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Why We Scrapped 3.5 Months Of Development

by Ethan Bloch on Oct 26, 2009

(Matthew Dixon)

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Inspired by the folks over at Scout and the general transparency of startups these days, I’ve decided to give some background on our recent product pivot at Flowtown.

Here’s the email that was recently sent to all of our users at Flowtown:

Hi there,

Since the day Dan and I started Flowtown our #1 rule
was to listen to our customers.

And it turns out our customers were telling us they
weren’t satisfied with the Flowtown landing page
application.

Additionally at a .05% paid user conversion rate
the metrics were telling us the same thing.

Now we could have put more time and more energy into
making the landing page app better / more useful.

Or we could embark (pivot) down a new path that was
immediately valuable and useful to our customers
– a path discovered via. months of feedback.

We choose the later and on Wednesday October 21st
what we’re calling in house as ‘new’ Flowtown,
officially launched.

It’s still early, but the immediate response has been
strong and positive.

If you’ve ever used email as a marketing tool, you need
to goto Flowtown.com and watch the 2 minute video demo:

http://flowtown.com

Thank you for being an early supporter of Flowtown.

Here’s to an exciting future!!

P.S. Your previous login/password still works and if you
had any existing contacts in Flowtown we took the liberty
of running them through our social discovery service,
free of charge!

Ethan Bloch
CEO and Co-Founder

http://www.flowtown.com

(e) ethan.bloch@flowtown.com
(t) http://twitter.com/ebloch

danmartell

I couldn't have said it better.

Our goal as a company has always been to create things people want, and to be focused on quantitative (business metrics) and qualitative (customer interviews) feedback cycle.

I'm personally super excited about the product pivot – and hope everyone will give it a try.

Were pushing new features daily and listening very carefully.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts.
http://www.facebook.com/chris.nadeau Chris Nadeau

Awesome stuff guys! Now that could be powerful. Smart move.
http://ethanbloch.com ethan

Thank you for the support Chris!

Cheers.

Ethan
http://andybeard.eu AndyBeard

I can see some real benefit in the metrics and being able to segment based upon various social media activity.
But these are things that interest marketing geeks like me, and I can see a marketing geek wanting this data within their current applications such as Infusionsoft.
I must admit my own initial review was that the landing page creator could be useful as long as I could use my own email service/crm and integrate it with other systems.
http://twitter.com/joelandren Joel Andren

Count me as one of those disappointed about the direction away from the landing page tool. I had logged in on Sunday to set one up to harvest e-mail addresses from a Google adwords campaign.

BUT…. until I'm willing to pay for a product (and I wasn't there yet), you're quite smart to pivot to where the pain is greatest. Best of luck on this new direction and I hope the landing page tool makes a reappearance soon.
http://ethanbloch.com ethan

Hi Andy,

Amazing feedback!! thank you

We're going to be doing some really exciting things around the follow-up marketing space from within Flowtown, so stay tuned.

P.S. Would love to chat via. phone and get your feedback re: new features and roadmap. Feel free to send me an email and we'll connect – ethan (at) flowtown (dot) com

Cheers.

Ethan
http://ethanbloch.com ethan

Hi Joel,

Thank you for your feedback, it really means a lot. I would love to bring back the landing page tool “new and better” once we have the resources to allocate to it.

Ping me via. email ethan (at) flowtown (dot) com and I'll be sure to keep you personally updated re: progress.

Cheers.

Ethan
http://twitter.com/joemanna Joseph Manna

Ethan,

I have to commend the transparent, clear discussion you've shared with your customers regarding a significant product change. This is a great sign of more things to come.

Great video, and looking forward to point #2.

~Joe
http://ethanbloch.com ethan

Hi Joe,

Thank you! And be sure to stay tuned

Cheers.

Ethan