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What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages
- amelius 5y agoInstead of using this service, you can also post your project to HN for the same result :)
- rajasimon 5y agoYeah! HN roast are indeed very good. I was launching my project in HN and six hours later I have shutdown the project. Because I got roasted. Left and right comments are shown it's not good for either party ( Me and HN users ) Note: The project I have mentioned is targeted to HN users in mind.
- skc 5y agoExcept HN will probably bring your site down in the process. I'm always in two minds about it even beyond the famously tough crowd here.
- rchaud 5y agoHardly. HN will talk about how they could build the same thing in a week, why enterprise pricing is "Call to discuss" only, or complaining about the use of Google/Adobe Analytics.
- beejiu 5y agoJudging by all the 'I know better' comments that are posted in this very post, you really couldn't.
- egberts1 5y agoCan I roast the roaster for not summarizing how he does the roasting (unless he is not wanting more business)? #headduck
- grenoire 5y agoDrink some Diet Coke and it shall all be revealed onto you.
- wombatmobile 5y agoThis sounded interesting so I clicked on TFA. OMG it does that thing I can't stand in news publications of repeating the same thing over and over! This is literally the first 8 lines of TFA: - - - What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages in 12 months 200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later. What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages in 12 months 200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later 200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later 12 months of roasting landing pages Over the last twelve months I've roasted the landing pages of 200 startups. - - - I get so annoyed when news articles do that, because they skimp on writing abstract leaders by simply duplicating text from the opening para. I don't know what else this article says because I stopped reading and closed the tab.
- royletron 5y agoBut I do want a Diet Coke.
- willcipriano 5y agoThe content is algorithm first, not human first. I too refrain from consuming articles written for computers.
- spicybright 5y agoIt's pretty sad webpages now are written for search engines to parse and only incidentally, for humans to read.
- ollymeakings 5y agoIt wasn't written for search. Nobody googles titles like 'what I learnt' The blog post shares every single insight I learnt reviewing landing pages and running my business without any SEO implemented at all.
- xbar 5y agoBookmarked, on the assumption that you were right. Did I miss the data that backs up your assertions that the improvements were effective?
- hungryforcodes 5y ago“Real pain PAS (pain - agitate - solve) is a common copywriting technique used to increase conversion. Most landing pages touched on the pain they were addressing, but only 1 in 15 agitated or amplified the pain with emotional language and vivid imagery. The ones that did this well created much more powerful landing pages that moved me to explore the solution. Fix it: Agitate your visitor by painting a vivid picture of the pain using emotional language, stories and visuals.” How is this not a dark pattern?
- pbhjpbhj 5y agoNot heard of PAS before but it's a stalwart of UK politics for those in power presently. Bonus points if you actually cause the pain, I guess.
- abraae 5y agoThat's just marketing 101, as used for centuries. A dark pattern would be luring them in further with something like "the one thing you need to do to fix your conversion rates", but with a link leading to a list of 10 things, with that one thing at the end or even not there at all.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y agoAnd number 6 was going to surprise me! (AVOID!)
- HumblyTossed 5y agoIt should be. But I guess when the revenue of the entire freaking planet depends on manipulation, people start to accept it.
- risyachka 5y agoWhy would it be? There is nothing sinister in it. Probably 100% of people do the same in every day conversations in one or another way without even noticing.
- 5y ago
- josefresco 5y agoIn the article he embeds a Tweet showing his first version vs his 20th version. Then I went to the site, and what's live looks more like the 1st version so I'm confused.
- ollymeakings 5y agoConstantly testing!
- josefresco 5y agoThe cynical side of me thinks this is the problem with the "landing page optimization" market. Measure, tweak, measure, tweak (repeat 20x) and before you know it, you're back to where you began! A couple years back, I read another article about landing pages that warned against taking A/B testing logic to the extreme, as it may lead you down the wrong path. My advice: Use your instincts/experience/feedback along with raw data.
- JackPoach 5y agoSorry to be pain in the butt, but this is largely irrelevant. There are a lot of experts or 'experts' who analyze other people mistakes. However, the real data for landing pages comes from actual customers, not expert opinion, however good or bad it is. Second, the #1 mistake for landing pages happens before the landing page is even created. Namely figuring out what to offer, how to offer it, how to stand out and how to make your goods or services way better than competition. Make mistake at this stage and no landing page will save you and analyzing landing page for a bad product or a bad offer will only take you away from seeing the real problem /*rant off. I see zero relevance in the post. The author may have learned something, but I as a reader did not. Usual marketing bullshit.
- kackerd 5y agoI know that there is a lot of art behind these type of patterns and getting people to sign up, etc. However whenever I see them discussing techniques, they seem to ignore the fact that people quickly learn to work around them. If I go to a new company's site, I'll quickly try and figure out whether I can get the info I need without signing up to anything I don't want. I'm used to weighing up giving my personal details, signing up for emails etc. If your site seems too spammy, intentionally opaque, or just yechy, I'll just forget about it and move on. Change the patterns or the KPIs, and I'm sure that many of your page visitors will change up too, especially the more savvy ones.
- JackPoach 5y agoYep, this is exactly why infobiz one-pagers with extra long text blocks that never ended started having the opposite effect. It's like writing THIS IS A SCAM in bold letters. 'Customer isn't a fool. She's your mother'(C)
- kackerd 5y agoYes. A lot of 'innovation' in marketing is just changing things to eliminate design decisions which are associated with scamminess and coming up with new ones which aren't yet overused by the worst bottom-feeders and so seem 'fresh'.
- haydenkshaw 5y agoSomething really irks me about how this site is using the word 'roast'. Feels like any of the following words, with relevant dictionary definitions, would've been more intuitive: analyse, improve, critique, assess, evaluate. Instead, let's take a slang word, re-define it's accepted meaning by removing the interesting nuance of it's usage, and try and piggyback of it's coolness. Not to my tastes.
- ollymeakings 5y agoIt generates word of mouth and share-ability but agree it's not for everyone.
- treerunner 5y agoThis is how you architect a boring web.
- rchaud 5y ago"Landing Page" tells you this is for SaaS products sales pages. Of course it's boring. Although it would be interesting to see a parody of such sites, such as the classic "Every Bootstrap website ever"[0] [0]: https://www.dagusa.com/ https://www.dagusa.com/
- dnndev 5y agoAnyone know of a TLDR version? Top 10 on one page? Would love to watch all 20 minute videos but just not at this time.
- ollymeakings 5y agoMy twitter thread covers 16 points and with visuals https://twitter.com/helloitsolly/status/1390310904563224581 https://twitter.com/helloitsolly/status/1390310904563224581
- dnndev 5y agoThank you! exactly what I was looking for
- dnndev 5y agoWhy the down votes? its a valid question... geesh...
- ollymeakings 5y agoOlly here, founder of roastmylandingpage.com Happy to answer any questions about the service or business not covered in the blog. You can also see the post as tweets, with visual examples from landing pages here: https://twitter.com/helloitsolly/status/1390310904563224581 https://twitter.com/helloitsolly/status/1390310904563224581
- illnewsthat 5y agoI think including the example images in the original blog post would have helped to convey your points better.
- ollymeakings 5y agoYep, this post wasn't 100% complete. Someone else posted it. No complaints here but going to add images in asap.
- rfwhyte 5y agoYou talk exclusively in qualitative statements, but do you have any quantitative data to back up any of things you are saying? Its all well and good to say what you think someone should do, but without actual data to back up these statements why should I believe you? You're just some random dude from the internet, and just because you said something, does not make it true. You say for example "Contrast your product with competitors and the current way of doing things." but what data do you have to substantiate that this is anything other than your / intuition / opinion? What kind of conversion rate lift did you clients see by implementing this particular tactic while controlling other variables to ensure the integrity of the test? As someone who's spent a fair amount of time on CRO in the past, I appreciate that most of what you're saying is probably right as it's all broadly speaking conventional wisdom in the CRO space, but it rings somewhat hollow without actual data to back it up. I understand data sharing agreements with clients can be difficult to arrange, but had you even included data on how the tactics you're recommending had impacted the conversion rate of your own landing page you could have at least had some proof in your pudding.
- apuchitnis 5y agoEnjoyed reading this - some very actionable advice and honest learnings too.
- ollymeakings 5y agoThanks! Glad you like it :)
- fluidcruft 5y agoAm I the only one who really hates these opaque landing pages? They all just look the same and you never know what the hell is actually being sold. Like that popwork one he's glowing over in the video. It's like you're walking down the street and bums keep handing you shiny wrapped presents. At first they all look shiny and you want to open it but then you've opened enough of them to know they're probably full of shit. So I stop bothering opening them. No, I don't want to create an account and give you my email so that you can spam me for months merely to know what's inside the box. Frankly my next stop is finding a video on YouTube of someone actually showing how to use... whatever it is. Or people talking about using it in a forum or something.
- ollymeakings 5y agoYou watched the video so you know at 1 minute in I say how important it is to simply tell people what you actually do. I also advocate for plain language and showing the product not just talking about it.
- fluidcruft 5y agoYeah, I saw that but still. It starts off with 1-on-1 meetings with managers and employees but then I guess it's actually just some scheduled survey like a weekly qualtrics to /dev/null that admin pushes at us already or whatever. Finally. That's what I got from that. I guess what I would say is that the pop.work* landing page seems to want to sell itself as scratching an itch or solving a problem, but doesn't tell us what that itch or problem is or even show us how it solves it. It's just vague and no details (which is a major red flag about a landing page for me personally). *lots of alternate "popwork" out there and you don't even link it or anything so I had to google text from the landing page in the video to find what and where it even was or if they'd completely pivoted to a different product (popwork.com)
- onlyfortoday2 5y agobut still what? stop moaning LOL
- 5y ago
- jojo_kelly 5y agoLove this, what a good idea. But, do you think you're undercharging at £150 per roast?
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoYour site is cancer on my tiny iPhone SE screen. Banner thing, little chat bubble of your face, pop-ups everywhere. Is it a parody site?
- ollymeakings 5y agoIs it a parody phone :)
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoNo it’s the best phone ever made.
- another_kel 5y agoIt's not since the iphone 12 mini was released
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoDammit I've been eyeing that one.
- Gracana 5y agoYou must reserve the good roasts for paying customers.
- transitus 5y ago@ollymeakings, the key point I would have loved to learn was how effective your service was. So by implementing (some / all) of your advice, how much did the conversion increase over next 3 months or so? (with no additional marketing and other implausible but desirable assumptions). You do mention "as I built evidence of the roasts increasing conversion" but leave the evidence hanging. Or perhaps I read the otherwise quite comprehensive piece too hastily. Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing!
- ollymeakings 5y agoYes there is an issue with the client agreeing with me sharing the data. It's something that is being addressed with new clients. The main thing is to ensure you AB test. Lots of what's in the post is proven, not just by my own experiments, but by organisations like Unbounce who have global data across 1,000s of pages. However the true key to improving your own loading page is to grow and act on your own quantqual data.
- ribs 5y agoAs @transitus said, some quantitative statements about results would be really helpful here. I hope you can get some. Other than that, what you’re saying is very convincing.
- ElectricMind 5y ago//I generated about £20,000 in roast revenue, and another £50,000 of freelance marketing work from clients // This guy made this much money with a simple idea. And he hasn't killed anyone. So even though I would never buy such service or think it is worth something to buy , I don't want roast this guy for earning money. All the best.
- ollymeakings 5y agoThank you! And every single client apart from one rated the roast 5/5 so they liked it too.
- mercwear 5y agoThis post is giving me 2010-2015 CRO is everything vibes and the landing page for the roast site is actually bad imho.
- punkspider 5y agoAm I the only one that thinks a table of contents would be great for this article? It starts off salesy and when this happens I tend to avoid committing to it, so I think a table of contents would really help a user decide if this is a good read for them or not.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoThis is literally a 4min read and the author divided it up pretty nicely in parts and bullet points. Every bullet point is an interesting insight for itself, so you could leave after reading half way and still make a net intellectual profit. People are so overly critical these days, the guy is literally giving away useful hard numbers and advice for free (some exposure for himself). Oliver, please take HN comments with a grain if salt. :-) People are very demanding here (which might be a good thing of course)
- GayforMoleman 5y agoThe article has acronyms (USP, CTA,...) that the author never cares to actually explain what they mean. I find that it's a really opaque and hostile way to approach a subject and it mostly makes me feel like the author wants to sound like he really knows what he's talking about. He stretches simple points (Have a clear mission statement/product description.) into longwinded statements with unnecessarily complicated jargon. Really just feels like I'm being pitched a service the whole time I'm reading.
- ollymeakings 5y agoUnique selling point and call to action. I will actually correct that as one of my insights is to remove confusing acronyms to improve legibility. Sorry the rest didn't work for you.
- StavrosK 5y agoI wrote something that might help: https://github.com/skorokithakis/expounder/ https://github.com/skorokithakis/expounder/
- TheCowboy 5y agoI don't know why you got downvoted because this is a good idea. The only criticism I have is that usually the dotted underline is associated with adwords on some sites. I don't know if there's a better way to do it. Superscript question marks at the end of the phrase?
- StavrosK 5y agoHmm, I have an adblocker so I can't say I've seen that pattern much, but you can easily change the display for it with a few lines of CSS.
- moshmosh 5y agoThere's a built-in HTML tag for this that traditionally uses the dotted underline. Looks like it doesn't do that on all browsers, though, these days, but it's a CSS tweak to add it. Behavior also seems worse than it used to on some browsers—safari makes you hover for a little to see the expanded definition, while I recall clicking to see it before, which is better. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/abbr https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ab...
- aosaigh 5y ago(Rant) What a snobby, begrudging comments section. Well done to OP for writing a detailed summary of a succesful productised service that they got off the ground as well as a solid list of actionable tasks you can take to improve your own product. They've outlined how their clients have loved the service, it's been financially successful and everyone is happy, yet all people here do is complain about a) how this is the downfall of the internet b) there's some technical or editorial minutiae of the post itself they dislike c) how they could have done it better d) what they're doing is just plain wrong or unimportant. If HN had its way, every product and service on the planet would be devoid of marketing, sales or design and the only way you could buy it was via the command line. Infuriating.
- hathawsh 5y agoI agree; this looks like a great service. I don't understand the objections. Thanks @ollymeakings!
- EricE 5y agoIt really is amazing. He's helping people improve landing pages. It's not how to generate spam, robocalls, improve your targeted facebook ads or some other form of active marketing - it's about making your passive marketing message more effective. I dunno why everyone assumes all marketing is bad. Without marketing how the heck would you ever learn about or even find potentially useful products? As with all things moderation is key and this guy is focusing on the most neutral kind of marketing out there!
- matheusmoreira 5y ago> I dunno why everyone assumes all marketing is bad. All marketing is inherently untrustworthy by virtue of conflict of interest. The people trying to sell products have every incentive to lie and mislead potential consumers. At best you get language that emphasizes upsides while downplaying downsides. There's a reason people search forums like reddit when they need real product reviews: marketing simply cannot be trusted. > Without marketing how the heck would you ever learn about or even find potentially useful products? Word of mouth.
- kaltuer 5y agoThere are some technical terms that you need to explain, as not all of the readers are well-versed on your industry. I'd also like to roast your page, as it has no navigation page.
- ravedave5 5y ago"Nearly every founder was able to capture their product or business USPs gracefully in the form, but only about 1 in 5 had this language on their landing page." I cannot belive how many landing pages I go to for prodcuts and I can't figure out what they actually do, or why to use them over X. It's shocking.
- EricE 5y agoIndeed! The Curse of Knowledge strikes all the time if you aren't on constant guard for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
- nitwit005 5y agoI tend to assume the issue is not that they can't explain things, but they don't want to. Plenty of companies spend a lot of money creating manuals to explain exactly how everything works, and then hide them away so that potential customers can't look at them. The most common reason seems to be a desire to force you to talk to sales.
- kleiba 5y agoThis could, however, be a way to implement one of the recommendations of this site: address the most niche audience you can until you reach a critical mass of customers. If you don't understand what the service/product is about, you're probably not part of the target niche. That said, there's also just really bad web sites out there, no doubt.
- duckmysick 5y agoThis also applies to open source projects on GitHub.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago> I cannot belive how many landing pages I go to for prodcuts and I can't figure out what they actually do You can do anything at Zombocom. [0] I can't believe how many years this site has been around, and it's still essentially the same site. The only change is that it now uses JavaScript to animate the spinning circles rather than Flash. [0] https://zombo.com/ https://zombo.com/
- egypturnash 5y agoreads this ponders the front page of her art/comics site Social proof... social proof... oh hey I have a couple of glowing quotes from Hugo winners for the cover of one of my comics, maybe I should put those on the link to it on the front of my site, too. Thanks, Landing Page Roast Guy. Maybe next I'll even edit the css so they're not in tiny low-contrast type. Nah. Gotta stay humble.
- jholman 5y agobtw fyi... on Rita's page, at the bottom, the Comics I Like hover effect is only showing 4 links, but there's a fifth all sneaky-like at the top (spacetrawler?). looks like a bug?
- egypturnash 5y agoHuh, weird, I am seeing what looks like five links with a fifth appearing furtively on the fade in/out. Thanks! I wonder what broke it somewhere in the years between when I did the css for that comic and now. And if I can get MAMP to start working for my local dev copy again, it refused to work the last time I tried to do some minor tweaks to the main site. Ended up having to fuck around with the live site. So many layers of tools.
- abanayev 5y agoOliver, props on your business and thanks for the interesting insights. I’m really disappointed in HN today though.
- swyx 5y agomy swipe file of landing page advice articles here: https://github.com/sw-yx/launch-cheatsheet/blob/master/README.md#landing-pages https://github.com/sw-yx/launch-cheatsheet/blob/master/READM...
- robinj6 5y agoSEO has made the Internet so toxic. I can’t stand wading through data these days, it’s written for bots.
- tofukid 5y agoI wonder what the range in conversation change was for landing page tweaks. I’m curious how much landing page tweaks in general really matter. Do you see 50% changes in conversion by making copy changes, or 5%?
- optymizer 5y agoThanks for the write-up! I don't get all the negativity in this thread. It's a well-written and detailed post, filled with actual content. I liked that the author included the financial information too. I wish you all the best!
- swsieber 5y ago> 95% of roasts were booked by male founders. I'd be really curious what the demographics are for founders. I'm not in the SV area, and I'd love to know how representative (or not) of the general founder population that is.
- xwdv 5y agoOnline recipes are a pain because I find the vast majority of them are written by women, who tend to meander with their posts while men get straight to the point.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoThat's not why. It's because you only see the ones that do search engine optimization.
- compiler-guy 5y agoOnline recipes may or may not be written mostly by women, but the style is a consequence of copyright law, not biology or gender or even cultural norms around gender roles.
- xwdv 5y agoRegardless, I do not think it was worth a barrage of down votes, as the majority of recipes are in fact written by women.
- servercobra 5y agoThe first half of your original sentence is a fact, but the second half is your opinion and likely what the downvotes are about.
- toomanyrichies 5y agoCitation?
- crysin 5y agoYou made a sexist comment with no evidence. Reap what you sow.
- burnished 5y agostatements of the form "X is bad because women whereas men do good" are widely recognized as garbage. please don't pretend the problem is you claiming that women are the majority recipe-writer, that is clearly not the part people feel the need to express their disagreement with.
- sigg3 5y agoI, for one, really enjoyed reading your advice and mostly agree with them. It's like that book "Don't make me think". I've had some of the most confusing times when a HN link points to a landing page. I personally prefer getting a readme on github. But some of them completely forget to describe what the thing is/does/improves, too. I really dislike landing pages. But I also realize I'm probably sitting on the porch shouting and waving my cane :)
- earksiinni 5y agoFantastic info, thank you, @ollymeakings! As you mentioned in the comments here, your article assumes that the business already has product-market fit. Do you have advice for people who are at the idea stage and are building landing pages as a way of finding product-market fit? I've been building a landing page to test out a consumer-oriented travel app idea before I build it. Ideally, I want to build a community of users before creating the app and learn from them what to build. Conversion at this point means signing up for an email list, then I reach out with a personal email. Not fancy, but it's a start. I see the landing page in my use case as a conversation starter: "Sign up for this app! Actually, the app doesn't exist yet, but I'd really like to build something like this for you. Does it strike your interest?" Not in a bait-and-switch way. Thanks again! P.S.: I'm an engineer transitioning into entrepreneurship. Learning that marketing is my chief responsibility--and what marketing really means (way more than advertising)--has been an eye-opener for me. Here are some other landing page resources that I've found helpful: Rob Hope's Landing Page Hot Tips ebook: https://gumroad.com/l/hottips/root https://gumroad.com/l/hottips/root Harry from Marketing's guide to landing pages: https://marketingexamples.com/conversion/landing-page-guide https://marketingexamples.com/conversion/landing-page-guide
- frabjoused 5y agoI feel like this useronboarding site (https://www.useronboard.com/ https://www.useronboard.com/) is the right way to go about this. It's informative, helpful but doesn't make the website its tearing down feel wrong.
- bigtasty 5y agoSlightly off-topic, but I'm curious what your logo [1] is? Based on the first iteration of your website, it used to be the chicken drumstick emoji () or similar, but now it's a drumstick with purple and pink? [1] https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6059199ee613ee15184e8810/606225da9e69310a9bf08c6c_landing-page-logo.svg https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6059199ee613ee15184e8810/606...
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago> Tools like Loom are amazing for recording video-in-video. But when they fail mid-roast recording it's horrible. When it happens 3 times in a row, you consider leaving your job, hiring a small dependable car, packing up your possessions and moving to a remote farm far away from everything and everyone you know. Any particular reason for choosing Loom over, say, OBS? I know OBS is primarily for game streamers, but it would get the job done just as well and might be more stable since it's incredibly popular. Or why not record your screen and webcam separately, and then edit the two together in post? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?
- orliesaurus 5y agoShameless Plug: I also roasted stuff, in fact over 200 pages, in public - on my YouTube channel: https://lf.gg/youtube/ https://lf.gg/youtube/ This started as a side project during the pandemic, I was really bored. I am not as good looking as Oliver and my English isn't as fluid but I tried... P.S. If you have ANY suggestion on how to improve my YouTube channel - could you share it?
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoThis is a lot of real effort - one per workday for a year. I just am trying to imagine what I could do similarly: - a code review from an OSS project per day? - a bug fix per day? - document something every day - add a line of code to an OSS project per day? Any ideas?
- roryokane 5y agoYou could use https://www.codetriage.com/ https://www.codetriage.com/ to receive a daily email reminder to triage an open issue in an open source project of your choice. (I haven’t tried that service myself.)
- schleiss 5y ago> Focus your landing page on one conversion goal. How does this help with SEO? Won't your pages be too thin and suffer in Google's eyes? I thought rich content is the way to go.
- Exuma 5y agoVery nice. One minor correction -- The emoji you used next to "Processes I implemented" is unavailable on the latest OSX update for some reason. I'm not even sure what emoji it is, but it looks like stacked bars.
- McCarney 5y agoLove your work Oliver! Keep on crushing it