In my previous post I gave a brief introduction to The Lean Startup and its Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. I wen't on to describe how I started my first loop of the cycle and what came out of it. Now is time to start a new loop.

What should I Build

The question that immediately comes to mind is: What should I Build next?. This is often not an easy question to answer, but there are things we can do to help us figure it out.

One useful approach is to look at the loop backwards and turn the question upside down: What do I need to Learn?

By framing the question this way we can focus on figuring out what do we need to know about our customers, our product, our service, etc. Once we have stablished what is the most important piece of information that we need to Learn we can start thinking about what do we need to Measure in order to fulfil that learning. And from there we can then specify what features or changes we need to Build into our product to achieve it.

Putting it into practice

In my previous post I asked people to try my PoC (proof of concept) and tell me what they think of it in the comments section of the post.

This approach relies heavily in having others proactively telling me if they tried my product and what they thought of it. But it's hard to Measure any response against many who might try the product but not bother leaving a comment after.

So the question I want to Learn the answer to is: Are people trying my product?

A simple way to obtain data to Measure is to Build a basic visitor tracking feature. There are many options out there that can be used for this purpose, I have chosen to go with Mixpanel. The reason for it is that Mixpanel offers a free tier for low usage (even though is way higher that I could ever expect at this stage), and is very extensible and powerful for when the need arises for more.

The waiting game

And now we wait. Hopefully people will visit the product, and I will get some basic information from my tracking efforts. With this information I would be able to answer a very simple question: Are people using the product at all?

Try it out

So here it is: DiBuJo

Give it a go, and let me know what you think of it in the comments section!