Is a landing page enough to validate my idea?
Hi guys,
I wanted to ask if just a landing page would be enought to validate my idea. My idea is a freelance marketplace focused on developers and designers, slowly then moving into marketing and writing.
what number of sign ups is enough?
Lets say for example I get 8,000 people to my landing page and 800 people sign up. is this validation? the above example is over 2 months.
Any other ideas how to validate an idea like this? As it is very hard to find businesses that are looking for freelancers.
Regards.
(A very large review site—probably the one you're thinking of) used to do this thing where they'd have links which go to 404 pages, and they'd track which links got the most clicks.
So they might put:
"Reviews of caravan hotels" in the sidebar, and if 100 people clicked it in 1 day they knew that it was of interest to their users.
They tried hundreds of these things (apparently), and that helped them develop the most interesting products.
I once them "aren't your users pissed off though" and they said "Big sites like ours get away with it, because there's so much content it doesn't leave a lasting impression".
Stuck with me.
To clarify, this let them test concepts before even putting a landing page up.
Hey @gul88 thanks for starting the thread.
I think a landing page could work at some point. However, a landing page is far from marketplace. You might need a workable concept available online that pull demand and supply side.
Sign ups often consider as vanity metrics. Your idea will be validated once people actually using your product regularly (will be defined by you)
I'm also in my early stage validating a small idea, keen to hear your feedback. Let's exchange idea :)
HI @felix12777 I just checked out your website, looks really good and very usefull. My issu is that I am stuck in between 2.
One is a digital item marketplaces, starting with html and wordpress themes. Offering 10% commission. A lot less than envato. Along with a 5% cashback for buyers on all themes. From my research nobody is doing this not envato, not themeforest or even theme planet. I think that sellers will benefit from this, also we would offer 0% commission on sales, for a flat monthly fee.
the second one is a freelance marketplace aimed towards developers, designers. Again offering 10% commission or a flat monthly fee.
In Regards to what you said on validation ony comes through implementation and users using my product, The costs is quite high to implementing any one of these ideas. So this is why I am trying to validate my idea, before spending big bucks to go ahead with this.
I have been given some great ideas by other amazing users on IH so far. Feel free to add some ideas(lol).
Thanks for your message, looking forward to seeing how virtualmojito.com grows.
Project your idea and the value it may provide to the end-user
The landing page should better explain your idea to an end-user. Any person viewing your site will create an impression during their first 3 to 8 seconds of their stay. So, I urge you to make sure that your landing page creates a good impression.
Your landing page can contain the following:
There is no proper number on how many sign-ups are enough. The more the better. The idea behind capturing people's contact information is to serve your product for initial validation. When we first launched the Berlocks landing page, we had over 150 sign-ups. This helped us to put our product before them for a test. Their feedback helped us build a better product.
We have had 10% of people who converted as our customers.
To better reach audiences and keep validating your idea, I would also recommend the following:
I hope this helps.
Reuben.
your ideas are right and thank you for your answer. I gues I am worried about spending everything and being left with nothing tbh.
Every step in the field of business creation comes with risk and worry. You mentioned that you are worried about spending everything and being left with nothing. What everything are you talking about and what nothing? I am just trying to understand because we at Berlocks guide initial startups out of their worries and help them decide on a path they should walk on.
Everything meaning what I have saved up so far in terms of money.
It is a partial loan as well.
So my concern is to start a business and have it fail, as I am trying to learn as I go. without any clear guidelines, on what to do and which direction to go.
I have already failed one business, and i lost 5k there. But that was from a bad co-founder.
I do have some knowledge on how I would start it, but I don't think its enough to actually grow.
I understand your concern. At the end of the day, everything adds up to earning.
Let me encourage you by saying that there have been many amazing products that failed to see the light of day because of poor marketing. At the same time, there have been some not-so-good products that attracted good audiences.
Here are my 2 cents, build your MVP as fast as possible and launch it. Find your initial customers through posting on forums, blogs, and word of mouth. I wouldn't recommend paying to find initial customers.
Iterate on customer views and provide value to them. Ask them, what makes their experience special and how you might serve them better.
All that matters is how you approach in promoting your business. We have a team to guide you in understanding what your next step should be. If you are interested hit on Berlocks.com
I think the biggest hurdle is finding customers who want to hire freelancers.
Yes, as a first step towards solving this hurdle, I recommend you to write an article in medium or some blog site (Can be your own too) describing the problems the current freelancers are facing and how we can overcome it. Also towards the end showcase how you are solving this problem in a better way. This will certainly drive some traffic towards your website. Hopefully, your landing page can capture their email and build a community.
a 10% conversion rate (assuming sign up = gives you an email address) is pretty solid. IIRC, the last time I did this I managed 17% and was pretty excited about it.
I always like to think of the "riskiest assumptions". To me, there's no doubt in my mind that if you can find a business that wants a freelancer and serve them up a site with credible freelancers, you have a winner on your hands.
The trickier bit for a business like this is finding these businesses and making sure you have a great inventory of responsive and high-quality freelancers (i.e. the standard "cold start" problem with marketplaces). By example, I could design/code up a CraigsList competitor tomorrow, but buyers wouldn't care because I don't have the sellers. Sellers wouldn't care because I don't have the buyers. Crack that nut and you win!
Getting freelancers onboard is easier, and after reading about the chicken and egg problem the best solution for this is to build up the sellers side first. And then attract businesses to the platform.
I see business validation as an ongoing thing that should never end. Even when you have a sustainable/profitable product, you should always be reviewing things and ensuring you are keeping with the times.
Getting people to sign up is a good sign, but it doesn't validate the business. You need people coming back, you need to be solving a problem, you need them doing something and of course you need to get it to make enough money. And for all of that you need a functioning product, which you may not have at day one, but things like a landing page are first and sustainable steps to help you formalize a product offering.
I think you could validate your idea with a bunch of mails, and of course some devs and designers too... something like "you have to do the CORE job your application would".
But maybe a super simple landing where devs and designes register to your pool of devs/designers and then email them with jobs could work.
"Do things that don't scale" - Paul Graham
So what your saying is to grab a bunch of each users and simply send out jobs. If I can match devs and designers to a job. Then my idea is validated?
Aplogies I have read multiple mvp blogs etc.. it gets confusing, sometimes I am left thinking, "Ok great example in the blog, how do I apply it to mine"
Yeah and no. I mean, you want to match a project with a dev/designer, so I think you could have some few devs/designers and find some jobs for them, so then offer the jobs to your pool of devs/designers by mail or any other communication platform.
Also if you are thinking your product have some sort of advantage (other websites don't offer) to offer to your users, you have to try to offer this advantage to your devs/designers in this validation process.
other freelance marketplaces either do this manually which is labour intensive or like upwork through a platform.
I am thinkning of including a wireframing tool, so clients can see their ideas being wireframes, prottyped and then developed. No other freelance marketplace offers this.
Thats cool! You can validate that too!, I can share with you a validation process I've been,I had a client with a product who match designers and customers, and he was offering some sort of a new methodology for designers. So, his validation process was:
1 built a platform where he could offer this new approach
2 at the same time he found a few (3-5) designers
3 he found some projects and assigned a project to a designer
After that, the client had a designer for his project and a designer had a project to design. BUT, when the client contact the designer trough the platform, the PROJECT OWNER behave as a designer , and the same project owner contact the designer through whatsapp, so yeah, basically the client contact the product owner, and the product owner contact the designer, in this way, my client could validate his idea.
Maybe you could go for something similar, If you want to build the wireframe system, create a dummy one (if not, use one already exists designers will know which one to choose) and then find some designers, and some projects, match them by mails and explain the designer he must create a wireframe first and contact the client
But the most important: after your validation process, try to talk to your users (designers, devs, clients) and ask them for feedback, so you can build the product for them
thank you Victor! but dont designers hate the fact that they have to design a wireframe without speaking to the client?
Kind of like contests only one or two are selected from a dozen.
Yeah, I guess the do, it was just an example. I mean, you want to validate the CORE of your future project, and I understand that is "using wireframes as first deliverable from the designer to the client", then maybe you can follow the approach of using mails but telling your designers they MUST deliver a wireframe as the first deliverable
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Thanks, But as I am using my life savings to start a business I am worried of just launching just because there are multiple marketplaces out there.
Speaking to freelancers, they would want a 10% commission charge, as it is cheaper than the rest.
But I dont really have much of an offer for clients to come and post their job.
My concern is that I dont want to spend Tens of thousands of pounds and just failing.
even if I create a basic MVP, it still costs money to post on social media, blog, landing pages etc... hire a team. etc..
Please don't spend your life savings on one bet. You want to do a lot of experiments to see what works.
"even if I create a basic MVP, it still costs money to post on social media, blog, landing pages etc... hire a team. etc.."
what I meant by posting, it costs not too post, but to do the digital marketing. escpecially if I dont have a background in this.
Right but trying to buy your way to the results this early is not going to work.
With a freelance marketplace the only way to "buy my way to the top" is to do what elance did, which is pay people to post on my site. And unfortunatley I cannot do that.
I just need to look at my own burn rate, tbh. and simply validate the idea. The way I see it If I dont get 10% or more conversion on the landing page sign ups to not follow through.
I have a full time, job I do not want to push ahead with something that did not get a lot of interest in the first place.