Should I mention pricing in a static site to test market fit?
I'm currently building a static website to test if there is a market fit for a traveling service. I got the idea from Rob Walling of Drip. In his podcast, he mentioned we created a static site with some content about his idea to see if there was user excitement.
My idea is to connect travelers going to Colombia, with local people who are trustworthy. In this way not doing tourist travel but more of the local real experience. Attending a soccer game, eating traditional food, etc. This would be a paid service.
However, I'm debating if I should mention the price? Or if I should only mention that there would be a cost. Not sure how much the pricing will be I just want to make sure there is excitement to see if I build the platform. What does the community advise?
@dbarochiya @klintmane @Stubru @gimix Thank you so much for your feedback. I build a small static site prototype. It took me about an hour, front-end is not my strongest so I probably need to rebuild it.
I have to emphasize the idea of local experience vs traditional tourist one. Also thinking of the way of addressing security concerns, etc. This is draft one of the template https://theasteve.github.io/meetmedellin/
I would recommend selling your service right away, even if for now your site is just a mockup and doesn't really have automated payments. You want to know if people would buy it or not and price is one of the most important factors.
Use the same strategy you will use for your final service: either "talk to us" if you don't want to disclose your price or if your price is tailored to each specific customer; or mention your price if it's going to be publicly available.
Do not worry too much on finding the right price, you can change it later. Again, what you want to know in the beginning is if people are willing to pay something . How much is a second step in the learning process.
I would agree, I think including the price is an important part of gathering user feedback. After all, you want to see if users will realistically pay for this service. I like @gimix idea of adding a "talk to us" page, or a place for users to leave their email so that you can contact them about the price if they're interested. This is also a good way to collect user information to reach out to them in the future.
I would mention price. I would also try to find 10 people who you think could or should be your customer. Talk to them. They will tell you way more than a static site ever could.
Your right Josh! But I would just like to put the site out there to see if people reach out. If they do, this means there is something there. I think doing both would be even better! (talking to potential customers & deploying a site to see if there is interest)
Definitely do both. Good luck!
If you are open to making your site slightly dynamic, I'd instead ask users for their ideal budget for something like this. I'd ask them this immediately after they confirm their email.
This has a few benefits:
It indirectly implies this is a paid service.
You may learn that a traveler's budget has a high variance, thereby giving you some insights into how to price the service in future.
If users sign up with email but don't bother telling you their budget afterwards, then you get early warning signs that monetizing could be difficult.
If some users tell you their budget and some users don't, then you automatically have a set of strong leads and weak leads. You can save time in future by selectively following up with the strong leads.
Good luck.
Hey Steven,
In the past I've wondered about similar things as well, as wherever I go I prefer the local experience compared to the traditional tourist one.
I don't know if you are familiar with Airbnb Experiences, but you should probably check it out. I've used it before and enjoyed the guides so for me that's already been validated (both personally and by a huge player - Airbnb).
A local basically creates an experience and then people can pay for it, a few examples:
Edit: As for the pricing, I think the best option would be a small commission for handling the transactions (fixed or otherwise), if your model would be similar to Airbnbs.
It really scales well and the users really won't mind.
Hey good idea on the testing. Yes I think you should mention some basic guide for price. BTW this is something i'd be keen to do, but it does depend quite a lot on the price. Don't forget a lot of Western travellers are still probably a bit worried/scared to travel to Columbia, so somehow you need to address this, in my opinion.
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