Nobody is signing up to my app. What do I do?

Written by Dante, who built Prep66, PrepAMT and Ancestorii

Look at the page before you change the channel. Check four things, in order: whether the people arriving actually have the problem, whether the page says what the product does, who it is for and what it costs in their words, whether the price makes sense next to what the problem costs them, and where they leave, on the page or inside onboarding. Ancestorii paid about £210 for about 15,000 visitors in its first seven days of ads and had not one paying customer. The site asked strangers to pay before they had tried anything. When the paywall came off, one person signed up, and still nobody paid.

Is it the traffic or the page?

Count your visitors by where they came from. If almost nobody arrives, you have not found your buyers yet, and the channel is the question. If the right people arrive and then leave, the page is the problem, and no new channel will fix it.

Ancestorii's analytics showed that around 20 percent of visitors scrolled past halfway and stayed over 30 seconds. Its founder took that as interest. It was not. The site asked strangers to sign up and pay before they had felt anything, made anything or had any reason to trust it. Time on the page is not a signal. A signup is barely one. A payment is.

Check one: the wrong people

Are the people arriving the ones who have the problem, today? Ancestorii sold family timelines to parents and grandparents, people its founder had never been, and it reached them mostly through ads. Prep66 reached aircraft engineers with an exam booked, in the subreddits where they ask how to study. Same founder, opposite result.

Check two: the page

Does the page say what the product does, who it is for and what it costs, in the words those people type? Two things decide it.

Their words, not yours. PrepAMT was written around "AMT", the term the trade uses, but people search for "FAA A&P". When ChatGPT was asked for A&P prep sites, it listed 29 of them and PrepAMT was not among them. The whole site was rewritten around A&P: every page, every heading, every machine readable field, and a whole section of the site was renamed.
The price, on the page. One of the answers Ancestorii's founder got on Reddit was that there was no price on the site. People will not sign up just to find out what something costs. It is better to put some people off with a price than to put everyone off with no price.

Check three: the price

Check what your price is being compared with: the cost of the buyer's problem, or other products. On Prep66, failing an exam module means a resit fee, months lost, a stalled licence and a delayed pay rise. Next to that, £19.99 a month is not a purchase. It is insurance. The competition charged £300 and more for a course. If your price is being weighed against a free tool instead of against the problem, your page has not made the problem clear.

Check four: where they drop off

Find where people leave: on the landing page, or after the button, inside sign up and onboarding. Those are different problems. People who leave the landing page left before they saw the product. People who leave inside onboarding left after they had decided to try it. The fix is in a different place for each.

Ancestorii took its paywall away and let people start for free. The ads went back on at 7am. Three hours and £2.80 later, one person signed up. That proved people would click a free button. It did not prove anyone would pay, and nobody did.

What not to do

Do not add a channel. More people arriving at a page that does not work is more money spent to get the same answer.
Do not build a feature. If no stranger has used what already exists, a new feature will not change that.
Do not raise the ad budget. Ancestorii's spend in its first two months included more than £500 on Meta ads and £76 on Reddit ads, and everything together brought four signups.

Questions people ask

Is it my traffic or my landing page?

Count visitors by source. If almost nobody arrives, it is the channel. If the right people arrive and leave, it is the page: what it says, the price, or the first step after the button.

Should I remove my signup wall?

Removing it only tells you whether people will click a free button. That is all Ancestorii learned: one signup, three hours and £2.80 after the paywall came off, and nobody paid. Decide from what free users then actually do. Prep66 kept signing up free so people could look inside, but nothing could be used until they paid.

Should I show my price on the landing page?

Yes, whenever the buyer decides alone. Nobody signs up just to find out what something costs. Where the price really depends on the customer, the page should still say where it starts or how it is worked out.

How long should I wait before changing my landing page?

About a week, if people buy your product on the spot and the week brings enough visitors for a sale to be possible. Ancestorii's founder could see in the first week that it was not working, and kept going on hope for months. Decide the line before you start, and act when it is crossed.