The Quiet Truth About Shipping a Real Product

What should you expect in production, or when your product goes live, as a product owner or startup founder?

After all the brainstorming, fights with and hustle-bustle with the product gathering team, product requirements documents, developers, product team, and all of the products, what does production look like?

Yes, what you found out on the internet today is developers trying to scare the hell out of you. Don't do this, don't do that. You become too careful, and you keep developing till all the energy and interest you have gathered goes off, and you have little energy left to go further, which usually doesn't survive discouragement.

1. Your landing page should say what you do, in summary

Before all the big images, videos, heavy animations and all of that, most people want a very beautiful system, which is fine by itself, but most times this is not what you need to get started with. There is room for improvement up there, provided your product has answered the basic problem it is meant to solve.

It might interest you that most visitors don't come to review your site. Most people that come to review your site are engineers, competitors who want to build what you are doing, and they are looking for how best to strike you off the ladder.

But your product must answer these questions. Is it accessible immediately? How long does it take to load the first page? Do you answer the question any person who got to your site through social media or a search engine asked, on the first text they found on your page?

If this is ticked, you are good to go, regardless of how beautiful the buttons are or how aesthetically pleasing the entire page is.

2. Make your product intuitive

From the first page on your site, can the user get to the point where the solution is, without special guidance or confusion? The first text should answer what users are there for on your site.

This doesn't end there. After that text you need a clear call to action button, maybe "start finding now," in the case of a property search and listing platform like 9jaFinder.

What you find after the brief introduction is a form to start searching. You don't have to waste time talking too much or doing too much.

Be very minimalistic, and ensure from top to bottom your text is connected and directs users appropriately.

3. Keep the first version simple

Most product owners want the best of the best, which is good, but most of the time you first have to think like the user. If you were the user, what would you be coming for if you were to use the product?

If you tick that box, then you are set and ready for production, regardless of what is to come later. When you get to 9jaFinder and search for properties in any location, and it pops up, that has answered why 9jaFinder exists.

The next thing is to start verifications, start sorting, start following up on accreditations, and a lot more, regardless of the stack you have chosen.

Pick the stack that lets you get started, at least for your first 1,000 users, while you are chasing those 1,000 users and gathering stamina to go for version two.

4. Build seamless feedback and contact channels

Most people build a form, but a lot of customers coming in at the initial phase of the product don't need your form. They don't have the patience to wait forever to be answered. They need an answer right now, and this is what most people miss in their site setup.

You have a couple of options to power your site. We have IdentifyOrg chats, which help you answer site inquiries even while you are away. You can connect your WhatsApp with the site, and users can message IdentifyOrg and give a bit of information to the AI.

It helps you accurately, almost like a human. Your chats look like a sales rep attending to them. There is a premium version that helps your site connect with users and process orders directly from WhatsApp.

IdentifyOrg communicates with your website and notifies you about it, helping users process orders directly from WhatsApp. This alone is one of our breakthroughs on the IdentifyOrg side.

5. Check for basic exploits and loopholes

You can conduct a site audit using the IdentifyOrg website auditor. You can check for free, but subsequent or deeper searches require a small token in naira per check.

This helps you with the housekeeping chores, to be sure you are not opening your doors for thieves to come in and exploit your system.

6. Launch and patch as you go

After you have done all this, start launching and campaigning for your product. While your project is in production, you will still see flaws, and some issues or important features your users either recommended, complained about, or were searching for.

You start working on these along the line. When we rolled out 9jaFinder, we had over 100 users after going to a radio station, and we got a lot of feedback from our users.

It got to a point I was overwhelmed, even close to depression. This was because I was the one doing all the development, since we were short on funds and had no investors in view at that period, so I was running here and there to ensure the recommendations were in place.

At that point I nearly lost my mind. People did not know what I was facing, but right inside of me I was feeling unprepared. Yes, you will feel that way too, but that should be your joy and not your discouragement.

I was able to scale through that period, even to the point of our mobile app being built and launched. Today we are celebrating our achievements and still looking forward to bigger audiences, bigger house owners enrolling with our agents, and other real estate people starting to use the system. We are more than prepared.

If you have covered these basics, you are good to go. The next topics will be scaling the product, making it better, and using feedback from users to patch and improve.

So till I see you on the next one, keep building, keep shipping. Catch you on the next one.