Reviewful

I value working with local businesses. I don't really like major corporations, and so I will go out of my way when I can to shop at small, local places in my town.

I am also occasionally active on Google Maps, submitting reviews of the places I go to, especially the local places I love, and the local business owners I interact with.

I noticed that for certain niches of business owners, there seemed to be a high value put on collecting 5-star reviews for their business on Google Maps, and other places. Service-based businesses such as HVAC and plumbers, but also dentists, orthodontists, spas, etc.

Social proof is a huge part of how they attract leads and ultimately get more customers. In many cases this also means they are (or should be) posting these testimonials on their social media accounts, as for an increasing demographic, this is the person's first exposure to their business.

I did some research on what a lot of businesses are using. The main flaws I noticed across several of the competitors were friction (the amount of configuration required to get from zero to posting automatically), bloat, and pricing.

So, I built Reviewful to be as close to friction-free as I can get it, and honed in on serving one very specific purpose (configurable automatic posting of Google reviews). Pricing is an ongoing experiment, but the goal with my pricing is to be affordable for small business owners, without seeming cheap.

The product is currently an MVP, and still in validation stage. Users can look up their business by typing in the business name, and can then download a sample graphic from one of their available reviews. There is also the ability to submit their email address to join a waitlist, or they can purchase the 15-graphic offer I've been making to local businesses via an Early Adopter's Pass (which also gets them a lifetime discount).

At this point I'm just doing cold outreach, and doing whatever I can to shop it around to people, trying to get feedback, and see if there is an actual market for this type of app. My gut tells me there is based on the fact that businesses are already paying for this sort of thing elsewhere, but I need to validate it for myself before committing to building any additional features.

The feedback has so far been related to the friction on the landing page, especially for cold outreach emails, and also confusion related to it not being a finished product. I've also gotten some decent traffic on the app so far from my outreach efforts, so I'm feeling optimistic about it at this point.