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Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

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Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#1

Post by eaplant »

Hi HN!

I've gotten a bit frustrated by going to `datadog.com` instead of `app.datadog.com`. I know that I could use a chrome extension to do this redirect for me (I do). But since this is a painful UX, I think that SaaS companies should do something to improve it for all of their users.

So I made `marketing-redirect`, a quick bit of HTML to put on a marketing page that lets customers get automatically redirected to the application they're already paying for:

https://github.com/elliotaplant/marketing-redirect

You can see an example of it in action here:

https://elliotplant.com/marketing-redirect/

Aside from just making the tools I use better, I'm brainstorming ways to monetize this. My best idea is to create a cloud service the help marketing teams remove or tag the page views from paying customers who visit their marketing page so their analytics software can exclude them as possible leads. I'd love to hear your feedback.

Thanks,

Elliot

Re: Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#2

Post by MattGaiser »

Target the people who use Wordpress for marketing, but otherwise have an app. They might pay $5 for this, especially if they are separate business silos. As long as it is super simple to use, this could be a decent non-technical solution to a technical problem.

The challenge is once someone technical is called in, they will realize that this is trivial, so making it possible for non-technicals to easily use (even if just telling them where to paste the code) is essential.

But yes, I have certainly had this annoyance in the past.

Re: Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#4

Post by weird-eye-issue »

MattGaiser wrote: post #2

Target the people who use Wordpress for marketing, but otherwise have an app. They might pay $5 for this, especially if they are separate business silos. As long as it is super simple to use, this could be a decent non-technical solution to a technical problem. The challenge is once someone technical is called in, they will realize that this is trivial, so making it possible for non-technicals to easily use (even if…

This. I know of two businesses off the top of my head using WordPress (for the marketing site and customer portal) that I'm a paying customer for where I've struggled to find how to get to my account backend from their main site. For one of the businesses I've seen people ask in their FB group how to login (it's in the footer...)

Please sell this to them! (Assuming it works, I didn't look at it)

Re: Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#5

Post by pbhjpbhj »

I don't understand why you can't type the address of the page you want to go to, or click a link to get there (or provide a link if you're the website owner)?

It looks like you're forcing people to go to a page other than the one you select, but that would be really crap, so it can't be that ... so what are you doing?

Makes no sense to me, but then I hate websites that want me to install a wrapper around a web renderer just so I can access content that's really only a website ... is that what's going on?

Really, no idea and the demo didn't make it clear why the behaviour was good?

Re: Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#6

Post by brundolf »

Initially I thought this was a Chrome extension that users of these sites could install which would automatically redirect them from marketing.com -> app.com (maybe only when they have a login cookie?)

I think if you made such an extension, and maintained a redirect list yourself for popular SaaS sites, that could be a more viable business. It wouldn't be trivial to reproduce because it's dynamic; you're always adding to the redirect list and keeping it up to date. That's a real, small amount of boring work that can't easily be automated away and people might be willing to pay to outsource.

Good luck either way!

Re: Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#7

Post by KiranRao0 »

brundolf wrote: post #6

Initially I thought this was a Chrome extension that users of these sites could install which would automatically redirect them from marketing.com -> app.com (maybe only when they have a login cookie?) I think if you made such an extension, and maintained a redirect list yourself for popular SaaS sites, that could be a more viable business. It wouldn't be trivial to reproduce because it's dynamic; you're always addin…

This is very similar in concept to this chrome extension: Replace Youtube's Home with Subscriptions. It's open source and its purpose is redirecting from youtube.com -> youtube.com/feed/subscriptions. It may be a good place to start for anyone working on an automatic marketing.com -> app.com

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/replace-youtubes-h...

https://github.com/SeinopSys/YTMySubs/blob/main/package/back...

Re: Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#9

Post by niel »

This is useful as a reminder to make it easier for existing users to find your app.

Also, the marketing site being outside of reach of the app dev team is a real problem worth addressing with convenient snippets such as the linked solution.

That said, I'm still not convinced that an automatic redirect is a good idea.

I've had cases where I would like to refer someone to e.g. the pricing page (or a page I remember about a particular feature they need) on a SaaS marketing site, but had to open the marketing site in a new browser to find the link, because I keep getting redirected to the app while logged in. Someone else might have given up and the referral could have been less effective.

I propose rather updating navigation on your marketing site for logged-in users, making it easier to navigate to the app manually.

Re: Show HN: Redirect your customers from your marketing page to your app

#10

Post by fouc »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #5

I don't understand why you can't type the address of the page you want to go to, or click a link to get there (or provide a link if you're the website owner)? It looks like you're forcing people to go to a page other than the one you select, but that would be really crap, so it can't be that ... so what are you doing? Makes no sense to me, but then I hate websites that want me to install a wrapper around a web render…

Yeah, very good point.. I can no longer view https://elliotplant.com/marketing-redirect/ because I'm instantly forced away every time.
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