Ask HN: Teaser page now or wait for launch? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Teaser page now or wait for launch?

22 pointsguynamedloren15 comments

Background: I've been working on building my first web application for a couple months or so. One-man show. I'm also learning Ruby on Rails - at the same time. I figure it's good practice to have an actual product to work on while I'm learning the language/framework, especially because this web app is one of the driving factors behind my desire to learn how to program. On top of that, I've got some decent design chops and I've put together what I consider to be a beautiful landing page (with signup, headline, brief desc, etc) as well as a basic user interface page.

As long as school doesn't throw my schedule off, I'm shooting to have a very respectable (beta) product launched by Jan 1, 2011 with all core features. I won't release with every single feature I've ever imagined - big fan of the "release early, release often" mantra. Other features will be pumped out after release. Freemium business model.

Question: Do I release a "teaser" page right now requesting emails from potential users, or do I just wait for the initial launch? The teaser page would be designed in the likeness of the actual web app with header, info, product description, etc but would have a field requesting emails instead of a signup button (is there an actual term for this type of page?). If I do decide on a teaser page prior to launching, how early is acceptable?

I see pros and cons of both approaches, and would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Put it up now. Text on the Internet (and links to it) starts the clock against Google not hating your bones. Keep your mailing list "warm" with a monthly email about e.g. the problem space. Cross post the email to the site.

Good ideas - I appreciate the input. Another thought - do I request emails for beta testers specifically? Or do I request emails from the average joe, go about beta testing via another route, then inform average joe on the launch after beta testing is complete?

If you have a countdown page I think you should put a form there that allows people to sign up for the beta and/or newsletter. That way the people who don't get to beta still receive updates.

Request emails from everyone; send out an email announcing the beta to each individual whose address you have collected.

Wow. These are all awesome ideas.

Get it up and checkout https://github.com/vinsol/Launching-Soon while you are at it; I've been meaning to use this, or a similar gem, on my next project. Don't spend a lot of time on it, which is were the gem comes in, you'll be wanting to take it down ASAP.

SEO, audience building, and email gathering are key here. If you don't have a blog, start one, and just chat about things in the space. Comment on other people's blogs too, don't run around self-promoting at this point. Starting an app at day 0 with 20 followers is about a bazillion times easier than having none.

Forget launching. You're just leading yourself up to this amazing day that... may not be so amazing.

Put it up. Then email your subscribers when you have an MVP. Slowly, hopefully, the word will get out.

And by the date you'll have originally launched, you'll already have an active user-base!

I may have explained my goals incorrectly in the original post. The idea is to build a product with a set of core features that I have determined will make up the MVP[1]. When these features are complete, the MVP will uploaded to public space known as the internet. Period. Regardless of the date. The date exists as kind of a personal deadline - a form of self motivation. I'm pretty sure the app will be done and ready before then. I haven't worked it up to be some amazing, victorious day. Not into that kinda thing.

My question is simply - do I put a placeholder page and start taking emails today, or put up nothing at all until the MVP is complete?

[1]There are not a lot of these core features - like 4 or 5. Honestly, a decent programmer could probably build all of the functionality in a week. It's a dead simple app.

Couldn't agree more about putting it up now. It's such a minimal resource commitment, and you get to leverage any traffic/press with an incredibly valuable resource: interested users!

We got 400 beta users from a tech-crunch mention on a pretty minimal "teaser" beta page. Even though we lost some momentum by not being able to launch immediately with those users, it's been great to release waves of beta invites as we iterate.

Wow, impressive - you made it on TechCrunch with just a teaser page? How did they even have enough content to write about you? That's some good hype over a teaser!

It would be awesome if I could do the same, but I am worried that the teaser page won't really do the product justice, unless I outline all of the core features - which I'm a bit hesitant to do. I probably shouldn't be hesitant, but I am anyway.

Do you have a screenshot of your teaser, or can you describe what kind of info you included?

Put up a page now. Someone actually made a project specifically for collecting emails on a teaser page but i cant remember the name, perhaps someone can help me out.

It also worth exploring a test adwords campaign to see how much interest you can get to validate your idea, it also helps build buzz.

Along the lines of testing, you can do no better than Performable (http://performable.com) for A/B testing of landing pages. Also, read their blog. It answers OP's question, and so many more.

As for collecting emails on a landing page, MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com) is the best service I can think of for capturing emails in a CAN-SPAM-compliant fashion and look good while doing it. Campaign Monitor (http://campaignmonitor.com) is pretty good, too.

Thanks for the advice. I would love to see that project if anyone can find a link.

As for idea validation, I'm not sure how necessary that is in this case. No new technology or space-age innovation here. My idea is ridiculously simple and has been done a thousand times over, in one way or another. There is a huge market, but I think the big players are doing it all wrong. I'm borrowing a piece of advice from 37signals to "underdo the competition". As a consumer, I absolutely hate all of the current options in this app space (too complicated, too ugly, too many useless features, etc) so I've decided to go about building my own app to meet my own needs. I'm operating under the assumption that there must be at least somebody else out there with needs on par with my own needs. Worst cast scenario is that I end up as the only and a hell of a lot more coding experience than I started with (zero). Which would be totally okay with me.

The OP is using Rails, so probably the easiest solution would be to use https://github.com/johngrimes/t-minus.

collect email addresses.

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