Turning my web presence into a Lean Experiment

I keep having people ask me “How’s the startup business?”, and since my job roles and tasks are so varied and many, I usually use this reply: “It’s a lot like standing in a field full of rabbit holes, and it’s my job to try to learn what each hole does, and how soon I should be jumping into it.”

This week’s rabbit hole is my web presence. I decided that I needed to jump back into that rabbit hole, because I came across a new lesson. Over on LinkedIn I found adamberk’s article on Mapping your Business Model Canvas to a Landing Page Experiment. And I spent some time thinking about the base hypothesis of my business, and how I could test it with a landing page experiment. So what is my base hypothesis? I believe that there is sufficient pressure from range anxiety in electric vehicle owners to justify building a business around range extending products.

So in terms of a Landing Page Experiment, and based on Adam’s description, I need to structure my page around: A Value Proposition, an ‘Ask’ or Action that the customer must take to prove the market pain, and evidence to demonstrate the value of my proposed solution. So I set to work on a re-write of my landing page, and simplified it down to just these specific needs. And in doing so, an interesting thing happens: I stop telling the customer what I think their problem needs, and I start listening to what the customer is really saying.

What I mean by that: I no longer actually list my product ideas on the webpage. Before I had spent hours designing and drawing 3D renders of product ideas with what I assumed the customer would want to buy. But as I started talking to more customers, I found many wanted something different than I proposed. When I put a picture in front of them, often they would focus on the problems of the picture, and not the actual need I am hoping to solve.

Now that my landing page is updated, I find it is much more compelling than the basic business and product page I had before. I answer more questions, without giving away the ability to learn from the experiment. Take a look:

Fēnix Power

-John Bysinger