We develop a cloud startup: marketing, development and plans

I was inspired to write this post by Megamind ’s offer to provide free subscription to startups who are ready to talk about the development of their project, share successes and fakaps, and also have a direct dialogue with the Megamozgans. Well, although we already have a subscription to our company, we also think it is not superfluous to talk about our work. Below in the text I will describe who we are, what we did in April on the project and what we plan to do in May.

Who are we?

Since June 2014, we have been developing a virtual PBX for RingCloud business . In August, we conducted a beta testing of the product, in which more than 300 testers took part (read more about this here) , in October we started selling the service to the first users, simultaneously improving the product based on their feedback, and in February of this year we reached full production fully equipped.

I will break the post into five parts:

• Development of new functionality
• Improving and catching bugs
• Sales
• Marketing
• May plans

Go!

Development of new functionality

Docking with Skype

The idea of ​​implementing these connections is not new in itself. Everyone has been aware of the possibilities of receiving Skype calls via SIP protocol and landing Megafon numbers via SIP for a long time, there are a lot of documentation, but not all of them correspond to reality for some reason. For example, when connecting Skype Connect, we noticed some nuances in the operation of the SIP protocol, namely, the not completely standard transmission of From headers, caller IDs were transmitted a bit standard in them, this connection method also has some delays in incoming calls, on that their technical support is responding with promises to fix it. As a result, we have that our customers can easily integrate Skype into our virtual PBX.

Docking with Megaphone Multiphone

With the multiphone, especially, there were no problems except for some discrepancy between their official documentation and reality, so we made our documentation by testing all the functionality and describing it in detail.
We slightly modified our interface for managing the connection of an external number by adding call forwarding control on the provider side to our personal account, now in order to enable forwarding of incoming calls to a SIP connection or vice versa to a mobile number with the “multifon” service, our users do not need to make HTTP requests, send SMS or call in those support Megaphone, all this can be done in our personal account.

REST API

In March, we very often heard from various users the question of the possibility of integration with CRM systems. We also received interesting offers about using RingCloud in conjunction with other products. For all this, we needed to provide our users with our own REST API. No sooner said than done. In April, this task fell into our project manager and its implementation began. Already, we have a ready-made list of functions that we will give up to users, and they, in turn, will be able to make any integration based on them. In terms of visualizing the API, we decided to use Sphinx . On April 24, I accept the task from developers, and in early May we will post the API in public.

Improving and catching bugs

Facilitation of registration of a legal entity

Once again, passing through all stages of registration and use of the system, testers proposed to simplify the process of entering details for legal entities (LLC, JSC).

During the development process, billing requirements for the mandatory presence of fields to fill in the details migrated to the project. In fact, for the execution of a contract for the sale of numbers, the presence of crossed out data is not necessary. And when filling out, not every user had at hand the data of OKVED of his enterprise. Now this data is not required and does not create inconvenience for users to work.

Voice Mail Bug

Voice mail is activated by switching the toggle switch. Everything would be fine, but at some iteration of the product, the function of saving changes flew. That is, after switching and exiting the section, the settings were not saved. Since voicemail is not the most popular option, we found it also thanks to testers, and not customer complaints. Found and corrected.

Sales and user interaction

The long-awaited trial period

Since February, we tested a business model that allowed access to the service only after paying the first month of the selected tariff. In fact, the results of registrations and payments were quite satisfactory. Only here, not for a satisfactory level, we developed the product. In parallel with the users who paid and used, we were growing a funnel of potential users who expressed doubts not about us personally, namely, whether the virtual PBX would be suitable for them and / or whether they could cope with its configuration even with our help. That's it for them in April and the option of a free trial period of 10 days has become available. Our sales managers reported this to those who registered earlier, and the increase in daily registrations was more than 60%.

Marketing

Article Content Placement

Until this month, we worked only on pay traffic. Our first experiences writing articles for such portals as Shopolog , e-pepper , Habr and Megamind gave tangible growth in registrations and purchases. We also received great reviews on our product. Some of the comments / suggestions are taken into work. We will continue. For those who are just going to work in this direction, I want to advise you to put a small media plan for 1-2 months on publications. First think about the topics and who in the team can write something. So it’s much easier to decide whether to start working or not.

TV series translations (sponsorship)

It is very difficult to record direct metrics on this channel, but the growth of direct transitions indicates that on the day of the release of the series of various series, interest in the product increases. It is safe to say (and this is confirmed by the bounce rate) that people do not just go look at the site from advertising.

May plans

Landing, Landing, Landing

In May, we will devote a lot of time to testing various marketing theories. We have a lot of groundwork on landing pages. It is necessary to understand which ideas the market will correctly perceive and which we mistakenly consider to be true. In any case, our designer Alexandra, who joined us this month, will help us here.

Test new directions in contextual advertising

Everyone understands that normal guys have more than 10 advertising companies with different goals and promises. We are constantly brainstorming to find unused niches. Now we have 2-3 ideas that we will test. If everything is ok, then at the end of May I will talk about this in more detail.

Tariff location test for comparing the number of registrations

I read a lot about it. What. we’ll try :) Although there are parallel opinions from the series that the Buy button should not be painted with what color, but if you sell sucks, no one will ever buy it.

Launch of two internal projects: Mars and Jupiter

Here is the hottest secret secret. We have worked out two internal projects that will be ready by August this year. It will be a BOMB! In May, we will begin to write code and design. Everything within the framework of RingCloud, of course, but with a serious expansion of the service horizon. You'll like it. Nobody has done this yet!

Sorry for Longrid, if someone bothered, but this is just a shrunken version of everything done in a month in RingCloud . Below is a small survey that will help me understand what exactly is more interesting.

Thanks for attention!