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Checklist for product developers to market products

Stepahnie Hurlburt, a Graphics Engineer & Entrepreneur has tweeted a very useful checklist for software developers releasing Open Source products and tools to help in their adoption. I think the checklist can be used by all product developers / marketers to improve adoption.


Here goes the list, you can also read it on this Tweet Thread here or go to Stephanie's Twitter handle here.

“Why isn’t someone using my software product or open source tool? It’s good!”

A checklist for you:
  1. Have you described what it is and what the benefits are in a way a non-developer can understand?
  2. If someone Googles to try to learn more about it, is this description easy to find?
  3. Is this description easily skimmable? If someone looks at it for 6 seconds can they be convinced?
  4. Do you compare your tool to other similar tools so people feel educated about pros/cons of yours?
  5. If performance matters, do you have easy-to-skim benchmarks that include comparing it to other tools?
  6. Do you have a demo? If it’s open source, are there well documented and easy to build samples/demos?
  7. Have you spoken or written about your tool? Twitter, a tech blog, online communities, meetups, conferences, podcasts, etc
  8. Have you pitched it in 1:1 conversations with developers who might be interested?
  9. Have you talked with developers who may be interested to learn about why they haven’t tried it or don’t use it?

Key takeaways:

  • Describe your tool in an easy to understand way
  • Do not underestimate the power of informational interviews

Follow up Tweets:

  • And if the tool is meant to be used by devs, still describe your tool in a way a non-developer can understand
  • To learn more, read up on marketing/sales and talk to professionals. It’s a fascinating field and I have a huge amount of respect for it.

Checklist items added by others

  1. Is there a list of active users so I can see if co’s I might trust have decided to use it...
  2. Does it look like it’s got a viable community of contributors that might continue to develop it if main dev moves on.
  3. Is the main dev succeeding at turning it into a viable biz so they don’t burn out.
  4. Is a me-too library... too many options in a space means that many will turn into abandoned code. Image loading c to other lang binding sys


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