Ideas for growth with no paid users
As a sequel to https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/please-critique-my-landing-page-with-0-conversions--Kuyen1VG02Fe4bGeiLu, I have created a 2nd version of what I am trying to do at https://findrentfast.com/
Now, because the service is free, I am currently getting signups from both tenants and landlords numbering at about 4-12 a day. This is okay, except that the service is free.
Right now, I don't know exactly whether I should charge for my service. Last time I did (charged a total of $1 for each search using Stripe), immediately I got 0 sign ups.
What would be a good next step to move on from 4-12 signups a day? Should I start making the website look better so that I can get a higher chance of people signing up charging money? Should I just keep trying to grow my free sign up user base? Or should I do something else?
And oh, please leave any feedback about my site if you have them :)
To be honest, I'd suggest making some changes to the user interface before trying to charge for the service. There are some jarring elements (like the image background on the landlord search clashing with the text) and some other UI components which don't invite me to pay for the service.
Rather than subscription, perhaps the site would be more aligned with charging a referral fee for making a match?
Definitely going to look to improve the site as well. I would agree that the UI is holding back the pay rate. That's why Im going free for now
To be honest, it's hard for me to get past your design. That might seem like off-topic feedback, but if I stumbled across your site as a landlord or a tenant, I would immediately click the back button.
Design is a signal. It doesn't have to be amazing, but if it looks completely haphazard, then visitors will doubt the abilities of the company behind it. Can this company really "find the best deals for my dream home" if it can't make a website that's as least as good as a free online template? (Hope that's not too harsh, but that's really what I think when I see this.)
There are some very basic design principles being violated here. Here's a rule of thumb to go by: if you don't see other websites doing something, don't do it on your website. For example, the bright blue and red body fonts have got to go. Use black. The bright green and red blue text on the image background needs to change as well. Nobody does these things for a reason — they're unreadable. In fact, putting any text at all on top of an image requires an eye for a design that you probably don't have. So avoid that stuff. Stop trying to innovate and just keep it simple.
Better yet, hire a designer or find a template you can use. You've got about 1000 hours of practice ahead of you before you become a passable designer yourself. Since your goal is to build a business, not to learn design, just outsource that part. Otherwise you're going to spend many more hours on this than you need to.
what are some of the best websites to outsource design and how does it work? I personally use https://bubble.is/home. I know there are templates out there but I feel that none of them give me the flexibility and control that Bubble does. And, there are no templates to use for Bubble. I know I can't design anything to save my life, but I really don't want to use anything else other than Bubble to design websites if I were to do it myself. Outsourcing however, is another option
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That sounds like a good idea. I just found a site rentfaster.com that basically does exactly what Im trying to do. They also charge only home owners, per listing. Granted, their site is 10x better than mine