My first product: Automating website design

Introductions
#1

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to be working on my very first own product: Landen (landen dot co)

I’ve been working as a digital product/developer/designer consultant for the last 3 years but now I’m trying to build my own product.

I’ve noticed a lot of repetitive work around landing pages, which follow a LOT of the same rules across a wide spectrum of products. There are of course tons of website builders already, but I wanted something where the customer doesn’t have to design anything themselves. Instead, I’m asking customers the same questions a designer would ask: whats your product? what information do you want to communicate? what kind of style do prefer? Landen then generates a landing page for you based on those preferences.

While it’s still in semi-private beta, Landen can already generate full functional responsive landing pages and you can edit them and host them on a subdomain or your own domain.

I would appreciate any feedback at all, you can try it now completely free (during the beta).

Cheers,
Felix

1 Like
#2

I think it looks really good!! Nicely done. I may do some landing page work soon so I’ll do a deeper dive with it if I do.

How are things going with the product?

#3

Looks good. However, it was not clear how exactly it works … no templates? Hmm.

I’d add a video or images of step-by-step example page creation. Or at least a few finalized pages for various types of businesses.

On the “What do you want to show to visitors?” page I’ve got stuck for a while not realizing I HAVE to select 3 pages. I even thought the site was broken until I noticed that small note about 3 pages. Make it much more prominent (probably updated with clicks) or better yet do not force the 3 pages rule. What if I only need 1?

When I click “Start Editing”, it asks me to sign-up. I just started to feel interested, I’m in the flow of editing - and you break it. Let me finish! Let me see a page that I 100% love - and then ask to register, because at that point I will not hesitate (or at least hesitate much less).

I was “listening” to my internal emotional “engagement gauge”, and your own home page was “meh” for me. However, when I’ve got to the first page of the design wizard, I felt interested - what if I do this or that, how will it look. It was like a game. So - dunno, but maybe you should have a landing page where you immediately tell the visitor - without any distractions, just otherwise a blank page - “This can be your landing page. Want to make some changes? Here’s a few magic buttons.” - and lead the prospect thru until they make a page they like. At that point they, methinks, would be much more inclined to sign up OR save the page (ever considered to let them download the generated page for some one time payment?)

1 Like
#4

Thanks for all this detailed feedback, Vlad.

I think you’re spot on with everything. Many of the things you mentioned are already on my list.

The pricing is one my biggest struggles. I am now thinking about a one-time page generation fee, and optional hosting with two tiers (simple & pro features). This seems to be the most flexible option but I’m worried it might confuse customers.

#5

Do you mean that generation fee in the same lineup as hosting is confusing? I agree.

I’d postpone the generation for later. And then I’d have a separate service where the same code generates the sites for download with corresponding changes in the copy.

#6

Not quite in the same lineup. The goal flow I was thinking of is as follows:

  1. generate site
  2. edit content & refine design (without signup)
  3. buy the site + updates for a year for $30-50
  4. you can now download it (and re-download edits)
  5. you can also buy basic hosting at ~$5 month or pro at ~$20

basic hosting would be

  • own domain
  • HTTPS
  • form handling: email & slack forwarding

pro would add:

  • A/B testing
  • email capture
  • conversion stats

In terms of the bigger picture, I would market it less as a “build your own website” and more as an alternative to hiring a designer/developer for a landing page.