Fake-door tests

Fake-door tests

The most dangerous question in a startup is “would people actually buy this?” — because everyone you ask in person says yes. A fake-door test answers the question with behavior: you publish a page that looks like a real product offer, drive people to it, and count what they actually do. No product required.

What a fake door measures

A fake-door page looks like the real thing — headline, value proposition, pricing, a call-to-action. But the “door” doesn’t open into a product; it opens into a signal. The test tracks:

• Impressions — how many people saw the page (your traffic).
• Clicks — how many clicked your primary call-to-action.
• Email captures — how many were interested enough to leave an email.
• Payments — the strongest signal of all: how many tried to buy.

From these, you get the numbers that matter: click-through rate, capture rate, and — when a payment button is live — real conversion and real revenue.

Payment capture

The most honest fake door includes a real payment button. When someone completes a purchase, the payment is captured automatically, so you end up with genuine willingness-to-pay data — not hypotheticals.

Two payment providers are supported:

• Stripe — paste a payment link into the page and purchases are recorded automatically.
• Lemon Squeezy — the same paste-and-publish pattern, with purchases recorded automatically.

Both require a connection to the provider; see the Integrations overview for setup. For local testing or situations where automatic capture isn’t available, payments can also be recorded manually — with the amount, currency, and email entered directly.

Caution

If you collect real payments on a fake door, be honest in the page copy. Charging people for something that doesn’t exist yet — without making clear what they’re actually buying (for example, a pre-order or founding-member pricing) — is a fast way to lose trust and run into refund requests. When you capture real money, honor it: refund promptly if you can’t deliver.

What a fake door can tell you

Result	What it means
High clicks, low payments	Interest, but the offer, price, or page isn’t convincing
High impressions, low clicks	The message isn’t landing — the page or audience is wrong
Low impressions	The bigger problem is traffic: you can’t validate without eyes on the page
Real payments at your target price	The strongest possible pre-build signal — someone paid real money

The dashboard aggregates these metrics per idea — impressions, clicks, email captures, payments, and revenue — plus conversion rates and average order value, with an individual transaction log showing every payment event.

How to run a fake-door test

1. Build the page — use the landing page builder to create a polished page with your real offer and price.
2. Add a payment button — attach a Stripe or Lemon Squeezy link so the door leads to a real checkout.
3. Publish the test — deploy the page as a fake door experiment.
4. Drive traffic — share it where your target audience actually is: ads, communities, forums, or your own social channels.
5. Watch the dashboard — give it enough traffic and time, then read the metrics above.

Interpreting results honestly

• A fake door that converts is strong evidence of demand — it doesn’t prove retention or a viable business, but it proves people will pay for the promise.
• A fake door that doesn’t convert doesn’t automatically mean the idea is dead. It might mean the offer, price, or page was wrong. Run a variant — different positioning, different price point — before concluding.
• The fake door is the test, not the product. Its job is to de-risk your go/no-go decision — use the evidence, then build the real thing for the people who showed up.

Want to A/B different messages? Build two pages with the landing page builder and compare which one converts better.