5 ms·

Can your landing page do this? (Convert)

90 points by qrlawified 14y ago

diminish 14y ago
very good collection and summary for landing page optimization. i hope another version of this had conversion rate comparison, though i am not sure how you could do this..
davejafari 14y ago
Building a solid landing page seems so easy until you have tried one and failed to sell. The formula really isn't too difficult, but it does work if you get yourself out of the way: 1) outline a clear value proposition, 2) provide a call to action (+ a cost if there aren't multiple pricings), and 3) build trust. #1 and #2 should always be above the fold and the most visually prominent. Anything else on the page that doesn't build trust should be ruthlessly cut if you want to focus on pure conversion. It's easy to forget that YAGNI also applies to landing pages. Don't waste your time giving secondary information. They can get to it later. If they don't convert, they ain't gonna need it.
- daeken 14y ago
  I thought landing pages were super easy, until I messed up. When I put up the initial landing page for my latest startup ( http://questcompanions.com/ http://questcompanions.com/ -- finally launching next week!), the 'Enlist' button said 'Start' instead. Due to the non-traditional input box and the text on the button, people would just click 'Start'. Due to a lack of error handling in the frontend code, the empty email would go up to my server, go out to Mailchimp, and they'd hand back an error. All the user would see is "Invalid or duplicate email", then they'd move away. When I integrated Mixpanel, I saw why immediately and was able to fix it, but by that point I'd already wasted an easy $10-20 on Facebook ad clicks leading to the page. Tiny sum of money, but those were good clicks. Implementing error handling, better button text, and slightly different text on the input box caused the conversion rate to go way up, and the rate of people clicking the button without filling in an email dropped to nearly zero. Long story short, measure everything and be very, very smart about your messaging.
  - steve8918 14y ago
    I built my first web site/blog a couple of weeks ago, and I've been experimenting with advertising on Google, Bing, Facebook, etc, and I have to say it's been a really interesting experience. Basically the most important thing I've learned is that I have to understand why my users are coming to my site, and from there tailor my site around that. I have a very high bounce rate of around 75%, but most of that is due to smartphone users and the fact my site is pretty hard to use for them. Creating a simplified page is my #1 goal over the next couple of weeks. Looking at logs, I also realized that my landing page was hard to use for a significant percentage of my new visitors. I could see from the logs that they were getting confused, trying it out a couple of times and bouncing. I was working on this last week, and tried a couple of GUI changes, but decided that having unintrusive error boxes would probably help better. Hopefully that will help those users having trouble. But from the ones that stick around, I do have a few pretty regular users, and that leads to what I think is a kind of nice ad clickthru rate. I've paid a good chunk of all my costs in the first two weeks (of course, my costs are only around ~$30). Thanks for the pointer to Mixpanel. I was looking for a better type of analytics than Google Analytics which doesn't offer me a great deal of information. The only hesitation I have is whether or not having all this javascript client-side tracking will cause users to question their privacy. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
ardillamorris 14y ago
Great resource and like the pros and cons although with stats would've been better.
dazbradbury 14y ago
Great article, thanks! As we're discussing landing page effectiveness and I've just put together our landing page, I would love some constructive feedback: https://www.openrent.co.uk/home/index https://www.openrent.co.uk/home/index We're a week or two from launching, hence the slightly masked url. But any feedback before we put it in front of customers would be greatly appreciated. I hope this is an appropriate place to ask!
- chris_wot 14y ago
  I though that the blue stripes were buttons... Silly I know, but you did ask for feedback!
  - dazbradbury 14y ago
    Not silly at all, thanks for the feedback! Will need to think about how to make them seem less button-like. Perhaps highlighting the "learn more" buttons will make it clearer what our buttons are meant to look like.
    - mryan 14y ago
      Yes, I think this will help a lot. Maybe make the blue bars less prominent, while increasing the prominence of the 'learn more' buttons? At the moment, the learn more buttons don't 'jump out' at me when I view the page. As the blue bars are the only really colourful things on the page, they look like they should be CTAs. The Copyhackers book has an interesting section on buttons (preview here: http://www.copyhackers.com/web-writing-ebook-sample/ http://www.copyhackers.com/web-writing-ebook-sample/). I'm not involved with Copyhackers, but I read the book this weekend and found it very interesting.
      - dazbradbury 14y ago
        Thanks for the suggestions! I've updated the buttons, but I need to think of a nice way to make the blue title's less prominent. Hopefully that will improve things. I've seen copy hackers mentioned, but am yet to read it myself. Will take a look ASAP, and see what insights I can garner. Thanks again.
acoyfellow 14y ago
Unbounce looks great- I've been sitting on the fence about these types of service for a while now. What is HN's opinion on using a free version of a Unbounce (or other service)? (Coming from a student creating a start-up, no savings what so ever right now) Does it distract from the purpose of the landing page heavily? Does it add credibility? My quick and unprofessional opinion is that I would rather have the paid version, but since I have to really value what little money I have, I'm unsure if paying for a landing page service is wise or not.
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Actually it depends on for what purpose you intend to create that landing page. If it is for a B2B service, obviously it looks unprofessional. But for most of the other services, a short blurb in footer isn't too distracting.
chris_wot 14y ago
I can't believe that Crikey.com.au have forgotten to add their privacy statement. In Australia, that is a huge no-no. Even a link to it would have been good - they can't just state that they won't share the information gathered.
- chunkyslink 14y ago
  Can you explain why its a big no-no? I'm new to Australia. Thanks.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    Sure. Privacy is something that is covered via 10 National Privacy Principles. Principle 5 covers "Openness" http://www.privacy.gov.au/materials/types/infosheets/view/6583#npp5 http://www.privacy.gov.au/materials/types/infosheets/view/65... Basically, it states "an organisation must set out in a document clearly expressed policies on its management of personal information. The organisation must make the document available to anyone who asks for it". In general, the best way is for a link to the site's privacy guidelines. Crikey has one at http://www.crikey.com.au/about/privacy/ http://www.crikey.com.au/about/privacy/ - they could easily have published a short link to it on the site shown in the article. I'd say this was an oversight on their part, but from my POV quite a big one!
    - biot 14y ago
      If the document were printed on sheepskin and available to view in their office from 9am to 5pm, wouldn't that be making the document available to anyone who asks? Or is there specific legislation around a website having it published online and linked to from every page?
      - chris_wot 14y ago
        I don't think the privacy commissioner would take too kindly to this. That would be an accessibility issue. You'll notice though that on that page there isn't actually anywhere you can find the privacy policy. I don't believe there's any legislation to force people into providing their privacy policy online. Though I would say the effort taken to get people to come into the office to view the privacy policy on the sheepskin would be prohibitively expensive. :-)
AnthonyJoseph 14y ago
Would also love some constructive feedback: picdazzler.com Note: still waiting for the before/afters and copy to get here, disregard that please.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Can you move the .com closer to the PicDazzler text? I'd suggest putting the email address into a link - but an online form might be neat also. I'd also add a note very close to the email address that you won't use the email for evil purposes. Or See some before and afters - you really need to change that text colour. It's almost black on black... sign up or sign in is out of alignment and bleeding over the rectangular box with curved corners. Seems to be an issue with the div with id=main and class=grid_12. Just my 2c :-)
  - AnthonyJoseph 14y ago
    Thanks! I probably posted that prematurely, as those things are all on the list of "shit to fix".
wheaties 14y ago
Maybe it's just me but thanks for linking some of those. One of them is a service I've been looking for. I think some of those sites just got some free advertising :p
nextstep 14y ago
Has anyone used Manpacks? I'd never heard of it until now, but I'm considering signing up.
- trjordan 14y ago
  I've used it. It's awesome. I mean, there's not a whole lot more to it than what you see. You sign in, pick some clothes, and they ship it to you on a schedule. Saves me a trip to Costco every 6 months (or from feeling guilty about not going on that trip that often).
nickler 14y ago
I'm a huge believer in unbounce, for one simple reason. Once development barriers diminish all of this process will return once again to the control of marketers. I think they see this and are pushing this as a tool for the masses of people who can't code, but love to sell, and want to do it better.
oli_gardner 14y ago
Awesome to see this discussion going on - and thanks to qrlawified for submitting the post to kick this off. For anyone interested in trying out Unbounce, I wanna give you a coupon code (somewhat sheepishly as this isn't the usual forum). But if you do wanna check us out, use "hn503" to get 50% off for 3 months. If you flame me I'll either kiss you or hug you... #JustSayin

90 points by qrlawified 14y ago

very good collection and summary for landing page optimization. i hope another version of this had conversion rate comparison, though i am not sure how you could do this..

davejafari 14y ago

Building a solid landing page seems so easy until you have tried one and failed to sell. The formula really isn't too difficult, but it does work if you get yourself out of the way: 1) outline a clear value proposition, 2) provide a call to action (+ a cost if there aren't multiple pricings), and 3) build trust. #1 and #2 should always be above the fold and the most visually prominent. Anything else on the page that doesn't build trust should be ruthlessly cut if you want to focus on pure conversion. It's easy to forget that YAGNI also applies to landing pages. Don't waste your time giving secondary information. They can get to it later. If they don't convert, they ain't gonna need it.

daeken 14y ago
I thought landing pages were super easy, until I messed up. When I put up the initial landing page for my latest startup ( http://questcompanions.com/ http://questcompanions.com/ -- finally launching next week!), the 'Enlist' button said 'Start' instead. Due to the non-traditional input box and the text on the button, people would just click 'Start'. Due to a lack of error handling in the frontend code, the empty email would go up to my server, go out to Mailchimp, and they'd hand back an error. All the user would see is "Invalid or duplicate email", then they'd move away. When I integrated Mixpanel, I saw why immediately and was able to fix it, but by that point I'd already wasted an easy $10-20 on Facebook ad clicks leading to the page. Tiny sum of money, but those were good clicks. Implementing error handling, better button text, and slightly different text on the input box caused the conversion rate to go way up, and the rate of people clicking the button without filling in an email dropped to nearly zero. Long story short, measure everything and be very, very smart about your messaging.
- steve8918 14y ago
  I built my first web site/blog a couple of weeks ago, and I've been experimenting with advertising on Google, Bing, Facebook, etc, and I have to say it's been a really interesting experience. Basically the most important thing I've learned is that I have to understand why my users are coming to my site, and from there tailor my site around that. I have a very high bounce rate of around 75%, but most of that is due to smartphone users and the fact my site is pretty hard to use for them. Creating a simplified page is my #1 goal over the next couple of weeks. Looking at logs, I also realized that my landing page was hard to use for a significant percentage of my new visitors. I could see from the logs that they were getting confused, trying it out a couple of times and bouncing. I was working on this last week, and tried a couple of GUI changes, but decided that having unintrusive error boxes would probably help better. Hopefully that will help those users having trouble. But from the ones that stick around, I do have a few pretty regular users, and that leads to what I think is a kind of nice ad clickthru rate. I've paid a good chunk of all my costs in the first two weeks (of course, my costs are only around ~$30). Thanks for the pointer to Mixpanel. I was looking for a better type of analytics than Google Analytics which doesn't offer me a great deal of information. The only hesitation I have is whether or not having all this javascript client-side tracking will cause users to question their privacy. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

ardillamorris 14y ago

Great resource and like the pros and cons although with stats would've been better.

dazbradbury 14y ago

Great article, thanks! As we're discussing landing page effectiveness and I've just put together our landing page, I would love some constructive feedback: https://www.openrent.co.uk/home/index https://www.openrent.co.uk/home/index We're a week or two from launching, hence the slightly masked url. But any feedback before we put it in front of customers would be greatly appreciated. I hope this is an appropriate place to ask!

chris_wot 14y ago
I though that the blue stripes were buttons... Silly I know, but you did ask for feedback!
- dazbradbury 14y ago
  Not silly at all, thanks for the feedback! Will need to think about how to make them seem less button-like. Perhaps highlighting the "learn more" buttons will make it clearer what our buttons are meant to look like.
  - mryan 14y ago
    Yes, I think this will help a lot. Maybe make the blue bars less prominent, while increasing the prominence of the 'learn more' buttons? At the moment, the learn more buttons don't 'jump out' at me when I view the page. As the blue bars are the only really colourful things on the page, they look like they should be CTAs. The Copyhackers book has an interesting section on buttons (preview here: http://www.copyhackers.com/web-writing-ebook-sample/ http://www.copyhackers.com/web-writing-ebook-sample/). I'm not involved with Copyhackers, but I read the book this weekend and found it very interesting.
    - dazbradbury 14y ago
      Thanks for the suggestions! I've updated the buttons, but I need to think of a nice way to make the blue title's less prominent. Hopefully that will improve things. I've seen copy hackers mentioned, but am yet to read it myself. Will take a look ASAP, and see what insights I can garner. Thanks again.

acoyfellow 14y ago

Unbounce looks great- I've been sitting on the fence about these types of service for a while now. What is HN's opinion on using a free version of a Unbounce (or other service)? (Coming from a student creating a start-up, no savings what so ever right now) Does it distract from the purpose of the landing page heavily? Does it add credibility? My quick and unprofessional opinion is that I would rather have the paid version, but since I have to really value what little money I have, I'm unsure if paying for a landing page service is wise or not.

paraschopra 14y ago
Actually it depends on for what purpose you intend to create that landing page. If it is for a B2B service, obviously it looks unprofessional. But for most of the other services, a short blurb in footer isn't too distracting.

chris_wot 14y ago

I can't believe that Crikey.com.au have forgotten to add their privacy statement. In Australia, that is a huge no-no. Even a link to it would have been good - they can't just state that they won't share the information gathered.

chunkyslink 14y ago
Can you explain why its a big no-no? I'm new to Australia. Thanks.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Sure. Privacy is something that is covered via 10 National Privacy Principles. Principle 5 covers "Openness" http://www.privacy.gov.au/materials/types/infosheets/view/6583#npp5 http://www.privacy.gov.au/materials/types/infosheets/view/65... Basically, it states "an organisation must set out in a document clearly expressed policies on its management of personal information. The organisation must make the document available to anyone who asks for it". In general, the best way is for a link to the site's privacy guidelines. Crikey has one at http://www.crikey.com.au/about/privacy/ http://www.crikey.com.au/about/privacy/ - they could easily have published a short link to it on the site shown in the article. I'd say this was an oversight on their part, but from my POV quite a big one!
  - biot 14y ago
    If the document were printed on sheepskin and available to view in their office from 9am to 5pm, wouldn't that be making the document available to anyone who asks? Or is there specific legislation around a website having it published online and linked to from every page?
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      I don't think the privacy commissioner would take too kindly to this. That would be an accessibility issue. You'll notice though that on that page there isn't actually anywhere you can find the privacy policy. I don't believe there's any legislation to force people into providing their privacy policy online. Though I would say the effort taken to get people to come into the office to view the privacy policy on the sheepskin would be prohibitively expensive. :-)

AnthonyJoseph 14y ago

Would also love some constructive feedback: picdazzler.com Note: still waiting for the before/afters and copy to get here, disregard that please.

chris_wot 14y ago
Can you move the .com closer to the PicDazzler text? I'd suggest putting the email address into a link - but an online form might be neat also. I'd also add a note very close to the email address that you won't use the email for evil purposes. Or See some before and afters - you really need to change that text colour. It's almost black on black... sign up or sign in is out of alignment and bleeding over the rectangular box with curved corners. Seems to be an issue with the div with id=main and class=grid_12. Just my 2c :-)
- AnthonyJoseph 14y ago
  Thanks! I probably posted that prematurely, as those things are all on the list of "shit to fix".

wheaties 14y ago

Maybe it's just me but thanks for linking some of those. One of them is a service I've been looking for. I think some of those sites just got some free advertising :p

nextstep 14y ago

Has anyone used Manpacks? I'd never heard of it until now, but I'm considering signing up.

trjordan 14y ago
I've used it. It's awesome. I mean, there's not a whole lot more to it than what you see. You sign in, pick some clothes, and they ship it to you on a schedule. Saves me a trip to Costco every 6 months (or from feeling guilty about not going on that trip that often).

nickler 14y ago

I'm a huge believer in unbounce, for one simple reason. Once development barriers diminish all of this process will return once again to the control of marketers. I think they see this and are pushing this as a tool for the masses of people who can't code, but love to sell, and want to do it better.

oli_gardner 14y ago

Awesome to see this discussion going on - and thanks to qrlawified for submitting the post to kick this off. For anyone interested in trying out Unbounce, I wanna give you a coupon code (somewhat sheepishly as this isn't the usual forum). But if you do wanna check us out, use "hn503" to get 50% off for 3 months. If you flame me I'll either kiss you or hug you... #JustSayin