Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists. Good.
Bad news: You assume that cheaper pricing will make you win. Not even close.
There are tons of SAAS clones out there for every successful saas. Do you know how many Trello clones are out there ? Slack ? What matters is your ability to execute and sell. Cheaper pricing is one small factor that may get you a few clients but in order to run it as a successful business, you will need a lot more things. Some checklist:
- What significant advantage are you offering over existing ones that you are cloning ? Please tell me pricing is not the only differentiator. Most clients won't care. Trust me.
- What is the reputation of your company ? Even if you are starting out, you need to show that people can trust you.
- How easy is your UI/UX ? Are you creating a better clone or a worse clone ?
- Can you win on customer support ? Lot of people want to switch from their current provider due to customer support. Pricing does influence that decision but not a whole lot.
Agree with this. We have a successful cloud call center product Cloudagent in India and it has an enterprisy pricing structure. We wanted to launch in the US this year and we came up with a new simplified product getkookoo.com and went with a drastic price change to capture the market. We removed per agent pricing and said a flat $19.9 for unlimited agents and pay for only the calls you make. We thought the super simple and cheaper pricing is all we need. Turns out, its not. Though we have got customers, its been harder than we thought. In our case, it looks like the second point above, trust, is what we have not been able to communicate.
So yeah, pricing is just one very small factor. It is a factor, but only after all other factors have been taken care of :)
Your website is honestly really confusing. The design is nice and clean but the messaging is really lacking. I've ran multiple small businesses and I have no idea what "Zero agent rental forever" would ever mean to a business owner. I also had no idea what IVR meant and I've actually built automated message systems on Twilio.
Are you providing me the agents or do I have to supply themselves? It looks like you're just the software but once again the wording/copy made things incredibly confusing.
Your messaging should reflect that you provide easy to use call center software. If you're competing mainly on price then the "pay only for the calls you make" should be a tagline somewhere... that's a powerful message but I don't see it anywhere on the site.
I also don't really like the design on your features pages..at first I thought they were lists of blog posts. There's so much spacing with big faded images that don't make it easy to see the product. Not to mention you're peppering me with that free trial button when I really just want to read what each feature does...and then you could throw me the CTA at the end of the page if I liked this feature.
May I add if Ola, GE, Monsanto, foodpanda and DD are indeed happy customers of yours... that's an amazing achievement that should be highlighted more. With testimonials.
They are very happy customers :) and we have more too, HDFC life, Zomato, BigBasket, Practo, Intuit, HUL etc. But they are all Indian customers, so not sure if their testimonials will have real value for US customers. But I think your suggestion is good. Let me A/B test with that. Thanks.
I believe Intuit and Zomato are relatively well known in the US. Inuit especially through TurboTax. Maybe you could do something like "Inuit, developer of TurboTax"
I second this. Many of the people who might have the decision to buy, whether barely or really technical, will have heard of Intuit TurboTax. They'll know that's big deal.
But did "Intuit of India" develop TurboTax at all, there might be an issue of truth because same-named entities in different countries aren't necessarily legally part of a single corporation.
The brand is known, so maybe don't mention Turbo Tax but if you show the logo and it's a real testimonial it won't hurt too much that it's all Indians.
You should really think about investing in a copy editor for getkookoo.com. The style is great but the content is confusing and writing the price as "$19.9" is highly unusual in the US. There are also common sensical things that a copy editor will help you find, e.g. if your tag line is "Let's make those customers happy!" the line underneath it should clearly state how your service helps make those customers happy. The metrics on the number of agents and call minutes per day are tiny and easy to miss - check out how prominently metrics are displayed on other SaaS products.
If you want to communicate trust I would think hard about using a clown in marketing.
I think I understand what you want to communicate, but it reminds me more of something suitable for marketing a used car sale at jaw dropping prices.
If trust is what you want to communicate it should also be visible in the design of your web site. That means focus on details and optimization here and there.
E.g. you should check how many visited your site with a mobile phone today and see if you can spend some time on optimizing the first inoression. Also remember that users who come to your site might have other ideas on what is important. For instance maybe you should try to give your logo a little bit less prominent space and don't scroll it back into the view because it's annoying. Also optimize the page so that the call to action and testimony now beneath is visible and above the fold.
I would also focus on the value you provide to your customers and not only that you are affordable.
One issue I have with Indian companies are that they are not too good with their workers. I have heard a few stories. So maybe something that would assure me you are good with them, if you are, would be nice to see there.
And carefully check grammar and spelling on your site. If you can't get that right on your homepage, I'm not going to trust that you're going to get the details right in the rest of your business. Some examples:
- Each comma in a sentence should be followed by a space.
- Each sentence should end with a period.
- U.S. prices always have two-digit decimals. $19.90, not $19.9.
- Use a comma to separate thousands. 30,000, not 30000. (No space after commas used to separate thousands.)
These might seem nitpicky, but they make a big difference in establishing initial trust.
Your link indicates that I'm right. Scroll down to the 'examples of use page', and you see that adding up the 'SI (French style)' plus the second box below that yields by far the most countries.
"Most of the globe" does not obviously mean the same thing as "most countries". "Most of the people" would be a much more plausible interpretation than a metric that gives Swaziland equal weight with China.
"Most of the area" would also be a plausible interpretation, but "most countries" isn't.
Its actually the most plausible. If you go for 'most people', the most spoken language isn't English, its Chinese. Yet ask people, and they will happily point towards English. If you go for 'most area' you again run into a problem, because Russia and Canada are totally out of whack with regards to population per square km. 'Most countries' is the happy middle ground.
> If you want to communicate trust I would think hard about using a clown in marketing.
The first thing displayed was the clown image, it took couple of seconds to load the text later. The first impression I got was this does not look like a serious site.
Too funny I initially took this as "use a clown in marketing" to mean use some guy in marketing. I just figured as an IT guy you were being derogatory. I guess that says a lot about me.
Thanks for the detailed analysis. Will take this into consideration. Did not understand the point about taking care of the workers. Did you mean the employees? If so, then yeah, we have had almost zero attrition. There are people who have stuck with us for the past 8 years. So guess, they are well taken care of :)
But how would I present that on the website? Any ideas? Thanks!
To add to what adambratt said, if you thought your main differentiator would be pricing, I have no idea what "$19.9" means. First, in the US, we always use 2 decimals, so "$19.90" - may seem minor but just kind of looks like a scam otherwise. Also, what's the time period? Would be much more understandable to say "$19.90 per month fee plus x cents per minute. No per agent fee, ever"
It would definitely be worth it to spend a couple hours with perspective customers usability testing your site.
I've already taught my eight year old that this kind of copy editing issue is a red flag when he is buying pokemon cards on amazon. For a core business service it's a showstopper. Also the website was oddly slow to show me any text.
An additional note about the North American market, Copy-wise $19.9 should always be shown as $19.90 with 2 decimals to represent the number of pennies in the price.
For something like call center agents, as a small business $19.90 is too low a price. I have the same problem with Wordpress hosting. I use wpengine for $50+ per month (I don't recall what we actually pay) because for less money I presume the service provider won't care or have the resources to resolve any problem.
This is something we discussed. Thats why $19.90 is an introductory price. We are actually losing money on that. But since our India business is profitable, we are offsetting that for the first few customers. The actual price is ~$50
Say I'm looking to have a local Indian phone number that routes to the US -- either like Google Voice or Twilio. Do you offer something that could help with that?
Yes, we do that, but not on this product. This product is specific to service the US businesses. If you have some time, please check out our company site which lists all our products, http://ozonetel.com
On the bright side, you can expect your clone to actually not be a clone.
When initial product you want to clone was made, its makers had to solve a lot of problems and made choices, which are not documented anywhere. You will face some of those problems and may make different choices, even have new ideas to solve them. Ultimately, your product will have its own DNA and strengths, most likely.
There's a say I really like in the world of music composition : don't be afraid to copy your favorite composers, you won't do the same thing anyway.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Most big software platforms are used differently by different users. They have a wide range of features that most of us don't need (and maybe don't even know exist). What I think ends up happening when you clone something is you end up improving the product for YOUR type of user. This may or may not make up the bulk of the market, and may or may not be an improvement for typical users.
There will always be some mistakes that you can't learn from someone else's experience, but a close examination of the history of a forerunner can be very informative and allow follow-on products to avoid many of the same mistakes.
I completely agree. These questions should be the ones you ask before starting any kind of business, and regardless of your pricing.
It's really hard to convert a user that's already using a competing service just on price because they're probably already used to it, too the time to set it up, etc.
If you give them a little improvement it'd be as hard, but if you give them something they just can't get anywhere else you might have a chance. At that point the lower price isn't necessarily even a consideration but rather just a nice to have for them and probably a growth challenge for you because you'd be undercutting the revenue potential of a feature no one else has.
On a side note - price is what many founders believe potential consumers base their entire decisions on. While that's true for some products, it doesn't mean that it is for you. It's always best to figure out how to reach users first, then experiment with pricing.
It's still possible in the case of Digital Ocean vs AWS: 5-10x price reduction, focus on a subset of core service. You still need to deliver friction-less service in the beginning, reliability and customer service eventually.
Not all will move from AWS, but the price saving is significant for small players who doesn't need the full suite of AWS.
DO just happens to be cheaper than AWS for certain use cases, but they didn't get there by out competing on price alone, it ticks a lot of other boxes: it's easier and simpler to understand for a new developer looking to get started, you can calculate and anticipate usage costs with ease, etc. It's not just a good copy with better pricing, it brings something to the table.
Exactly. DO launched with great pricing, SSDs, and an attractive UI. If they launched with only one of those three we wouldn't be talking about them today.
I don't view digital ocean like that at all. I would be using them even if the price was exactly the same. Digital ocean offers a competitive advantage over AWS, they have a simpler to use interface that focuses on getting one server setups working asap.
Some points, integrated console, root password reset, automatic backups. These are features that make them better than aws for a simple side project.
Digital Ocean started as a lower-priced clone of Linode (Vultr did the same later). They started with just a subset of the services (finally catching up now), but had good developer marketing and a lower starter rate.
It'll be interesting to see if they can continue to grow now that Linode have reduced prices to be lower than them. That's one big catch with coming in at a lower price, the incumbent probably has the scale to lower their prices below you, if they consider you a threat.
An important thing you should consider is the cost of change.
I once built a screenplay editor in Hebrew for Israeli screenwriters. It had everything on your list. For free. The competition was practically Microsoft Word + macros.
The problem, though, is that the pain of moving away from these carefully crafted macros was too high.
This. We tend to underestimate the cost of switching. A new service doing the exact same thing as another (and not just software - the support, help, documentation, community etc) is still not good enough to get someone to switch, in spite of price. It might be easier to get new customers though, but remember, your competitor probably has an upper hand in marketing, and in general acquiring new customers.
If I remember correctly the founder of freshdesk read on HN that people were frustrated with zendesk and had lot of of complaints. So its not exactly a clone of ZD, I am assuming they understood the customer's pain points worked on those features not just compete on price.
"What significant advantage are you offering over existing ones that you are cloning" -- I keep hearing this. How do people answer this? Because, let say you add feature X that Trello doesn't have, but since they're bigger than you, they can simply add feature X as well.
Just adding features is a deadend. Look for things Trello wouldn't want to do. For example, features specific to a subset of customers. Larger companies are not able to focus on specific smaller segments because people in charge won't have the attention span to handle that many, but you can survive with just one. Another example is addressing some scenarios with fewer / simpler features. Established products cannot remove features, hence even simple uses cases end up over-complicated over time.
Trello itself is the perfect example of "remove features to serve simpler use cases".
All sorts of business and development process tracking software has existed for decades. JIRA, FogBugz, PivotalTracker, MS Project, and so on.
Trello got rid of 90% of their features, and just kept "list of lists of short text snippets". That makes it great for planning small software projects, but also shopping lists, travel plans, or sales pipelines.
Notice that I said "Advantage" and not "Features". Users don't care about features necessarily. They care about how it helps them. If a feature helps them, then it is a good feature. If not, then it won't matter. Figuring this out is the hard part of running a business because every user is different.
Well, you have to have a value proposition. "We're cheaper" is usually not very effective and it gets you the worst possible clientele. What people mean is "Tell them why they should buy from you instead of your more-established competitor, because price alone is a sorry value proposition".
Products that start with nothing more than price differentiation will eventually be pushed into a separate niche, which better serve the more price-sensitive customer base. Knowing this, it will be easier to gain clients if you can identify something you can optimize ahead of time. The smaller businesses/clients that will depend on your product will really value this and feel like they're being served well by your product, and not like they're the fodder in a price war or that they're using a bargain-basement, barebones product.
People do not feel proud that to be stuck in the bargain basement, so they're less likely to spread your product through word of mouth if you make it seem like a discount version of a well-known competitor.
As an entrepreneur, you just have to get a sustainable foothold somewhere and you can take everything else from that point. Optimizing a system for a price-sensitive audience is a good way to get started because the bigger guys are trying to leave that audience in the dust and they're usually very appreciative of the tools you're supplying.
Then you have to think bigger. If you are cloning Trello for example, have it have a different UI that is more useful for a particular niche, but that they can't simply add because they would alienate their existing user case. Make it better by doing things that the competitor can't or won't do.
> but since they're bigger than you, they can simply add feature X as well.
You can just look at Google to see that it does not work all the time, Google could have replicated Watsapp, Facebook, Instagram but they failed. They even failed with Google Video and had to buy Youtube.
It's far safer to make a product for a market that you know exists, rather than build a product and try to find a market. You differentiate yourself by providing more value than your competitors, whether it's a novel feature, better service, etc. There is obviously an element of risk/reward - if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player. Or you find out that there's no market and you crash and burn.
"if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player"
But not necessarily for long. If others see that there's money to be made in that market, you'll soon have competitors, some of which may be much bigger companies that have a lot more resources than you have. Being first to market doesn't assure that you'll dominate the market forever.
It's good news most of the time because you already know the market exists, you can see what the competitor is doing good or bad and learn fast from it.
Windows, Google Search engine, Facebook did not create a new market they built something better than the incumbents.
Personally I would like a Slack that works on older Mac operating systems. I had to leave the groups I was in since Slack made updates last month, and now I need Mavericks or newer to continue using it.
Yeah, I've never even installed the desktop client. It's an Electron (JavaScript) distribution, so it's essentially just a self-contained version of the site, isn't it? Just go to *.slack.com and you don't have to worry about it.
Having an alternative that works on older operating systems wouldn't help you unless the others in your group want to switch just for you. Network effects win.
Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists. Good.
Bad news: You assume that cheaper pricing will make you win. Not even close.
There are tons of SAAS clones out there for every successful saas. Do you know how many Trello clones are out there ? Slack ? What matters is your ability to execute and sell. Cheaper pricing is one small factor that may get you a few clients but in order to run it as a successful business, you will need a lot more things. Some checklist:
- What significant advantage are you offering over existing ones that you are cloning ? Please tell me pricing is not the only differentiator. Most clients won't care. Trust me.
- What is the reputation of your company ? Even if you are starting out, you need to show that people can trust you.
- How easy is your UI/UX ? Are you creating a better clone or a worse clone ?
- Can you win on customer support ? Lot of people want to switch from their current provider due to customer support. Pricing does influence that decision but not a whole lot.