The document discusses how to get first customers online without coding through landing page testing. It describes identifying hypotheses about a business, building simple landing pages, marketing the pages through various low-cost channels, analyzing results, and provides a case study of how the authors used landing page testing to evaluate the potential viability of their own startup idea called The Wed Connect in just one week with minimal investment.

1. Get Sharp:
Getting your first customers
online without coding
Elizabeth Yin
co-founder LaunchBit
May 11, 2011

2. Agenda
 Introduction
 Landing Page Testing
 Identifying Hypotheses
 Building Landing Pages
 Marketing Landing Pages
 Analyzing Landing Pages
 Case Study: The Wed Connect
 Q&A

3. In high school, we decided to
become internet entrepreneurs

4. Shiny Orb is a social shopping site
for wedding apparel

5. DressMob is a social shopping site
for all dresses

6. Building a website has become
very accessible
1990s 2010
Difficulty HARD Easier
Speed Months/Years Days/Weeks/Months
Hire, Try to learn, outsource,
Options Hire, Try to learn
3rd party tools
Books, friends, online,
Resources Books, friends
forums, Craigslist
Sites are being built more quickly and easily

7. The biggest obstacle for you is no
longer technical
Do you have a
product that
people want??

8. Landing Page
Testing

9. Just what exactly is a landing
page test?
A measurement of
customer demand
through a single webpage
with a single call-to-action

10. Dropbox got 200,000 signups with
just a video

11. Why should you do landing
page tests?
 Understand your customer acquisition
 Little investment required
 No coding needed
 No product needed
 Little time
 Little $$

12. Identifying
Hypotheses

13. Write down the top assumptions
about your business
 Write down your assumptions
 E.g. People will sign up for an online social
exercise-motivation service.
 E.g. People will pay a monthly subscription
 E.g. Maybe $9.99 / mo?

14. Building
Landing Pages

15. Use headlines to concisely
describe your product

16. Describe the top benefits with
short bullet points

17. Pay attention to layout and keep
important things “above the fold”

18. Show what your product looks like
with “screenshots”

19. Show a product demo through
videos or presentations
http://www.goanimate.com http://www.prezi.com

20. Adding testimonials can lend
credibility to your product

21. Have a clear call-to-action so
people know what to do

22. Use a signup form to get
information on your power users

23. There are many WYSIWYG
platforms for building webpages
http://www.weebly.com
http://www.yola.com
http://sites.google.com
http://www.unbounce.com

24. Success of your landing page
requires analytics data
# of # of
Visitors Signups
http://www.unbounce.com
http://analytics.google.com

25. A landing page should be very
simple and concise
 Benefit #1
 Benefit #2 Call to Action
 Benefit #3

26. Your landing page should send the
right message in 5 seconds
http://www.usabilityhub.com

27. Marketing
Landing Pages

28. Diversify marketing by trying many
different channels
 Small amounts of marketing across
multiple channels
 Q & A platforms
 Online forums
 Ads

29. Q&A forums and other industry
specific sites are like “annuities”

30. People in online groups can offer
quality verbal feedback

31. Ads are a great way to get traffic
to your page quickly
http://adwords.google.com
http://adcenter.microsoft.com
http://www.facebook.com/advertising
http://www.technorati.com

32. Analyzing
Landing Pages

33. Analyze your conversion funnel for
possible business viability
Forums Email Ads Facebook
Page Visitors
Watched Demo Video
Signed Up

34. Compare landing page results with
your hypotheses

35. Case Study:
The Wed Connect

36. The Wed Connect is our own
experience at quick idea testing

37. In 5 days, we had numbers to
evaluate The Wed Connect
Bounce Rates
87% of 68 people
56% of 16 people
21 Signups
 Quick math:
 Charge wedding vendors $2 / lead * 21 leads = $42
 Costs: $0.44 * 68 people = $29.92
 Potential profit: $0.58 / person

38. Qualitative feedback taught us
about the customer

39. We determined the viability of The
Wed Connect in just 1 week
0 1 2 7 8
1 day Customer Research
1 day Analysis
1 day Build MVP
5 days Testing and Marketing
Great initial numbers but a frustrating business

40. LaunchBit helps new, aspiring
entrepreneurs launch their ideas
http://classroom.launchbit.com
http://guide.launchbit.com

41. Got any questions about doing
landing page tests?
 More questions? hello@launchbit.com
 Mailing list: signup@launchbit.com
 Blog: blog.launchbit.com
 Twitter: @launchbit
 www.launchbit.com