10 Steps To Scaling Your Product

This article is written by Mohammad Eslim, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Eamonn Carey is the Managing Director at Techstars London. He was previously MD at Techstars Connection in partnership with AB InBev in New York, and has been a long-term mentor, advisor and angel investor in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the US.

“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you have launched too late.” Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn stated. If you asked most of the people who has started businesses with a variety of products or services, they would tell you how much their first product was imperfect, lacked in many sides, and was in dire need of development. That is very normal in the business world, as it is expected for newbies to get doubtful about when or at what limit is the product good enough to be launched in the market.

Every small beginner in the market faces these doubts and question and might possibly get cold feet whenever their product’s first version seems lacking. What you are ought to do is to collect yourself and start your product whenever you are ready, because if you wait for your product to be ready, you will never move a step in business. It is better when in business to know that first, you are the one who needs to be ready for your business to grow; and second, your product will never be perfect enough in the beginning and you will improve it as you scale in business. It is ok to lack at first and develop s you make your way up.

There are some keys you need to take into consideration to improve your product through versions until you are rewarded with yours and the customers’ satisfaction:

• Make your product fast.

Since the internet was founded, the speed of the services began to grow exponentially fast. Now 3 seconds delay is inefficient and insufficient and that takes you a couple of steps back in the market. So you better work on lesser time-consuming algorithms to get in result an enhanced high-quality service.

• Make it clear.

As in clear the purpose behind your product or service. Explain what it does and what you offer clearly in a pitch so people can relate to your services when they need them and so clients won’t be lost when you sell it in the markets.

• Make it easy to use

Because people don’t like to go through complicated processes to obtain the wanted services.

• Think about the action you want to drive.

For example, Snapchat’s action drive is taking photos so the application goes directly to the camera; also you need to think about your product’s action drive and get to it quickly.

• Make it simple

As lots of people like to be shepherded towards the thing you want them to do. So don’t be surprised when they ignore your incredibly imaginative user interface or break your things that you spent years building and perfecting.

• Use the right tools.

Such tools as Stripe, Intercom, Foursquare, user Onboarding and Peek.

• Test and test and test all the time.

There are a bunch of tests you have to do on your product, like A/B testing for all the screens and interfaces of your application.

Don’t be afraid to change because when you see people get engaged with your product, you don’t have to be afraid to pivot. Once you get it right, it turns into a viral loop where people get excited about your product and will use it more frequently and will tell more people about it, thus your product, app, service will go into a viral growth.

• Find your north star.

This means to find the metrics you want to track, which is more important and worthwhile. For example, find the numbers you are trying to increase all the time that your efforts go to it.

• Go for partners.

In terms of product scaling and getting in front of people, it is amazing to have partners for they can help you scale your business and advertise your product widely.

Those points are called hygiene factors and you have to think them over when you start building your product and continue applying them as you improve the product, service or application version into another version. Don’t be embarrassed that your product lacks something but try to develop it into another modified form that covers the lacks and performs any service well.