Recently we’ve talked about the importance of launching today to validate your ideas and also how to build a WordPress website to launch a landing page in a few hours.
But WordPress requires you can install a SQL database and comfort with somewhat advanced web technology. What if you want a simple way to build your site?
I’ve recently been using (and loving!) Super.so to launch new ideas in 30 minutes. You need 4 tools and a few bucks a month. All of the technical work is handled for you by other platforms.
To get started, we’ll need about 30 minutes and:
- A domain registrar like GoDaddy or Namecheap where you’ve bought a domain.
- Notion, which I’ve written about why I like before
- A Super.so account
- A JotForm (or similar) account.
Write your website copy
When you want to build your site, it can be handy to use something like Jarvis.ai to write quickly. For our purposes, we’ll generate the copy there, but keep in mind that you’ll likely have better output if you write something yourself.
The above text is okay, but it will need a little clean-up. Still, it took me maybe 90 seconds to get that text that I’m polishing up, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. 🙂
Build your site
You can go look up how to buy a domain at your registrar of choice, so we’ll skip that step.
Let’s launch a VR Fitness product.
Here’s our Notion page where we’ve put the copy for our new product landing page. It needs to be public for Super.so to be able to use it.
It’s not terrible, but it could certainly look better. For one thing, that link is pretty ugly. For another, it just looks like a Notion page.
Make it look pretty with Super.so
That’s where Super.so comes in.
Once you’ve signed up, add your new URL as a project following the steps here.
Then we’re going to use Super’s new Site Builder to build our site. This is what makes creating landing pages that look good really fast and very easy. Now, you won’t have the flexibility here that you would have in a more advanced CMS like WordPress, but you’re trading off speed and usability for that flexibility. If you’re comfortable building super-advanced projects in WordPress, well, this blog post isn’t for you. 🙂
In order to use the Builder well, I tend to split my screen between the Builder and the page I’m working on:
Once you’ve built the page to your satisfaction, You’ll need to pick a theme you like from their list of basic ones.
In my case, I’m using Zap. Start by grabbing the theme stylesheet here and then apply it to your new Super site by applying it in the “Code” section of the admin dashboard.
You can tweak your stylesheets from there a bit. I edited the CSS in mine so the page background remains white.
Capture leads
Finally, that call to action section I have in the hero section? Link it to your Jotform page.
Now I’ve taken a few ideas I had, spent not quite 30 minutes building a landing page and creating a form to capture, and I’ve already got something that I can use to validate an idea.
Is there a need for a VR fitness application?
Sure.
Can I find the right mix of language, offer, and audience to build a business? Well, it’s so easy to find out that you have no barriers left to keep you from trying.
The final product
And you end up with this: https://vrfit.super.site/
This looks better than your default Notion page by a bit.
More importantly, adding new pages, changing styles, and editing text and images are as easy as making changes to your Notion page.
If you’re ready to try a new idea out today, I’d love to hear about it. Hit me up @trevorlongino on Twitter and tell me what you’re building!
