How I got 3600 page views on launch day, and why it sucked
Yesterday, I launched the product I've been working on for 8 months. I also recorded 3606 page views on my site (shoutout to plausible.io), but ended up feeling worse than ever about my startup.
What I did 😎
- I worked super hard to create a compelling landing page (including a live demo), then created a clickbaity (but authentic) first post that could generate some discussion.
- I submitted both an article and my landing page at different times during the day to Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Teamblind, and /r/programming, then followed up on any resulting discussions.
The Good 😁
- WAY more page views than I expected.
- I sustained at least ~12 active viewers on my site throughout most of the day.
- I got a decent number of upvotes on Reddit, driving most of my traffic.
The Bad 😡
- I got banned from Teamblind (lol)
- Bounce rate and visit duration were absolutely abysmal.
- My posts on every platform except Reddit did not generate any discussion at all.
The Ugly 👺
- I got only ~20 signups (free, no credit card required - not likely customers).
- I received 0 serious inquiries from anyone about trying my product.
- This level of traffic is unsustainable - you can't launch every day.
Takeaways 🤓
- Marketing != sales. I got tons of clicks, but not from people who would become customers. I'm going to refocus on direct messages to actual potential customers. I got way closer to closing deals by DMing people on Reddit than just having random programmers see my site or read my article.
- Writing posts may be good for SEO, but may not serve any purpose in terms of actually finding customers if you don't have a perfectly-curated audience.
- VALIDATE YOUR IDEA BEFORE YOU LAUNCH! I assumed because 1. I observed a common problem, and 2. everyone I talked to about my solution liked it, that it would be easy to sell. I've still been getting tons of positive feedback from prospects, but finding people willing to use it for real is f***ing hard!
Overall, this experience sucked - but it has helped me refocus my next steps. (Any sales advice welcome, btw)
Trending on Indie Hackers
"Marketing != sales" THIS is something we really need to learn better as founders. It happened to me all the time. Of course you already know this, but in practice, when you're so into your project, it's very hard not to think that.
Something that been working for me is to push myself to be a little bit detached -- emotionally talking -- to my product to avoid this from happening. It's not easy, for sure, but depending on your personality, you need to start with that mindset to not fall into these situations, and when you face reality end up getting hit really hard.
Keep going! You're doing a great job, and thanks again for sharing.
Quick feedback about your landing page: it has a LOT of text, remember you have a few seconds to capture attention, and based on your data the bounce rate is high... which may have something to do with this.
+1 on the too much text. I like the overall design, but I didn't know where to look since there's so much stuff there. I ended up skimming through the landing page to get a rough feel for what the product was and ended up thinking, "Not for me".
I wonder if the landing page was simplified and focused on one or two points, there might be more discussion on it in your posts? As it is, since it's so busy, people may not take away a central "message" from it.
I too think that all that talking about building in public, audience building and SEO drives people to work on marketing too much. Instead of attention, we need customers. If SEO is your source of customers, that's perfect, but these channels may not work for anyone. Probably, they only work for a minority.
Hey Lucas, congrats on the launch. The tool looks pretty good.
I don't know how I felt about the demo. I did not entirely understand the benefits of the product from it. The WIP chapters almost made me stop exploring. I would definitely remove those, or at the very least send them to the bottom. Also, I wouldn't use the WIP chapters in the animation on the home page.
In my opinion, tools that require such a big change in a (most likely) existing process tend to require multiple touch points. Instead of being so eager to have visitors try the app, I would focus on collecting their email addresses and some basic information about them and their companies (ie: role, number of employees, how many people they are looking to hire in the next year... etc...).
Try to get in touch with everyone who signs up, and learn more about them, and the ways in which you can help them adopt your product.
Thanks for sharing your story! Definitely been in that post-launch hype phase to only realize the metrics aren't durable after a launch :(
2c feedback, my PoV is a former interviewer at growth stage startup (was pretty deeply vested in it, though was not the HM fwiw), now founder of my own pre-revenue startup, as I was looking through your page.
First clicked on the demo, was pretty confused what was going on, seemed like an Excalidraw, but had no idea what your product actually did, so hopped onto the real landing page.
looking through the landing page, I'm confused what exactly you do, it feels like an Excalidraw... with more things? It's tailored towards interviewing which is awesome, but it's not clear to me how it's solving my hiring pain point.
"Software interview sucks" is good, there were lots of words I skipped since I already agree interviews are super broken in general fwiw.
Scenario/chapters/etc. honestly I'd skip the product-specific lingo, I honestly have no idea what your product does at this stage, and which tactical problems in the hiring pipeline are you solving. Is it just a collaborative whiteboard like Excalidraw? Do you provide good interview content/questions as well for me? Do I have to bring my own content? How does this nuts and bolts make my (hypothetical) current interview process better?
---
tl;dr from the hiring manager PoV, how is this going to make my hiring faster/easier/better? Can I get higher quality candidates I'm mistakenly rejecting right now? Will candidates view my company in a better/more competitive light if I use this tool? Will this tool somehow give me more candidates in the upper funnel? Will this tool help me avoid bad hires? How will it accomplish any of those?
Imo if you could answer those questions above in really simple terms, it might make it a lot easier to at least try your tool meaningfully, if not pay for it if the value is obvious enough ($100/mo is nothing compared to the amount of resources teams pour into hiring 1 senior eng candidate)
This is wonderful feedback - I was planning to make some major changes to the explanation on the demo and the landing page text and your comment has reinforced the necessity for that. I'll probably also move all of the product-specific lingo to a "how it works"/"about" page.
Awesome :) happy to give more feedback on a redesigned page from you if you'd like, just give me a ping.
High empathy for your current journey - I'm currently iterating on our own product design landing page and have some major changes to make myself after running it through a few people in my network.
(If you happen to have experience in e2e testing, would love to chat with you ;) )
We had similar results at Notik. We actually have been having better luck using paid Google ads and a very targeted landing page. Much better results than launching on hacker news etc. Also individually reaching out to people on LinkedIn has also worked well for us.
Super interesting results. Especially about marketing.
So if you had to do it again, would you create any content for this launch or would you focus 100% of your effort on messaging?
I'm happy I created the first piece of content because I learned a ton about how compelling / not compelling my site and my messaging is (and it was pretty fast).
No real regrets except for having such high expectations about how easy it would be!
Looks like your solution is a complete shift from how teams are organized and used to doing hiring.
You can try to find teams/companies that actively trying to change their hiring processes. Search for companies writing about their hiring process and try to find the innovate ones and pitch them.
Another option is to try to smooth the adoption process by allowing teams to adopt your solution into their process instead of completely changing it.
Good luck and kudos on the launch
Feel you about the last point. Being a common problem and people telling you they like your solution.... you'd think it'd be an automated success?
Ohh yeah - should nearly sell itself!
Although I'm still a beginner when it comes to sales/marketing, some (hopefully) constructive feedback since you asked :)
Marketing/messaging (landing page):
The page feels like a pitch deck. It tries to convince me there's a problem rather than convince me 'aha' I need this product.
The 'why' is somewhat missing.
Why do I want to assess teamwork? -> Improve team performance
Why do I want to assess system design? -> Have confidence new hires have the necessary skills to succeed/deliver
Also, some might feel a little offended that you call their current process alienating, inaccurate, etc.
Consider taking inspiration from sites like https://www.expressvpn.com/go/home
Sales:
Continue reaching out to individuals. Ask them what their current process looks like, what their pain points are, let them talk 80% of the time, then position your product.
I think the product needs to be more 'complete'.
As an Startup, SMB, especially Enterprise buyer - I might lose credibility internally if I bought something external that had a bunch of WIP pages.
Re: pitch deck, I think this could actually be a pro - a significant number of people (about 45% based on my teamblind poll) indicated that they thought there's nothing wrong with LeetCode, which means a lot of people need convincing that their existing tools aren't good enough. That said, a lot of people have said to cut down the amount of text and I think I can get rid of the block you mentioned (or move it to features or something)
Re: being "complete" - I don't know whether to agree or disagree with this... There is so much content out there telling us to build lean startups, push fast, sell your MVP, pre-sell, etc. that I figured having 3/12 chapters as "coming soon" couldn't hurt that badly given that the core functionality is 100% operational and the whole site is super professional. In my ideal world I could just build build build features forever, but I had to ship eventually. I just wanted to make a bit of $ before sinking in the ~2 weeks to add some chapter types nobody may ever use if it doesn't go well.
Oh you definitely made the right choice shipping.
Just saying as a buyer, some may be only willing to pay a monthly subscription once its more done.
e.g. similar to how some game devs do alpha's where trial users get to play for free and provide feedback, then the paid version comes upon full/beta release.
Really good point... At least the emails I've accumulated thus far will work well with my first few feature announcements.
Or maybe I'm using your comment as an excuse to get back to coding 😬
You did a really good job of distribution. I wonder if the reason conversions were low was because most people on these platforms aren't interviewers / HR.
Like you acknowledged, I think hustling on cold outreach is the way to go for this. (At least that's how i would do it.)
Also, very polished website too. Big fan of the videos explaining how it works.
I think there are a few reasons conversions are low.
Thanks for the feedback!
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Some quick feedback on the landing page set up. When I open it, my eyes immediately get drawn to the top menu, then down to the moving image, then the hero text ("Tech interviews..."). It's a bit overwhelming.
I think you can:
As other people say, there's also too much text. e.g on "Most software engineering interviews suck." focus on the pain point for each interviewer or interviewee (whoever pays) to cut this down and make more punchy
I like the fonts and overall design, some changes will make it look great!
Yes, definitely marketing and sales are different.
SEO is a good seed and you must fertilize.
I'm the same saga like you. Be strong!
The fun hasn't even started yet.
Words of wisdom my friend! amen! thank you very much for sharing
Do you have some real conversation with your prospects? If not, I would advise to start talking with your user. Ideally face-to-face, or via Zoom or via the phone.
nice
Am not really an expert, but just want to ask a few question.
Do you have personal experience in the industry? (hiring I suppose?)
Are you targeting hiring managers or company execs? Have you confirmed that hiring managers are free to use whatever method they want without consulting feedback from their superiors?
I'm targeting hiring managers and individuals who conduct interviews - my best prospects at this moment would be founders of small companies who are just hiring their first employees and deciding their hiring practices for the first time.
Also, I have confirmed that interviewers are free to use whatever methods they want to interview. That is, unless they're at a company that has already designed some in-house tooling for the interviews (not super common).
It could be an interesting tool if it's for actual development rather then hiring. I refuse to do these kind of challenges as a dev so I would also never subscribe as a company (if I have one).
Interesting - what do you mean by "these kinds of challenges?" What do you usually do in interviews?
Just have a conversation? That's why it's called interview.
If you can land a software engineering job through just a conversation, more power to you - I've never heard of a tech hiring process like that, though.
I did land all my jobs like that expect my first one at Red Hat.
I say "no" a lot, though, while other people just accept these practices.
I like the feel of the graphics of your project but I will never like it for my beliefs.
Looks great but analytics is a niche that Google is the king . Hard to find serious inquiries that they are ready to switch their analytics platform.
Another day, another founder doing the same mistake.
This could have been easily avoided by pinging a few actively hiring Engineering managers on LinkedIn and then using that feedback.
Though I admit it was a mistake, it's definitely not as easy as "pinging a few engineering managers." In fact, of the 20+ conversations I've had with real hiring managers since launching, I've gotten positive feedback from nearly every one, with the only objection being that they don't make the decisions about tooling themselves or that they're not actively hiring.
Let's not pretend that getting high quality customer feedback is as easy as messaging the first few people who maybe fit your demographic - that's pretty much the whole point I'm making. Pre-sales (both literal as in monetary, and virtual as in interest/intent to use) may work for some types of businesses, but definitely not this one.
The article really speaks to me as a programmer, but a decision-maker may be better persuaded by the actual implementation in the hiring process. I think if you can get one or more startups, let them use it, and report on the quality of their hires, then an article about their experience will have an entirely different value.