How do I get a startup noticed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218513

by silent1mezzo • 15 years ago

13 19 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I was just wondering how people get their startups noticed? I've been tweeting and marketing my startup (currently just a landing page) for the past week and have only had 20 signups. Similar startups (only a landing page) get 500+ signups on the first day.

Should I be doing anything specific to get my startup noticed?

nudge2• 15 years ago

What have you made? You'll only get useful advice if we can see what it is.

silent1mezzo6• 15 years ago

http://dinnerplanner.net

Dinner Planner allows people to plan out their daily meals in an organized and efficient manner, share recipes with friends and even organize your grocery list (automatically). We send out daily reminders to people on what they're cooking for the night.

Tonnes of features are planned including SMS notifications, subscriptions to weekly menus, generate meal ideas based off what ingredients you currently have.

I realize there are other apps out there like this one, but to be totally honest, there aren't many good ones.

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

"I realize there are other apps out there like this one, but to be totally honest, there aren't many good ones."

Thanks for the honesty. ;)

nudge2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure it's the kind of thing where you can expect a huge number of pre-launch signups. You're providing a tool, but not one that's solving a burning business problem, for example. Big pre-launch signups tend to be for sexy technology platforms, buzz-generating social sites, or useful-looking business apps. Your site may provide value, but I'm not sure it will provide so much value that people really want to be told when it launches. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go ahead with launching it, mind. It could be the kind of thing people only care about once it's there. I mean, if somebody was opening a store near my house would I sign up to get an email when it opened? No. I don't care that much. But would I go in once it opened? Sure, maybe. The two things aren't related.

[edit] Sorry, to be clear: they are related, but not as closely as you might expect. No signups does not mean no business, just like many signups does not mean lots of business.

pestaa• 15 years ago

To get something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done. Or, nobody ever done, really.

ecto• 15 years ago

I just asked the same question basically: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218427

silent1mezzo6• 15 years ago

Awesome, I'll check out those answers.

deafcheese2• 15 years ago

Maybe try putting more information on your landing page. People would be more likely to sign up if they had more than 5 words to figure out what your startup does.

silent1mezzo6• 15 years ago

I added more information to the landing page. The issue isn't necessarily with the # of signups but more to do with traffic. Currently I'm converting 10% of my visitors to signups. But I'm not getting a lot of traffic.

arn• 15 years ago

Is getting a lot of traffic really a realistic goal with a landing page?

I mean, I'm sure there are exceptions. But this seems like a strange thing to even care about.

sagacity2• 15 years ago

I'd not be happy with a 10% conversion rate (unless the traffic is not targeted).

Here are some suggestions I can make:

To increase traffic: * If you have some budget, why not try the good ol' PPC route? Even a short (yet smart, tight) campaign on AdWords should get you a good number of signups mighty fast.

* Find (as many as you can of) blogs, forums etc. related to recipes, grocery, dinner planning etc. and make useful/meaningful posts with your URL in sig. - make sure you don't spam though ;-) (As you probably know, there are some excellent, inexpensive, non-spammy forum/blog posting services out there. You can shop around a bit and use any of these if you wish.)

Also, no matter how you increase traffic, increasing the conversion rate will obviously get you more signups.

To increase conversion rate: * I'd strongly suggest adding some more text to the landing page. I think something like what you wrote here:

>> Dinner Planner allows people to plan out their daily meals in an organized and efficient manner, share recipes with friends and even organize your grocery list. We send out daily reminders to people on what they're cooking for the night.

Tonnes of features are planned including SMS notifications, subscriptions to weekly menus, generate meal ideas based off what ingredients you currently have. <<

placed as a blurb (not too large font size) somewhere to the left of the sign-up box can boost conversion.

* A somewhat stronger 'call to action' should also help. I think even something as simple as 'Your E-mail' displayed inside the text box should boost sign-ups.

HTH

profitbaron• 15 years ago

Your splash page is very bland, having looked on http://dinnerplanner.net there isn't much on it other than 20 words.

I recommend that you make your splash page/landing page better by adding more information, or even a few screenshots etc to hep encourage signups to your service.

However, this seems more of a marketing issue. You should focus more on your marketing efforts as well as, how your competitors marketed your product? Also you should consider contacting publications such as a food blog etc, as this will also help you acquire more signups.

autalpha• 15 years ago

You're seeing this error because you have DEBUG = True in your Django settings file. Change that to False, and Django will display a standard 404 page.

In other words... DEBUG = False when you're exposing the rest to the world.

silent1mezzo6• 15 years ago

Forgot to change this from local development. Thanks.

ig1• 15 years ago

Whats your visitor:signup ratio ?

silent1mezzo6• 15 years ago

268 visits - 21 signups

or roughly 8%

sagacity2• 15 years ago

Okay - I found the following with a quick dig through our developed website portfolio:

* http://www.RecipeAvenue.com

* http://www.TheDrinkMaker.com

* http://www.USRestaurantGuide.info

* http://www.dGroceryStore.com

I don't know the traffic levels on these sites (we don't track such things individually for each site) but I guestimate a collective volume of ~ 20-25k PVs/mo.

If you wish, we can run a (site-wide) promo of your landing page on all of the above sites for a few weeks. (You don't need to pay anything - at any time - unless you must ;-)).

Let me know if you're interested.

silent1mezzo6• 15 years ago

That'd be awesome. Whats the best way to get in contact with you? You can email me at adam[ at ]dinnerplanner[ dot ]net

How do I get a startup noticed?

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