Ask HN: How should I attract people towards my launch page
Me and couple other friends are working on a venture that fixes problems experienced in Daily deal websites by customers and the merchants.
We do this by: 1. Letting the customer simply login and download the deal, without paying for it. They simply pay for the deal directly to the merchant when they avail the deal 2. Letting the merchant be in the driving seat by not waiting on the website to provide a check when the deal runs out and by not taking a huge cut from every deal
We've done some market research on the topic and feel that there might be a market for this kind of a product from both Merchants and Customers point of view. Merchants not willing to try existing deal sites because of huge share from every transaction and depending on the site to provide them a check and Customers have nothing to lose by simply getting the deal and only paying for it when they avail it.
While we are 3ish weeks away from launching the site we decided to create a launch page to help spread the word, however, we are not sure as to what more should we be doing to make the page go "viral". We've provided enough information to entice the targeted audience into putting their email address.
Should we be looking at something like google adwords?
6 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 29.1 ms ] threadYou'd be competing against savvier people with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend and a much better monetization strategy. This does not historically suggest winning auctions.
I wouldn't describe yourself as fixing a problem experienced in daily deals websites, since neither typical merchants nor typical customers have a problem with daily deals websites. Merchants have a problem called "not enough customers", and customers have a problem "not enough money to buy what they want to buy" or "too much money, not enough amusing things to spend it on."
Talk about how you address those problems. Ideally, right to the customer. Find a message which resonates, then put that on the website.
Anecdotally, your problems are probably going to be a chicken & egg scenario with no good deal inventory to start with, so if you had to overwork one side or the other, I'd give excessive effort to getting the merchants on board in your target city. (Almost every local site starts somewhere. This is probably a good idea. Steal it.)
Merchants have two complaints with daily deal sites (let's be honest, we are talking about Groupon for the majority):
-Groupon takes a huge cut, 50%
-Groupon customers are typically drive-by customers. Most merchants complain that they get few or no returning customers from a Groupon deal
Many merchants have been burned by Groupon and have publicly stated they won't be doing it again.
One of the cofounders of this site and this is exactly our thought process of today's Groups sites. For these 2 reasons if the merchants don't offer deals because they get burned from the huge cut, they won't have a reason to come back with other deals. Consumers won't have a reason to come back with out a deal (Unless they like the place that much).
Perhaps "fixing a problem" are strong words, we should say "making it easy". We were planning to give more effort to getting the customers putting in their email address (showing interest) and then us taking that "backing up" to the merchant(s) to tell them about us. But getting a different perspective, you are correct, we should spend time towards getting the merchants on board.
Do you see value in letting the customers get the deal they want without any charge and the freedom of paying for it only when they avail it? AND on the other hand letting the merchant be happy by not significantly cutting into their profit share and not waiting for their money from the deal site?
Or are the above points not significant enough to be considered different from 100 other deal sites that are out there.
It's probably not going to work like that. Customers won't sign up until you have deals. Merchants won't come to you until you have customers. You'll have to start by hustling together some good launch deals, and your pitch will probably need to include the line "we'll buy you traffic if you put a deal on our site". Until you launch (with real, awesome deals) your launch page is only there to avoid the total legitimacy fail of a potential merchant typing in your url and getting... nothing at all. Don't bother with adwords.
Hope that helps!
Also, since users will be able to just get the deal w/o paying, we're adding a 'tipping point' feature on initial deals. Meaning users will be able to "get" their deal but they'll only be able to see/print it once they influence 2 or 3 other people from a special link.