A walk-through of how I tested an idea I had for a software product before building it. Demonstrates the concept of a "smoke test", an experiment done to see if demand exists for a product or feature. I put together this presentation for the lightning talk bake-off for Business of Software 2013. This is the original slide deck with 20 slides before I trimmed it down to 15 slides.

1. How To Run a Smoke Test
by Trevor Lohrbeer
@FastFedora
trevor@FastFedora.com
FastFedora.com
trevor@LabEscape.com
LabEscape.com

2. What is a Smoke Test?
A way to test
market acceptance
before creating a product

3. The Idea
How can I figure out how many
people actually read my blog?
Page views only measure how
intriguing a headline is, not how
engaging your content is.

4. Install ClickTale

5. Record Videos of Visitors

6. Categorize Each Video

7. Summarize Results
Only 15% of page views actually read

8. Ask People for Feedback

9. E-mail People

10. Do People Respond?

11. Get Advice

12. Develop Hypotheses
Idea: WordPress plugin that tells writers who read
their articles, not just who clicked on the headline.
Hypothesized Values
Potential Headlines To Test
1.
Measure engagement
1.
Write Engaging Articles
2.
Improve accuracy
2.
Are Your Articles Engaging?
3.
Optimize marketing
3.
Does Anyone Read Your Blog?
4.
Charge more

13. Create Target Metrics
100 subscribers

14. Pick a Template

15. Add Your Content

16. Publish Your Landing Page

17. Create Ads

18. View Your Conversions

19. Analyze Your Results

20. View slides at:
slideshare.net/fastfedora
Trevor Lohrbeer
@FastFedora
trevor@FastFedora.com
FastFedora.com
trevor@LabEscape.com
LabEscape.com