Lessons Learnt from my Landing Page for Idea Validation

If you have heard about Lean Startup, you would definitely have heard of the use of a landing page too. While my team is working on our Minimum Viable Product (MVP), we launched a landing page on LaunchRock. It was an experiment for us to test the response to our idea and also to collect some leads. It has been a few weeks since we launched it and I would like to share my observations, analysis and what I've learnt so far.

What is a landing page?

First, for the benefit of those who do not know or are unclear about what a landing page is, I shall explain it briefly. Essentially, it is:

• one page of a website (usually the home page) or a one page website, which
• contains information about a product or service, and
• a call to action (buy something, drop an email, request for invite, etc.).

Having a landing page is one of the methods suggested by Lean Startup to test the response to an idea without having to build the actual product. The basic idea is to create a landing page and Get Out Of the Building (GOOB) to approach people. According to Startup Owner's Manual by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf, "low fidelity MVP [(eg. landing page)] tests whether you've accurately identified a problem that customers care about (based on user visits to your site, e-mail received, demos played, etc.)". So the ideal result is that all or a large percentage of the people that are approached indicate that they care about the problem by showing some form of interest. This means that the problem and customer segment identified is likely to be correct. For a list of startup landing pages, I recommend you check out BETA LI.ST.

What I've learnt

1) Use of "currencies" collected

I always thought that the main purpose of a landing page is to see how many people are interested in my idea so that I can decide whether to pivot or persevere. However, I forgot about how I can use the emails I have collected to follow up with the people who had signed up. For Cloudlys, our plan is to test our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with only those who are interested in our idea. Through the sign ups on our landing page, we know who the interested people are and we can contact them directly to test our MVP and collect feedback from them.

2) Approaching target customers and not friends

I think that sharing our landing page on Facebook is a mistake. This is because Facebook is simply filled with my friends but not our target customers (or potential cookie monsters). Hence, the conversion rate of views to sign ups is not meaningful. (By the way, the conversion rate is really poor.) I remember that Bryan Long, from Lean Startup Machine (LSM) Singapore, once told me that when I Get Out Of the Building (GOOB), where I go to look for cookie monsters is important. This implies that who I approach is important. I have to be asking the correct people, a.k.a. my target customers, for the results to be meaningful. This is because I'm interested to find out if my target customers, not the whole world or my Facebook friends, care about the problem I identified. So I should be reaching out to people who are concerned about the problem of fragmented product information and reviews online (ie product information and reviews are available online but they are all over the place so it is hard to look through them). Any suggestions where I can possibly find these people?

3) Curious cats

When I looked at the emails of the people who signed up, I saw the following people sign up: my mom, my brother, my uncle and fellow entrepreneurial friends. So I approached my brother and a friend who signed up and asked them what made them sign up. Sadly, it was because they are interested in what I am doing in general and not in my idea specifically. This meant that they will sign up no matter what my idea is. Hence, I conclude that there are many people who sign up at landing pages just to see how a product is going to look like (or what the founder is up to) without being concerned about the idea or problem. Personally, I am one who will sign up at landing pages to see how the actual product will look like even though I know I'm not their target customer. Therefore, the numbers should be taken with some discounts.

4) Numbers do not tell me everything

While statistics can be useful, the numbers do not tell the full story. For instance, if I did not approach some of the people who signed up, I would not have found that they are not interested in the idea/product at all, but are interested to see what I am up to. Assuming that the sign up rate was high because there were lots of curious cats and I simply looked at the numbers and did not approach the people who signed up, I would have been misled into thinking that I have identified the right problem and customer segment, when it is not the case!

In summary:

• Emails and contact details collected through landing pages should be used for follow ups and customer development
• Approach cookie monsters and not just friends
• Not all who indicate their interest care about the problem identified
• More learning can be done by talking to people than looking at numbers