Start-up Research

Hello,

A friend and I have created a product that we want to test market. We've developed a prototype, but don't want to spend thousands of dollars creating a product if nobody is interested. Someone suggested we create a commerce site to see how many people actually add the item to their cart and click "buy". (At that point, we'd consider the item "sold").

The idea is that they could look at our product, add it to their cart, and then click "buy". We would like to collect contact information so we can contact them if and when the product is made... but we don't want it to get as far as allowing them to enter their credit card information... so maybe after the names and emails are entered, step two would be "sorry- item is out of stock. we will contact you when it is in..." something like that...

I realize there are some ethical concerns here regarding allowing people to get far enough into the ordering process for a product that doesn't exist yet... so I'm also open to other ideas as to how I can get the same information.

Thanks,
John

Apart of what you already mention from the ethical point of view of offering a product that does not exist, I really do see a bigger problem (if is not a problem for you means you are REALLY good), and is how are you going to bring traffic/people/customers to your website?

I think there are other ways to do it, but the one of setting an online shop is also great . Good luck (send the prototype )

You can use OpenCart for this, and probably set up a payment method that does not collect payment, but let them pre order?