Existing Market
Regarding what would be next, I assumed consumers would want the ability to make merchandise of the art they post to my website such as stickers, prints, and charms. It's definitely something they buy on their own time, and it's a feature my competitors offer, so why wouldn't they be interested in it?
However, I was met with a more lukewarm response than anticipated. The reason was that typically, when artists want to make merchandise, they keep that in mind from the very beginning when creating a piece. I was told by one of my interviewees that they often forget art websites even offer the feature, so it makes for an ineffective afterthought with little point. I myself have never utilized it, but figured others did. In the end, what I was encouraged to continue focusing on was having an aesthetically pleasing website. These ARE artists, after all!
New Market
For my new market, I identified my competitors as my new market. Many websites have applets and plugins available on the Google app store to help enhance them to consumer's niche needs. So, I would change my product from a website to an app that would help website users better organize the content they were seeing.
When I interviewed my intended market, I was surprised at the approval I was met with. As it turns out for one of the websites in my market, something similar has actually already been done for that websites' chatrooms by a user of the website, which made the formatting much nicer to look at as well as adding additional features for those who wanted them. However, this route seems less profitable, as I know many applet makers run on donations alone, even if it's a smaller project.
That is very interesting that the option for merchandise was not received the way you thought it would be. I am not an expert in this area as you are, but I would have thought the same thing you did at the beginning. However, now that you know it would not be worth your time and efforts you can focus on keeping your customers happy with what they do like!
ReplyDeleteHey there again Haley! I think it's pretty awesome that you thought of branching out from a website to an app--I can't believe I didn't think of that to suggest! A couple of the big-name ones do have app versions of their sites in a way that shares similar design (so you can tell it's the same thing) but changes up formatting for a different viewing screen size, like how Pinterest's app does that but changes up the layout of their pin boards from the full screen site. Anyways, you put so much heart into this project and I hope it pays off well for you!
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