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I don't have one yet. Still working that out! I am certainly monitoring this thread with a lot of interest. My approaches and results so far: - Email marketi

I don't have one yet. Still working that out! I am certainly monitoring this thread with a lot of interest. My approaches and results so far: - Email marketing. This was done by identifying businesses in the local area (roughly 1,000 of them) and just churning through contacting them, ideally with the name of the owner sourced from their website. Result: literally not a single response or conversion. - Posting to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with tutorials, news, offers about my product every 3 days. Result: also zero. I should note that I have never had a social account before this, so I have no existing networks of friends and family to rely on. - Talking about my product on Hackernews. Result: hundreds of page views and 4 free trial signups. Nice! Finally something. - Reddit posts: tens of page views, no signups, so far as I can tell. I have a few more routes, like paid for advertising, but I am honestly trying to do this all at a cost as close to 0 as possible (FWIW, I'm paying about £10 a month for my VPS and Cloudflare workers, that's it) The product is a static website builder that's supposed to be much easier to use than WordPress, mostly cheaper and also super usable on mobile (which is rare I believe). https://pinkpigeon.co.uk https://pinkpigeon.co.uk if you're curious, and apologies for the self promotion.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
I assume you're identifying businesses to contact by those that don't have websites, or have bad ones? If so, what if in addition to offering subscriptions to your product, you offered website design services (can be easily offloaded) along with that subscription? That way, they get a site built for them, but they can do the updates themselves.
- PinkPigeon 5y ago
  Thanks for the input! We do actually offer that as well. And at pretty darn competitive rates (because we can build sites very quickly), but have not had any interest from that angle yet either. Yes, we've contacted businesses which have terrible / no websites. But it's surprisingly tricky getting people out of the mindset of "I hate my current website setup, so all website setups must be terrible"
owenversteeg 5y ago
I worked on a website builder of my own a while back. I had a similar issue of finding customers and eventually shut the thing down. The problem is that there’s just too much good competition, so you really have to distinguish yourself in a big way. There’s also a network effect I didn’t anticipate - people want to use the popular service, or the one their friend recommended. Your product is unfortunately not the type of thing that’s compared side by side to alternatives - if it was, your features would matter more. But they don’t, because that’s not how people decide to use these types of services. If I were you I’d find a small target market and go crazy with that group. Maybe make it a website builder for only doctors or something. Get your target group to love it and recommend it amongst themselves, and then you can grow from there. Just being another website builder in a sea of website builders, though - that’s tough. I’ve tried that and I wouldn’t recommend it. It can work if you’ve got a massive marketing budget, or are head and shoulders above the competition, or have VC dollars, but it doesn’t seem like you have those on your side. Good luck with whatever you do! My email’s in my profile if you have any ideas or questions.
- PinkPigeon 5y ago
  Hey thanks so much for the input. Yes, you have hit upon many points I am aware of. I knew what I was getting myself into when making yet another website builder. Thankfully I can run the thing almost for free, which allows me to play the long game, if I want to, anyway. We differentiate on a few different metrics. It's certainly a much easier to use product than other website builders out there. I think our module-based approach is reasonably unique too. So is the quality of our documentation. The thing is, and that was one of your central points, website builders are not compared side by side. I am thinking of making some content that does this, which may also help. I'll give you a shout via email to talk more in depth.
aquark 5y ago
Your effort here is admirable, but I think you have chosen a very hard market to make an impact in. Some hopefully constructive feedback: Who is your target customer? A small business owner without a website? In which case listing features like "Cloudfare CDN" and "DDoS protection" won't resonate with them at all. A couple of other things that jumped out from the pricing page: * 10,000 for submissions a month is pretty meaningless: if 10,000 people a month are interested in my business I am motivated to spend a lot more than £7.99 to capture and process them. Either make the limits really small to feel like a limit, or just say unlimited. * support responses in 5 days ... this would be a red flag regardless of price. As a small startup the one thing you can offer is exceptional support (since you don't have many customers to offer it too!). If it takes off lower the expectations, but I'd suggest 1 day even for the lowest plan should be doable (and if not raise the price...) A business owner doesn't really want a website builder at all, they want a website: lead more with your 'custom websites' page. If £199 is too much of a hurdle for them then realistically they aren't going to be a great customer anyway. Maybe offer a couple of business a free website to have some real world referable examples. If you are targeting website designers (which are probably an easier to identify market) then focus more on the builder itself, maybe stressing the mobile friendly side (though I don't really see how that helps me if I am a designer ... I won't try and work from my phone). Good luck!
- PinkPigeon 5y ago
  > Your effort here is admirable, but I think you have chosen a very hard market to make an impact in. Yup, I like to think I was always quite realistic about the chances of succeeding in this market (mind you, my definition of success is reaching a few hundred customers, not millions, haha). Wordpress and Squarespace are incredibly entrenched and their marketing makes it seem like there are no alternatives, but there are. Discoverability is the main issue. > Who is your target customer? A small business owner without a website? In which case listing features like "Cloudfare CDN" and "DDoS protection" won't resonate with them at all. This is a very good point and I have struggled with this. If you were a dev who wanted to re-sell and make websites for others with my system, you could. If you were a business and wanted me to build your site, well, I offer that as well. If you wanted to do it yourself, business or not, then you could, too. The problem is, I don't know which of these routes could work. So I don't want to commit to either of these branches. At the same time, offering them all waters down the proposition. > * 10,000 for submissions a month is pretty meaningless: if 10,000 people a month are interested in my business I am motivated to spend a lot more than £7.99 to capture and process them. Either make the limits really small to feel like a limit, or just say unlimited. Good point, I think I might make them unlimited. > * support responses in 5 days ... this would be a red flag regardless of price. As a small startup the one thing you can offer is exceptional support (since you don't have many customers to offer it too!). If it takes off lower the expectations, but I'd suggest 1 day even for the lowest plan should be doable (and if not raise the price...) Another very good point. I think I wanted to play it safe here. Is it better to commit to a turnaround time at all? Or is it easier to just say 'exceptional support', which I am indeed aiming to provide (and I think there aren't many situations where it would take me 5 days to respond. It's much more likely to be same-day), or is that too vague? > A business owner doesn't really want a website builder at all, they want a website: lead more with your 'custom websites' page. If £199 is too much of a hurdle for them then realistically they aren't going to be a great customer anyway. Maybe offer a couple of business a free website to have some real world referable examples. I have done that actually. Still no responses. I have a feeling that email marketing is not the way to go these days. > If you are targeting website designers (which are probably an easier to identify market) then focus more on the builder itself, maybe stressing the mobile friendly side (though I don't really see how that helps me if I am a designer ... I won't try and work from my phone). The mobile angle came from the fact that a fair number of business owners (n=10) have told me that, if they were to update their website at all, they would be doing it after work hours, which is when they are on the sofa with their phone or tablet. They don't want to sit at the computer / desk after already doing that all day in the office. So, making the whole thing work on mobile seemed like a useful differentiator over Wordpress or Squarespace, as they certainly don't work on phones (tablets are better). Thanks for all this advice, it really helps to get outside perspectives on this stuff. I can see that positioning is my biggest challenge for now.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
You identified you're niche wrong, i think. Your description is literally targeted for developers and your landing page too. Local businesses that already have a website, don't need another one. Agencies use their own tools for site creation and are hard to convince. ( I suppose the email marketing was targeted to all businesses)
- PinkPigeon 5y ago
  Hey, thanks for the response. > You identified you're niche wrong, i think. Your description is literally targeted for developers and your landing page too. That's a good point. Being a dev myself, I probably projected what I'd care about a bit too much. > Local businesses that already have a website, don't need another one. This is an interesting one. When I initially started researching businesses, I found about 1,000 of them, with terrible Wordpress sites. I'd say about 100 of them have updated their sites ever since. Which means some businesses do indeed look for, find and then go with a company to update their site. > Agencies use their own tools for site creation and are hard to convince. Yup, not going after them. My target market is (was supposed to be) small businesses with terrible Wordpress sites, or no websites at all. I may rethink the positioning a bit though, as these comments have been very helpful in elucidating some issues with it. Thank you very much :)
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    Of the 10% that get a new website, do you have any metric where they change supplier? ( Would be manual labor probably) Positioning as an agency tool is possible ( white label) Simplifying your landing page and categorize niches is also possible ( Business owner, developer, agency, ... ) I think the repositioning could be done by focusing on sites with a bad mobile UI. Ps. Don't forget that rl interaction improves conversion.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago

I assume you're identifying businesses to contact by those that don't have websites, or have bad ones? If so, what if in addition to offering subscriptions to your product, you offered website design services (can be easily offloaded) along with that subscription? That way, they get a site built for them, but they can do the updates themselves.

PinkPigeon 5y ago
Thanks for the input! We do actually offer that as well. And at pretty darn competitive rates (because we can build sites very quickly), but have not had any interest from that angle yet either. Yes, we've contacted businesses which have terrible / no websites. But it's surprisingly tricky getting people out of the mindset of "I hate my current website setup, so all website setups must be terrible"

owenversteeg 5y ago

I worked on a website builder of my own a while back. I had a similar issue of finding customers and eventually shut the thing down. The problem is that there’s just too much good competition, so you really have to distinguish yourself in a big way. There’s also a network effect I didn’t anticipate - people want to use the popular service, or the one their friend recommended. Your product is unfortunately not the type of thing that’s compared side by side to alternatives - if it was, your features would matter more. But they don’t, because that’s not how people decide to use these types of services. If I were you I’d find a small target market and go crazy with that group. Maybe make it a website builder for only doctors or something. Get your target group to love it and recommend it amongst themselves, and then you can grow from there. Just being another website builder in a sea of website builders, though - that’s tough. I’ve tried that and I wouldn’t recommend it. It can work if you’ve got a massive marketing budget, or are head and shoulders above the competition, or have VC dollars, but it doesn’t seem like you have those on your side. Good luck with whatever you do! My email’s in my profile if you have any ideas or questions.

PinkPigeon 5y ago
Hey thanks so much for the input. Yes, you have hit upon many points I am aware of. I knew what I was getting myself into when making yet another website builder. Thankfully I can run the thing almost for free, which allows me to play the long game, if I want to, anyway. We differentiate on a few different metrics. It's certainly a much easier to use product than other website builders out there. I think our module-based approach is reasonably unique too. So is the quality of our documentation. The thing is, and that was one of your central points, website builders are not compared side by side. I am thinking of making some content that does this, which may also help. I'll give you a shout via email to talk more in depth.

aquark 5y ago

Your effort here is admirable, but I think you have chosen a very hard market to make an impact in. Some hopefully constructive feedback: Who is your target customer? A small business owner without a website? In which case listing features like "Cloudfare CDN" and "DDoS protection" won't resonate with them at all. A couple of other things that jumped out from the pricing page: * 10,000 for submissions a month is pretty meaningless: if 10,000 people a month are interested in my business I am motivated to spend a lot more than £7.99 to capture and process them. Either make the limits really small to feel like a limit, or just say unlimited. * support responses in 5 days ... this would be a red flag regardless of price. As a small startup the one thing you can offer is exceptional support (since you don't have many customers to offer it too!). If it takes off lower the expectations, but I'd suggest 1 day even for the lowest plan should be doable (and if not raise the price...) A business owner doesn't really want a website builder at all, they want a website: lead more with your 'custom websites' page. If £199 is too much of a hurdle for them then realistically they aren't going to be a great customer anyway. Maybe offer a couple of business a free website to have some real world referable examples. If you are targeting website designers (which are probably an easier to identify market) then focus more on the builder itself, maybe stressing the mobile friendly side (though I don't really see how that helps me if I am a designer ... I won't try and work from my phone). Good luck!

PinkPigeon 5y ago
> Your effort here is admirable, but I think you have chosen a very hard market to make an impact in. Yup, I like to think I was always quite realistic about the chances of succeeding in this market (mind you, my definition of success is reaching a few hundred customers, not millions, haha). Wordpress and Squarespace are incredibly entrenched and their marketing makes it seem like there are no alternatives, but there are. Discoverability is the main issue. > Who is your target customer? A small business owner without a website? In which case listing features like "Cloudfare CDN" and "DDoS protection" won't resonate with them at all. This is a very good point and I have struggled with this. If you were a dev who wanted to re-sell and make websites for others with my system, you could. If you were a business and wanted me to build your site, well, I offer that as well. If you wanted to do it yourself, business or not, then you could, too. The problem is, I don't know which of these routes could work. So I don't want to commit to either of these branches. At the same time, offering them all waters down the proposition. > * 10,000 for submissions a month is pretty meaningless: if 10,000 people a month are interested in my business I am motivated to spend a lot more than £7.99 to capture and process them. Either make the limits really small to feel like a limit, or just say unlimited. Good point, I think I might make them unlimited. > * support responses in 5 days ... this would be a red flag regardless of price. As a small startup the one thing you can offer is exceptional support (since you don't have many customers to offer it too!). If it takes off lower the expectations, but I'd suggest 1 day even for the lowest plan should be doable (and if not raise the price...) Another very good point. I think I wanted to play it safe here. Is it better to commit to a turnaround time at all? Or is it easier to just say 'exceptional support', which I am indeed aiming to provide (and I think there aren't many situations where it would take me 5 days to respond. It's much more likely to be same-day), or is that too vague? > A business owner doesn't really want a website builder at all, they want a website: lead more with your 'custom websites' page. If £199 is too much of a hurdle for them then realistically they aren't going to be a great customer anyway. Maybe offer a couple of business a free website to have some real world referable examples. I have done that actually. Still no responses. I have a feeling that email marketing is not the way to go these days. > If you are targeting website designers (which are probably an easier to identify market) then focus more on the builder itself, maybe stressing the mobile friendly side (though I don't really see how that helps me if I am a designer ... I won't try and work from my phone). The mobile angle came from the fact that a fair number of business owners (n=10) have told me that, if they were to update their website at all, they would be doing it after work hours, which is when they are on the sofa with their phone or tablet. They don't want to sit at the computer / desk after already doing that all day in the office. So, making the whole thing work on mobile seemed like a useful differentiator over Wordpress or Squarespace, as they certainly don't work on phones (tablets are better). Thanks for all this advice, it really helps to get outside perspectives on this stuff. I can see that positioning is my biggest challenge for now.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

You identified you're niche wrong, i think. Your description is literally targeted for developers and your landing page too. Local businesses that already have a website, don't need another one. Agencies use their own tools for site creation and are hard to convince. ( I suppose the email marketing was targeted to all businesses)

PinkPigeon 5y ago
Hey, thanks for the response. > You identified you're niche wrong, i think. Your description is literally targeted for developers and your landing page too. That's a good point. Being a dev myself, I probably projected what I'd care about a bit too much. > Local businesses that already have a website, don't need another one. This is an interesting one. When I initially started researching businesses, I found about 1,000 of them, with terrible Wordpress sites. I'd say about 100 of them have updated their sites ever since. Which means some businesses do indeed look for, find and then go with a company to update their site. > Agencies use their own tools for site creation and are hard to convince. Yup, not going after them. My target market is (was supposed to be) small businesses with terrible Wordpress sites, or no websites at all. I may rethink the positioning a bit though, as these comments have been very helpful in elucidating some issues with it. Thank you very much :)
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Of the 10% that get a new website, do you have any metric where they change supplier? ( Would be manual labor probably) Positioning as an agency tool is possible ( white label) Simplifying your landing page and categorize niches is also possible ( Business owner, developer, agency, ... ) I think the repositioning could be done by focusing on sites with a bad mobile UI. Ps. Don't forget that rl interaction improves conversion.