First IH Post - Landing page aimed at students
Hello! I've launched a website designed for high school and college students to organize their research and ultimately write better papers. I'm a full-stack developer, but marketing has always been a bit of a rougher area for me.
I originally made a version of this site for myself in college to help organize my own research projects. I had some friends use it but didn't have a good "go-to-market" to get anyone else on board. I've since completely rewritten it now that I'm almost a decade out of college and have a lot more technical experience under my belt.
Specific feedback I'm looking for is:
- What do you think this site does?
- Who do you think it is for?
- As a student, what would be important for you to know?
- As a parent of a HS/College student, what else do you need to know to purchase it on behalf of your student?
- What else do you need to see before you sign up for a free plan?
I have a feeling that my primary market will be parents/grandparents purchasing on behalf of their student - I don't see many college kids handing over money for something like this, but I'm looking at creating some pre-written messages students could send to parents along the lines of "Hey, I found this cool site and I think it could be helpful. Would you be willing to purchase an account for me to use to get better grades?"
I've got lots of additional ideas (integrations with tools like Grammarly, potentially offering writing tutoring or editing services, etc.) but I'm specifically keeping it limited for now before I see if there actually is a market for this or if it's a "passion project" that I don't expect to turn much money from.
One additional feature that I have written and almost ready to launch is a Chrome extension so students can just highlight text on any website and it will automatically create a note that is attached to that website as the source. No need to copy/paste between tabs and it automatically tracks the URL.
Thanks for any feedback you can offer!
Congrats on your first IH post!
I'm on the same boat as you. Working on my first landing page and hoping to post my first IH post soon too!
Here's my feedback:
Yup students are broke, I never really paid for monthly services until after I graduated college, I used open-source and free solutions instead. This is an interesting angle, I've seen this approach in a few places. Like Apple App Store gifting an app. You could create a marketing page that has an onboarding flow for parents to gift to their kids, this could be promoted on social media sites like Facebook. We can all agree that all parents are on Facebook now
Great feedback! I'm working on a demo video that will hopefully be less overwhelming than the static screenshot. I tried to pick one that showed a general overview of what you can do in the app, but that particular view might be too much all at once.
And that's great feedback on emphasizing everything the app does to save your research - almost every entry in the database is versioned, so you can go back and see previous versions (i.e., you can look at every version of a Thesis you've ever written). The essay section autosaves as you type and it takes a "snapshot" of your entire essay every 5 minutes so at most you'd lose 5 minutes of progress. I should put some of that information on the landing page.
I also have a Chrome Extension almost ready to launch as well - you can highlight text on any webpage, click a button that pops up, and it will automatically create a source for that webpage and save the content you copied as a note. I've enjoyed working with the Chrome Extension stuff. Let me know when yours is launching or if you run into any issues you want a second set of eyes on!
Agreed on using open-source and free as long as possible - even now with "adult money" I'm still super cheap if I can get away with it, haha (: Yeah, I think a marketing page directly for parents would be well worth my time - I think they are my real "purchasers" even if they aren't the "users". So I'm sure I'll have to validate with them almost as much as with students.
Thanks again for the thoughtful comment!
Glad I could provide feedback.
I'll definitely reach out if I have any issues, also I welcome you as well to reach out to me if you have any issues and you want a second set of eyes on them.
Good luck!
Welcome Jacob!
Check the site on a wide monitor, I think that it would look nicer if you gather the content more to the center.
I would add a couple images/color to the background of the gray background sections, usually I can't tell if the is an image if the background is gray.
Good luck!
Thanks! I took away some images and I think I went too far in the other direction - I need to tastefully add just a bit back in to keep it visually appealing.
And I'll double check how it is on extra-wide monitors - thanks for the heads up!
Nice welcoming you on here Jacob! I like this idea. I am just a bit confused about the hero copy. Get an "A" on your next paper does not feel like it's supposed to be there. I don't believe that citing correctly means getting an A on your university or IB papers. Quality of writing does and there are plenty of free citation tools I remember using back in the days (not critique, just an observation). I believe the problem you are solving is structuring your citation research. Which is more about the process (big headache) for an end-user than the outcome of getting an A. I would suggest changing the hero copy to: Organise your academic research with ease. Or: Academic research organized. Exactly the way you need it. I would really zoom in on the problem you are solving for the end-user.
Oh and I would record a 2-3min intro video, as it could give the user a much better understanding of the flow of features, which were not clear to me when skimming the site.
PS: I think your primary market should be high schools. Especially ones doing IB or A-Levels. They could be the ones paying for the students. Parents will most likely just tell their kids to find a free option, or the kids will find a free version without ever asking the parents.
Awesome stuff again. Keep em coming!
Thanks for the feedback! I agree, I'm hoping to talk with some actual high school / college students over the next couple of weeks and hear what sort of verbiage they use to describe their process, what works or doesn't, etc.
I originally went with the goal of an "A" because, at least for me, that was my "goal" in high school - the research was just a necessary side effect. So far I've stayed away from using the word "academic" in describing it because that feels so "ivory tower"-esque, at least to my ears. That's something I should ask potential users about.
And I agree on targeting high schools. It feels like one of those where it will be easier to sell to schools once I have users and data showing how it's used, but it's hard to get the users when schools don't know about it - a vicious cycle (: But, I feel confident that I can break into it somehow. I'm thinking about going to some local colleges in the fall and trying to do some "set up a tent and get people to chat" type marketing. Not sure yet, but somehow, I'll get my first few users and start getting some more feedback.
Thanks for all of this - I'll keep thinking about what you brought up!
That is awesome! Really love how you are already going to quote customer-centric. It's hard work and takes longer, but it will definitely pay off in the long run. Do you have processes for creating interviews structures and assumption tables? I'd happy to connect on Twitter to chat more: https://twitter.com/itsjulianpaul In any case, good luck!
I don't currently have any set methodologies for interview structures and I've never even heard of assumption tables (though I did a quick Google search and the basic structure seems to make sense). I'm planning on listening more than talking for sure and having a few leading questions primarily around price and who would pay for it (i.e., how likely would students be to ask parents / grandparents to pay for it)
Great stuff. There is a rule of thumb for this. The 80/20 rule. The interviewee should of course do 80% of talking here, you 20%.
I’ve got plenty of tips for customer discovery interviews in my product HUSTLE OS on gethustleos.com. Here are my main 3 things I always look for:
Hope that wasn’t unsolicited advice, but helps!
Cheers.
Thanks for your post Jacob! Welcome to the IH community! Lot of good feedback that I won't double down on below. Just my 10 cents: when you say high school/college students my mind automatically goes to mobile-first and tiktok lol. I pulled up the site on my phone and it looks pretty good on mobile. I would just focus on cutting down and simplifying copy as much as you can as you learn more about your target audience. Even a 10 sec - 15 sec video at the very top might do a better job at catching this audience's attention than text. Keep it up!
So I should record myself doing a tiktok dance every week for marketing? Got it! =P
That's actually a really good point - I've been surprised how much traffic is on mobile even in the few shares that I've done to personal social networks. I do think a video optimized for mobile would be an awesome way of explaining the value quickly and efficiently. Thanks for the feedback!
Haha if you start doing tiktok dance marketing, I'll sub :P
Be careful what you wish for! (:
Hey Jacob, this seems like a really great product! I checked out the landing page - here are my two cents:
Your headline is catchy - it seems like you've clearly spent a lot of time on this. Respect that work ethic man.
assuming your headline stays the same, your subheadline should say - "what your product is and how it is fulfilling the promise you made in the headline"
Your CTA could be made more catchy - eg: Start learning for as little as 5 mins" (not sure if this is true but just to give you an idea of what I mean)
your value props should be supporting arguments and as you may have guessed, must be a function of the headline + subheadline.
Your next headline "Research is hard. Let's make it easy"is good but I would suggest replacing this with the line below. We could frame it as - "Tired of wasting hours marking citations? ' or something like this. Basically, it should enforce the headline + subheadline by posing it as a probem and showing how you can solve it.
for your value props. you can talk to your customers and find out the core benefits they cant live without and then follow the headline + subheadline syntax above to write your value props.
add more testimonials if possible.
add the pricing plan in there too.
Hope this helps. If you need more specific pointers, feel free to ping me at sb@marketcurve.org - happy to help any way I can.
Thanks for those detailed comments! I've already started making some updates and will push those live soon. I may reach back out to you after I've talked with some more potential customers and understand their pain points and can better articulate the value propositions. Thanks again!
absolutely man! happy to help in any way I can. Let me know how your conversations go with your prospects.
I think this is the perfect example of a 'weak' landing page but a potentially good product for student. I can feel the pain of having to keep post-it notes or another way to quickly go through notes,snippets and links to support my essay.
However - this page is definitely short on selling the tool to me.
You are right, this is your first post - you should definitely dig in more into what makes a good landing page - here's a good starting point https://www.louisnicholls.com/landing-page-checklist/!
here are your answers:
It allows you to save your research as you write your essay
Students/Academics
Why should my child use this over just regular taking notes inline of Google Docs?
How it's better than the traditional approach with hard data
That said, don't give up - I am just trying to give you the best advice (researching what makes a landing page more interesting to sellers) to enable you to make some changes quickly to your page and start selling more!
Awesome, thanks for that feedback. I’ll work through that link you posted and see how I can make it better. I appreciate your candid feedback!