Nowadays, using only a wordpress and an idea, anybody can start an online business. After dabbling in the online space for a number of years, I realise that the hardest part to making an income online is knowing which market to go after. In the past, any business idea  starts with product development. However, that is a mistake because you are not sure whether there is a demand for your product. Instead, the best thing to do now is to test your business idea online using a landing page and an email opt in. This is by far the cheapest and best way to test whether there is a real market for your idea.

Currently, there are a number of online service that can help you to set up a landing page with an email opt in within minutes. This will make the testing of your business idea even more convenient and efficient. Remember, you don’t have to write a single line of code until there is some evidence that people wants what you are going to make.

 

Launchrock.co

The granddaddy of launch pages. Launchrock was one of the first web service that leverge on the ‘test idea before writing code’ trend started by the lean startup movement. As such, it has the most complete features you will need to test an idea including template, email collection and analytics.

 

Kickofflabs.com

Kickofflabs launched as an alternative to launchrock but packs a bit more power in its backend, at least according to their marketing spin. It believes, not only in converting users to customers, but also on how to get your customers to share with others. It is a nice idea and will be great as a platform to test how well your business idea can spread itself.

 

Unbounce.com

Unbounce is well known as a great marketing tool for doing A/B testing on your landing pages. You can take advantage of their testing tools on your business idea as well.

 

Strikingly.com

Strikingly is a service that can allow you to set up a gorgeous looking one page website for any purpose. You can of course use this service to create a landing page for your business idea and see if there will be anybody interested enough to leave you their emails.

 

Smore.com

Smore is a service for businesses to create their flyers online. You can use it to create a ‘fake’ flyer with all the features of what your future product will look like. Again, this is just to test if your concept can invoke any response for your potential customers. If not, you will only be wasting the time and cost of creating this flyer, rather than the entire product.

 

Populr.me

Populr.me has a lot of features in its service. It has gorgeous templates, sharing tools, analytics and more. It is also mobile optmized that your landing page will look good on any platform or devices.

 

Prefinery

Prefinery has expanded its service to include more than the testing of your business idea online.  Its online tools also help to convert your visitors to potential customers and encourage them to share your product idea.

 

 

Launchable.io

Launchable is a brand new startup and its eats it own dog food by using its platform to test its business idea. It is still very minimal at the moment but this is how landing pages should be. They should just focus on articulating the pain you are trying to solve with your business idea. If the pain is strong enough, it doesn’t matter how good your landing page design looks.

 

LaunchGator.com

Like launchable.io, launchgator seems to be a pretty new service that offers a basic idea testing page for you to customize.

 

My.Betali.St

A strange domain name but it offers what is says: A simple way to test your business idea and incentivising your email users to share the word before the actual product paunch.

 

DIY landing page for testing ideas online

If you don’t like any of the above services, you can always do your own landing page using just a wordpress theme. Launch Effect is such a theme that allows you to create a simple landing page for your business idea.