It's too expensive!

I call BS! The number one reason people (our users and our team members) bring up as an excuse for not upgrading is that the subscription is too expensive. I hear it, but I don't buy it. Cheap or costly is a perception of value. When they say the subscription is too expensive, the chances are that two things are happening:

• They are not the right target customer
• They don't understand the product yet

The product is not expensive when you compare it to other similar subscription plans in the market. There are, of course, cheaper research tools out there (For example, Robinhood Gold incorporated Morningstar and it charges only $5 / month). However, we provide a lot more value. Or, at least that's what we think we are doing. Paying $12 or $35 per month to eliminate mistakes from investment decisions for a stock market investor that invests a few thousand per months is an excellent value. We just need to show that the value is there. 

I plan to resist a price-cut for a few more months, and instead, focus on addressing the above two hypotheses. Let's go through each one with a few details.

They are not the right target customer (Topic for a future post):
Finding the right target customer is hard. We'd like our customers to be younger people. And, we would also want them to old enough to be ready invest a few thousand per months, so our subscription price is worth it to them. They also have to be in the middle as far as investing experience goes. Not too early as an investor that they still don't know what Fair share price is, as an example, and not too advanced that they have their own Google sheet with formulas and plugins. There is this narrow and nice slice of the pie that works for us. If I say this sentence to a VC or an angel investor, they will walk away because they think the size of our target customer is too small. If I do not focus on these people, then I have to walk away because the product doesn't make money.  I'm planning to focus on our target customer. However, this topic is more related to our traction strategy and needs more thinking. We have some thoughts, most importantly, we are thinking of our embedding and widget tools. However, more on that in a different post. 

They don't understand the product yet:
One thing before I get to the this discussion is that I think customer feedback is BS (I know, blasphemy!). We can't just ask them do you understand how this product creates values for you. Customer feedback for UI and UX works, because people can show you what they see, and how they see it and how they interpret it. However, customer feedback related to product development is not good enough. People have a hard time verbalizing what they need and how they want it.  But, the question is how do we plan to figure out whether the users understand our product?

Most people are reactionary creatures. You put a feature in front of them, and if they use it, you know that it's working. If they don't, you still don't know if they don't like it. Maybe they haven't seen it? Perhaps, they haven't understood it. So, let's peel the onion layer by layer (Elon Musk style) to figure out why the users don't understand the product:

• The customers don't understand the product. Why? Two possible answers:
  • The product is sh*t! Oh, well. Are you ready to close shop? No, okay, so, let's go to the second reason.
  • They haven't used it enough. Why?
    • Maybe, it has UI issues. Okay, that's possible. We've made many changes in the UI since the last test. We should do it again. Let's plan for a UI test using Usertesting.com. Stay Tuned!
    • Maybe the usage cycle is longer than what you imagined? Maybe users need 2, 3, 4, 6, ... months to figure out how to use the product. Possible! However, the problem is that at the beginning they don't yet trust the product. They forget to come back and never get into the habit of using it. How do we bring them back in month 2, 3, 4, 6,... ?
      • By sending them a relevant notification. How do we do that? 
        • Mobile App? Well, we don't have it, and we can't afford to make one (not money-wise, neither time-wise). So, that's on hold. Anything else?
        • Let's figure out the stuff they are interested in and send them emails. We can do that. Do we know that? 
          • We certainly are not going to ask them. However, the users will show it to us through their actions. What they click on is what they like to know. So, let's give them a relevant experience as we can. 

Two actions:

• Using The Hooked model, let's send the users enough external triggers (in our case, relevant email) so that they start forming internal habits to come back to Stock Card.
• Let's run new user tests to make sure the users understand what we are offering them.