

Rethink your Startup Website: Make a Net, not a Funnel - edw519
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2012/04/build-a-net-not.php

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chrisacky
This is actually quite a useful technique yet equally unknown method of
figuring out product viability from your own user cohort.

The overall concept...

\- Not sure if a some FizzBuzz feature is required on your site?

\- Not sure if people are interested in your awesome newsletter series on Blue
Widgets?

\- And in any event, after you've created FooBar... What will the take up be
if you add it to your site?

Well, before you spend 4 days coding your new and exciting product, only to
find out that no one actually wants to use it... do some market research on
your own visitors!

How?

Easy... put the feature on some of your sites pages and purposefully 404 it,
and when they click through, record the event.

Just provide some message saying "Ooopsey, looks like we are having some
problems!".

Run the test until you are sure that either: it's working, or it's a total
flop.

Guess who's already doing this? TripAdvisor. Listen to Kaufer explaining how
at TripAdvisor they purposefully 404 their users into figuring out if
something is worth doing.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/founder-stories-
tripadvisor...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/founder-stories-tripadvisors-
kaufer-discusses-the-logic-behind-running-404-tests/)

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edash
This isn't an either / or decision for a company. It makes sense to create a
net if you're early in the lifecycle of a company or product—before it's
reached product/market fit. Once a startup has reached product/market fit,
however, creating a funnel and A/B testing the hell out of it is probably a
good idea.

To use an example from your post, now that you know what people are looking
for (and how they're behaving) on your paystub page, you can begin to tweak
the design, layout, and flow of that page to optimize whatever it is you want
to optimize.

With the above in mind, "make a net, not a funnel" is another way of saying
"don't optimize prematurely".

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hsuresh
>> Confused about how so many people could visit and still I was clueless
about what they wanted, I logged on to the Hacker News IRC channel and asked
the room "Can anybody help? I have a site I don't know what to do with."

There is a Hacker News IRC channel? Anyone know the details?

~~~
astrofinch
Google suggests it is #startups on irc.freenode.net

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wicknicks
How do people react to fake buttons? I'd suppose it makes them more annoyed.
Isn't that counter-productive? Or is it worth the risk?

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rs3123
In the article, OP wrote about Facebook: "They didn't want you to do anything
but what you wanted to do naturally, they just wanted to pay close attention
and help." Does OP or anyone else have specific examples of what Facebook did
in their early days?

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DanielBMarkham
Traditional A/B testing assumes that there is one goal, conversion, and you
tweak one thing at a time to reach that goal.

This has the same end-point, make something people want, but the methodology
is completely backwards. Cover all the bases, provide all kinds of chances for
users to do stuff, then figure out what your goal should be.

Interesting to see what some more experienced start-up guys think of this.

~~~
harlanlewis
I've most often seen this tactic in secondary products, with the goal of
learning from (hopefully) representative visitors in a way that doesn't risk
presenting an unfocussed core offering.

This sort of safety-zone data mining doesn't have to be limited to perfecting
your pitch, either. I don't have any inside info, but Massive Health's The
Eatery struck me as a very clever way to learn an awful lot about their
potential users for whatever they're really working on behind the scenes.

