Landing page first, or app first?
So I was thinking about my product and the road map to Launch, and it dawned on me -
Not only do I have to build my web application's front-end, back-end, and integrate payments and APIs, but I also have to create a landing page and blog app that is the store-front of my product.
What tools are out there to rapidly deploy a landing page and blog site besides wordpress?
Yeah I would 100% say spin up a quick landing first even if it's just incredibly basic and start pushing people to it. Then you can literally start working on your MVP WHILST also collecting emails for a waitlist.
This is what I did for Rella (https://rella.so)
I used Typedream and it's literally so easy to get a quick landing page up and running.
I used this template here from @olly
https://build.typedream.com/duplicate?url=https%3A%2F%2Frmlp.typedream.app&via=oliver
And literally had a basic version up and running in < 1 hour.
For copy etc. I used ChatGPT to generate some basic versions and then just iterated on that.
Agree 100% build a landing page first to validate your idea BEFORE spending time on creating something that people might not need.
Here is something to add to the basic landing page. Make a fake paying page to see if people ARE WILLING TO PAY. This is the most important part of validating an idea.
This allows you to see if people actually willing to buy AND collect emails of those people that would of already bought. So when you launch you have an email list of people that already want your app.
Thanks for the shoutout on my template! Glad it was useful, your page is looking great.
I've never built a landing page, it seems like a waste of time to me. Just build the shittest version of your app that someone might use.
When I launched Bank Statement Converter it was just a page where you could upload a PDF and it would download the CSV results. Payments, auth, landing page and the blog were absent.
You don't need to build that stuff until someone actually uses your website and gets value out of it. After a few weeks I saw people were using it and so I built the other shit.
Just start with the landing page that sells the value of the product your building and make the CTA "Sign up for early bird offer" or something similar just so you can get their email and personal information. This will help you get your first paying customers from the moment you launch your platform instead of waiting additional time to get those customers.
Tools like Webflow will make it really easy for you to do so without writing a line of code, so you can have it ready in like a day, and their template market is awesome.
Making a quick landing page makes sense to me. Because you need early customers and the best way to do this is by making a landing page.
You can use no-code tools or can also code yourself.
This is what I did for my current SaaS that I'm building right now. Because I love to code I quickly built a landing page using Nextjs and started collecting emails.
Here it is if you want inspiration: https://simplisticnotes.com/
I would say definitely app first!
Then you can use something like Webflow to quickly build a clean and professional looking landing page. I've had a great experience using Webflow, and they have some ready made templates that can save you even more time.
App first, focus on your product. rest will come later.
I have recently been testing Wix (wix.com) to create a simple landing page and it has sufficient capabilities to do the essential work. Adding call-to-action buttons, adding a plan section, image editing, etc.
Wix is well known for its intuitive interface and simplicity of use. If speed is of concern, I can recommend it.
Using landing pages available online has helped as inspiration.
You can first start working on the app because in the work you will find a lot of things that can be mentioned in your landing page.
If you create the landing page first, you have some points you can mention on your page, no one cares about it what your offering and how that can help them but when you have the initial version of your app you can show effectively what your app, what that can do, how it will help users in this way the change of the customer conversion will be high as compared to the pre-launch activity.
You can check out the product Churnfree.com suppose if we have not made our product and we mention on our landing page that our product will help your SaaS business to reduce your high customer churn; then no one will understand it they come and left and we will not see them again but know we have the product which we can show easily and show the customer how much powerful our product and how that can help in their business growth and churn reduction.
This is my personal opinion!
I would recommend landing page first, create landing page, describe your product even before you actually don't have anything developed yet. Collect emails from those who are interested, build early fan base, build community.
Regarding your question, there are plenty of good landing page and website builders. Most of people now will recommend webflow.com, but if you have enough time you can check out these:
framer.com
designmodo.com/slides
designmodo.com/startup
unicornplatform.com
squarespace.com
weebly.com
tilda.cc
readymag.com
editorx.com
duda.co