Buffer pricing page experiment: strangers and a price.
The Buffer pricing page experiment came from Joel Gascoigne in 2010, before he wrote any product. He added a page of prices between his description and the email signup. People still clicked through, and a few chose the paid plans.
Three pages and a tweet.
Joel Gascoigne wanted a tool that spaced out your posts on Twitter. First, he put up a page describing the product, plus a page to leave an email. Then he tweeted the link and asked people what they thought. This is landing page idea validation in its simplest form, built before the product existed.
Why the Buffer pricing page experiment was so small.
Next, he inserted a third page showing plans and prices. Anyone wanting to leave an email had to walk past a number first. He did not build the product, and he did not poll his friends. Instead, he put a price in front of strangers and watched what they did. So the Buffer pricing page experiment settled your hardest question in an afternoon.
From launch to a paying customer.
He built the first version in the evenings and at weekends. Buffer went live on the thirtieth of November 2010, with a paying customer inside four days. That is one way to get first paying customer fast, though one case proves nothing. Also, neither company is in the sample of 1,673. The real difference from Clinkle is the date each let somebody else in.
Sketch your own Buffer pricing page experiment.
Write one paragraph describing your product, as if for a first page.
Under it, write the plan and the price a stranger would have to walk past.
From the book.
I want you to notice how small that test is. He did not build the product to find out, and he did not ask his friends whether it sounded like a good idea. He put a number in front of strangers and watched what they did with it. How many evenings have you spent on this?
I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start, chapter 2: The three-month window
Questions about Buffer pricing page experiment.
What did the Buffer pricing page experiment actually test?
It tested whether strangers would walk past a plan and a price to leave an email. Some still clicked through, and a few clicked paid plans.
How long did Buffer take from idea to paying customers?
Gascoigne wrote it up as idea to paying customers in seven weeks. The paying customer arrived within four days of launch.
Did the pricing page cause everything that came after it?
The chapter does not claim that, since one case proves nothing. Instead, it shows the shape of letting strangers in early.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 2, “The three-month window”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 When did my business idea start: date the first act.
- 02 Three month window startup: what the study measured.
- 03 Failed ventures take longer: why stopping is so hard.
- 04 Business idea timeline exercise: count your months.
- 05 Clinkle startup story: three years, no public product.
- 06 Buffer pricing page experiment: strangers and a price.
- 07 Length biased sampling: what the study cannot prove.
- 08 Busywork instead of real progress: five dating traps.