Fake Door Testing: Validating Ideas
After launching a “few” failed ventures over the past several years, I’ve come to understand why certain ideas are more difficult to bring to fruition and why some growth strategies are more challenging to implement. Maybe it was my team’s failure to acquire clients, inability to keep costs low as we scaled, or a failure in product design. Regardless of what the issue was, I’ve found that a majority of my failures were rooted in my lack of understanding of the potential customer and their needs.
If I knew my customer inside-and-out and conducted thorough due diligence, perhaps I would’ve acquired clients in a cost-efficient manner, identified flaws in product design, and ultimately recognized if my product matched their needs.
My teams and I would’ve saved THOUSANDS of dollars. But alas, it’s better to fail and learn than to learn nothing at all. So, after all these trial and errors, how do I understand if a product will succeed? In other words…
How do I know if my idea serves a customer need?
OK – there are a hundred ways to do this and thousands of articles covering this topic. I’ve a read a lot and implemented some, but what I’ve found to be the most impactful method for understanding if there is a genuine need for a product/service offering is a Fake Door Test.
Fake Door Testing allows us to understand if an idea or product has viable market demand prior to investing in and delivering that product. To conduct the test, we show the user an option that does not yet exist. After the user takes an action (clicks a CTA, registers, etc.), the website notifies the user that this feature or product is not yet available – hence the “fake door.”
By measuring how many users “step” through the fake door, we can gain a better understanding of real market interest and ultimately make more informed decisions.
Fake Door Testing Step-by-Step
The process consists of 3 key steps:
(1) Create a Landing Page and Construct a “Fake Door."
The landing page should be designed to clearly explain your product/service offering – nothing more, nothing less. As with any early-stage startup, it is important to stay lean and reduce expenses where possible; after all, this is a test designed to validate an idea, not put it into full motion. Unbounce and Mailchimp are two great options for quickly developing landing pages (no, I am not sponsored).
The door should be easy to locate and tracking should be enabled in order to understand who stepped through the door. Regarding what is “behind” the door, I suggest redirecting users to a page that says, “Thank you for your interest in ~Your Product Offering~. Please provide your email address to stay in the loop.” In this way, you can capture the contact info of real potential customers for when you launch.
See below for a great example by Buffer, a social media account manager. Their landing page clearly lays out their service offering and the door, a "Plans and Pricing" button, prompts users to input their email address.
(2) Test and Market your Page
After the landing page is fully fleshed-out, start driving traffic. Paid advertisements (Facebook, Instagram, Google) are the most viable option, as they guarantee a stream of potential customers in a defined set of time. Slow and steady does not win the race here.
(3) Capture and Analyze Data
After enough data points have been captured (sample size is contingent on your level confidence), you can now analyze the data. Of key importance is the conversion rate of users who stepped through the fake door versus the total number of users who visited the landing page. A higher conversion rate can be used as a proxy for greater market demand.
While analyzing the data, do keep in mind that the data may be imperfect. Users may have not seen the door, the copy/content may have not appealed to certain set of users, etc. So please iterate before going ahead with / canceling an idea.
Advantages of Fake Door Testing
Save time and resources. Fake door testing allows you to validate an idea/product, even before investing your time and money into development.
Real-world Stress Testing. While it’s great to conduct interviews, observational research, and other studies to understand customers, it is arguably just as important (if not more) to understand how the market will react to an idea/product in the field.
Disadvantage of Fake Door Testing
It’s not a nice thing to do. Users who step through the door are expecting your product, not a dead-end. Therefore, I suggest conducting the test on a predetermined sample size for a set short duration of time.
I honestly can’t think of any other disadvantages except for a limit on the number of fake doors. Placing too many fake doors on a website would surely frustrate users, but would also be pretty hilarious :)
Key Takeaways
Fake Door Testing is one of many ways to validate a potential product/service offering. I’ve found that by implementing these tests early on, I could gauge market demand, and as a result, save both time and money on ideas with little to no traction.
But don’t get me wrong – a Fake Door Test is not a be-all end-all. A low conversion rate does not mean you should close your doors and call it a day. Rather, the test should be used to capture data and generate insights to ultimately make informed decisions.
Feel free to post your thoughts and questions below!
By Gyan Kandhari