60 Minute MVP

 45 Minute MVP Instructions

Today your team will launch a product! You’ll be creating a “Landing Page” – a simple, single-page website that:

1. Tells your customers about your product

2. Displays a video explaining your product

3. Tests whether people want your product

It’s important to note for this exercise:

DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT!

Push yourselves to complete all of the steps within the time limit. You’ll have an opportunity to go back and make tweaks later, the important thing is that you don’t spend a ton of time trying to get everything perfect the first time around.

Step 1: Break into Roles

To launch in 45 minutes, your team will need to split into specialized roles and work in parallel. You’ll need three Roles:

1. Landing Page Role: This person will create your website.

2. Pre-Order Role: This person will be in charge of testing whether customers                      want to  buy your product.

3. Video Role: This person will create an animated video about your product.

Decide who is going to do what and remember, no development or video production experience is required for any role, so take the one that feels most challenging – you’ll get the most out of it that way.

Step 2: Follow your Role’s Instructions

• Landing Page Role
• Video Role
• Pre-Order Role

Landing Page Role Instructions

You’re in charge of creating the website customers will learn about, and purchase, your product on. Most importantly, you’re responsible for:

• Marketing copy (aka words) used on the site
• Design of the site
• Integrate analytics (see note below)
• Helping your teammates incorporate their work into the site

Remember: done is better than perfect!

Here’s How:

1. Sign up for a free account on Wix.com

2. Watch the video above. It’ll show you exactly how to create your landing page.

3. Note: analytics integration isn’t included in the video above. To add analytics, simply:

1. Click to open the Visitor Analytics Wix Plugin
2. Click “Add to Site” in the top right corner
3. Follow the instructions

As Wix updates its user interface, you might see differences between what’s in the video and what you see.

Remember: done is better than perfect!

Pre-Order Role Instructions

You’re in charge of making sure customers can pre-order your product, so you can measure how many people want it. Here’s how:

1. Decide how you want to measure pre-orders
2. Follow the instructions in the pre-order setup video

Measuring Pre-Orders

Since your product doesn’t exist yet, you’ll want to sell “pre-orders” for it (i.e. accepting orders before the product is ready as a way to measure demand for a product and determining whether it’s worth producing at all).

There are two ways you can measure pre-orders:

• Credit card-based: customers provide their payment information ahead of time, but will only be charged if/when the product is delivered

• Email-based: customers provide just their email address indicating they are interested in a product

Email pre-orders are easier to set up, but they’re not the ideal approach because people will often provide their email address when pre-ordering, even if they have no intention of buying a product. The last thing you want to do is launch something, collect a ton of email addresses thinking that means people really want your product, and then create the product only to realize that very few people actually buy it.

To account for this, if you decide to use email-based pre-orders, you should assume on average that you’ll need to collect 20 email addresses before you generated one (1) actual sale.

The best way to tell if someone wants your product, is if they take out their wallet.

So your first job is to decide, what do you want to measure?

• Email pre-orders: where 20 email addresses demonstrate 1 sale (assuming 5% of the people who provide their email address are likely to buy)

• Credit card pre-orders: where 1 credit card number demonstrates 1 sale

Your next step is to implement your pre-orders.

Pre-Order Option #1: Email Addresses

Email addresses are the easiest form of validation to collect from your customers, but they also carry the least amount of weight in terms of validation.

While getting someone’s email address is a great step towards validating interest in your solution, it’s a far cry from collecting payment information. Just because they give you their email address, doesn’t mean they’ll pay for your product.

That said, it can often be advantageous to start off testing whether you can get email addresses from customers potentially interested in your product, and if you do, then switch over to asking for pre-orders.

To collect email addresses as your form of currency on your landing page, simply modify the contact form that your landing page team creates (it comes for free w/ Wix) – as illustrated in the video above.

Pre-Order Option #2: Credit Cards

The most difficult currency to acquire, but the most valuable and therefore most validating currency is a pre-order.

Pre-orders will allow you to gauge  forrojects, you’ll be able to test the market for your product before you launch it.demand your product before you spend the time and money building it. Like Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects, you’ll be able to test the market for your product before you launch it.

To sell pre-orders, you’ll use Foxy.io – a special service to sell products online – allows you to collect pre-orders, including payment information, without actually charging your customers. Asking for payment information is the best way to test demand for your product, but you don’t want to take any money at this point because you haven’t built your product yet. Instead, you’ll tell your pre-ordering customers that you’ll collect their payment information now, and only charge them if/when you release the product.

So on your landing page, be clear with customers that they are pre-ordering a product, that you won’t take their money until their product is ready

To add credit card based pre-orders to your site:

1. Watch the video above
2. Create a new free account on Foxy.io.

1. Insert your first name, last name, email, and password.
2. Select at least one option about “how you consider yourself”. For instance, select “store admin”.
3. Insert the name of your store, and subdomain for the FoxyCart pre-order URL (e.g., YourStoreName.foxycart.com).

3. Customize the language used by FoxyCart for standard orders, so that you make it clear for your customers, that your orders instead are pre-orders, and also, that their credit cards won’t be charged.

1. Click on “language” from the top header menu.
2. Expand the “Cart” language details.
1. Search for “Order Summary”, and change the word “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
2. Search for “Order Total”, and change the word “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
3. Search for “in your order”, so it becomes “in your pre-order”.
3. Expand the “Checkout” language details.
1. Search for “Complete your purchase”, and change “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
2. Search for “Confirm your purchase”, and again change “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
4. Expand the “Receipt” language details.
1. Search for “Message order”, and once more, change “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
5. Expand the “Email” language details.
1. Search for “Html message order”. Change the word “Order” with “Pre-Order”. We also recommend adding a reassuring sentence for your customers, such as: “Your credit card has not been charged.”
2. Search for “Html order summary”, and change again “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
3. Search for “Order number”, and change “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
4. Search for “Text order summary”, and change “Order” with “Pre-Order”.
5. Search for “Text message order”. Change the word “Order” with “Pre-Order”. Here again, we recommend adding a reassuring sentence for your customers, such as: “Your credit card has not been charged.”
6. Click on the “Update” button at the bottom of the page.

4. Create your product Pre-Order URL

1. Click on “sample code” from the admin top header menu.
2. In Step 2, you will find an example link that will be used to redirect your customers to your pre-order cart.

<!-- link example -->

<a href="https://your-subdomain.foxycart.com/cart?name=Cool%20Example&price=10&color=red&code=sku123">Add a red Cool Example</a>

1. Copy this link and paste it into your preferred text editor (e.g., Notepad on Windows, and TextEdit or Notes on Mac) Note: After the question mark, you’ll find all the parameters useful for describing your product. “name” and “price” are the only two parameters required by FoxyCart. Use “name” for your product name and “price” for your pre-order price point. If you are selling more than one product, you can also add other parameters, such as the color, the size, and so on.4. 
2. Unpack the URL to customize it more easily, like the following:

https://uber-for-doctors.foxycart.com/cart?
name=Uber for Doctors Pre-Order
price=79.99
On Sale= From $99, 20% off for pre-orders!
Release=If there’s sufficient demand, we will launch by the end of the year.

1. Now, encode your parameters one after another using an ampersand character (‘&’) as a separator, and replace the query string in the example link with your new one. Your new link should look like the following:

https://uber-for-doctors.foxycart.com/cart?name=Uber for Doctors Pre-Order&price=79.99&On Sale= From $99, 20% off for pre-orders!&Release=If there’s sufficient demand, we will launch by the end of the year.

1. Copy and paste this new URL in your browser, and you will land to your pre-order page.
2. Your page should look like the following.

1. As you might have noticed, all your parameters are under your Product name.Note: The highlighted text display the changes (e.g., from “Order” to “Pre-Order”) you made in the “language” section previously. So, double-check that everything shows up as expected.
2. Update your Wix page to add:
1.  A “Call to Action” (CTA) (e.g., “Pre-Order your First Visit to get 20% off”) that entices customers to pre-order. The CTA should include a link or button that goes to your pre-order page (e.g., “https://YOUR-STORE-NAME.foxycart.com/cart?name=Uber for Doctors Pre-Order&price=79.99&On Sale= From $99, 20% off for pre-orders!&Release=If there’s sufficient demand, we will launch by the end of the year.”)
3. Text to make it clear:
1. Your product is still in the initial design and testing phase.
2. Customers will not be charged when placing their pre-order. Instead will be charged if/when the product officially launches.
3. Here is some example text to include on your page:
4. At this time, this product is in its early design phase and is only available for pre-order. If there is sufficient demand, we hope to launch by [insert your target launch date – be conservative (e.g., within the next year)]. You will not be charged for your pre-order, instead, your payment information will be stored securely and you’ll be charged only if/when the product launches in the future.

6. Congratulations! You are ready to collect credit card pre-orders now.

Video Role Instructions

You’re in charge of describing the problem your team is solving, and how you’re solving it…with a 30-second video.

Here’s How:

1. Create a PowToon account here: PowToon.com

1. Note: Some students have reported problems using the Safari browser with            PowToon. If you have problems, consider trying Chrome instead.

2. Watch the video above. It’ll show you everything you need to know to create a video.

3. If you have trouble embedding your video into Wix:

1. Make sure your Wix site is in Editor (not ADI) mode

Note: you’ll have very limited time to create your video before you need to integrate it into the landing page. If you have extra time, you can always tweak your video after the first draft of the page is done.

Remember: done is better than perfect!

Step 3: Launch It!

As soon as your website is launched with all three components:

1. Landing page
2. Explainer video
3. Currency test

Email a link to me.

Congratulations!

You’ve launched the foundation for your product’s website (without having to write any code)! You’ve got the power to put something on the web now that your customers can see and interact with.

Now it’s time to polish it up so you can start testing it with customers!

https://www.teachingentrepreneurship.org/60-minute-MVP-instructions/