In this post I'll list down a few steps that should be carried out to pick up early reactions from potential users about your new product.
For those who are new to this term, validation is done to verify that a product will be successful without actually building and deploying the product. There are multiple ways to test it out.
Coming Soon Page
A basic landing page (or a single page website) that clearly lays out product description. It will state the product benefits and will have a clear call to action to join the list of early beta users.
The objective of "coming soon" page is to make sure that you understand the primary motivation of your potential users. If they are excited by your proposition and opt-in for early trial, that validates your product features and objective.
If you don't get the kind of response you have expected at this stage, you should try different versions of benefits and call-to-action to make sure your users understand what you are going to offer and yet they are not enthused by it.
If you don't get a great response after trying out different versions of product benefits and CTA, it's time to go back to the drawing board and think through the product benefits as clearly, the product with its current vision is not gaining traction among users.
Variation 1 (Coming soon Page With Pricing Page)
If you receive a great response for your coming soon page, it's a huge first step. Congratulations!
The next one is a more difficult test to test the product's price point as you might have envisaged. If you haven't thought of a price point yet, this is the right time to at least start that process.
If you have no clue about the price point, you can go ahead with a hypothetical price point based on your competitors (or similar products) and see if that's acceptable to the user.
For that you need to set up the CTA for pricing. It can be something like: "Check out pricing for early users"
You may even go one step further and lay out the pricing plans if you already have an idea of what your plans would look like. By tracking the clicks or by using a screen mapping software to track user's interest in various plans, you can get a good idea about the features and plans your users are most interested in.
Variation 2: Find Out User Motivation
In this step you want to test your potential user's motivation to use the product as well as understand more about who your user is.
You can add a one-click survey to ask various questions that delve into user's motivation behind using your product. You don't want to interrupt the flow that you have already established in step 2. All you are trying to do is to start a friendly chat with the user.
If they are really enthusiastic about the product, as early adopters usually are, they'll give you suggestions and ideas that will not just serve as an additional validation but also help you improve the product.
Closed Beta
If your product has already passed the above tests, it's time to test its potential to go viral.
Ask your users from step 1 and 2, who have already expressed interest to be part of your beta, to invite more users to test the product. This can be carried out by emailing your list with a specific CTA and make it sound exclusive.
You may even restrict the number of invitations each user can send, and see if they max out their invitation limits.
You should be able to track invitations at this point. If you see a lot of invitations going out, this indicates a viral potential for your product.
Explainer Video
At this point you should have a mock-up ready that you can capture in a video and share in social platforms. This will act as if people are running the actual product and it will show them what they can achieve with the product. This is useful for products with more complex benefits where users don't easily understand the value coming out from the product.
Waiting List
Waiting lists are for products that are not fully ready or you're not sure that the product will be scalable at its current form.
In such cases the product can be offered only to people who have showed very keen interest in the product and are willing to help you with their feedback. Ideally, people who have interacted with you in step 3, through the one-click survey are ideal candidates for this.