How we Went from Zero Audience to Over a Thousand Beta Signups

https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/63fa3e5603b

by goldvine • 13 years ago

90 56 13 years ago

mijustin• 13 years ago

Wow, I love both of these examples.

On both landing pages you get a really quick idea of what the product is about (without having to read any text).

It took me a few more seconds to understand HookFeed, but once I saw the feed updating (the animation) I instantly understood.

goldvine21• 13 years ago

Great to know! Thanks for the feedback

WA• 13 years ago

I didn't get HookFeed and lost interest before I understood. So I still don't know what it is.

cldr• 13 years ago

So... It was basically all thanks to a well-designed landing page, or did I miss something?

goldvine21• 13 years ago

I think design was a factor. But it wouldn't have mattered how well it was designed, if it didn't show the functionality.

Our first attempt was following the accepted format for landing pages... 1. Pick a headline 2. Take some screenshots 3. Write about benefits

But we realized that wasn't compelling enough.

You could have the best headline in the world, backed by a solid design, and it still wouldn't communicate in the same way as an example/demo/animation of functionality.

Cheers, @mattgoldman_sd

purplelobster• 13 years ago

What do you think about an embedded video? Personally, I love being able to see a video of how it works (with minimal marketing speak of course), but maybe it turns away some users?

colinm• 13 years ago

Well, some people will signup for anything. Different thing getting them to open their wallet.

goldvine21• 13 years ago

Very true, but wouldn't you rather have 10,000 eyes on your product than 100, even if most won't convert.

We will likely convert single digits to paying customers. That doesn't mean we won't work our butts off to get the beta in front of as many ppl as possible...

count3• 13 years ago

How many of your signups came from the Amy Hoy 30x500 empire?

*edit: Not to take away from any of what you've done or the product, just curious as to how big just her network effect is at this point, vs really having 'no following'.

goldvine21• 13 years ago

I'm not a part of 30x500. Is that what you meant?

count3• 13 years ago

Yep, cool. Good article and neat site, either way!

alexshye2• 13 years ago

Great writeup on your showing-not-telling approach to designing a landing page.

But after reading it, here is what I really want to know: what does "a few tweets" mean? I know many people (myself included) who have tried to "kick out a few tweets" and did not get 1000 email signups quickly. My belief is you are writing it because it makes a better story, and puts emphasis on your design. But is it true?

How did the tweets get out to that many people in your target audience? Do you have many followers? Did an influential person retweet it? If so, was it a friend or an unplanned retweet? I'd love to hear more about this side of the story.

rhizome• 13 years ago

Buy the book and find out!

goldvine21• 13 years ago

See my reply just above :-) the book will be much more detailed about our process. Not so much re: marketing because we really haven't done much at all.

goldvine21• 13 years ago

I tweeted at Drew Wilson and Josh Long who wrote the Execute book. I had no prior relationship with them, and they were kind enough to retweet, after I let them know how the book inspired me. This triggered a lot of traffic from designers, and since some of those folks liked our design/product, it got posted to Designer News and some other galleries where it picked up more traffic.

We later got on BetaList which drove about 300 signups and a bunch of traffic to each product. That was easy, just submitted the site, and eventually got included.

I think all of that traffic converted better than usual thanks to solid design, and good communication of the core value of each product via showing, and not telling with a dry headline :-)

alexshye2• 13 years ago

Awesome.. exactly what I was looking for :)

I'm in the process of trying to drive initial traffic to the Soulmix private beta (http://www.soulmix.com), so this is helpful. I would love to see more people say exactly what they did to drive traffic at the early stages of site. Bloggers often make it sound trivial, but I'm not sure that is true.

krmmalik2• 13 years ago

How long did it take before Betali.st featured you? i submitted my app over 8 weeks ago

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

> "In the spirit of executing, we will also soon be launching a book detailing the show-not-tell process much further, making it easier for you to implement in your own products."

Good post but I'm curious about this. You are already working on two products which haven't launched - why did you decide to add a third task of writing a book? Would it not have been better to launch the products, see if those signups converted to users, and then write the book?

goldvine21• 13 years ago

That certainly was an option, to wait.

But since it is just the two of us, and I'm the only one who can work on backend code, Joelle has some open time. She is doing much of the early work on the book while I push product (currently focusing more on Minimalytics to get the first beta open).

As for waiting to see if the signups convert to users...I think that has more to do with the traffic sources versus the techniques being taught in the book. I wouldn't want to wait months when the inspiration has already struck and is fresh :-)

codex• 13 years ago

Why do you consider collecting 1,100 email addresses to be particularly noteworthy? I see inane YouTube videos of the worst possible quality getting orders of magnitude more views. And how many of these email addresses are bots?

groundCode• 13 years ago

My thoughts exactly - a book about creating launch pages for products not yet built?

goldvine21• 13 years ago

Exactly, that is the best time to make a teaser page.

And frankly, most pages built that early in the process are awful considering all the unknowns.

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

I've scanned the article two-three times and didn't find the salient point: Where did you get the 10,000-100,000 visitors required to get 1,000 signups?

goldvine21• 13 years ago

Sorry :-(

As for traffic, we initially got retweeted a couple times by people with a few thousand followers in the design space. Both products also were on news.layervault.com as a result for some time, as well as BetaList a bit later on.

Our conversion rate to beta signups is around 30%. We've had nowhere near 10,000 or even 100,000 visits.

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

Oh wow, 30% is a great conversion rate. However, step #1 of "how to get 1000 signups" is "get 3000 views" :P

deadmike• 13 years ago

This is the critical information that these articles never mention. It's always "We emailed a few friends and the next morning we had $100 billion in VC funding and a private island!"

I wish more blogs would include the "luck" details in their success posts. It's practically lying to say that all that happened was that you tweeted to ~100 followers. I'm not trying to criticize, it's just an interesting bit that makes the startup sound much more down-to-earth when they're willing to admit where they got their luck from.

Because let's not forget: all success is due to some luck, and that's sometimes the most interesting part of the story.

quizotic• 13 years ago

Love this, and will try it myself. Thanks for sharing!

Ixiaus2• 13 years ago

Your javascript on that page pegs my CPU up to 100% - I'm on a MacBook on Chrome.

goldvine21• 13 years ago

On the Medium blog page? Or on Minimalytics/HookFeed/Small HQ sites? Thanks!

Ixiaus2• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, should have been more specific. It's on the Minimalytics site.

canterburry• 13 years ago

How many twitter subscribers did you have at the time of Tweeting? How did you acquire them without a product to show?

goldvine21• 13 years ago

not very many at all, the tweets that drove traffic were not from me. They were from a couple other people that did have a following in the thousands. My follower count has grown since then.

kamakazizuru2• 13 years ago

call me a cynic - but I dont get why everyone who has a half decent idea and questionable success feels like they should write a book about it? Why not wait until you have something really worth sharing and where people would pay for the knowledge?

goldvine21• 13 years ago

I've bought eBooks/read valuable insight from tons of people with "questionable" success.

That doesn't make the information not useful/inspiring. Most of what I do, I learned from other people who chose to share that info.

And most of the people I follow...I originally discovered thanks to them sharing/selling content based on their learnings. I see nothing wrong with the way the industry works.

kamakazizuru2• 13 years ago

sure I learn a lot from people sharing as well - and try to share too - but I do see a difference in charging people a few bucks for telling them things they will find in blogs and trumpetting my "success" story - and reading a blog post from someone sharing a good insight. Sorry if I'm being harsh here - but we do have a bit of a pat on the back community here - however I realize that might not have been the most constructive comment. So heres some more constructive advice - its great that you got a bunch of beta signups. Build your product - that will be worth a lot more than an ebook about how to build a landing page that will get you more signups. There are plenty of people out there with significant experience in this space who publish tonnes of great free content weekly about these things - a lot of it backed up by research too (ref: copyhackers.com). Same thing with marketing related advice - check out the blogs of hubspot and kissmetrics for example. If I were you - rather than spending time writing an ebook and trying to sell that - I would use that content - publish it on my products blog - and use that to drive traffic to my product. Ref: content marketing. Just my 2 bits - the industry doesnt work that way - people buy content from those who have had considerably larger successes - but prove me wrong on this and I'm the happiest guy around :D - it would be an indication for me to go publish a whole lot of ebooks that I didnt think would ever sell!

buro9• 13 years ago

Interesting thing... Medium's branding is stronger than I thought.

I didn't register that Minimalytic or Hookfeed were new projects and independent startups until the end, and still had to double check and then saw the very small text that mentioned "Small HQ".

I interpreted the project names as being cute names for projects within Medium, not the product of an external company.

It's a strange thing when the content screams "Medium" more than it screams the content. I suspect it has a lot more to do with the design consistency and experience rather than the words.

redguava• 13 years ago

Why try to build two apps at once? One is hard enough.

goldvine21• 13 years ago

There has actually been a ton of overlap code-wise. Also, we wanted to be able to cross-promote the products which has worked incredibly well, building both audiences simultaneously. Most of our focus is on Minimalytics, but HookFeed is moving very quickly as well due to the overlap.

I would recommend it if the two products are similar.

Also, we have the choice to context-switch and work on what we are most passionate about on any given day.

callmeed• 13 years ago

I have an honest question that I hope you won't take offense to (your two products look great, btw) ...

Did you consider that doing a startup with your boyfriend/girlfriend might be a bad idea? Startups are hard enough on co-founder friends and non-involved SOs/spouses. It seems your situation adds more possible bad/awkward outcomes.

I'm curious if you guys discussed this at all (not that it's any of my business of course).

goldvine21• 13 years ago

We worked together at an agency for 2 years prior, she was Project Manager, I was a developer. That's actually where we met.

When it came time to decide whether or not we should work together, we weren't really worried about it.

It's turned out amazingly well. But we can handle being around each other ALL DAY most days. That won't work for everyone, I guess.

But I'm glad I didn't blindly avoid it based on the advice of the masses (which is usually wrong/naïve).

:-)

gearoidoc• 13 years ago

Since launching my startup recently I've discovered that SO much success in marketing comes down to luck.

The best way to increase your chances of luck? Work smart, work hard and keep showing up.

goldvine21• 13 years ago

"Keep showing up" is huge. But it's not equivalent to luck. Many people here are talking about how most startups succeed due to luck, and I don't think that is true.

We've been working on product for a very long time, and things didn't start to click until we started being social and talking to others in the industry, helping others out and getting helped out.

Much of the sharing that took place around our products came out of a few new relationships with others. We made an effort to meet new people, so I wouldn't exactly call that luck...

The more we show up, and participate, including writing...the more traction we get. It's amazing how easy it's been once some momentum kicked in!

How we Went from Zero Audience to Over a Thousand Beta Signups

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