Instagram just sold to Facebook for 1 BILLION dollars. I’ve captured their landing page at http://instagram.com so it can be studied further before Facebook gets their hands on it.  What makes this the perfect landing page for a billion dollar company?

Lets walk through the image I’ve marked up here:

(Click for full size version)

Starting from the top left corner where most users eyes will go first…

1. If you can highlight a great price… do it.  Who doesn’t LOVE free? Right away this says “Anyone can join this party”.

2. A great visual that answers “what” questions.  A phone with rotating images of the app. Says right away that you need a smartphone and that this is an App I’m selling you on.

3. Memorable logo that helps explain the product.  You’ll notice that everything on this page is designed to help explain the value proposition… right down to the logo. It’s a straightforward old-timey camera with some color for flare.

4. A tagline that sells their mantra or vision.  You’ll see the words “fast”, “Beautiful” and “Fun” several times along with similar words like “Easy” and “sharing”.  It’s straight out of the Steve Jobs school of presentation by repetition.  They took their vision and explained it 4-5 ways on this page.

5. A concise product description that both sells AND educates.  Nothing worse than not knowing what you are going to get. This description is also your help manual that tells you exactly how you use the app.  Again… a page straight out of Apple ads that educate as well as sell.

6. Clear calls to action for downloads.  Not only do the App store logos stand out because they are the only non-colorful things on the page… the pricing tag and images on the phone will also lead to a download.  It’s hard to click on this page and NOT end up downloading the app.

7. Repetition of the price… “Did we mention it’s free”… in case someone read that far.

8. It’s all above the fold. In fact the very bottom of the page doesn’t go more than 600 pixels from the top.  Enough for grandma to still see most of it with 6 different browser toolbars installed on her Windows XP netbook.

9. Great examples.  The words “Meet Instagram” are right next to two great example screenshots. Again… another way to focus on what you get out of the product.

10. Links for the 1%. There are links at the bottom for the 1% of people that need to know more.  But they don’t take up any of the primary real estate. You have to work a bit to find them.

I’m not saying you can’t sell for 1 billion dollars without a great landing page… but it sure helps. What’s great about this example is that on the surface it looks like they skimped on their web site. But the reality is that they:

A. Didn’t need a great web site because their focus was on mobile.

B. A lot of effort clearly when into this landing page through thoughtful copy and design.  The same attention to detail in their app is excuded in this “packaging”… yet another page out of the Steve Jobs era Apple.

So, go on, go forth and create the next billion dollar landing page.  But when you do… remember that KickoffLabs only asks for a small fraction of that valuation.

- Josh

The Second Conversion

Okay, so you got someone to your site, they signed up for your beta, and they’ve even started using it. Woo hoo! Success, right?

Hold your horses, cowboy…

While it’s certainly good that people are taking an interest in your start-up, you’ve overlooked a critical element of the conversion process: Getting referrals.

Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing available to you. Think about when a friend or colleague whose opinion you value recommends something to you…

How much more likely are you to act on that recommendation? It could be for a new movie, a local restaurant, or a car dealership. That third-party endorsement from a happy user you trust carries a lot of weight.

It’s the difference between a runaway blockbuster smash hit and a fizzer that spends one weekend at the box office before being quietly shuttled to DVD purgatory.

I don’t want that to happen to your great idea so…

What are you doing to get the users of your product or service telling their friends?

Here are seven tips to increase the likelihood of your users putting the word out on your behalf.

1. Make it easy to share

You need social share buttons in obvious – but non-obtrusive – places and the actual process needs to be smooth as silk or it’s all over. No one is going to jump through hoops to tell the world about you, but if you’re truly remarkable and you make it easy for people to spread the word, they will!

2. Create a “mission” your customers can get involved in

We all yearn to be part of something meaningful, worthwhile and bigger than ourselves.

So let’s say your goal is to get 10,000 customers by next month. Tell your customers; if they like you and the way you’ve positioned your cause, they’re very likely to help you achieve your goal – or at least go a long way to doing so.

3. Send a personal thank you note

At the very least, email anyone you notice sharing the love and genuinely thank them! If you have their mailing address (because they’re a customer), hand write a personal note from you, the Founder, and pop it in the post. Do you think that would have a positive impact?

4. Find out why people aren’t sharing your message

Reach out to your first 1,000 customers personally and find out if they’ve told anyone who might be interested. If not, find out what it would take to get them to do so.

This might sound rather tedious, but you’ll learn very decisively what you need to do (or do better) to earn this kind of recommendation organically. The fact is, most of what you do to get your name out there will fail whereas we both know personal recommendations work. So tedious it might be, but it’s also a very effective way to uncover things about your market you probably don’t yet realize.

5. Reward referrals resulting in conversions

Hundreds of thousands of companies use refer-a-friend rewards programs and you can, too. An example is how Netflix adds free months to your account when you sign up a friend using your unique referral code.

Yes, it requires specialized programming skills – or the willingness to outsource the job to a reliable web developer – but the return on investment could potentially be very large if a lot of people get on board and start recommending your product or service.

6. Run a referral contest

A variation of the previous tip is to hold a tell-a-friend contest, where the customer who generates the most referrals (paid or trial, that’s up to you) within a designated time period wins a prize. Make the prize relevant to your customers’ interests as well as worth the effort. A common prize for these kinds of competitions at the moment is an iPad.

7. Don’t stop selling!

Be sure to keep extolling the benefits of your product or service to your existing customers. Remind them every week what tremendous value they’re getting and all the ways their life is now easier as a result… “And, uh, by the way, shouldn’t you be telling all your friends about this unparalleled awesomeness? Yes, you’re right; you should! Here’s how…”

So the basic thrust is to focus on treating your first wave of customers like royalty, making sure they receive truly remarkable service and reaching out to them personally; make it easy for people to share the message; remind people regularly without being obnoxious; and then start working on how to scale that and amplify your communication using the voice of your happy customers.

Premium or forgettable?

It’s no secret that word of mouth comes from exceptional customer experience. Surely, you don’t recommend things to your friends which are “just okay” or “alright, I guess”.

What kind of recommendation is that?

So in order to get your customers to rave about your product or service to their friends, family, colleagues, blog readers, etc. you need to not be forgettable. Actually, you need to do even better than that: You have to deliver a premium experience every time.

The difference between a premium experience and one you forget about is the difference between successful word of mouth that builds your business year on year versus just keeping your head above water no matter how good your actual product is.

The good news is that most businesses aren’t willing to go the extra mile. They’re content to sit in the “average-to-good” Customer Experience Zone, making it much easier for you to give your customers the premium experience they crave.

Here are a few examples of premium versus forgettable customer experience:

1. Minimising inconvenience

Take an auto-repair shop. Which of these is the premium experience and which one is forgettable?

a. While your car is being fixed, you’re given a late-model loan car which is actually better than your own.

b. While your 6-Series BMW is being fixed, you’re given a Ford Focus with 110,000 miles on the clock.

2. Quality versus quantity

Let’s take smartphones as an example:

a. Beautifully packaged, pristine new iPhone with a few high quality bundled apps.

b. Android phone with custom carrier UI and three dozen bundled trial apps, most suck, and the others are spam-ware.

3. Respecting your time

Delivery windows are something that make me crazy. Consider these two:

a. Having your new refrigerator delivered and installed exactly within the 30-minute window you were given.

b. Being told by a customer support person in a remote call centre that delivery times are some time between 7am and 4pm. Just wait for them.

These kinds of premium experiences are not accidental. They’re precisely the things that will make your business stand out from your competitors. You’ll have happier customers and you’ll get more referrals.

How can you apply this to your business over the year ahead? Make a list of things that are currently under par or just average. Then work out how you can make them exceptional, premium experiences that your customers will rave about.

Your comments are very welcome.

- Josh

P.S. Above all else, meet your brand promises. If you don’t get that right, everything else is just window-dressing. For instance, we say “Landing Pages in 60 Seconds”… and we mean it. If it actually took 20 minutes, people would call us out. So focus on the core things first. Make the customer experience in those areas 100% premium. Even if you do just that, you’ll be a step ahead of some of your competitors!

No price, no value

Starting out completely free with the idea (or hope) of eventually changing to paid model is a major mistake.

If you plan on charging for your product or service, here are four good reasons to do so from the very beginning:

1. You Avoid Setting Poor Expectations

When you start out completely free – with no inkling that you’ll one day start charging – you’re undermining the value of your offering. People don’t value free. We love free. We just don’t value it very much, if at all.

When you’re giving away the farm, you’re sending the message – both directly and indirectly – that there’s not enough value there to put a price on.

What’s worse is that people are also going to come to the conclusion (rightly or wrongly) that your product or service mustn’t be very good quality. They’ll figure that if it were, you’d be charging for it, wouldn’t you?

2. You’ll Uncover Your “Real” Target Market

The people who aren’t willing to pay for what you offer aren’t your target market. Plain and simple.

How can you test response to a concept or headline or package deal or anything else if you’re not presenting your marketing efforts to your real target audience?

Sure, you might be able to get thousands of free members or subscribers, but what if none of those people go on to buy when you switch to the paid model? What then? It means you’ve been spending your time and money talking to the wrong group of people.

Far better to present your value proposition as convincingly as you can (see this post for a vital tip in this area) and find out who will actually pay for it. Then communicate with those people, find out more about them, their needs, the obstacles they’re looking to overcome, and so on. Then use that insight to further refine your communications to that audience – in a positive feedback loop.

3. You Can Provide Proper Support

There’s a double-edged sword to consider when it comes to getting more users of your product or service: Support.

You see, the more people who take up your offer, the more support you’re going to have to provide. And providing that support obviously costs money. Most businesses operating on the free model simply aren’t built to scale support. How can they if they’re not making any money? That venture capital can only stretch so far and most users expect better support – yes, even for a free product/service.

So the equation here is simple: Charging from the start… equals ability to scale quality support as more users come on board… equals satisfied users who continue to use your product/service and are likely to tell others about it.

4. You’ll Build Trust

Or, rather, avoid eroding trust forever by doing a “bait’n'switch” manoeuver. What this means is if your service was free and now it’s suddenly $10 per month, people are going to be highly sceptical no matter how you try to “justify” your decision.

Now, there will, of course, be readers of this blog post who’ll argue “The original free accounts should remain free. So where’s the problem?”

The problem is in how you’re going to be perceived in the market. People who were thinking about joining and didn’t now have to pay $10 per month – even though you never said anything about it changing from free to paid in the past.

Consequently, these people will probably be thinking

Will the price go up again? Are they just getting me in at $10 a month and once I’ve spent all the time and effort to integrate my business with their solution, are they then going to hike up the price? And will it go up every year after that? When will it ever stop?

Obviously you don’t want people asking those kinds of questions. So don’t put yourself in a position where they are.

The long and the short of it

Charging from beginning is a simple way to avoid devaluing your product or service, getting led astray by the wrong audience, running into problems with the scalability of support, and losing the trust of your target market.

By all means offer a free trial, but make sure you’re actually charging money in some form or another right out the gate. It’ll be much better for you in the long run.

- Scott