[albertni]

While there are always exceptions, I'm guessing most startups that are around the 10k user mark have plenty of free low hanging fruit left in terms of improving a user's experience or getting more traffic in general. Whatever you end up doing, you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck with a more optimized flow.

Personally (and without knowing more about what you guys are doing), I'd spend the $2k exploring different avenues to get a better idea of what kinds of things do and do not work. It's hard to know what may or may not work sometimes without trying it, at least a little bit. Seemingly similar startups may have very different levels of success with things like untargeted Google Adwords, targeted Google adwords, other methods of product placement, etc., and while you can't always get conclusive evidence from $2k, it's a start.

[yeti]

Yes, we have plenty to improve in improving the flow and newbie experience

Always wondering about what priority should be new features we need for stickiness vs improving the first time experience

[froo]

Honestly? first time experience if you want to grow your userbase.

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

For example, there are many arguments to why WOW is a dominating force in the MMO market and one of them is with the "first 5 minutes" concept. It hooks players early and from there tries to keep the experience fairly pleasant through the first X levels of play.

There are many other MMO's out there and the first 5 minutes can be frustrating. These games usually don't do as well.

EDIT - Having thought quickly about another benefit of stickiness vs first impression, this is another argument I came up with that is pro-first impression.

I think that if you had to choose between the two, that first impression is better for the network effects that it can create.

Think about your browsing behaviour and how you pass content along to your friends.

When you find something new and interesting, do you send it to your friends (via IM/email/facebook/twitter) straight away or do you wait a couple of days before you send it?

[yeti]

Good point