Factual part:
The competitor I spoke to was the community manager of Momentum, and I asked them 5 questions.
- Have you ever dealt with severe customer complaints about your app? If you did, how did you handle it? Did it cause you and your team to make significant changes to your app?
He said of course they have and that complaints are inevitable; although that may be the case, he enjoys hearing about them because it is a way for them to learn and improve on their Google extension. They talked about how they changed their Metric feature because of how their users did not like Momentum’s initial way of displaying numbers after the decimal point. In the end, Momentum took their feedback into consideration and made a changes for them to round their numbers if needed. Attached is a before and after they made changes according to customer feedback.
Before:
After:
- What does your most frequent user look like? Does it actually match your target audience, or does it go out of range?
Their target audience is anyone who has a computer; they do not have a specific age range or anything, just anyone who owns a computer and people who want to be productive.
- How were you able to effectively market your app? How did you make them feel compelled to download your app and keep them as your loyal customers?
They have only done a slight amount of marketing, nothing too major. They said that the most important thing they have done was creating a good product which helps to bring in customers. Not only that, but because their extension is free to install, it makes them super shareable among others. They are often featured in ‘Top X browser extensions’ articles which helps to spread their name. Lastly, they said that they announce new features and updates on their social media, which lets users know they’re still working on Momentum.
- What was the first failure you experienced from creating this app? How did you learn from that experience?
The first failure they experienced was trying to get approved as a Google Chrome extension. They started off as a personal project with low expectations, and it was not something they wanted to create for users, but more so for the founder himself, which was creating a space for focus reminders. But, they were able to overcome the Google Chrome extension problem by learning more about the approval process for Google Chrome and making changes accordingly to get approved as an extension. Overall, they define failure as making the same mistake twice; they view mistakes as a good thing, since it provides them as an opportunity to learn and grow.
- How do you know your most frequent users love the app? Do they personally email you compliments or leave reviews? Do they refer friends?
They know their most frequent users love the app because they get encouraging emails and reviews very often from their users. In those messages, they often hear that their users share Momentum with their friends, family, and coworkers.
Reflective part:
After reading through Momentum’s responses to my questions, I realized that mistakes are an inevitable part of the road when it comes to starting up any business. As much as I want to start up a business, my concerns about failure keep popping up in my head, which prevents me from starting anything. But after reading through Momentum’s responses, I realized that failure can be viewed in a positive light too; failure exists so that you can learn from it and use that experience to your advantage for the future.
Next-steps part:
After reading through this interview, I still think that my idea of creating an app to help people procrastinate less is still a good idea. It will be a difficult road to get this app on either the App Store or Google Play, but even so, procrastination is still a huge problem among students to this day; there is no ‘one shoe fits all’ solution when it comes to procrastination, so I think that even though there are already a lot of productivity apps out there, it does not hurt to add another app onto the market because one app may work better than another for certain users. Everyone is different, so one app may work better for one user, but not the best for another user. I hope to create an app for those users that have yet to find a solution to their problem of procrastination.
My current idea of offering coupons as an incentive for users to be more productive is not the best approach, but for sure I will still tackle the same problem but with a different approach. Just like how the Forest app helps their users become more productive by planting real trees, I want to create an app that helps not only the users, but also for the better good as well.
