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Comment by fookyong | Hacker News Reader

There is an ocean of difference between 14% of visitors committing their email address to something, and that same figure actually pulling out their credit card.

A more prudent assumption would be 10% of that 14% will actually pay for your product when it is launched.

I learned this first hand. Your mileage may vary of course, but it's incredibly easy to drive traffic and stimulate interest, enough that people will give you their email address or whatever other personal information you want. The moment you ask them to pay though, you're in another world in terms of conversions :) This MVP-type google ad testing doesn't really translate that well into real world data like purchase conversions. I don't think that's the point anyway.

It's good for seeing what people might be interested in, which is often something that startups aren't sure of :)

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I agree with you. Maybe a good idea would be to ask for a credit card, but not to charge it. I think this borders on being illegal though.

I am still pretty happy with 10%, since this was my cut-off for going ahead and building the product.

Per fookyang, the conversion is just 1.4%.

In his book, I believe that Tim says that it's not illegal if you don't store a user's credit card information when selling a product that isn't fully-baked. But I agree that it is a bit shady...

"This product is currently in private beta. Enter your credit card details to guarantee your spot in the next phase of release. You won't be charged a cent until you get access"

Then do the authorize.net CC storage thing where you don't even need to worry about securing private details (pre-auth, don't capture payment till you have a product to sell).

Instead of asking for the credit card information (which does sound illegal), I've heard of others who have placed a "Buy Now"-type button on the landing page or fill out form fields just up to the credit card fields (say, for a multistep payment process). A user who clicks on "Buy now" or fills out the first part of the payment form is a pretty convincing datapoint.

I haven't tried any of this myself since it raises a big issue for me: Doing this makes a promise that you don't intend to keep (at that moment). If trust is what gets users to buy, isn't it counter-productive to violate a user's act of trust?

I'd like to get over this because I can see how experiments like this can be useful and I hope you'll keep us all posted with your success rate. Some things I'm curious to know are:

* How much time passed between your AdWords test and your MVP launch? * Of the emails captured, how many participated in the beta and eventually became paying users?

Best of luck!

I will definitely do a follow-up on this. It seems like there is quite a bit of interest in this type of testing. I will provide some numbers as soon as I have them.

What would it take to make you feel comfortable about it?

That's a good question. My reservations mostly have to do with this:

Of the emails captured, how many participated in the beta and eventually became paying users?

Which is really asking: Will those users really come back after you've broken that initial promise?

Other success stories say yes. And I speculate that there's a certain window of time that you need to deliver in to make it work.

There'll always be another question though, so I guess it can't hurt to just give it a shot.

About a month ago, I filled out an application/request with an NGO (Acumen Fund) about opening a local chapter where I live (Melbourne). My understanding that if they get enough requests, they'll try to get a local chapter going.

Now I got a response that they want to extend a 'special invitation' to use their 'to register on our brand new community site' where I can get involved and maybe new chapters will materialise.

The timing seems pretty convenient. I suspect that the request/suggestion form was really a list building excercise for the community site. It's a Ning. Those things need to cross a substantial chicken-egg hurdle before they are any use to anyone.

I admit, there was no blatant lie. It isn't really exactly the same thing. But it is sending out feelers & building email lists. They could have also put up a big 'join our community' button on the site that led to an 'sorry, under construction' page after you "sign up." Maybe they did. It was a little bit sneaky. I still joined & even started a group. I'm not angry with them. I'll even mention it to others.

BTW: http://community.acumenfund.org/

You can preorder several video games. But maybe it's illegal if you don't know yet if you're really going to build the product.

Maybe do a pre-order the way the do with video games sometimes? You'd have to be pretty serious about hitting the release date though. (And the customer would have to be pretty serious about buying your product.)

One real world example of this is https://www.fitbit.com/order If you try to order the Fitbit they say they will not charge your credit card until the item actually ships.

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