A problem/solution tester landing page builder
Ok, I know there are A MILLION "landing page" builders. But they are generic (or are they? if not let me know!).
I'd love to create a wep app which, through answering a few questions about you potential online business, creates a SaaS landing page optimized to solve your "problem/solution" hypothesis.
So you don't build the side like Wordpress, instead you feed it data about the value prop and choose from some templates and it creates a landing page.
It would have email collection built in, and analytics to let you get a sense of interest and conversion rates.
The market would be non techs that want to test the waters but don't have WP/Squarespace knowledge (or don;t want to deal with that) etc.
Thoughts? I think it would be a cool product, but not convinced it solves a core problem. I know it would help ME (and I'm an engineer) but are others as lazy as me?
That make the process of designing a landing page super quick and easy, but you should measure the satisfaction rate unless you're making generic landing pages. Landen.co is also following the same process as yours.
But you can make a few full website templates for each nitche and let the user pick one. For example, I'm targeting Mobile App landing pages with Pageam.com and planned to build separate templates for health, travel, games, messaging, etc. apps. So the user would pick a closest template to his/her app and would replace the text and images accordingly.
@hosshams wow Landen.co really is it. What are your thoughts on launching if an ideal competitor exists?
To be honest, I don't care. There're tons of landing page builders, but I've started Pageam.com. There're tons of form builders, but I've started Formito.com.
You might start with a similar product or idea, but eventually you'll develop something different or you'll target a different market. A unique idea might help you to raise money or make a billion dollar company sooner, but as an indie maker you might be better build a product for a well know problem but target a small and reachable niche. To me, website builder is a very decent area. There's not any single company who has most of the market share, tons of niches to target, people have different taste in design, building a decent landing page still takes time, etc.
@hosshams you've just blown my mind! "I don't care". How do I get to THAT mindset?! ;-) That's awesome, thanks for sharing. And what you say makes perfect sense. So, I've looked into your landing page etc, but to you, what "niche" then are you serving that you feel is not served? Just interested to hear you articulate and it'll help me have more clarity on how to identify/target/think about niches. Thanks again!
There're several posts in IH about how to find the niche you'd like to serve. For me, it started several years ago when I wanted to build landing page for a startup that I haven't had yet. So I thought ok, I'll build a generic landing page template for now and when I have the right idea I can quickly design it's landing page. Long story short, I started TheTheme.io and developed TheSaaS and sold 6000+ licenses. But I always wanted a business with recurrent revenue! So I thought ok, I already was in landing page builder business, I have a pretty good template, I need to update my codebase, and build a page builder on top of my blocks. I targeted mobile app owners/developers since they usually only need a single landing page instead of a full website like SaaS website builder. So I'm starting with this niche to find some early adaptor while I'm working on a full website builder version. As you can see, I picked a niche that is aligned with my past experience, it's aligned with the early version of my product, and a landing/website builder is something I always had in my mind in past years.
Hey @hosshams, just wanted to say, thanks so much for sharing this. Really helps A LOT. And makes a lot of sense... I love the journey you went through.
Really make me think... as I look down my notebook of ideas, the ones that have the format "{{thing}} FOR {{specific person}}" have way more power than the "{{thing}} that does amazing {{thing}}" ideas... it's pretty interesting when you start to look at it like that....
Honestly, when I launched Landen it was also pretty close to existing competitors. Only with time have I developed more of my own spin on the problem. Chances are that you would also start with a similar approach and then deviate as you find your own way of doing things. Even though the space is very crowded, there are plenty of niches that could be served much better by a specialized offer. The SaaS website niche is probably the most crowded already but there are tons of others where the same technologies could be very useful.
The real issues in the website builder space come with the technological complexity IMO. The customer expectations are very high and it takes a lot of moving parts to get even to a basic product - so in a sense the barrier of entry is pretty high.
hey @Felixg, great work on Landen by the way, very impressive. I'm curious... how did you negotiate in your mind entering the market at the beginning when you knew you were so closer to competitor offering. Like, what gave you the motivation to launch despite similar existing competitors. And... whatever differentiator you thought you had at the beginning, is that the same now or has it changed?
One of my key motivations back then and still one today was that I could easily find tons of annoying things in competitor offers. I did not spend a lot of time researching them but would just try to see how far I could get before getting frustrated and that was pretty early most of the time. If I have to sign up and go through a lengthy onboarding before even seeing a potential site then I'd just leave. That's one of the reasons why you can generate a site on Landen without signing up. The main differentiator both in my own mind and from what customers tell me is the ease-of-use. It might not be for everyone but Landen's approach works for plenty of people who got frustrated with the other offers. With time though, the differentiator changes, or more is added to it. There are lots of variables that define website builders: flexibility vs ease-of-use, feature-rich vs focussed on 1 thing, static vs dynamic content, ... I have a certain idea where the ideal overlap is and it's different from the competitors. I don't think it's possible to develop that sense until you've worked on a project for a while though so it's hard to know beforehand.
@Felixg wow, that's perfectly articulated, and make a ton of sense. I love this: "would just try to see how far I could get before getting frustrated",
I mean, that is a really AMAZING way to approach a problem. I also like how you recognize that there isn;t an "ideal" product, simply different products which choose to make different compromises. I think that's key. There's never a "right" amount of compromise. Simple different mixtures or overlaps as you say will appeal to different people. That's really well put.
thanks so much!
I'm on the cusp of looking at this kind of app but need to get something else out the door first.
My thoughts have been around developing a super-easy super-quick solution based on capturing data and generating pages/sections so it sounds similar to your thinking.
Although there may be a million builders (and without dismissing the challenge involved in entering the market) I feel some of the popular "no-code" builders are actually built for coders. For example how many non-techies would get lost using WebFlow? My aim would be to deliver a solution simple enough for a 10 year old kid to use but make it so slick that you couldn't tell.
I can send you an email if you want to explore further ...
@rab, MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY. Yeah ping me, [email protected], would love to hear more. Did you actually get started?
Tbh I think Carrd is the best solution for this that's out there. You can easily connect it's form element with Zapier to facilitate signups and use the data any way you want.
Carrd will have a "template market" this year (https://twitter.com/ajlkn/status/1214630581331513346) and I've personally built several type of landing/download pages with it:
thanks @bramk, but to be honest, if anything, your comment validates the idea more... which by the way is great, so appreciate it. But the main thing is, I want to target those like me with a very low pain threshold. So, those that don't want to put the bits together, but intead just having something that "just works", know what I mean? But I totally appreciate a lot of people are like "it isn't so hard". Just different thresholds I think.
yeah I get you! good luck :)
We used a similar app before, https://www.launchaco.com. I definitely found it useful for idea validation and value prop testing. I would use apps like that again. I'd think many other bootstrappers want something like that when they are starting out. I'm a developer and we still paid to use it to save time, so it's not just for non-tech users.
@he9lin nice, that's great to hear, thanks. And, is there any reason why you wouldn't use launchaco again? Or anything you wish it did that it didn't?
@he9lin wow so https://www.launchaco.com is pretty much ALMOST perfect from a site creation point of view. I mean, if I was going to build something I don't know why it would be any different....
However, it doesn't seems to provide the entire lifecycle I had in mind. Like, from my point of view it would have it;s own internal analytics to just surface the data you need to validate, like conversion rate on cta, heatmap maybe, etc etc. Did it do anything like that? I published a test site but didn't see anything?
You'd probably need a person to actually build the site if you're only feeding it some data and not giving the user a drag & drop editor or something... maybe the initial setup could be done by a person for a fee and then the owner could take over and make any changes.
I'm thinking everything gets handled for you, from domain purchase to email collection setup and analytics.
It's not something easy to pull off though.. BUT you could just validate it by creating a form and then building the site with some already built service.
@tmartty excellent advice! But I think actually at least two solutions already exist from reading this thread... so... any point in pursuing? I think the idea is validated since two SaaSes already exist... ?
Yeah sure. The problem will be marketing and getting it to the right audience.
During black friday, the super simple website www.carrd.co had a promotion to get their premium package for $9 (for like 10 simple landing page websites). It's not bad, but it has a few clunky things that make it annoying to use. I bought it because I don't want to pay a lot for a website like Squarespace, Weebly, or Wix.. but I want to have something clean, pretty... and able to grab user emails. Or be able to give me analytics.
Something like that would be sweet.
Good one, feel the same. Would love to help with go to market
@Tiltforindie hmm cool! I might have to keep you to that! :-) What would that involve do you think?
I am non-techie, mostly experienced in marketing and sales, want to partner with someone with technical background and with great idea like yours)) at the same time having my own proven ideas
Hey @Tiltforindie you know what, that idea sounds great. This kind of partnership is actually something I've been thinking about a lot recently. Would love to chat more, maybe we can flesh this out more, see if there's a fit etc. Shall we move to email?
Sure- let us talk! Shoot me an email, I see only your twitter.
Yes, plenty of people are lazy - plus, if there's an easier way, why not take it?
That being said, are non-tech people as likely to use landing-pages to validate? They may need some active marketing to get onboard.
What would be really value-add for non-tech crowd would be to take care of the hosting/domain piece behind the curtain, for multiple landing pages. That's one friction that I experience.
hey @ovi thanks! yeah for sure this would be a SaaS fully hosted etc etc. Good point about the domain stuff... you mean like you can buy the domain directly in the app, a bit like SquareSpace?
Buying it directly in the app would be a nice-to-have but not a deal breaker. Being able to easily configure the domain in the app would be key, though.
It would also be great to support free subdomains for early validation - so instead of www.mybestidea.io it could instead be mybestidea.yourappdomain.com
Sure hope there is a market :)
I just launched something that does this, I have a lot of ideas and wanted a platform which allows me to go from idea -> validation -> scale.
Built in landing page split testing, Pirate Metrics analytics...
@apsion, great! How's it going so far?Sounds like your thinking is exactly the same as mine. What do you think of https://www.launchaco.com/, does it step on your toes? Is it live?
@thatandyrose Really like launchaco, great flow and UI. Cool way to tie external tools into the flow.
My store went live on the 5th and I am now working on content and finding 10 early adopters. Not a lot of overlap :)
You can find out more here https://launchmuse.com/products/3
@apsion oh wow, so you're solution is far beyond just a landing page right.. it provides an actual framework for building apps too? is that right?
@thatandyrose Yes, I built it so I could build other solutions faster and significantly reduce data sharing with 3rd party providers.
I am reconsidering selling the codebase and just use it internally.
Sounds like many other builders out there that let you just type in some text into templates. A few also come with analytics.
From the customers that are paying for https://versoly.com/ it seems they out grow them products very quickly and either move onto wordpress or custom built like gatsby.
So I imagine the churn is crazy high. Which is also good because people are always free to switch to other platforms.
Hmm nice call out on versoly... That's super useful. I do want to make it even more dummy proof (for lack of a better term) but maybe I'm entering to a niche territory... This is gold though, thanks
Duh, just noticed now versoly is yours. I checked out, really nice man. I like it a lot. How's it going as a business? Did your initial hypothesis around it turn out right? Biggest surprises?
I like your build it offering. Kinda like a value add consultation offering?
There are some really simple builders.
Going very well, growth is compounding.
Biggest surprise was just how important marketing is. A worse product can sell a lot more than a better product with just positioning and messaging.
I haven't got to the stage yet to test my initial hypothesis. That will be in the next month or so after I get a few more features out. The plan is to target SaaS companies who are post revenue, the churn should be 0 and has a ton of other benefits.
@volkandkaya thanks man. I think the bit about product vs marketing is gold... and hard to hear when you're a "product person" such as mysefl.. where I'm so focused on making THE BEST product.
So from this thread two really strong apps have surfaced that do exactly what I want almost... how do you feel about competing with them, how do you deal with that? the two are https://www.launchaco.com/ and https://www.landen.co/. How do you position against them?
thanks again!
Both of them are very popular. There is also Carrd.
I'm not sure you could compete against them and it be worth your while. You would need to look at the opportunity costs.
Versoly is so different from both of them. I'm personally not a fan of being locked into a platform so from day 1 the vision of Versoly was to allow customers to export their code and be able to edit it instantly that is why we use Bootstrap. Millions of developers already know it.
Versoly is the only website builder I have seen that can do import/export and editing HTML code in live time. Being able to make simple changes in the code can save so much time and frustration.
It also causes a lot of headaches as it is very difficult to do, importing random HTML can cause a lot of bugs and it took months of fixing them to get to a working product.
Versoly's positioning is a little weak at the moment, luckily we have a "no sign up required" process so visitors get to demo the product and normally fall in love with it.
If you want to get into this market you need a clear differentiator that makes you 10x.
I believe we have that with the code editor inside the web app, customers love it.
@volkandkaya hey dude, thanks for the thoughts. Sorry for lateness in replying, just life getting in the way :-)
Those are all really interesting thoughts... your right the differentiator has to be substantial.
I've got another idea which is slightly more original (and unrelated to page builder) but having trouble positioning it myself.
Without the positioning, how do you find that people click on the CTA anyway? And what are you finding is the best way to find people (just in general, not specifically to your market). The other idea I have is analytics related.
Thanks again man, and all the best.