Painted Door Tests: Everything You Need to Know

A painted door test is a way to validate product ideas before investing significant resources into building them out.

The name comes from the idea of putting up a “facade”—in this case, a metaphorical painted door—to see if potential users would be interested in going through that door if it led to the product or feature being tested.

In painted door testing, you create a basic user interface or sales page that describes and captures the interest in your proposed product concept.

This interface could be as simple as a mock landing page or dashboard, with no functionality behind it. Rather than building the entire product upfront, you first present this “painted door” to gauge demand.

Users who land on the page or interface and indicate interest by providing an email address or taking another desired action provide positive data points for the validity of your idea. A lack of interest signals that further investment may not be justified, and you need to adjust the concept instead.

By testing interest through a painted door before developing, you can quickly and cheaply validate (or invalidate) key assumptions about your product and market fit. This step de-risks the innovation process and provides customer data to help you make smarter product decisions.

A painted or “fake door” test embraces the “lean” development philosophy by encouraging rapid experimentation and learning from customers as the ultimate reality check.

It’s an invaluable de-risking technique and a crucial tool in the product development lifecycle.

Efficient validation

Rather than sinking months of effort into building a product no one wants, a painted door enables you to test the waters with minimal up-front investment.

This discovery process provides faster feedback to validate (or pivot) before committing more time or money.

Rich customer insights

Interactions with the painted door directly show how real users respond to your value proposition.

This qualitative feedback is pure gold for refining the product vision, as you can tailor features to customers' use and enjoyment.

Lower risk

By validating demand before overcommitting your company’s engineering time, a painted door test reduces the risk of launching something the market doesn’t want. It lets you fail fast and change more cost-effectively.

Focus on what matters

Rather than guessing what’s important to customers, a painted door highlights the most compelling aspects that drive action.

This will focus your future development on the highest-leverage areas, such as those that will yield the biggest returns and customer satisfaction.

Faster to market

With invalidated ideas eliminated quickly, your validated concept can proceed directly to development and release faster by avoiding wasted time on unfruitful paths.

While painted door testing offers many benefits, there are also some potential downsides.

• Limited user insights: Since there’s no product behind the facade, you can’t fully gauge how users would experience and interact with the real thing. More refined usability feedback has to wait until the later prototype stages.

• Risk of misleading data: People may sign up simply out of curiosity without serious purchase intent, which could provide an overly optimistic signal that doesn’t translate into demand.

• Potential for idea leaks: Publicly describing your product concept means competitors may get wind of your ideas before you can fully implement them.

• Extra overhead: Managing and analyzing results from multiple painted door tests adds more work and complexity than simply building the product.

• Has a limit: Painted doors are best for validating high-level demand. At a certain point, you need to start coding to validate the more granular assumptions.

Although these possible disadvantages are relatively minor, it’s important to have reasonable expectations. A painted door test won’t eliminate all risks or replace conversations with real users.

However, when weighed against the benefits, it can be a useful signal to help steer product investments.

In general, painted door tests are most valuable when dealing with customer demand and product-market fit uncertainties. The bigger the question mark, the more a test makes sense as an initial de-risking filter.

They can be used in several stages of product development, including:

• Exploring new ideas and concepts
• Testing major new features on existing products
• Entering new or unfamiliar markets
• Validating expensive projects

However, painted doors shouldn’t be used for minor tweaks or lightly validating ideas you’re highly confident about based on other data sources. At that point, the incremental value likely won’t justify the hassle of running another test.

You should apply your judgment and use the tests for the highest-risk, highest-stakes situations, where quickly separating fact from fiction can save time and money.

To get the most value out of painted door tests, follow best practices to help you run cleaner experiments that generate more reliable data to inform your next steps.

• Keep it lean: The point of painted door testing is to validate ideas quickly with as little investment as possible. Don’t overcomplicate the “fake” door by building out too much functionality—keep it lean.

• Make it realistic: While avoiding full implementation, you should still make the painted door realistic enough that people understand what they’d be signing up for. That means using on-brand designs, copy, pricing, etc.

• Use real traffic: Your tests won’t be valid if you’re just asking friends or colleagues. Make sure to drive a sample of your target users or customers to the painted door.

• Set clear success criteria: Decide upfront what criteria will constitute a passing or failing score for the test, such as getting a certain number of sign-ups or engagement from a particular target demographic.

• Instrument analytics: Beyond these sign-ups, you should also instrument additional events like page views, clicks, etc., to gauge user behavior.

• Test multiple variations: Rather than just one painted door, try validating multiple value propositions or designs simultaneously to see what resonates best with your users.

• Follow up with responders: Don’t let leads from the test go cold. Have a process for following up and continuing the conversation.

• Combine with user research: Talk to and observe some responders for more context to provide background to your painted door data.

• Don’t over-interpret: Recognize that the results only represent an early signal to help guide further diligence and decision-making.

A structured process helps ensure your painted door tests run smoothly and generate clear, actionable results to inform your product strategy.

Here are some of the test’s most crucial steps.

Define the concept

Clearly articulate the product idea or feature you want to test. What is the value proposition? Who is the target user? Nail down these key details before doing anything else.

Design the facade and set goals

Create a basic landing page or user interface that describes your offering as convincingly as possible but leaves out the working functionality. Use attention-grabbing copy and visuals, authentic branding, and pricing.

Determine how you’ll measure the success of this facade and what makes an idea worth pursuing further. Example goals might be the following:

• Number of email sign-ups
• Percentage of users clicking the “Buy” or “Download” call-to-action (CTA) button
• User demographics you attract, like location, age, and job roles

Add tracking and identify traffic sources

Integrate basic analytics to track metrics like traffic sources, visitor engagement, conversion rates, and lead capture fields.

Pinpoint the marketing channels you’ll use to drive your target user personas to the fake door. This might include paid ads, social media, and email lists.

Measure and collect results

Once the data starts rolling in, continuously monitor the performance against your predefined goals and over a set testing period.

Anyone interested could quickly follow up and continue the conversation to gather qualitative feedback.

Analyze, share, and adapt

After the testing period, analyze the full qualitative and quantitative results to decide whether the concept passes the validation threshold.

Whether you pursue or nix the idea, document the most important findings and share these learnings with the product management team.

For validated concepts, the data from a fake door test can help prioritize product roadmaps and feature requirements. For failures, it’s a chance to revisit the drawing board.

Once your painted door test has run its course, it’s time to analyze the results and extract meaningful insights.

Let’s look at some essential factors and stages to consider.

Quantitative metrics

The first step is usually to look at topline performance metrics, such as the number of sign-ups, clicks on CTAs, conversion rates, and more. How do they compare to the success criteria you previously set out?

You should also analyze deeper funnel metrics. How many unique visitors made it to the landing page? What were the dropout rates between each step?

Finally, look for meaningful segments. Did certain traffic sources, demographics, or variations significantly outperform others? Why might this have happened?

Qualitative feedback

Review any comments, survey responses, or notes you gathered from following up with interested leads. What did their motivations or hesitation reveal about the potential of your product and its market fit?

Identify common themes from this information. What value propositions or positioning seemed to resonate best? Where were the biggest points of confusion or friction?

Reality check

With all feedback gathered and inspected, you can give your concept a reality check.

Did the results align with your hunches and assumptions going into the test, or did they invalidate some hypotheses?

Be honest during this stage—if the numbers struggled to meet your thresholds, don’t make excuses. A failed test is still valuable data.

Next steps

For validated concepts, the results can help you prioritize your product’s requirements and anchor future development to match the most powerful selling points. On the other hand, invalidated ideas can drive productive pivots before you waste more resources going down the wrong path.

The most effective analysis synthesizes all the information into clear, actionable insights. However, don't look at the data through rose-colored glasses or unfounded optimism.

Instead, you should embrace what your customers reveal, no matter how inconvenient it may feel initially. Even an unexpected or “negative” painted door test result can be useful in the long run.

The real value of painted door testing comes from translating the results into concrete product decisions and actions.

Product teams might use the insights to:

• Prioritize which features to work on
• Refine their positioning
• Inform UX design
• Set realistic usage targets and revenue goals
• Help secure further buy-in
• Identify gaps in their product or marketing strategies
• Formulate new hypotheses for more testing

Successful companies use painted door tests not as a one-time decision-maker but as an ongoing feedback loop that validates and steers product development in the right direction.

By closely linking the insights to action, product teams can increase the value of this testing technique and build products that better resonate with real user needs—a win for both the business and the customer.

Amplitude Experiment can support and streamline your painted door testing. It’s a one-stop platform for creating, deploying, and analyzing product experiments, including A/B tests and feature flagging.

• Easy set-up: Use the platform’s feature flagging tools to control the visibility of the painted door. Quickly implement the test without extensive coding.

• Targeting and segmentation: To minimize risk, target specific user groups and use controlled rollouts to gradually introduce the painted door.

• Data collection and analysis: Track events and monitor user interactions with the painted door. Use funnel and cohort analysis to understand user behavior and interest levels.

• Real-time insights: Access real-time data on user engagement through intuitive dashboards and reports. Get notified of significant changes via alerts.

• Iterative testing and optimization: Carry out A/B testing afterward to compare different versions of your product and find the best-performing one. Refine your tests based on the initial painted door results.

The platform’s comprehensive approach ensures you can effectively validate new feature ideas before commitment significance to their development.