5 ms·

If I see a call-to-action or a subscription form I hit the back button faster than Doc Holliday could draw his Colt.

akerl_ 5y ago
How does a landing page work if it doesn’t offer a next step? Maybe we’re not aligned on what a “call-to-action” is, but sort of tautologically a landing page should direct me to how I can try out / buy / learn more / etc. If it doesn’t do that, what’s the premise? I see a thing that looks interesting and then it’s my job to go on a hunt to figure out how to get it?
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  There's nothing wrong with a contact link. Collecting email addresses for the sake of collecting email addresses is a mug's game. (It's the royal road to having your emails end up in a spam folder.) Collecting email addresses of people who are deeply interested in your service or product is golden. Doing the first is the enemy of the last.
  - davidivadavid 5y ago
    That's moving the goal posts. Of course you'd rather have good than bad lead qualification/generation. But you still need calls to action to collect those leads somewhere, which was the parent's point.
- eigengrau5150 5y ago
  > How does a landing page work if it doesn’t offer a next step? Does the front page not have links to other pages on the site? If not, then whoever built it fucked up. I don't want to be "directed". I don't want anything that resembles a hard sell. As far as I'm concerned, a website's front page should be a menu, not a "call to action". > I see a thing that looks interesting and then it’s my job to go on a hunt to figure out how to get it? Exactly, and what's wrong with that?
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    Not like you want to make people work too hard, but a person who works a bit will be motivated, self-selected and "drawn in" to the situation. Rather than you working to sell them they work to sell themselves, and they are more effective at that than you will ever be.
  - akerl_ 5y ago
    > Exactly, and what's wrong with that? It’s entirely opposite to the whole field of good user interface design? It seems pretty uncontroversial that the goal of a user interface ought to be making it easier for the user to do what they want to do. If I load up a site for some product, there’s basically 3 possible outcomes of reading the page: 1. I don’t want the thing 2. I might want the thing, but I need more info 3. I want the thing In the 1st case, the close tab button works great. In the 2nd and 3rd case, I want to either get more info or get the thing. So a site with a good user experience will provide an obvious indicator that says “click here to learn more” and “click here to get the thing”.
    - JohnFen 5y ago
      The problem is that landing pages are often sales jobs, and the presence of call-to-action items, email harvesting, etc., confirm that it's a hard-sell job. Such pages tend not to be useful to people who have not already decided to buy, because the "learn more" links usually don't really inform you about the product, but instead lead you to another sales pitch.
    - eigengrau5150 5y ago
      > It’s entirely opposite to the whole field of good user interface design? Good for whom? Good by what standard? The older I get the more I've come to suspect that most UI and UX designers come from the Temple Grandin school. They seem to think that users, website visitors, etc. are just human cattle and that their job is to design better cattle chutes. I don't want a "better user interface". I want web apps that work, and I have yet to find one. Even dict.org reports errors when run through wave.webaim.org. - If your web app doesn't work in Lynx, it doesn't work. - If your web app doesn't work on a 56K dialup connection, it doesn't work. - If your web app isn't WCAG 2.0 AAA compliant, it doesn't work. > If I load up a site for some product, there’s basically 3 possible outcomes of reading the page: No, there are four outcomes. You forgot one: 4. This website is so obnoxious that I've forgotten why I bothered accessing it in the first place. If even one of your users asks, "Why am I doing this to myself," when visiting your website or using your web app, you've messed up.
- handrous 5y ago
  It's not an automatic back-button press for me (I mean, hell, most sites do that these days), but I do find pages that yell at me to BUY IT! first thing to be really gross. Like having a salesman run up to me on the street, pen and contract in hand, yelling BUY BUY BUY! Like, WTF. I don't know you, and I don't even know what you're selling yet, but you're shoving a contract in my face already? "Crass" is too mild a term. The only time it's convenient to have those buttons front and center, and the only time I click them very soon after first visiting a site, is when I already know what the service is and I'm at least 90% sure I'm buying it before I even load the site (tenth visit, already used the service at a previous company, buying a product/account for a family member, that kind of thing)
  - davidivadavid 5y ago
    Yes, many companies have bad lead qualification and try to sell their product too early. But that's orthogonal to the concept of having a landing page or a call to action in itself. The problem is not having or not having calls to action, it's to figure out which call to action is relevant at what step of the funnel.
PaulHoule 5y ago
What's worst is the pages that hit you with several pop-ups before you can even read the content: sometimes they ask for your email address twice and also ask if you want to get push notifications. As they say in Germany, "Bitte Keine!" Seriously, the "call-to-action" that doesn't flow naturally from the content is a scourge of the web in 2021. There's the audiophile blog that pops up a dialog asking if you are "confused" and want to book an appointment (Pro tip: that's why I haven't been to a stereo store since 1999) There's nothing you can do that makes you look more inauthentic than that.
JohnFen 5y ago
I do this as well. Those are red flag items.
revicon 5y ago
one of the first goals of a landing page is to pixel you so they can retarget you with ads elsewhere. If you've visited the landing page in the first place it shows the business that you've at least heard of the company, which moves you into another stage of their sales funnel. If you actually fill out the form or take whatever action is shown on the page, that's gravy for them but a savvy marketer knows it takes at least seven touches to a lead before they're ready to convert. Landing pages are very top-of-funnel.

How does a landing page work if it doesn’t offer a next step? Maybe we’re not aligned on what a “call-to-action” is, but sort of tautologically a landing page should direct me to how I can try out / buy / learn more / etc. If it doesn’t do that, what’s the premise? I see a thing that looks interesting and then it’s my job to go on a hunt to figure out how to get it?

PaulHoule 5y ago
There's nothing wrong with a contact link. Collecting email addresses for the sake of collecting email addresses is a mug's game. (It's the royal road to having your emails end up in a spam folder.) Collecting email addresses of people who are deeply interested in your service or product is golden. Doing the first is the enemy of the last.
- davidivadavid 5y ago
  That's moving the goal posts. Of course you'd rather have good than bad lead qualification/generation. But you still need calls to action to collect those leads somewhere, which was the parent's point.
eigengrau5150 5y ago
> How does a landing page work if it doesn’t offer a next step? Does the front page not have links to other pages on the site? If not, then whoever built it fucked up. I don't want to be "directed". I don't want anything that resembles a hard sell. As far as I'm concerned, a website's front page should be a menu, not a "call to action". > I see a thing that looks interesting and then it’s my job to go on a hunt to figure out how to get it? Exactly, and what's wrong with that?
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  Not like you want to make people work too hard, but a person who works a bit will be motivated, self-selected and "drawn in" to the situation. Rather than you working to sell them they work to sell themselves, and they are more effective at that than you will ever be.
- akerl_ 5y ago
  > Exactly, and what's wrong with that? It’s entirely opposite to the whole field of good user interface design? It seems pretty uncontroversial that the goal of a user interface ought to be making it easier for the user to do what they want to do. If I load up a site for some product, there’s basically 3 possible outcomes of reading the page: 1. I don’t want the thing 2. I might want the thing, but I need more info 3. I want the thing In the 1st case, the close tab button works great. In the 2nd and 3rd case, I want to either get more info or get the thing. So a site with a good user experience will provide an obvious indicator that says “click here to learn more” and “click here to get the thing”.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    The problem is that landing pages are often sales jobs, and the presence of call-to-action items, email harvesting, etc., confirm that it's a hard-sell job. Such pages tend not to be useful to people who have not already decided to buy, because the "learn more" links usually don't really inform you about the product, but instead lead you to another sales pitch.
  - eigengrau5150 5y ago
    > It’s entirely opposite to the whole field of good user interface design? Good for whom? Good by what standard? The older I get the more I've come to suspect that most UI and UX designers come from the Temple Grandin school. They seem to think that users, website visitors, etc. are just human cattle and that their job is to design better cattle chutes. I don't want a "better user interface". I want web apps that work, and I have yet to find one. Even dict.org reports errors when run through wave.webaim.org. - If your web app doesn't work in Lynx, it doesn't work. - If your web app doesn't work on a 56K dialup connection, it doesn't work. - If your web app isn't WCAG 2.0 AAA compliant, it doesn't work. > If I load up a site for some product, there’s basically 3 possible outcomes of reading the page: No, there are four outcomes. You forgot one: 4. This website is so obnoxious that I've forgotten why I bothered accessing it in the first place. If even one of your users asks, "Why am I doing this to myself," when visiting your website or using your web app, you've messed up.
handrous 5y ago
It's not an automatic back-button press for me (I mean, hell, most sites do that these days), but I do find pages that yell at me to BUY IT! first thing to be really gross. Like having a salesman run up to me on the street, pen and contract in hand, yelling BUY BUY BUY! Like, WTF. I don't know you, and I don't even know what you're selling yet, but you're shoving a contract in my face already? "Crass" is too mild a term. The only time it's convenient to have those buttons front and center, and the only time I click them very soon after first visiting a site, is when I already know what the service is and I'm at least 90% sure I'm buying it before I even load the site (tenth visit, already used the service at a previous company, buying a product/account for a family member, that kind of thing)
- davidivadavid 5y ago
  Yes, many companies have bad lead qualification and try to sell their product too early. But that's orthogonal to the concept of having a landing page or a call to action in itself. The problem is not having or not having calls to action, it's to figure out which call to action is relevant at what step of the funnel.

PaulHoule 5y ago

What's worst is the pages that hit you with several pop-ups before you can even read the content: sometimes they ask for your email address twice and also ask if you want to get push notifications. As they say in Germany, "Bitte Keine!" Seriously, the "call-to-action" that doesn't flow naturally from the content is a scourge of the web in 2021. There's the audiophile blog that pops up a dialog asking if you are "confused" and want to book an appointment (Pro tip: that's why I haven't been to a stereo store since 1999) There's nothing you can do that makes you look more inauthentic than that.

JohnFen 5y ago

I do this as well. Those are red flag items.

revicon 5y ago

one of the first goals of a landing page is to pixel you so they can retarget you with ads elsewhere. If you've visited the landing page in the first place it shows the business that you've at least heard of the company, which moves you into another stage of their sales funnel. If you actually fill out the form or take whatever action is shown on the page, that's gravy for them but a savvy marketer knows it takes at least seven touches to a lead before they're ready to convert. Landing pages are very top-of-funnel.