How do I test my idea with a landing page?

How do I test my idea with a landing page?

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When it comes to launching a new product or innovative service on the market, I always ask: "How many customers have you already shown your idea to?". Because today it is easier than ever to test an idea with potential customers. Testing may sound like a big investment of time, money and other resources, but the opposite is true! 

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Why a landing page?

With a landing page, you can easily test a product before it even exists. If the idea is a direct hit, perfect! But sometimes we realize that a product idea still needs to be adapted in order to survive on the market. Or we realize that although the value proposition is good, it resonates with a different target group than we expected. This early customer feedback then allows you to develop your products in a customer-centric way. This saves time and reduces the risk of launching something on the market that nobody wants to buy.

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What do I need to consider for the landing page?

A landing page is a simple, digital website that explains your value proposition with a call-to-action (CTA). There are many good tips and tricks on the internet on how to build a landing page. But if your goal is to validate a product idea, there are a few points you should pay special attention to when building the landing page.

1. Value proposition
2. Heading
3. Pictures
4. CTA
5. Pretest
6. Traffic
7. Analytics
8. The small print
   
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Value proposition

The primary goal of the landing page is to validate your value proposition. In other words, to find out who is interested in the idea and for what reasons. Consequently, the value proposition is the most important element of the landing page.

Before you start building a landing page, you need to get to the heart of your value proposition. Alexander Osterwalder's Value Proposition Canvas can help you with this. What does the target group look like? What jobs are customers trying to do? What customer benefits does the product provide? What problems does the service solve? 

It is worth formulating the value proposition as a team. The book Value Proposition Design has excellent workshop instructions.

The purpose of a landing page is to pique the interest of potential customers and get them to learn more about your idea. Ultimately, customers need to understand the value proposition.

If you want a conversion, you need to make sure that your value proposition matches your customer's problem. You should focus on the benefits the customer gets from your solution. What is really important from your customer's perspective? 

Heading

Good texts are extremely important! The easier it is for visitors to understand the idea, the more likely they are to stay on the page. Remember that many visitors may not scroll down. Neil Patel says: "8 out of 10 people will only read the headline. 2 out of 10 will look at the rest of your page." So it's worth investing some time in the headline. 

The headline should...

• ...be fully legible without visitors having to scroll.
• ...refer to the value proposition.
• ...show how your idea solves a major problem for customers. 

And the whole thing has to be formulated so simply that customers understand it quickly. Not an easy task.

You can find some tips here: How to Write Copy That Converts | 5 Things You Need to Know About Writing GREAT Marketing Copy

Pictures

To test a new product idea, you need convincing images on the landing page. This is because strong visual elements help to convey the value and attractiveness of the products. "Seeing is believing", as the saying goes. An apt image or 3D rendering to show people what this product will look like in the future helps to get to the heart of your vision. Such virtual prototypes make it possible to gauge customer interest before anything physical goes into production. It is therefore worth having meaningful images and renderings produced for the landing page. You can find some of our examples here. 

Clear call-to-action

If you want to validate your idea with a landing page, the call-to-action (CTA) is usually a request to fill out a short survey. You want to learn more about your visitors and find out why they are interested in your idea. Online surveys are ideal for testing your assumptions. However, the CTA must also offer visitors to the landing page added value. After all, what do visitors get out of completing your survey? You need to get creative here. Can you perhaps give something away? Or set up a waiting list? Is there something to download? 

Pre-test

Test your landing page with someone who hasn't seen it before you put it online. It seems obvious that a landing page should be easy to understand. But unfortunately, many landing pages are written by experts for experts. This is the curse of knowledge. It means that you already know too much about your idea. This can lead to your customers not understanding what you want to offer. It's best to show your landing page to two or three people who don't work in your company. The point is to make sure that the headline, images and CTA are easy to understand for potential customers. We call this a usability test or simply a pre-test.

Traffic

A great landing page is useless if nobody sees it. Websites need traffic! In other words, visitors. They come from a variety of sources. They may see your online ads, your posts on social networks, your email campaigns, your guerrilla marketing with QR codes, or they may be part of a consumer panel. Whatever the source, it is worth using channels that are used particularly often by your target group.

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Analytics

It is very important to know how users behave on your landing page. Ultimately, you want to validate your value proposition. It is therefore a good idea to measure the behavior of your visitors as they move through the website. The most popular tracking tool is Google Analytics. It's free and relatively easy to set up. You can easily display various user statistics, e.g. how many visitors come to the website, what they click on and which sources the traffic comes from. However, you have to remember the small print.

The small print

Ok, so you have now created a landing page. Congratulations! But before you can go online, you still have to comply with the legal regulations. A landing page for a product that doesn't yet exist is completely legal. But there are a few things you need to bear in mind. These include:

•  a reference to cookies ("cookie banner"), 
• a privacy policy (reviewed by a lawyer), 
• Contact information of the company and a contact person. 

If you have thought of everything, you can now go live.

Conclusion

Building a landing page is easier than ever. But at the end of the day, it's just a means to an end. The ultimate goal is to test your product idea and validate your value proposition. 

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Do you have any questions about testing ideas with a landing page? Then write me a short email!