set up your series before you sign up

the short version

some of the pages our ads link to now start with let's set up your series: four short questions, one at a time, before anyone asks for your email. what are you building, does it have a website, where does it stand today, and what are you setting out to do next. each has examples under it, and each can be typed or said out loud with the microphone button. as you answer, your episode card takes shape beside the questions. give a website and it changes again: your logo, your colour and the nearest of our typefaces, read from the site's own public pages. the last answer shows you your series: its name, a line about it, the three questions episode zero will open with, and a few things we would love to understand about it later on. then start episode zero. it asks for your email only if we do not already have it.

why it changed

rich, who builds underway, was looking at a tool that promises to personalise a website for every visitor. the honest version of that is smaller than the pitch: a click from an ad carries no name, no email and nothing about the person. the only things a page can really know about a stranger are what they choose to tell it. so the question became what someone would happily tell us, and what we could do with it that no ordinary landing page can.

the answer was already the product. underway is an interviewer. a page that interviews you back, briefly, and shows you what your series would be, is the product in miniature rather than an advert for it. and it goes after the one leak we could measure: people signed up from the ads and then stopped on their first screen, before episode zero. someone who has already read the first question their co-host will ask has, in a small way, already started.

rich also pointed out what a bare what are you building box gets you: a few words. nobody types forty orders a month unless something asks them how many orders they take. so every question says what a good answer covers, shows a real example, and offers another one. none of them is a picker: the rules ban a stage picker, and one sentence in your own words covers every kind of business, from an idea with no name to a company ten years in.

what the page does with your answers

• your first answer names the card, from the name you typed if you gave one.
• your website, if you give one, is read on the server: its name, its logo, the colours it actually uses, the typefaces it loads, and the words on its homepage and about page. nothing is generated. a site with nothing to pick a look from leaves the card in ours, and says so.
• your last answer writes the preview: the series name, one line, who it is for, three opening questions for episode zero and a few topics, written only from what you said and what your site says. nothing invented about customers, numbers or dates.
• everything stays in your own browser until you sign up. leave halfway and the page picks up where you left off for a week. start over clears it.
• rather talk it through? start episode zero now skips the questions and goes straight to the conversation.

after you sign up

today fills in what you told the page: the series name, what it is called, your one line and your website. your brand takes the site's logo and colour only if you have not set one, and the episode label stays gold, because gold means now. your answers become standing background that your co-host reads before episode zero, so it goes one step further than what you typed rather than asking it again. and the topics are kept for later in what to film. a signed-in founder who opens the page is never asked for an email, and someone who came from one of our emails presses once.

a test, said plainly

outside the uk, the eu, the eea and switzerland, half the visitors to these pages see the questions first and half see the email box first, as before. a cookie remembers which, so nothing changes between visits. we judge it on who starts episode zero, not on who leaves an email, because asking four questions first is expected to cost some emails and that is fine if more people actually begin. inside the uk and europe nobody joins the test and no cookie is set.

on the phone

the questions live on the web pages our ads link to, which open in the phone's browser like any page. the phone app's first screen is unchanged: the same card, your first name and one line, already filled in if you set your series up on the page first.

four questions, and your series takes shape. set up your series.