Do I need a good design for my landing page to launch a product?
Hey guys,
For the past week, I have been trying to get paying customers for the beta version of my product - it helps you create a knowledge base or a help center using Notion as the underlying CMS.
I have been able to make just 3 sales so far (3rd sale in the last 30 mins - so yay!! But then again, all LTD as of now, so not great.)
Right now, I am setting the knowledge base for the customers signing up, and onboarding them manually.
While I am building the self-serve dashboard for customers. I thought I would get a first version of the website up and running as well.
This is where my question comes up. With all that's there on the to-do list, I have been thinking of not stressing so much on the UI, rather the usability of the product. Do you think having a designless website would leave a bad impression in front of prospective customers?
As of now, I am planning to go ahead with just formatted text and explanatory images + product images. **For example: the featured image of this post is a screenshot of the first fold of the product under the top-nav. ** The top nav contains the logo and menu links, but after that every page is like this... Markdown formatted text + images.
I was wondering how you all feel about that?
Cheers
🔥 Roast My Landing Page
Functionalities & content first.
That has been the consensus so far. Thanks :)
Best of luck with the continued development!
Thanks Prem. Zixflow looks quite cool. How has the journey been so far?
Don't stress too much about design; as long as you can effectively communicate the idea in your mind, having a decent design is perfectly fine.
Thanks Attah. Just read your bio. Let me know if I can help out in any way. Cheers.
what you have is good enough
:-)
Short and yet encouraging. Thanks
I heard once from one of our customers, people forgive bad product with good design. I think Ui can be a USP for a startup in any competitive space. Rest depends on your bandwidth, and understanding of market in which you will sell.
I am not saying design is not important, but I think communicating the product offering is more important. Plus, as you rightly pointed out, bandwidth constraints. I am trying to use whatever bandwidth I can save in trying to make sales.
The words you use help validate your idea more than design.
That's the hypothesis (maybe even the hope) I am going with as of now. Would probably edit and re-edit the words many times before I start thinking of putting a nice looking page together. Would try to nail the copy first.
"As a startup founder with multiple websites, my advice is to launch the product quickly for validation and then fine-tune the design later. To get your first paid user, there are 15 other steps you need to take, and website design is just one of them."
Thanks Trey. Would try following that.
Hi Abhishek,
Between copy and design, copy is more important. However, most people will ignore copy presented in bad design. So, in the end, we have to get both of them right.
Understood.
As of now, the focus is on getting to 10 and 20 sales. Since every single customer acquisition method is 1:1 communication, I figured I could bury my head in the sand on the design aspect for the time being.
Hi Abhishek, Congratulations on Your Progress!
Key Points to Consider:
→ First Impressions: A well-designed landing page is crucial for setting a positive first impression.
→ User Experience: Balancing usability with aesthetics enhances overall user engagement.
→ Conversion Rates: Effective design can lead to higher conversion rates.
My Suggestion:
→ Starting with markdown text and images is practical for now.
→ As your product evolves, investing in a more polished design can significantly benefit user engagement and conversions.
Best of luck on your journey!
That's the reason I included the screngrab.
At least my thought here is that markdown text helps me use headings, lists, bold etc already.
Then I am keeping enough white space.
And finally images to communicate the product features/offerings.
I am not saying its perfect, but it may be a "good enough" starting point.
No, the design of the landing page does not matter at all. The only thing that matters with the landing page is if it converts visitors or not. If you have a plan to convert visitors with an-undesigned landing page you should try to test that first.
Famously, Google started, and still has a fairly un-designed home page.
It's more likely that you need to do some design to help visitors understand what your product does. It makes sense to think about your customer journey sequentially, and then build through that journey in order.
Create the best version you can with N-input and go through the journey. Landing Page>Purchase>Onboarding>Product>Referral>etc
Think about creating everything you need for the full journey and then improving what you can do personally and hiring out for what someone else can do better than you for the relative cost.
For me as a soloprenuer, I take things as far as I can on my own and then try to find a reliable and cost effective freelancer. When speaking with a freelancer take at least 2-3 days to evaluate them. Ask everyone for sample work and a simple question or two to see if they are actually reading the messages.
Then start with a very small, non-critical project. If you are looking for landing page design the first project might be 3-4 proposals on a slide or PDF. Just go through the process of opening, building and closing a job with someone. You will learn so much, and from my experience it's very much worth finding the right person rather than just a fast person.
Good luck!
Thanks Michael.
As of now, the focus is on cracking those first few dozen sales. Hopefully interacting with these early customers will also help me identify patterns in what is convincing users into buying into the product.
Then I can start designing the pages based on how to best communicate those points.
I think landing page design is pretty important.
I analyze landing pages for my newsletter, and even though I don't always have the performance data, I am starting to recognize patterns in how the top SAAS brands build out website pages and landing pages.
Minimalism can be a good play, but I think there are certain conventions that have been A/B tested to death, and we now can call those empirically higher performance tactics.
You're using notion as the CMS you say, is this through one of the third party page builders that use notion as the source? or is this an actual public notion page, put on a custom domain, that you are running traffic to?
I'm hesitant to say it's wrong, I just know that a more customizable page builder would give you the option to test more visual changes.
TBH - There are only like 5-10 layouts I ever see on the top SAAS Brands landing pages and websites, so I don't know how custom you need to get. But if you can't implement those sort of cliche ones, or can only test a few using notion, I'd consider switching.
I think these 3rd party notion-backed page builders might be the best solution though.
The pages of my customers' knowledge bases do have the necessary design elements present.
It is just that my sales website is void of any design (minus the header, footer)
As of now, I am trying to keep my eyes laser focused on making the first few sales.
At least get a sense of whether the product is something customers are paying for, and if (or how) reluctant they are towards paying.
I believe the design is important but should not be over-engineered.
I think it is important that the design is just good enough so that your customers stay on your website. Once they see your solution they should not care about how it looks if it solves their problem
I saw a couple of people building a knowledge base on Notion.
I also found a SaaS which only provides easy knowledge-base access.
Nice. Would love to learn from you.
You really don't need to be however I believe with the same content, design can be a perk to step out. I'm launching a startup focused on making it super easy for CEOs to hire top-notch designers by the hour. Would this kind of service help you?
I agree, it can help to step out. However, pick your battles is the question in front of me right now... Need to choose between freeing up my bandwidth for sales vs adding essential features to the product and design.
Design, unfortunately, takes a backseat in front of the other two.
The user's dashboard as well as the help centers they build for their business - those have design elements, since that is what would matter to them more than the design of my landing page.
About your service - yes, it would be great for CEOs, not me though - cashflow constraints at the moment. :-)