Building a Sign Up Page Before Building a Product
I'm trying to gauge interest in my product idea. I've heard in the past about building a simple landing page to capture email sign ups just to gauge interest. Is this a viable strategy to start out? Does anyone have additional resources on Indie Hackers that have done this? Or examples of this approach in the wild? Thanks!
Yeah, I would consider this a really good approach. Many people do this, and are really good and fast at this. Some people produce several ideas/landing pages per month.
We are struggling at the moment with getting people to visit our landing page. :D
Some literature recommendations I consider very useful:
Ash Maurya: Running Lean
https://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Plan-Works/dp/1449305172/
Weinber, Mares: Traction
https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/B01705KMG4/
April Dunford: Obviously Awesome
https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005/
Best wishes
Creating a landing page with an email form is a good idea. If you're looking for alternatives to squarespace/wix/wordpress, I've heard good things about Landen - the founder is a member here at IH: https://www.landen.co/
One other thought - when I go to a startup landing page and they ask for my email, it's nice when some kind of value exchange happens immediately. Maybe it's a small pdf ebook. That gift entices me to give my email and also keeps me on the lookout for good content in the future.
This is a great tip! Thank you!