In this section you will:
1. Create a beautiful demo page to collect customer emails.
2. Get early adopters to sign up.
Now that you've scripted up powerful messages and a selling UVP, we can now use them to build a demo that will help get users' email and find out their response. We will introduce several tools to help you create a demo with an email input field to collect potential users' emails early.
Creating a demo page sounds hard, but there are many great tools available that will help you easily build a landing page that can help you collect tens of thousands of interested customers. A landing page should look just like your website's primary landing page, which should look like a great looking marketing page that fully demonstrates what your product is, your UVP, and the benefits to using your service. The demo needs to be professional and clean for users to take you seriously.
A demo will allow you to see if people actually need your solution. It will let people know what you are building, and if they need it they will leave their email with you so that when you are done developing, they can finally solve that big pain point.
e.g. Create a landing page in minutes with Unbounce
Create a landing page for your product to start collecting user emails. This can be a simple HTML page, a video, or a static page, etc. made with one of the landing page builder tools below.
This landing page is the front page of your website/service. It is supposed to fully illustrate what your MVP does. The UVP, sub-headlines, and content you put on your landing page (great example: http://csspiffle.com) can already tell you if you will have the right solution by the response from your potential customers when they sign up and leave you their emails.
Do not wait till you are done with your product/MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to start collecting early adopters. A lot of startups think that they cannot get customers before they have a product ready. Read the Dropbox story below to see how they got 75,000 customers even before they had a line of code written.
Also, do not make your landing page look too raw and generic. When users see that you didn't put enough effort in building the page, they will feel annoyed and actually feel negatively about it. Make sure whichever tool you use to build your demo page, customize it well so it includes good content like a strong UVP, mockups or screenshots, images, and valuable information that could excite them.
You can use stock images and perhaps some of the platforms' default templates to help you create something beautiful.
Mandatory elements you will need on the demo page:
Case Study: Dropbox had a 3 min screencast on Hacker News that got a lot of feedback. They did a simple landing page with information to collect beta emails. They had a link that said “Google Drive Killer Coming from MIT Startup”, which gave them 12,000 diggs and 75,000 signups…in one day. They also got into Ycombinator with all that interest they generated.
Read this: http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587
Another AWESOME Case Study:
CSSHat had a really great looking landing page here (CSS Piffle) that promised to help designers solve the problem of having to convert Photoshop images into usable CSS. They tweeted their service, and they got 10,000 potential users within weeks. The landing page was so awesome that even though it's been static and unmanaged for a year now, still many users ask about it.
Dropbox and CSSHat put a concrete idea in their customers' hands, which wasn't the usable product, but it was enough to prove what they're doing is what people want. That said, you can basically create a simple landing page that explains what your solution is, and some basic info on how it works.
Also: How I grew a waiting list of 20,000+ at Mint.com
You don't need a restaurant to test your food concept. Aspiring chefs have used food trailers as a way to quickly test their product while keeping their risks super low. – Ash Maurya
You can even get Google Adwords or some ads to test to see how attractive your ad is. A blog entry would work too. If a lot of people click on your ad, that immediately shows you the demand for your service.
Case Study: Ash Maurya validated his idea using a blog post named “How I Document My Business Model Hypotheses.”
There are companies that create these demo videos that help potential customers visualize your solution while getting sign-ups for your service.
Don't spend too much effort creating a “demo” page. Ideally, when you are creating your demo page, you should be somehow designing your eventual website's front page. Any effort not put into making the final product is a waste. Making a video is good because you can use it after you launch.
Create a static demo page:
7 good examples of landing pages: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/coming-soon-page-design-with-examples/
Companies that will make your demo video
Make your own screencast:
Now go to one of the places where your customers frequent, and submit a link that points to your demo page.
You found some of the destination URLs in the Stalk your customers task under Customer Development Stage. Now you can use those websites to find your customers!
However, remember that we are only collectiong early adopters now. Right now there is no need to grow users. We will grow users when we've fully validated our MVP. This is very important, because many startups just focus on growing users before they even have a "working" solution. Users sign in, and realize that the UVP is not delivered. They leave the site to never return again.
How to script a great headline:
1. It's better to lay it out in layman terms, and it needs to have a motivation.
Example:
"Build your company and get funding in 60 days"
2. Good Copy Writing Tips:
The Ultimate Guide to Writing Incredible Headlines
How to Write Magnetic headlines
Copy Hackers - Amazing tips on how to write converting copies.
3. Learn from headlines on Hacker News and Reddit - see what works and what don't
Hacker News Front Page
Recommended places to get feedback:
Reddit Startups - the trick here is to add "Show Reddit:" in front of your headline. When a lot of people like your link and vote on it, your link will appear on the front page, which gets the most traffic.
Hacker News - Tips on how to get onto the front page on Hacker News - add "Show HN:" in front of your headline to get more attention. Like Reddit, when a lot of people like your link and vote on it, your link will appear on the front page, which gets the most traffic.
Slashdot - Another good social news platform to post your startup news or landing page link.
