How to convey credibility on a landing page as an indie hacker?
I've been going through Julian Shapiro's excellent landing page guide and come across the following:
The more expensive you are and the lesser known you are, the more work you have to do to convey credibility that justifies your price. And the quickest shortcut to portraying credibility is providing transparency into who's behind your company.
For a normal company this is fine; slap on a nice team photo in an office and it adds transparency and credibility, but what do you do as a solo indie hacker? If I use a photo and bio, potential customers might be skeptical of buying from a company that presents as one 20-something year old.
Is it better to just leave the team section out? Is there a good alternative to convey credibility?
The keyword here is "transparency" - if you're a solo shop, be upfront about that. All these "appear like a fortune 500 company" tips will (more likely than not) just look like a thinly veiled attempt to lie about your size, which it would be.
A transparent solo-shop has more credibility than you think.
Agreed transparency is key. When I work with technical vendors for my full-time job, nothing is more irksome than an account rep saying their "team" is working on it, only for me to find out it's one person. Be clear up front.
Depending on the service/product, you could also play your weakness into a strength and highlight personalization, the fact that a single human designed this, you're not some sort of corporate war monger, etc.
Thanks, Kieran.
I certainly have no intention of lying about my size BTW.
Do you think that credibility of being a solo shop applies to all kinds of customers? I know most people here on IH wouldn't think twice about buying from someone presenting as an individual if they claimed to solve their problems but my target customers will not necessary be used to that. Maybe I am over thinking it.
To be clear, I have no reason to believe you would be dishonest.
My only warning was about appearing dishonest by using some of the tactics listed in the (currently) top-voted answer.
The first sign of even the slightest misrepresentation I get from any person or company virtually eliminates any chance I will ever invest either my time or my money with them. I suspect I'm not alone in that.
I think you're right on the money when you say you might be overthinking it, and you're certainly not alone. I think every single one of us has overthought it, and most of us still do... but hopefully a little less each time around :-)
Size doesn't matter (at least that's what my wife tells me).
I'd rather work with a small company that knows what they're (or he's) doing than a big company that's just spending VC money.
Rather focus on the benefits of a small company (excellent support, no overhead costs, the ability to change directions if needed).
People don't really care as long as the product and vision stands out.
I don't know what your product is and your price point but my approach is to embrace the positive:
And with 'You', you don't need to highlight that it is 'only' you so I would skip the team page and list credentials.
Obviously this needs to shown in the product and the support that you give. Be careful with faking or pretending, you need to be able to put your money where your mouth is.
Here’s another take on this. More than once I’ve bought from companies that didn’t have any social proof. I just needed to know their product solves that one really painful problem I’m having at a price that is reasonable (ie. not cheap but not overly expensive).
The explanation of their service was complete, as well as a pricing that was easy to understand.
Here’s one service: http://zip-tax.com
PS - not affiliated with them but just thought it might be useful to provide an example.
Thanks, Simon. My service is intended to be a painkiller and I am certainly prioritising getting my messaging spot on.
In purchasing something like the sales tax API, would the lack of social proof/company information concern you or do you only look at whether it solves your problem?
I'm wondering how widespread this kind of behaviour is and whether we as Indie Hackers are much less likely to hesitate in purchasing online. I think my target customers might be more hesitant but I'm not really sure.
To be absolutely honest, I did have a split second of hesitation. But then there wasn’t a product that compared to theirs — especially given the price point I wanted. As well, they provided nothing more than what I needed, which meant I wasn’t paying for a feature I didn’t need.
In the end, I figured it was a small price to try things out.
I think another way to look at this is that if you’re selling a sub-$100 per month business, the ideal customer shouldn’t really have to look too hard at this. If he’s hesitating a lot, chances are the customer’s budget is too small for him to be a good customer with a decent LTV. Again, my personal experience is that the best customers (ie. least support, most satisfied) are the ones who jump right in (with a credit card in hand) because they need to solve a problem. They don’t really care that the cool kids X, Y, and Z are also using your software.
Depends who you're selling to and what you're selling. If you're going for a big government contract, the photo of a smiling teen probably won't help. On the other hand, they'll find out eventually (during the sales meeting, for example).
Equally, it could be an advantage in some scenarios (and not matter either way in others).
As a solo founder you have more important things to worry about at this stage :)
Yes. Social proof. Logos of companies you've worked with/are customers. Case studies with customers showing how great your product is. Smiling testimonials from happy customers. Press clippings (not a big fan of these personally).
Your credibility goal should be "oh wow, this person in the same situation as me finds this product incredibly useful". I find Julian is setting the bar a little low with "this person is probably a real person".
(Although most of his advice is awesome and I don't have the context here)
Good luck!
Thanks, helpful as always. Social proof would be great but I'm yet to launch the product and don't want to fake it. While this is a B2B product (I think it counts as one) I will be selling mainly to self-employed individuals so no company logos. These people do congregate and talk to each other about their problems so maybe I should just concentrate on that aspect.
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Wow, great pointers here. I have a business address (following your advice from a previous question I asked - thanks!) so that's a start I guess. I'll look into getting a landline number for sure, hopefully I can do that easily with Twilio.
Do you think it's worth incorporating ASAP (I'm in the UK too BTW) given that there is a tradeoff between doing this and getting the product out and validated? I always thought incorporation was worth doing only after a product was starting to take off but I'm not sure. (I know I am contradicting myself a bit here since I asked and you answered a question about establishing credibility rather than validation but just want to know your take on this).
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Thanks again, I'll have a read through.
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