Lessons
Class Introduction
10:37 2Why Most Entrepreneurs Fail
06:30 3Adopting a Mindset of Launch and Learn
05:10 4You Must Put Problems Before Solutions
16:15 5Establishing Your Skills
11:26 6Examples of Product/Service Ideas
21:03 7Know Your Tribe: Your Best Competitive Advantage
06:08 8Types of Research
14:41Method 1: Surveys & the Art of Asking
21:45 10Where to Find People for Research
05:53 11How to Analyze Your Findings
21:51 12Mind the Gap
17:19 13What Does Validation Mean?
06:44 14Anatomy of a Product Landing Page
13:32 15Creating a Landing Page with Instapage
28:25 16Connecting Your Landing Page to Your Email List
08:36 17Simple Design Tips
07:58 18Why Email is Crucial
03:14 19Email Demo with ConvertKit
10:53 20Connect Your Email List to Your Landing Page
05:06 21Email Demo Continued: Broadcast & Automations
16:23 22Spreading Word About Your Landing Page
19:16 23Nurturing Your Audience
09:17 24Next Steps
20:56Lesson Info
Simple Design Tips
Simple design tips. Hopefully some of these are clear now, but I just wanted to have a reference point for you to go back to. So I would try not to have more than three fonts. Again, there's no magical number, but I think just because fonts are available doesn't mean you should try and use all of them on your page. I see this often, and just keep it simple. I know there's a lot of fonts out there that look fun and cute and everything, but at the end of the day, they're not readable, or they're not as readable in mobile or something, so make sure you test all that out. Color schemes. We talked about this a little bit. Obviously make sure it's readable, make sure that you're not using too many colors. I think it's distracting. So you notice we had a theme. We had green, we had this yellowish color. I wouldn't try and use, you know, seven colors, as your brand. So don't do too many colors. Okay, make buttons look like buttons. Man, this is one I see all the time, where, did you notice our...
buttons were rectangles with rounded corners? It almost looks like you could grab it. You see a lot of these buttons online. Those are good buttons. Bad buttons, I should've made this, but a bad button for a lawnmowing business would be if we had a graphic that was a bunch of grass, like astroturf or lawn or flowers or something, and on that, made it say like click to get your lawn mowed or something. It just doesn't look like a button, so don't make your, don't make your buttons be cute graphics and things, just use the button. In Instapage there was a, an element that it said button, just use a button. It's kind of a pet peeve. I should've made the example though. Make your buttons look like buttons. Keep, or use the visuals to help your key points stand out. So as we went down one of those longer ones, we had the icons for payment, for scheduling, and other things, and instead of having three paragraphs about that, we were easily to, easily able to communicate that in just a couple of icons and one or two sentences, and then don't stray form the template. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands or you've done this a lot, I wouldn't really stray from the template, because, like I said, these companies that have these landing pages, they know what templates perform, and if a template's not performing it's not going to be there 'cause they want you to be a happy customer, and get your page with conversions, so they're in it. They have your back as well. In my photography website I also have ways to collect emails and do bookings, and my websites don't sound as welcoming, because I found that people book and if it doesn't say that they'll have to pay a deposit, that they actually have to commit to it, you know, they might drop off it. It's easy and fun to book, and then they, there's no monetary value attached to that, they might just forget about it, not show up. So I actually make ways for them to commit to it by paying a deposit, or by telling them that they, if I show up and they're not there, they have to sign a contract, but that takes away from having welcoming landing pages. So what's the balance that you found for that? Sure. So that's a great point because if you are in business, you don't want to scare people away by mentioning the money and things like that, but at the end of the day, you are a business, so you need to make sure you get paid. There's nothing worse than having someone schedule an appointment with you and not show up. So, what I would do is, I think it sounds like you maybe need to look at the rest of your website and figure out how do you make the, kind of main area, maybe the page that is not about booking. Make that more friendly and then on that booking page, I might use language, I'm just completely making this up, but saying like, "We really respect our time "and we want you to respect our time too, "so in order to do that, we really ask for a 20% deposit "or something to show your commitment to this." If you kind of frame it like that, rather than saying like, "You must pay a 50% deposit." You can create a little story around we respect your time, you respect our time, we ask you give us a deposit, or have language about some type of penalty. You could say, "You know, If you don't show up "for your appointment, by booking your session, "that's like a virtual contract." if you will. I'm not a lawyer. But that you're still going to owe us this percent. But I think it's really framing, you know, how you talk about that deposit or the payment on that billing page for people. Does that help? And I would also follow it up in any email people receive too, to remind them, and maybe even you could automatically send that invoice, depending on what software you use to try and get that deposit up front as soon as possible, yeah. What really struck me about the landing page, was that simplicity of just the one benefit or two, and I'm always the person who wants to over explain, and so how do we get over, how do we determine, or get over that idea of we need to explain everything that this is going to be Yeah. Without, so that they, so that they do want more info? Right, so I think. Without being too big. Right, so get on the road, you know, if we find we get all these emails for our lawnmowing thing, and then it's, we've been successful for a year, we're definitely gonna have a website that is more detailed, that does go into more of the features and tell people all these things. Why? Because we want to be out there mowing lawns. We want our website to be like an employee of our company and be answering all the questions so we don't have to pay some customer service person to be doing that and answering emails that answer those questions. So there will be a time and place to do that, but I think that if you struggle with figuring out what's the one thing that I really want to emphasize, you really have to go back to the research and think what is the promise? What's the holy grail? And for the lawnmowing maybe it's like, have the lawn your neighbors envy, or have the best lawn on the block. For my course about portfolios it's, I can't remember, I think says something like, "Create an awesome UX portfolio", or "Create a portfolio that stands out." It those fill in the blanks that they probably already put in the survey. Even though you want to tell them about your organic lawn care products and these quiet whisper mowers you just bought from like Japan or something, and all these other things. Those are nice, but what people really really want is just that nice lawn, the envious lawn on the block, the beautiful lawn, the not dead lawn, whatever that one thing is. So think about that what that one thing is and sometimes it helps to get on the phone with a couple of people as well. I mentioned this earlier, but it's one thing to read about those answers when you can also hear or even in person see the body language between, be, for people explaining their problems, like if they're really wincing their face and things you'll know when they are getting to the biggest problem.
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Ratings and Reviews
Jacki
The immensely valuable information in these videos teach exactly how to validate, promote and sell product to your target audience. This course is a few years of marketing school nicely wrapped in the perfect course bundle for every type of business from entrepreneur to enterprise. I have a decade of marketing experience and learned new tricks to immediately use. Wantpraneurs will gain all the knowledge needed to get started with their new business idea in clear, do-able steps. If you are in dev, marketing, UX or business, or want to be, I strongly suggest this class to you.
Amie Kelson
I have taken several CreativeLive courses on how to start a business. This one has some of the best content and practical information on the "what" AND the "how" of validating your products. I highly recommend. The one thing I wish she would have gone into more depth on is how to find people for market research. She covers where to find them, but not enough detail about how to engage them. Even with that missing I would still highly recommend.
Elizabeth Arostegui
The course is really complete and interesting. She shared a lot of useful tools and techniques that can be applied.