Ask HN: Review my landing page, cowriter.co
Link: www.cowriter.co
Some background:
Me and my team launched CoWriter during a 24 Hour Startup Challenge. Within 3 days we had over $5000 in sales, from there we kept growing mostly from word of mouth. At this point we are at approximately $20,000 in pre-orders but have completely stalled out.
We ran some facebook ads and while they did bring traffic in we got no addition pre-orders from this.
Currently when users visit the site, over 90% of them don't even scroll down the page. They just read the top part and leave pretty quickly. At this time I am considering putting the video explainer at the very top.
I am a developer, not a marketer. I am open to any and all advice. I know there is demand for this product I just am not sure how to reach our audience.
PS: The video on the page is being replaced by a more professional one with a voice over. We are hoping this will help.
4 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 19.3 ms ] threadOn my laptop, the call to action fills the screen from top to bottom. The Facebook, Twitter, etc. links signal a footer. The first time I visited, I didn't realize there was more if I scrolled down.
"Join the WriterVerse" may be a better call to action than "Say Goodbye to Writer's Block". The times I pathologize my non-writing as writer's block are pretty rare. The times I look to connect with other people are common.
Are there really thousands of authors? I don't see evidence. Is that really a selling point? One or two people who care seems like a better value proposition. That's something that could be done in a non-scaling way by founders.
This looks like a chicken and egg problem. Charging for a pre-launch is tough. Once I am paying, why should I review other people's work.
It seems like publishing is beyond a minimum viable product. What's the evidence for expertise?
My advice: Limit the scope. Make a few users happy. Build a community. Skip the growth hacking.
Good luck.
Fixed the call to action so it now shows you are supposed to scroll down.
Changed the call to action as well. Thanks for that. It does sound a lot better. :)
We do have thousands of authors, but I am not sure how to show evidence of that. I will remove it and just keep the testimonials of the 3 authors/publishers on the page.
I know charging for pre-launch is tough, but the grid succeeded so we were trying to do the same to see if we could manage it. We would rather not need a investment.
The publishing functionality is already built in. We take the stories that are written on our website and convert them to ePub, PDF, HTML, and Mobi automatically. This gets hosted on a special page and allows for the author to sell the book right there. No hassle. I suppose we could hold off the feature, but it feels like that's why most people would buy in. We do have an author & publisher on board as consultants.
Thanks for the advice. I will definitely start working on building the community we can always add our features in as we get users instead of launching with them all in.
e.g. on front page:
Writers -> Writers'
comma between writers and and
Features page
With CoWriter you can -> comma before "you"
under Collaborate - comma between chat and or
etc. etc
I'm sort of hyperobservant of typos, so the average user may be fine with it.