ASO. Lead generation for soft launch.
Essence: You start quickly “sawing” a software product based on ready-made solutions + crutches/sticks. You do the minimum set of features to be allowed in the application store.
This is a fairly non-trivial way to test product hypotheses for mobile. The only drawback is that the fee for such a test = development + paid developer account + traffic. The main goal of development here is to get a visual review from the store, overcoming Apple/Google guidelines: you can achieve this through a dummy wrap – no one but the reviewer will see it. If the hypothesis is not confirmed – take it off the market.
The bonus is that you have a few months of real page existence in the relevant app store. And that’s a little organics, and the ability to drive traffic to the existing page (albeit without campaign optimization), and collect pre-orders that will turn into installs at release. The drawback is that analytics from Apple / Google deliver info with a delay, i.e. quickly experimenting with UA will not work.
3. Zero-code (no-code/low-code) tools.
Purpose: Very fast and cheap testing of the hypothesis. Getting the first clients, adjusting the strategy.
Essence: Creating a template software product in visual interface. Roll it out widely → take metrics → decide on further development or develop the product, if we are not restricted by the zero-code toolkit.
Zero-code “movement” is growing dynamically, new tools and services are constantly emerging. By 2020 there is already a wide set of tools available, not only for testing product hypotheses, but also for creating MVPs to help understand if it’s worth spending resources on full-fledged development. In some cases, it allows you to create and develop full-fledged products. The advantage of the approach is that a digital product can be created almost without programming knowledge.
It is important to have information about most popular tools on the market, to know their features and possibilities. By combining zero-code solutions, it is possible to test product hypotheses very quickly and cheaply. Here are examples of services to explore:
Product Hypothesis Testing Tools
Fake product launch (Product Hunt/ Kickstarter/Landing)
Purpose: To test the viability of a product hypothesis without development.
Essence: Testing is done by presenting a nonexistent product to your target audience (or investors): you can do this with public speeches, presentations, prototype demonstrations. With digital products is easier, the main emphasis should be made on the visual part and marketing: quality promo, logo, identity, branding, etc. The finale of this story should be a milestone, for example, getting “Product of the day” on Product Hunt or completing a fundraiser on Kickstarter.
