Ask HN: What landing page do you love? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What landing page do you love?

199 pointsrichardreeze147 comments

I saw this question today on Indie Hackers and thought it would be interesting to ask the HN community.

For me, the answer would be Stripe Atlas (https://stripe.com/atlas)

https://www.lingscars.com/ - yes, this is a real car rental business. Best viewed on desktop - the mobile version is not nearly as... potent.

Ha. I don't know Ling but I think I'd like to.

I've met Ling and I know a bunch of people who worked on her site over the last decade. She's definitely an interesting character, and very good at marketing.

The last time Ling was mentioned on HN she accused HN of DDOSing her site.

Yes! HN members were DDOSSING my website, damn them. - Ling

Got em

Whoaa, are you really Ling? This website is awesome. I'm gonna send some relatives your way for some business.

Very amusing, but bloody awful if you go to the site and want to hire a car.

People should check out the page source too.

I think this is worse: http://arngren.net/

That was a lot funnier than I expected :D

Ling scars!

* I am LING you can trust me *

This is some Geocities level awesomeness and I love it.

Well, dang, I’m late.

Google image search results for “ling” are probably the best Google image search results there will ever be.

People named Ling, some very photogenic, liberally interspersed with a huge ugly fish, and almost nothing else.

Wow. Amazing that it works almost perfectly with JS disabled. I really like the menu/navigation functionality as well, at least on desktop. Surprisingly good website despite its appearance.

I saw this in a class recently. I was blown away. Simultaneously confounded and appreciative.

Does the button on the live cam page[1] really play the proclaimers in the office? No one's there at the moment for me to test it out.

[1] https://www.lingscars.com/webcams

Mother of God...

I now have a new thing I need to send to everyone I know.

https://muzzleapp.com/

Just checked out. It's hilarious for sure.

Hilarious, but you can just option click the notification center icon to silence all notifications. No need for a standalone app.

The point of the app is it does this for you automatically when it detects screen sharing, negating the chance that you forget to turn it off yourself.

my favorite solution is still disabling the damn notification center altogether for good. nothing to be forget about then.

To those who find the concept hilarious.. The specific value proposition of this app is "automatically turn off notifications when screen-sharing." Automating everyday tasks seems like exactly the type of thing we use computers and software for.

Had a good laugh

Pretty funny, but it looks like macOS Mojave does this already - there's a "Turn on Do Not Disturb when mirroring to TVs and projectors" setting in System Preferences > Notifications > Do Not Disturb - which might explain that development seemed to stop more than a year ago: https://muzzleapp.com/updates/ Unless there's something else that it does which isn't covered by that preference setting?

Damn. I didn't know that. thanks an awful lot...

For future reference, the smart person creates a second login on their machine with no notifications allowed and with nothing logged in for presenting.

Presumably this wouldn't cover screensharing from an app like Slack or Zoom?

Ah, yes - that’s what I was missing. Thanks for pointing that out.

And I guess sometimes you're sitting in front of your Mac with others without using any presentation mode. Muting notifications could be really helpful then.

You can manually turn on Do Not Disturb mode also to accomplish this.

This is from the same developer as CodeKit. His documentation, sales copy and release notes are always hilarious.

Check out the "reviews" on http://codekitapp.com , Especially this gem:

>Your app is lame, your face is lame, your friends are lame, and your continued existence deeply offends us.

>Hacker News, Where Self-Esteem Goes To Die

:-)

"CodeKit: it's at least 183x better than iTunes."

The contrast on that side is super low. I’m viewing with grayscale inverted in low light (at night) and the site is totally unreadable. Wouldn’t call it a great landing page.

This is amazing

Is it a good thing if I didn't even scroll, but just watched events unfold? Surely that's a compliment, right?

https://panic.com is pretty great and so is the landing page for their upcoming hardware product: https://play.date

Playdate site is awful. It appears to be designed for people sitting 2 meters away from their 8K screens.

Not only do I completely agree, the original 'panic.com' site is generic looking and usability annoying. "We do generic icons for a living...you have to hover over them to get any info". Really?

I'm assuming huhtenberg works there.

You probably meant that the GP worked there, not me.

MY bad. Sorry for the misattribution.

https://fibery.io/anxiety

Maybe that’s a joke, but this page appears to have managed to crash Safari on iOS a couple seconds after loading.

When it comes to Safari, given their widely known non-compliance with W3C standards, I'd wager this to be a bug/non-compliance within Safari.

Agreed, that‘s a possibility. Although a properly tested landing page probably shouldn’t crash a relatively mainstream browser on current version regardless of its quirks (technical correctness isn’t everything), this wouldn’t be an excuse for the quirks nor would it be a reason to not love the landing page for other reasons.

On the contrary, I believe developers should stand up to Apple where they can, and the browser is likely the only place for it, given they have zero leverage in negotiations on native apps, in which Apple is making life very very hard for developers who simply do not fall in line with their guidance.

If Apple will willy-nilly reject app store (both Mac and iOS) apps, retroactively change rules to kill competition (look up what they did with steam) and randomly start banning popular frameworks (electron apps are the latest victim), and still insist on being W3C non-compliant, in a blatant effort to force users and developers to their walled garden, developers need to grow a backbone and take Apple on where they can. If Mac users really want your webapp, Firefox/Opera.... are just an install away

Rereading ancestor comments I think we are on the same page actually, but in case I’m wrong…

In general, I could appreciate the decision to make a stance in this way on a personal level, but when evaluating a real landing page for a paid product from business perspective—which would be an inseparable aspect—I would not be able to recommend preferring “technically correct” over “actually working”.

This does not only hurt sales/business, but also causes stress to non-technical end users. All they experience is their browser exiting when they visit the page (thankfully, tabs are preserved on next launch); they are not concerned with implementation and do not become more aware of Apple’s standard non-conformance as a result.

A non-commercial website oriented towards developers, or indeed a joke such as in this case, is fine, of course.

In short, violating open standards—bad, taking a stance—good, hurting regular users and business—bad.

Honestly, safari is an obscolete browser.

Yes. Safari is a joke - a bad one.

The website does say "never tested on a touchscreen."

Does this work? It's hilarious, but I'm not sure the reverse psychology is working on me...

This is the real product landing page:

https://fibery.io/connect

The other one is probably just trying to be cheeky :)

>For me, the answer would be Stripe Atlas (https://stripe.com/atlas)

Why? It seems very generic and bland. Or is that the point? Also, it make you scroll through a lot of stuff to find what you are presumably going to the site to find. They bury the important stuff way down at the bottom.

Yeah, most 'landing pages' are pretty useless exercises in annoying your user.

I believe it gives you all the "big picture" information you need in a very simple way (maybe that's why you call it bland). But I do find simplicity important.

This is hard to do with a product as complex as Stripe Atlas (just Google "form a company" and click around to see what I mean). But they pulled it off. And it looks beautiful.

TLDR: I love a landing page that turns complexity into simplicity.

Maybe my brain is broken, but I found it uninformative on the surface, and it makes it hard to locate any actual information about the project.

"Just tell me what the damn thing does."

http://www.tarsnap.com/

(I'm also a happy user!)

Now, that's a good landing page.

None. Absolutely none. I have never "loved" a landing page. They are always too clever, too designed, too cluttered, too austere, too "gorgeous", too self-indulgent, too self-important, etc.

Is there anything you do like?

to be fair, it's just a landing page - not a life changing experience. I don't know that I share OPs enthusiasm, but I've definitely never liked or loved a landing page.

Yes.

I like a landing page whose implementation makes it clear that the people behind it have thought long and hard about the people who will visit, and what they want.

I like a page that's clean, clear, spare, easy to find the things people are looking for when they come to a landing page.

The XKCD panel nails it: https://www.xkcd.com/773/

There are so many things I really don't care about when I land on your site, and a few things I really do care about. Visit the web site for a museum to find out how much it costs to visit[0]:

  > Plan your day
   > Your visit
    > Discover
     > Become a friend
      > Memberships
       > Admissions
        > Audio guides
         > Day tickets
          > $18

Then you want opening times and which holidays they are closed, and the page is comprehensive and detailed, and from 2008 and clearly wrong.

Absolutely no thought about what a visitor is trying to accomplish, and instead is all about trying to ... well, I don't know what they're trying to do.

I like a landing page that has clearly catered for the visitor, and not just to show off how wonderful their web design skills are.

--------

[0] Adapted from here: https://twitter.com/sophie_gadd/status/1213126700625739778

The only true and lasting love: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com

I find it pretty hilarious that a substantial part of it is an ad for Geico.

Well. BH owns Geico or prolly the largest shareholder. Also one of their most lucrative investments.

I personally dislike Geico’s spammy marketing but I guess it’s minting billions for BH.

If it were to me, they’d be a law that all insurance companies need to be a co-op or non profit. Profit in insurance (esp for health insurance) makes no sense for a country.

"If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can write us at the address shown above. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response." Lol

For anyone wondering, Berkshire Hathaway is worth over 400 billion USD... Their site doesn't use css or JavaScript...

If you have a browser that has flash, then http://www.zombo.com is a good one.

Otherwise you can visit: https://html5zombo.com/

Man, I loved zombo.com in high school. Early meme for us.

Looking at my "Designs" bookmarks folder, half of the websites have been shutdown and the other half I don't "love" any more.

This proves two things for me, design has nothing to do with the success of a product, and the second: design is subjective and changes not only from person to person but also for you, there is an absolute chance that one design that you love now, may hate in future.

I have to agree. I agonised over the design of our landing page but eventually came to the same conclusion.

Plain text that gets as many selling points into the eyes of the visitor above the fold is what I believe is the most sensible route if you're debating bit to design your landing page.

I think clean and attractive is key. At least for me. If you have a product I want and your landing page is well designed and clearly explains the product, then I am much more likely to try your product.

I assume, right or wrong, that if you out that much work into your landing page, you must have put the same into your product.

Now if your product stinks after trying it, I'll leave just as fast. But at least I have it a try. I'm sure I'm not unique in that regard.

Now, if you are resource constrained, focus on the product first, of course.

This is an ongoing debate in my head.

Obviously, there are examples of both cases (e.g. Facebook is an "ok" design but Stripe is beautiful).

Then there are other things. For example, this CB Insights post (https://www.cbinsights.com/research/personal-finance-apps-st...) mentions a study where "Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg gauged people’s reactions to various websites and asked them what factors played the biggest part in their assessments, design was unanimously the most commonly-cited reason for trusting or not trusting a particular site."

So I wouldn't say design has nothing to do with the success of a product, but it is true that it's not enough to make a product good.

I might be biased since I'm a marketer, but more businesses die because of bad or absent marketing than bad or absent design.

Notion is great https://notion.so. Will probably rip it off for my company soon.

New topic, Landing pages like notion.so that are blank with JS off

Not just a great landing page but a great product, which helps.

Which features do you like most, that makes it a great product?

Totally agree

Wouldn’t call notion a great product. I found it incredibly hard to use.

The thing I absolutely hate about both Notion and Airtable is that both have all sorts of dirty dark patterns in hidden ways. Like signup with gauth will ask for permissions to read contact list. They’ll then secretly spam your contact list for “explosive growth”. Fuck that!

Seriously Google. You need to disable that shit. I signed up and immediately regretted my decision.

Stack Overflow actually has a landing page! Usually your entry point is via a Google search, so you never see it.

https://stackoverflow.com/

Note that it only shows if not logged in.

That's a homepage though, I'd argue that questions pages are more like landing pages for SO.

This thread comes up once every month, I'd suggest to go over the past month's threads:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...

I loved how plain and to the point Magic's original landing page (2015) was:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150313215658/https://getmagicn...

Now it's been redesigned of course:

https://getmagic.com/

But I still prefer the original.

I remember this! You're right I also loved the original landing page when I first saw it. Thanks for sharing.

about:blank

I like the minimalism of Bonsai: (https://www.hellobonsai.com/

If you're looking for landing page inspiration, here are two sites that collect examples

https://onepagelove.com/

https://www.pages.xyz/

Shameless plug: https://www.waveguide.io/landing-pages/all and for Mobile Landing Pages: https://www.waveguide.io/mobile-landing-pages/all

I refurbished the landing page of my personal blog site during the Christmas holidays and have received some very nice feedback: https://tkainrad.dev/

Oh well. There is a cookie notice that takes more than 50% of screen real estate when I load the page.

Oh, wasn't really aware that it would be so large in some cases. Thank you for this feedback. Could you tell me which kind of device you were using, I guess a relatively small mobile phone?

iPhone8 iOS. Pretty average mobile device.

Alright, will make some changes, i.e. not showing it to non-EU visitors and making it a little smaller. Thanks!

I struggled to answer that question myself while researching for my own product's landing page.

I decided to go for a very different path and create something that could showcase the product as soon as possible, with simple and objective copy for people who wanted to understand it better.

I do very much love it as it is right now, but of course I am biased, and of course I am open to criticism to improve it. But the principle (clear copy + showcase the product working) I will probably keep.

Here it is to receive your judgement: https://www.quidsentio.com

Copywriter here:

Use a more common font.

Headlines over buttons.

This is one I made https://pinballmap.com/

I like it, but I think it would be nicer without the big list of "regional maps" at the bottom. I'm not really sure how best to include that list (users have told us, "list all the regions so I can ctrl-F for them! or else I hate you!"

Next I want to add some stats to the landing page. Like, top 25 pinball machines that are on location. And each one listed would be a link to show that machine on the map.

Very grateful for your work.

Have you considered having the map be optional (a click away)? To preserve mobile data if nothing else.

Also, given how often turnover happens, a link next to each itemized machine to notify you of changes (and perhaps another to notify participating owners of mechanical problems)?

I wish the 49ers playoff and INDISC weren't the same weekend.

Well, the main, searchable map is one click away ("Explore the Map"). But yeah, that map on the landing page that only shows where the regions are, we could simply hide that on mobile. We are really de-emphasizing the regions in exchange for the single map where you can search anywhere. I don't like the search experience on that single map, though. But it'll take some work to redo it. I want it to be more like the app search experience.

If an operator is tagged at a location, and that operator has granted us permission to notify them, then they get a daily email of any comments left on their machines. Roughly half of them take advantage of this (147 out of 299). We should probably remind operators of this feature more often, given that it's now buried in a 6 year old blog post.

My daughter's birthday is on the same weekend as INDISC! I used to like going to that tourney.

Honestly, here. I want content instantly

Self plug - TRYING to finish https://fastcomments.com. Goal for the homepage was something pleasing and simple.

Loaded fast, that's a thumbs up from me! Most of the landing pages I've seen on this thread have been very pretty, no doubt, but on my poor little computer they weren't the speediest of websites.

Clicked on the website you linked, bam, it's loaded. It's also very simple too! No distracting shapes or clunky animations, it's just a very satisfying website. +1

You don't know how happy that makes me, thanks.

I'm tired of slow software so I vowed to make all my personal projects perform well. Along the way I wanted to add comments to my blog, tried disqus, and figured I could do one better (at least for me).

Craigslist. Easily navigated by topic and by geography.

https://www.kickscondor.com/ Can't believe no one has posted this yet.

Well, you tell me landing page, I think marketing lies. And stupid responsive design pages that waste 99.95% of the space on my monitor.

How can I love something like that?

https://burnout.so is awesome. Fantastic product too; I'm living it.

This is actually a great landing page! Makes me want to try the product

I've seen worse, but in my opinion, this is not a good landing page. It doesn't offer much in terms of actual, actionable information -- only marketing-speak broadsides, the layout is hard to follow, if you change the font size to make it more usable (the size the page uses is far too large), then the layout breaks further, and so on.

To me, the interspersed emoticons/images detract from readability.

https://www.jooq.org/

- Fast to load

- Tells you what the product does right at the top

- As it's a database library, and there are many other database libraries - the features are written in terms of how the product is different from the competition - goes into

- Code examples pretty soon, so you can really see what using it would be like.

The new site from The Designer’s Republic is really cool:

https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/

Love the colors and use of simple animation - really stands out from the bland tech/startup sites we usually see.

Check out the Wipeout icons and typography :-)

Love their work, but the new website sucks. Let me look at things on my own time. But I guess a person who's tired of being worshipped for things they did twenty years ago would prefer you don't pore over them.

Pitch.com

It is a start up to compete with powerpoint that raised 50 million pre-mvp... yea ... sweet landing page tho

Geez... Love the landing page though it feels like a Pixar movie.

https://www.blackbox.cool/ Is so fun and tells you everything you need to know.

I can honestly say that I've never seen a landing page that I loved. Landing pages are those things that get in the way of what I'm really trying to find.

https://python-poetry.org/

I think the snake animation is pretty cool.

https://thriva.co/ - I love the layout on this one!

It looks so much better on large screens without the margin

Lots of them on https://www.land-book.com are great.

https://www.dreamlist.com

https://search.yahoo.com

https://newreleases.io

http://3kvc.com/

So much slow animation.

Https://Drudgereport.com - still king of highly efficient info delivery.

xkcd was right about web sites in 2010 (https://www.xkcd.com/773/) and it hasn’t really gotten better since then, either.

https://rezi.io

The page is blank in Firefox until you've scrolled down.

Not on mobile, but it did take a good 10-20 seconds to load.

noted thank you

Quick feedback, the video on the landing page doesn't have a full screen button, or double click support, so the text can't be read (I'm using Firefox on desktop). It's pretty self explanatory so the text isn't super important but I think it takes away from the video unnecessarily.

I love the one on my own website. http://egypt.urnash.com

I haven't changed it since I made it back in 2011, aside from adding links to new projects.

I really like stripe

privacy.com for sure, super simple and clear.

podia.com

I think landing pages are overrated. I like good products no matter how they are presented...

However you can have the best product in the world, if you can't sell or market it (via a landing page for example), it will never be used (or very little).

I’m partial to https://reactfordataviz.com because it’s the best one I ever made and reaches 7th on Google for important keywords even tho it’s a sales page.

I like it because it loads fast, isn’t very designed, and focuses on decent copywriting instead of A/B testing quackery

And it converts well at an average of 50 cents per pageview.

Took about 4 years of customer research and conversations to arrive at that copy.

> Took about 4 years of customer research and conversations to arrive at that copy.

And nobody caught the "havign"?

And 'andn' and 'youll'. But still pretty cool...

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