

Ask HN: I created a landing page to find potential customers. Any tips? - coderdude

Hello HN! I'm working on a startup that sells datasets from ongoing Web crawls. I detailed more of what I'm doing here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160408<p>I "tossed together" a landing page [ http://webscaled.com/ ] after reading an article on HN describing how the author met success selling e-books online. I'm trying to find <i>potential</i> customers now, mostly by tracking AdWords campaigns to see who is signing up for the newsletter.<p>Are there other ways that I can try to locate potential customers during this brief "landing page" period? Should I even attempt to contact other bloggers about my startup, or should I wait until the product is online?
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pedalpete
I'm actually at the same stage, so I can't offer too much advice, a few quick
things.

1) I like your design, company name, branding, etc. well done

2) I'd re-write 'marketplace for datasets of the Web's structure, like the
entire link graph (in chunks, of course)'. You didn't describe it that way in
this post, you just said 'datasets from ongoing web crawls'. That is WAY
easier to understand. I'd use that as a starting point. Just tell people what
it is that the site does, or more important, what it can do for them.

3) along with the previous remark, your keywords can use some work. use the
google adwords tool <https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal>.
you've got 'datasets' when in fact, 'dataset' has 10x as many searches. I'm
sure you can get better descriptors as well.

Keep up the good work!

~~~
coderdude
1) Thanks! That's always the best feedback. ;)

2 & 3) I really needed outside perspective on this. It's been difficult
verbalizing what I'm offering. I'm still working on the suggestions, but I've
updated the page with a (somewhat) better description and with researched
keywords.

Thank you for the feedback

~~~
pedalpete
Your description is getting better, but maybe somewhere have an example of
something somebody could do with your dataset. For instance 'have you ever
wanted to xyz on all the data from Acme company mashed with the data from
AcMeToo, but didn't have access to that mass of data? well, now you can with
Webscaled'...

Something like that. Also, check out <http://80legs.com/>, it seems like
you're in a very similar market, but that you are pre-building the crawlers.
They are a fairly well backed firm, so they've already put the time and money
into some of the messaging, so use them to give you some ideas.

~~~
coderdude
Good stuff here. :)

I'm going to work on some use cases and put them on the landing page. Thanks
again for your time.

------
il
If I hadn't read your previous HN post, I would have no idea what your site
does. It needs more descriptive content to clarify the immediate benefits of
your app.

If you're running it on Adwords, unless you want your campaign slapped in a
few days, you need: 1\. More text on page 2\. Privacy policy/ contact us on
bottom 3\. Basic SEO- top keywords in h1 tags or at least in text

~~~
coderdude
It certainly seems to lack enough description. I'm going to add a few bullet
points tonight that better describes the datasets I'm selling.

Thanks for the tip on Adwords. I'm going to add the privacy policy and a
contact form tonight as well to cover my bases.

I haven't been too concerned with SEO at this stage, mostly because the domain
is new, still sandboxed, and comprised of a single page. That is why I skimped
on the meta description, and Google basically ignores meta keywords anyway.

Thanks

------
jdrock
coderdude - I work at 80legs (<http://www.80legs.com>). Just messaged you via
your contact form. We should talk about a potential partnership. It would make
more sense to cooperate than to compete, as we are in the same market.

