So I wrote a post on Facebook and shared an Instagram story to reach friends and family.

The content

My facebook post:

And my instagram story:

The results

I got some likes, shares and supportive comments, but let’s the key how much closer did we get to 1000 users?

Before the posts we had 12 users who signed up already to the app, now let's see how it looks after.

Current users: 17 …well that’s not exactly the result I expected, but I’ll give some thoughts in the conclusions, let’s see some more stats first.

Page views:

The facebook post was published on 28 Aug, there was certainly at least some traffic, but most didn’t convert.

Conclusions

My view on the results is that the app is for planning trips, which will naturally attract people who are well planning an upcoming trip. But my post on facebook was mainly reaching people who were just going about their life scrolling through facebook content. Some gave a like, some even checked the website, but if they weren’t thinking about any upcoming trips then in the most optimistic case just thought “I’ll get back to this later when I’ll need it”.

The conclusion is to then try to reach people who actually are in the trip planning process, and whom the app would help right away. Next we will try to find them and contact them directly to try out the app. So you soon in the next instalment, hopefully with nicer results :)

I will publish blog posts on the things we try with their outcome and any interesting insights learned from it.

So buckle up and join me on this ride, prepare for it to be bumpy, but with a bit of luck we will reach our destination soon.

Why this series?

Recently we launched our app and quickly realized that just because we love what we built (yes, the bugs too) somehow the users aren't flocking to use it.

As an engineer I'm quite comfortable writing code, adding new features (and ohh my... our backlog of ideas is huge) or tackling fixing the weirdest bugs. But what does it help if everything lines up perfectly on Safari if we don't have any users on Safari? ...or any other browsers for that matter?

Clearly my focus should be somewhere else: getting the word out, reaching and acquiring users. So that's exactly what I intend to do. Doing it in public will hopefully give me the push to follow through with the plan, and maybe even succeed.

In addition I hope that it can be interesting for people in the same shoes, maybe we can together learn a thing or two and read about a success story. That's the plan at least. I hope I won't have to rename the series to "a cautionary tale of things that don't work".

Is this a media hack to get attention and reach? We will see, maybe... If it works, then sure ;)

What is My Next Adventure?

My Next Adventure is a travel planning app with the key aim to help comparing different options. You can do this by creating multiple variants for a trip and adding many different accommodation and transport options to them. Also events that you would like to attend can be added and then you can see how things line up on a map too.

The app allows you to prepare versions where you can easily compare options that answer questions like "what if we would drive instead of flying?", "what if we would stay for 2 more days?", "what if we would add another destination to our trip?" or "what if we go only the 2 of us vs. we take the children and grandparents too?"

The project started as usually when I'm planning a family vacation or even just a weekend getaway I end up with a bunch of different notes and spreadsheets with the options, while still relying a great bunch on my memory (let's not get into how effectively) to remember whether it was option 2 or 3 with the breakfast included; or how many bags did I count for the cost of the flight?

I wanted a better way, and "My Next Adventure" was born. I'm actually writing these lines from my first vacation planned on the app, and this time I can be sure that we chose the best option. Here's me on this adventure:

What's next?

I have a few ideas jotted down that we will explore, and the rest we will figure out as it goes. Maybe some previously thought unlikely idea will materialize or will get a random great thought, or maybe You, reader, will suggest something worth trying. In anyway, most likely it will be quite a journey.

Each journey however has to start with the first step, here the first post in the series (after this intro) will be about reaching out to people I know (or at least are in my network) and hopefully will get a few sign ups from that. After that the overall theme for the beginning will be to do things that don't scale, as it's recommended in many online resources.

Where can I follow?

Blog posts covering new things that we tried and their results will come out on this blog, so it's best to follow here. You can see the whole series under this link.

Shorter and quicker updates I will share on X also, so be sure to follow there too.

In addition feel free to get in touch with me directly if you are going through the same, have any feedback about the app or just want to drop a line.