Hacker News Reader

Comment by JackPoach | Hacker News Reader

Sorry 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.

View on HN

I 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.

Yep, 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)

Yes. 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'.

Hi, author here

I shared what I learnt across the 200 pages I reviewed and my focus is on landing page conversion. I am working on the assumption there is some sort of product market fit.

I also included techniques to generate insights - like exit intent, review analytics and heatmaps, introducing a cycle of testing - rather than just telling people what they should do.

Finally, I don't look at naff tricks on the visitor. It's all focused on proven concepts for relaying what makes your business great.

However if you can find anything in the list you feel is some sort of bizarre manipulation or trick I'm happy to look again.

I stopped reading when it said make the landing page focus on one thing. No no no. I HATE pages where it’s plastered with “Sign up” but you have to search for the login button.

A "landing page" is not necessarily the home page. It can be a page that a Google/Bing ad points to, or one that ranks high on search, that's specifically designed to talk about the product and its features.

If you are already a user of the product, chances are you'll bookmark the login page, or have it appear in your browser autocomplete. Worst case scenario, you'll go to the homepage and click the login button on the top right.

>A "landing page" is not necessarily the home page.

Excellent point. And a very powerful one too. It just caused me to think about the content and structure of an educational site I'm involved with in a VERY different way. Thanks!

You're welcome.

The "landing page" is ultimately wherever you, the site owner, want the user to land on. The reason a distinction is drawn between a landing page and a home page is because there can only be one home page. But there is no limit to the number of landing pages you can create.

- LP 1 for "Self-serve video course" users

- LP 2 for "Live, Group based instruction" users

And even there, LP1 could have Variant 1 and Variant 2, which are randomly served to users as part of a split test, to see which page converted better. You can use tools like Unbounce or Optimizely to serve the pages to a randomized audience.

I often take the excessive focus on things like the landing page, design details to be a sign of inexperience/immaturity on the part of founders. Once you have a selling product, by all means, do optimize at the margins. But at an early stage, it’s just a distraction.

Really? I recently optimised a landing page for a client who had £100,000 weekly ad spend on Facebook and increased their paid ROI by 40%.

Trust me, it's a critical part of the conversion performance.

Sounds like they had a selling product to begin with. Optimisation has its place of course, but when the client is a pre-revenue startup with uncertain business plan and a scrappy budget, and they keep refining pixels on the landing page, I feel bad for them. While another client goes from zero to $20k MRR in two months with a $20 Themeforest template and a Lorem ipsum text still there.

Oh yeah, totally agree - multiple landing page iterations for early stage pre-revenue is silly.

I do cover user acquisition, methods of validation, when to test, types of test, the culture of lean, and more in the roast.

One thing to note however with the buyer you describe - they often make REALLY rudimentary mistakes. I've seen people forget CTAs, links not working, totally confused language (no idea what they do), missing key elements, not written to buyer etc.

Also missing great opportunities to showcase their business more powerfully. For them it's £149 and they have another person look at it and give practical feedback.

Its actually interesting (bit on the spammy side) a lot of sites get built by a developer who doesn't relay pay any attention on to its intended function.

And designing the right architecture for example do not stuff all your sku's / PDP on one single page with just images, no text and a page title of "Products"

And a lot of businesses a page will have to serve multiple requirements: a laser focused ppc landing page targeting one term well that's a lot easier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com