u/candizdar

Decent CTR, decent signup rate. Most of those signups never reached the feature that makes the app worth using.

Found out by watching real users go through the flow on screen recordings. Not analytics. Actual footage.

One tester spent almost a full minute on the step right after signup. The CTA I thought was obvious. She hovered, clicked the wrong thing twice, came back, hovered again. A full minute. On one button.

Analytics said "users drop at step 2." The recordings showed why. Fix took 20 minutes.

Found three things across four sessions. Fixed them. Ran ads. Conversion went up enough that the unit economics changed.

If you're spending on ads before you've watched real people use your product, you're paying to confirm something's broken, not to fix it. It's a weird kind of expensive.

Watch five real people go through your flow before you spend anything on acquisition. You'll find something. It'll be uncomfortable. Fix it first.

(I built TestFi for this real testers, screen recordings. Mentioning it in case it's useful, not the main point.)

Decent CTR, decent signup rate. Most of those signups never reached the feature that makes the app worth using.

Found out by watching real users go through the flow on screen recordings. Not analytics. Actual footage.

One tester spent almost a full minute on the step right after signup. The CTA I thought was obvious. She hovered, clicked the wrong thing twice, came back, hovered again. A full minute. On one button.

Analytics said "users drop at step 2." The recordings showed why. Fix took 20 minutes.

Found three things across four sessions. Fixed them. Ran ads. Conversion went up enough that the unit economics changed.

If you're spending on ads before you've watched real people use your product, you're paying to confirm something's broken, not to fix it. It's a weird kind of expensive.

Watch five real people go through your flow before you spend anything on acquisition. You'll find something. It'll be uncomfortable. Fix it first.

(I built TestFi for this real testers, screen recordings. Mentioning it in case it's useful, not the main point.)

Most devs I've talked to think it's 12 days. It's 14.

The rule: closed testing track, 12 opted-in testers, actively using the app for 14 consecutive days. Simple until you try to actually find 12 people.

Friends say yes. A few install it. One uses it for two days and then forgets. You hit day 9 with 3 active testers and aren't sure if the clock resets.

Posting on Reddit for beta testers gets you a wave of day-one installs, then nothing.

The only thing that's reliably worked — for us and the devs we've talked to — is getting people who actually do this regularly. They join the track, install, keep using it. Google sees what it needs.

That's part of why I built TestFi. You post a campaign, share your Play invite link, and testers are usually in within 24-48 hours. You also get screen recordings, so the 14 days isn't just dead time.

Anyway — if this is where you're stuck, comment. I've been through it.

Friends say "looks great." Strangers don't lie.

Drop your app link below. Real testers, screen recordings, written feedback. $1.99/tester, results in 24-48h.

testfi.app

Friends say "looks great." Strangers don't lie.

Drop your app link below. Real testers, screen recordings, written feedback. $1.99/tester, results in 24-48h.

testfi.app

Friends say "looks great." Strangers don't lie.

Drop your app link below. Real testers, screen recordings, written feedback. $1.99/tester, results in 24-48h.

testfi.app

Friends say "looks great." Strangers don't lie.

Drop your app link below. Real testers, screen recordings, written feedback. $1.99/tester, results in 24-48h.

testfi.app

Friends say "looks great." Strangers don't lie.

Drop your app link below. Real testers, screen recordings, written feedback. $1.99/tester, results in 24-48h.

testfi.app

Friends say "looks great." Strangers don't lie.

Drop your app link below. Real testers, screen recordings, written feedback. $1.99/tester, results in 24-48h.

testfi.app

Have you ever noticed a feature in your app that baffles everyone but the creator?

Dive into those tricky user flows by joining the conversation or signing up for testfi.app to see what puzzles users with your app—only $1.99 per tester!

If you're shipping a new app every day with AI hoping one catches on, skip this.

For everyone else: you had a real idea, built it, got Stripe working, launched it, watched real people sign up. And then nothing happened. No sales. You added features. Still nothing.

I watched this happen to a developer recently. Signups were coming in. Active users: zero, every day. He kept building for six months assuming it was a product problem.

It wasn't. Every single user was dropping off at step 1 of onboarding. He had no idea.

He finally got 5 strangers, put the app in front of them, said nothing.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"I gave up at this screen."

One hour. Five people. That told him more than six months of building did.

He understood his own product too well to see what everyone else was seeing.

Find five people who have never heard of your app. Watch them use it. Don't say a word. Where they get stuck is where your actual problem is.

If you're shipping a new app every day with AI hoping one catches on, skip this.

For everyone else: you had a real idea, built it, got Stripe working, launched it, watched real people sign up. And then nothing happened. No sales. You added features. Still nothing.

I watched this happen to a developer recently. Signups were coming in. Active users: zero, every day. He kept building for six months assuming it was a product problem.

It wasn't. Every single user was dropping off at step 1 of onboarding. He had no idea.

He finally got 5 strangers, put the app in front of them, said nothing.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"I gave up at this screen."

One hour. Five people. That told him more than six months of building did.

He understood his own product too well to see what everyone else was seeing.

Find five people who have never heard of your app. Watch them use it. Don't say a word. Where they get stuck is where your actual problem is.

If you're shipping a new app every day with AI hoping one catches on, skip this.

For everyone else: you had a real idea, built it, got Stripe working, launched it, watched real people sign up. And then nothing happened. No sales. You added features. Still nothing.

I watched this happen to a developer recently. Signups were coming in. Active users: zero, every day. He kept building for six months assuming it was a product problem.

It wasn't. Every single user was dropping off at step 1 of onboarding. He had no idea.

He finally got 5 strangers, put the app in front of them, said nothing.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"I gave up at this screen."

One hour. Five people. That told him more than six months of building did.

He understood his own product too well to see what everyone else was seeing.

Find five people who have never heard of your app. Watch them use it. Don't say a word. Where they get stuck is where your actual problem is.

let me get you a feedback from real user with a screen recording of them while thinking out loud using your app and an AI analysis of their video

drop your app 👇

let me get you a feedback from real user with a screen recording of them while thinking out loud using your app and an AI analysis of their video

drop your app 👇

Real testers record themselves using your app and say out loud what's confusing. AI analyzes the session and gives you a scored UX report.

Written feedback: $1.99/tester
Screen recording + think-aloud: $3.99/tester

testfi.app

No shade to this subreddit. I used to do the same thing — post asking for beta testers, get 3 replies, 1 of them actually follows through.

Built TestFi to fix that. You post your app, pick how many testers you want, and they come to you. Each session is a screen recording with think-aloud narration, and AI generates a report scoring the UX.

Written feedback: $1.99/tester. Screen recording sessions: $3.99/tester. First session usually comes in within 24 hours.

Happy to answer questions.

testfi.app

Built TestFi. The pitch: you need 5 real people to use your app and tell you what's broken. Finding those people used to take days and a lot of begging in Discord servers.

Here's how it works. A tester opens your app, records their screen, and narrates what they're thinking as they go. AI then processes the session and gives you a scored report friction points, where they got confused, what they completely skipped.

Written feedback: $1.99/tester. Screen recording with think-aloud: $3.99/tester.

Go ahead.

You ship something. You have no idea if a normal person can actually use it. Your friends say it looks great. Surveys tell you nothing.

TestFi sends real testers to your app. They record their screen, narrate what confuses them, and you get an AI-scored report breaking down where things went wrong.

Written feedback: $1.99/tester
Screen recording + think-aloud: $3.99/tester

87 developers have used it. Happy to answer anything.

testfi.app