A web site setup to validate a concept will contain similar elements to marketing websites. This should include:
- Some information about your proposed company and/or product.
- Contact details, maybe just a gmail address.
- A form or other means to express interest or disinterest in the concept.
Also like a landing page, you will have a fairly small window in which to grab people’s attention. For marketing sites this means saying something about your company or product that interests the reader and entices then to continue. For validation sites the content isn’t dissimilar, but it must include a clear announcement of the site purpose. In this case you are not selling a product or service, you are soliciting expressions of interest, and you must drive people to quickly complete a small task such as ticking a box or filling out a form to indicate their response before they lose interest and drift away.
If you’re validating a concept, then you probably don’t have a brand yet, and probably don’t need one. Your validation site can still be attractive and well designed, using a style put together for the purpose.
Once you have a validation site, you need to tackle the problem of how to drive people to your site. There are a few ways you can do this. Generally, validation won’t occur over a long period so search engine optimisation (SEO) is not viable, and you will need to have a budget for search engine marketing (SEM) instead. Facebook ads may also be especially effective as these may be targeted at very specific demographics. Posts from your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social platforms may be invaluable if you already have a following, at the risk that reaching out to your network may bias the results (in the same way it isn’t reliable to just ask your friends to validate an idea, because they’re much more likely to support any idea you have).