Ask IH: Thoughts on new business idea pivot
Hey IH 👋
I am back after posting my first post a little over a month ago. I initially shared my side project ThemeLatte (https://www.themelatte.com) and the excitement of finally launching something. The original idea was to build themes and have them available for download. I want to expand the concept and figured I would see what you guys thought.
I thought 🤔 what if I did more than offer the website themes for people to download. What if I provided a whole package by deploying and managing their site. I think my target audience would be business owners that need a website but want to focus there time on other things like marketing, sales, services, etc. It would be a flat monthly fee, which I have not decided on the price. I suppose this would fall in the "productized service" category. The landing page will show some of the services that I would offer.
I designed a landing page for it here (https://www.themelatte.com/home-v2). I would love feedback on any thoughts you guys might have. ☺️
Don't think ("I think" is dangerous). Let your market do the thinking.
Reach out to target clients, validate by getting a handful of them to pay for it. Do it manually at first if you have to, then automate and scale.
Don't build more before you do, unless you're in it for the building.
Boom!
Good point, I think the landing page now is sufficient enough to get the idea across and start reaching out to potential customers.
I think this is a good idea for your target market. My main concern is that the themes you have now look a bit jacked up on mobile (chrome on Android). How much mobile testing have you done?
I'd make sure you have a mobile first design nailed for all your templates before you make a marketing push.
Probably not as much as I should have. I built them in hast, trying to get something out the door. To grow the theme collection, I thought I would reach out to other theme creators to see if they would like there themes offered in ThemeLatte.
In general you can expect around 80% traffic to come from mobile. Depending on the site of course. But thats a good measurement
It sounds like a good idea to me. There are many SMBs that don't have skills to use and customize a theme in addition to dealing with hosting. I'd look to some of the growth strategies WP Engine used as a guide for how to hit this market. Good luck!
This comment was deleted 8 years ago