The Lean Start Part 3 - Adventures with Landing Pages

Previously on the Lean Start

Last time, I wrote about the results of the online survey and how they may be biased as I paid for the responders for their time. In order to validate the results for people who weren't being paid, I decided to create a Landing Page.

The Landing Page Genesis

This has proved to be somewhat controversial. On the one hand, it seems that putting up a page with a description of the Problem and the proposed Solution is a simple way to gather feedback. On the other, without any functionality behind it, it seems somehow deceptive to my visitors.

For those of you who have been in the software business for a while, the concept of "vapour-ware" will be all too familiar. Many companies have floundered by over-promising and under-delivering. This is the challenge that I faced with the Landing Page design and copy. I wanted to give a flavour of what the service would do without overwhelming the visitors with too much detail.

In order to help, I solicited feedback from some close friends who were critical enough to tell me that I was putting far too much text on the screen. One described it as like reading a Request For Information tender response. I guess I have been in the B2B space too long! Others were critical of actually releasing something to my potential users that didn't do anything.

Nevertheless, I decided to press on and created a simple site with the help of a Web Designer. You can see the site here: http://bit.ly/g5Jyrn

From One to Many Landing Pages

The next step was to drive some traffic to the page from friends and family. I chose two direct contact methods, email and Facebook messages. In order to distinguish how the traffic was being generated, I created duplicate versions of the site.

The results surprised me a little. Email worked much better than Facebook in driving traffic to the site. There could be several reasons for this, including the fact that not everybody logs onto Facebook every day, but do check their email.

So the landing pages are up and running and visitors are leaving their email contact details for when the service is open. In my next post, I will describe some of the traffic statistics and go into more detail about what worked (and what didn't) in terms of driving traffic to the site.

And if you have the time, here is the link to the landing page again. http://bit.ly/g5Jyrn Drop over and take a look. If you have any comments, I'd be delighted to hear them.