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Example: how the speed of the learning loop leads to higher-quality, more actionable feedback.
Thank you everyone for giving me their feedback about the £5 optional price of the Lean Startup London meetup yesterday! I thought I’d share the responses and share how I’ve approached this experiment. To me, this is an example of how an “embarrassingly early” MVP improves the breadth and speed of insight that can come from it.
The test
I wanted to test a small price for a meetup – mainly after quite a few people have told me that they’d be willing to pay, especially if that means we can schedule the Lean Startup London meetups regularly. (In this case, I also wanted to offer to cover Patrick’s hotel costs, since he had offered to stopover in London to meet us and talk at a meetup.) I wanted to make the payment optional to keep it student-friendly. The MVP of this is unchecking the “payment required” checkbox on Meetup.com and announcing the meetup normally. I had expected to run into some problems with this, but I wanted to get the MVP out as fast as possible to get feedback faster, rather than try to find and fix problems that might only exist in my head. (And I had meetings all day so wanted to announce this quicky to get out the door!)
Hypotheses!
I expected most of the attendees to be happy to pay a fiver and I expected that a lot of people might miss the call to action – either because of habit of clicking Yes on meetup to get in fast, or because you can RSVP in other ways, like the mobile app, which I’m not familiar with.
The results
The RSVPs started coming through really quickly, so fast that I thought Meetup probably wasn’t presenting optional payment when you click “Yes.” But one can never be sure so I asked! I tweeted and sent a quick email to people who had RSVP’ed explaining what I wanted to learn and why.
I was surprised at all the different reasons that came back – many more than I originally thought!
The most common reason was that I didn’t specify that I’d like people to pay in advance. A lot of people assumed they could pay at the door. I hadn’t considered that at all. My hypothesis that the main problem would be that the call to action wasn’t visible enough – that actually came in second. So the fast learning loop paid off. I learned an issue that was more important than what I originally thought.
I also quickly learned of a whole series of other reasons that I hadn’t considered, so my understanding of the problem is much broader. Plus, people made some helpful suggestions. Here are some of the responses:
In my case it was simply about getting my name down while I had a spare moment, have every intention of returning & paying.
I actually thought it was compulsory from having seen other meetup groups that have a fee associated via paypal.
I failed to see the CTA to pay, until I saw your tweet.
It would be better if you could pay what you want with a recommended contribution.
Could be because the description sounds like “Forward are paying for everything. Want to volunteer money anyway?”
I saw the message about paying which I’m more than happy with, however I didn’t see anything about how – expected to see an /paypal link etc…
I just read the title and clicked on RSVP without seeing anything else… it actually took me a while now to find how to pay…I never payed for meetups so I didn’t know the platflorm would allow it
Its easiest to pay at the door typically for me. I tend to avoid paying online.
Perhaps we are all getting used to eventbrite windows popping up with paypal logos etc)
Meetup app [does not say] whether we need to pay immediately. I read it as an entry fee for the day.
I also thought you had priced it to dissuade people from signing in and not turning up.
Optional most of the times means I won’t do it, I think (really assuming here) that if you would put that on eventbrite for 5£ you will see the same number of registrants, 5£ is good, it’s the price you’d pay to go for a pint anyway.
It takes too many steps to enter in my credit card details.
Now I have a better understanding of how people think, and a much better idea of what adjustments to try for the next meetup. Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond! If there’s anything I’ve missed (which I undoubtably have!) please let me know…
