Bootstrapping In a Nutshell is a series of articles where you'll learn how to bootstrap a new online business from scratch through a real-world project.
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To really validate your idea you need people to take action. People might tell you they'll purchase or subscribe to your product, but there's a big difference between what they say and what they do — there's nothing forcing them to stick to their commitment when your product is actually released. So to make them take action, you need a landing page.
The purpose of a landing page
A landing page is useful in several ways:
- It propels your idea into the real world. This forces you to work on your copywriting to be sure you do a good job explaining the purpose of your product.
- It lets you gather immediate feedback about your idea and connect to people that may be interested in it. Collecting emails to have one-on-one conversations is imperative for getting insights for success.
- It lets you really validate your idea in a real-world environment before actually coding your product. By putting a call-to-action on the page you force people to make a decision: is this product important enough for me to enter my email address or not?
Using a landing page is only the first step to validate an idea but it's a critical one. If you don't collect any email or pre-order, well you know that your idea sucks. The good thing is that you saved time by not building this product. You can move on.
If you collect some emails but not that much, you can still connect to these people by starting a conversation about their needs and pains. These conversations will lead to creating a product that's useful for them and probably other people. It will give you insights to create a product people want.
And if you collect lots of emails or pre-orders and people are crazy about your product, well you know that you have a market and can start building your product with more confidence.
How to create a landing page
There are tons of services out there to create a landing page. But a very well-designed one is carrd.co. The pro plan price is $19 / year ($14 / year with coupon code NUTSHELL25), which is extremely cheap. Don't hesitate to purchase it.
A landing page must be simple. There is a famous designer quote that says "Less is More" and you should definitely live by it. Simplicity sells. People are busy and don't have time to read tons of text to understand your product.
So you should stick with the bare minimum: a good picture, a title, a tagline, and a call-to-action button for the email form. It's not a coincidence that the template designs available on Carrd are so simple:
Before rushing to select your template, you must first carefully craft the title and tagline you'll use.
As I'm not a copywriting superhero (yet) I did my research. I read this article, which says in a nutshell:
- Step 1: dump out your entire business in a few sentences
- Step 2: trim it down
- Step 3: trim it down some more
As I said: less is more. But be careful here. Successfully finding a good title and tagline is not easy. That's why there are entire courses about copywriting — it's a full-time job. So try to do your best, iterate, and test your copywriting by talking to customers.
Your value proposition
The value proposition of your business is the reason why your customers should use your product. Most of the time, it's because using your product will make them save time or money, or both. Ask yourself this question: why would someone want to use my product?
For my blockbuster movies newsletter idea, it's to save time. It's more convenient to receive a list of all the movies I'm interested in in my inbox. First, the service filters out all the non-blockbuster movies, and second, it comes to me: I don't have to manually check the theater website or some cinema news website.
This won't fix any major pain points for my customers so I'm not expecting any kind of huge success with this idea. Nevertheless, if I can collect the email addresses of a few movie fans I'll be able to open up some conversations and get great insights to move on the next idea or to reshape this one.
So to know what your value proposition is, just answer this question: why would someone use your product?
Exercise: write a title and a tagline
I did my homework and started at step 1 for my idea. I wrote a paragraph that explains what my product is:
My product will let you receive an email for free once a week with all the newly released blockbusters available in theaters so you never miss one. You can watch trailers, pre-order DVD and Blu-rays to save money right from your inbox.
Let's continue this process with step 2: trim it down.
Receive an email every week for free with the latest blockbusters so you never miss them.
I totally removed the watch trailer and pre-order part because my value proposition for now (I can change it later) is to never miss a blockbuster. Let's jump to step 3: trim it down some more.
Never miss a blockbuster. Get the latest blockbusters releases in your inbox. Every week. For Free.
Put your value proposition — the benefit to the user — before everything else in your title. And then use your tagline to explain what your product is all about. Use short sentences. You should be able to tweet it!
Now that we have the content for our website, let's build it!
10 steps process to create a landing page with carrd.co
Let's build a landing page with a custom domain name, because, you know, we are serious!
Step 1 — Domain name
Purchase your domain name. I asked for some help on this part in my second article and @shanecleveland suggested "upcominghits". I like it a lot (thanks Shane!), but the term hits can be used for songs too, and I do movies. So I thought upcomingmovies would be good. But a little bit too long.
Maybe bigmovies? I searched for available domains, and of course the .com was already taken. So I took a look at it out of curiosity. Damn. A porn website! They're everywhere, dammit! I don't want to be associated with that in any way.
So I switched back to upcomingmovies. The .com redirects to a facebook page (wtf?) but the .io is available. I take a look at Google search suggestions:
Jesus! I just typed 3 letters and boom! Incoming movies 1st. Awesome. I checked the Google Keyword Planner tool to look at the traffic:
Holy crap! Good numbers too here — let's go for upcomingmovies.io!
A general note here: don't overthink your name too much. The numbers above should not have any impact on my rank in Google or the traffic on my website because of the EMD update. But my future content marketing strategy should definitely take that into account.
By the way, Google should have been named Googol, did you know that? That didn't stop them to succeed. Your product is more important than your name or website, you can still change them later.
Step 2 — Email address
Create an email address with your new domain. Usually you can use hello@yourdomain.tld, for me it's hello@upcomingmovies.io: shot me an email now to tell me you read this article 👍.
Step 3 — DNS configuration
Follow the instructions in this guide, basically:
- Make your A record points to 108.168.244.214
- Add a CNAME www record points to "yourdomain.tld." (don't forget to add the trailing '.' at the end, some registrars adds it by default, others don't).
After 24 hours you should be able to connect to your website through SSL. Using SSL is better for SEO. When you type yourdomain.tld in the address bar it should use SSL by default automatically and redirect you to https://yourdomain.tld.
Step 4 — Collect email addresses
Create a MailChimp account with your brand new email address. MailChimp is a service that will allow you to collect email addresses and send your newsletter easily. There are tons of other services, but I know this one and it is compatible natively with carrd.co so I pick it up. Plus it's free until 2000 subscribers!
Sign up for MailChimp. Use your new email address, for me hello@upcomingmovies.io. Follow the instructions. Confirm your account etc. When everything is set up. Log in and create a new list. Then click on Settings > List names and defaults:
Fill the fields at the bottom and write somewhere your List ID, it's here:
MailChimp is packed with a ton of options for lists. For example you should select Send a final welcome email and design this email carefully to welcome your new subscribers. You should also select Send unsubscribe confirmations to subscribers.
In general, browse the knowledge database of MailChimp, there are tons of options you should learn about to make your newsletter awesome and stay in touch with your clients.
Step 5 — Get your MailChimp API key to collect emails
Now, create an API key, label it carrd.co for example. You'll need it later to configure your website email form.
Step 6 — Get an awesome template
Go to carrd.co and select a template with the "pro" label at the top right corner. Yes we take the pro label because we're going to purchase this service for $14 / year thanks to the NUTSHELL25 coupon code, it's a steal. Trust me. Select the template you want, hover over it and click on Select.
Step 7 — Design your landing page
Accept the trial period, click on Select + Start the trial. Read the instructions about the interface.
Set a great picture for your background, change the title to your value proposition. Set the tagline. Customize everything to your needs but respect the KISS principle: Keep It Stupid and Simple. Your website should be able to load fast and be easy to understand. Put only one call-to-action button.
Here is my project:
Optional: I created a twitter account @_moviesupcoming for this landing page so people can reach me out this way. You can create accounts for other social media platforms.
Last but not least: go to your carrd dashboard > Account > click on Select a pro plan and at the bottom enter your coupon code NUTSHELL25, hit apply and purchase the standard or pro plan with 25% OFF! You're welcome!
Step 8 — Connect your email form to MailChimp
Let's do the technical part now. Edit your website, select your email form, then in the left panel, select MailChimp Signup and then enter your API keys and List Id. Plus check the double opt-in checkbox like on this screenshot:
Then click Done! Your email form is now hooked with your MailChimp account! Well done!
Step 9 — Publish your landing page
Now configure the custom domain, click on the publish button at the top right corner:
And add your title and description, select Use my own domain and put your naked domain name below like this:
Click on Publish Changes and then on View Site to see your site up and running!
Step 10 — Test your landing page
Test the email form:
- On your website, enter your personal email and tap on your call-to-action button (Subscribe).
- Go to your inbox and confirm your subscription via the link sent by MailChimp.
- Go to your MailChimp account and check if your email has been added to your list.
Important notes (or how I lost several hours trying to figure this out)
- If you don't confirm your account via the email MailChimp sends you when you subscribe, you won't see your email in your MailChimp list AND you won't be able to subscribe again on your website (error: Sorry, that email has already been subscribed).
- To make your tests easier, never unsubscribe yourself from the list, but use MailChimp to delete your email from the list when your status is subscribed.
- If you accidentally unsubscribe from your list, you won't be able to delete your email from the MailChimp List interface. You must resubscribe first from the email that confirmed you were correctly unsubscribed! Then you can delete your email through the MailChimp List interface because your status will be back to subscribed.
After that you can adjust the design of your website whenever your want and improve it. Mess around with the carrd interface to learn it. You can do lots of things but remember to keep everything simple at the end. Go straight to the point!
Also I strongly encourage you to design your signup emails and double opt-in emails carefully to maximize the conversion rates. Make them personal and warm. Care about your new subscribers, provide them values immediately.
In the next article you will learn how to set up Google Analytics so you can record your conversion rate between new visitors to new subscribers over time.
ABOUT ME: I'm a 32 yo software engineer and entrepreneur. I use my free time to start new online businesses. Actually I'm learning front-end development while building an audience on twitter, follow me ;-).
NEXT ARTICLE: Ep #4: How to Set Up Google Analytics For Your Landing Page
FULL ARTICLES LIST
Ep #0: How to Select Your Next Business Idea
Ep #1: How to Select Your Domain Name for SEO
Ep #2: How to Validate Your Idea by Talking to Customers
Ep #3: How to Create Your Landing Page
Ep #4: How to Set Up Google Analytics For Your Landing Page