Four weeks ago I started an experiment. I had 5 ideas of possible startups so I put together a simple page for each idea explaining how the service was supposed to work, how much it would cost and if the visitor has interest, she can inform her email address to receive news of the service. I’m not a web designer, so I needed help to put together a simple page for each startup idea I wanted to test. @dovb recommended a very good service named unbounce:

I defined a name for each startup idea and registered a domain for each one so each startup description page had its own URL.

I used Google AdWords to generate traffic:

I set $15 per day as the limit for each startup campaign. The startup description pages received a total of more than 2500 visits and more than 300 people shoed interest in the services described in these startup description pages. This hole experiment cost me $1500 including AdWords, unbound service and domain registration. $300 per each startup experiment. It could have cost even less since the interest (click through rate and sign up rate) was clear after the second week of the experiment.

Lessons learned

Next time you have a startup idea, try running a startup validation experiment. It will certainly be cheaper than investing too much time and money in your idea and after launch realizing that there are no customers for your startup.