My product is in a miserable position. Any advice...?🙏😭🙏

Hi @sungho! I'm a full time teacher and I'm OBSESSED with all things cognitive science and have blogged it a lot. Spaced repetition and interleaving are my bread and butter and I'm actually working on several things right now that use them.

A couple of thoughts about why LearnObit potentially isn't doing as well as you'd hoped, even though I think it has the potential to be a super powerful resource:

1. Firstly, the tone of your copy. The first thing you read sounds full of doubt 'So, it might be a good idea to try it out'. I think 'steroid for your learning' gets the reader quite excited about the possibilities, but then you deflate them. I would say you need to make this first paragraph full of self confidence.

2. You've obviously tried really hard to cater to people who are still learning about cognitive science and the science behind learning (by making short and long read versions of your blog) but I still think you're assuming a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader - there's quite a lot of jargon that needs breaking down or simplifying.

3. The note-taking tool looks awesome from a CS perspective but also HARD CORE - I think it could be scaring a few people off. I'm sure it's not in reality, but it looks as though it would be really complicated to use, and this will be putting people off. As one of the key findings of cognitive psychology tells us - people will ALWAYS avoid thinking wherever they can!

4. The gifs are quite in your face and fast-moving. Don't forget you know your product like the back of your hand, but someone coming at it for the first time will be quite overwhelmed. When you couple this with the fact that it looks quite complicated to use, it acts as a massive barrier to entry.

I hope you don't mind me being honest here. Trust me, I think you're onto something really exciting and I would totally use it, just needs a bit more thought. You want people to feel like this product is going to de-clutter their mind and turn them into a Zen master, but at the moment it feels like it would be a heavy workout.

Hope that makes sense and doesn't come across as too brutal. Good luck!

Hey, I think that you could benefit from clarifying who your audience is and what your software will help them do before doing more promotion.

Here's a great guide that can help with that process

@solomon_teach said already great things. Especially that you get overwhelmed with features, also the gifs are too fast and not understandable. I am not kindasure what the app is about. Is something like Workflowy meets Polar meets Anki?

I wanted to try it the app, because it looked interesting. But I am just confused with what to do first. I did the tutorial - still overwhelmed. I am very interested in doing spaced repetition and using Anki for it. Creating cards is a bit of a hassle in Anki, especially if you want the basic kind. I think LO has potential here. But I am not sure how the spaced repetition works and if it works for me. I would make the "tutorial" divide in some parts of what the app can do. F.e. note taking and memorization. For memorization, you could show a "real life" example of notes and how you'd go about studying it (f.e. capitals and states).

You could always get three or four people (maybe not during the Situation, but later perhaps) who don't know the product to try out the demo and you are watching over their shoulders, not saying anything. ;) Always a great experience. Check out "rocket surgery made easy" for this process.

Hi @sungho, I like what @solomon_teach gave you in feedback, but to add, briefly:

Strip all of the apologetic, "still beta," "give it a try," etc. Call it a product that works. I don't want to be your unpaid beta-tester; I want something of value for me. Make me believe that you have that.

Also, "a steriod for your learning" - learning what? How? Show images/video and explain in brief text what the thing does and then offer the app d/l. I am not installing an app with absolutely no idea what it does or how.

I hope this helps.

Is the problem the acquistion or the conversion? You're not getting people to your site or they're not engaging when they are there? (If it is the latter I can immediately see a number of reasons perhaps why not).

Turning to the direct question you asked... were you posting on niche sites and in context, or this was the case of, I have a new product check it out?

I'm asking because you might have more success if you tap up specific communities, perhaps via LinkedIn groups, Facebook closed groups etc. when you invest time, lead with value and validate your relevance to specific niche audiences.

It then would become a question of shaping your value proposition for specific niches, and seeking out where they 'live' online.

Hi Sungho,

As others have noted, you need to clearly explain the "magic" behind learning based on that methodology. Instead of diving deep in the showcase, provide the audience with "This methods improves by X% the time of learning" (sources and more sourcers).

I have ZERO clue about spaced repetition, but I'd follow this steps:

1. Create awareness of a problem: (<Have you ever find yourself studying X hours and retaining nothing?>)
2. Let know that theres a solution: <It is proved that doing spaced repetition helps you improve by a X% marging the retention of an idea>
3. Let them know WHY your solution is the best: LearnObit nails the problem with a intuitive way to do it <screenshots there, screenshots here>.

Best of lucks Sungho, you are already one step towards your goals!

Can you clarify a bit? Is it that you are having trouble getting people to try it or that people who sign up aren’t engaging with it? At what stage are people dropping off? That might help you get more focused advice on where to spend your time and effort.

Hi Sungho, to be sincere, I'm just not understanding how your tool is supposed to help me. I'm guessing there is some science behind it, and if you explaining to me what it was and why it would benefit me (and when I should be using it) then maybe I'd be more keen to experiment. At the moment my impression is that your product is an inferior version of notion. I'm not a huge fan of the design either.

Keep at it...

Hi @sungho
I've read your homepage and still don't understand what the product is, who would want to use it, and why! There is a lot of jargon (Tree-structure... Spaced repitition... Orthogonal... Anki...) - is your target market people who already know what these things are, or people who don't? If the latter, then the pitch needs to be simplified, a lot.

Also more generally is this a tool for consumers? Businesses? Schools? How do you best get the product in front of those people?

I'm not so sure promotions on boards is the best first step to promote a platform in the beta stage. Also, it's kind of difficult to understand your offering from your website. I felt that it's too complex to understand and navigating the website was hard. So it might not be tailored for the general audience in your board but probably could be valuable for specific users that participate in those boards. So you might want to try start by posting messages on the board asking for user feedback and iterating on both the platform and messaging/marketing. Overtime, I'm sure both will improve and you'll scale accordingly. At this beta stage, it's much more helpful to engage users that are very interested in your topic and welcome trying innovating tools/platforms.

Another idea is to educate your audience, either by posting messages on that board or writing blog articles on the topic and posting it in a publication where your audience are (e.g., Medium publications). Don't promote but educate. I've had success with posting on a data science publication on Medium for my platform.

Eventually, each of these channels will reach a ceiling and you'll want to experiment with another distribution channel. It becomes a never ending game of scaling.

Good luck.