Ask HN: Landing page for our upcoming app. What do you think?
shoutt.me
shoutt.me
We recently A/B tested the hell out of our landing page at Sidelines (http://sidelinesapp.com), so there are some interesting things we learned that may be applicable to you:
1. Coming up with an effective single-sentence explanation of your product will affect your conversion more than anything else. I don’t think you’ve quite nailed it with “An app for you and your campus.” Figure out what the most compelling use-case of your product is and make that clear on your landing page.
2. Make sure your landing page looks great on mobile browsers (especially since yours is a mobile product). Right now, on Safari on my iPhone, I don’t even see the map.
3. I would get rid of “Exclusively at Stanford University”, since I think it will turn off people from other schools. You should experiment with removing it or even better, showing it only if the IP of the person clicking the ad is in the Bay Area.
4. I would get rid of the “What do you want to shoutt about?” I think for most people using these kinds of apps for the first few times, they start of as consumers of info/content and you later have to convert them to producers of content. Your value prop with “What do you want to shout about?”” here is all about the producer side, and I think that may not be as appealing for brand new users. Look at Twitter for example. Their landing page is all about the consumer value prop, and doesn’t mention the sharing aspect (“Find out what’s happening, right now, with the people and organizations you care about.”)
5. A launch date and countdown would be awesome.
6. Get people to connect their FB accounts instead of just giving you their email. This way you could potentially send them FB notifications as well when you launch.
7. Try putting your messaging front and center instead of to the bottom left. We got great results with this.
8. Experiment, experiment, experiment. Anything I or anyone else here may tell you would just be intelligent guesses at what we think will work. You’ll get way better results from doing some quick A/B tests. We went from about 7% conversion to our landing page to about 55% conversion just by running a series of A/B tests.
Good luck!
We checked the landing page on a mobile browser (Safari & Chrome - iPhone) and maps loads fine. I think the server is getting overwhelmed with the response from HN.
-webkit-background-size: cover;
-moz-background-size: cover;
-o-background-size: cover;
background-size: cover;
After: http://bit.ly/POyEaA
With that fixed, it looks very nice indeed.
Energy spent on your landing page is energy you should have spent preparing to delete it.
We're actually launching this week at Stanford (our app has already been approved by Apple). The launch page is to get the email addresses of interested people and to create a pre-launch buzz at the school. We also have our pre-launch marketing on the campus going on.
Even the early signups have to be convinced twice to try your app, the fewer people who see your launch page instead of your launched page the better.
This "Lean Startup" attitude is a great way to suppress inspiration, creativity, etc.
It's basically an information platform to share with people around you. It would work best in existing communities like colleges, neighborhoods and even cities. The network moves with you and connects you to the people you share the same time and location with. Also, there are no friends or followers. On Shoutt what you share is more important than who you are.
It's also a great way to find the most relevant information around you.
Eg something like this:
"Shoutt lets you hear and share what's happening around you, no matter who you are or who you know. It's a social network that moves as you move, connecting you to the people around you."
Also, can I ask why Shoutt instead of Shout? The double T doesn't really appeal to me.
We initially stumbled into "tt" because we couldn't find a domain name for Shout. But once we did, we felt that it added an edge.
[2] http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/28/likealittle-funding/
[3]
It would be helpful to research why some of these social discovery apps did not work and ensure Shoutt doesn't make the same mistakes. Like a Little went on a rage for many months and then started plummeting. Personally, I love the idea though! Good Luck!
A real flourish would be to show a device with your app running on it. Same deal: phone, black background, white text box. Show the message text typing out on the phone, have it disappear, then fade in the message. Now the concept is crystal clear.
You can get rid of Fall 2012 probably. But otherwise really nice and polished. Looks great on a big screen.
Once we launch (this week) we're going to change the site to have much more information, including a demo of the app.
No spam. Promise.
On what could be improved:
-Too much text in the lower left. You can use less characters and communicate the same thing better. Such as...
-'Leave your email and we'll let you know when Shoutt arives' change to 'Request a beta invite' and change from 14px to 18-20px. Alternately, remove this text entirely and change button text from 'Submit' to 'Request Invite'.
-Logo could use a bit more spice
-Where you say 'what do you want to shoutt about', I'd use your logo in place of 'shoutt'
-'an app for you and your campus' can be moved under the logo and put it on one line instead of two. Alternately you can move 'Exclusively at Stanford University' under the logo.
-Make the button and email form a bit smaller in relation to everything else. And consider something with a more low-key/elegant look, like rounded corners and with effects when the cursor is in the box: see Bootstrap forms. I'd also change the placeholder text to a more low-key font color, same with the button color. It shouldn't draw so much attention (at least not if it says 'Submit' if it says 'Request Invite' drawing attention is good).
Just incremental improvements, everything looks great as is. Feel free to email me if you want to follow up or for future feedback.
Good luck!
Awesome! Thanks for the feedback...really useful. We've changed the "Leave your email..." to "Request a beta invite". And we made the fonts slightly low-key.
We'll look into the other changes for the layout and incorporate them.
Edit: I should add, though I'm seeing it after some other folks have suggested tweaks, I think it looks fantastic. Well done.
Looks good?
One other idea: I wonder if removing the periods after "campus," "invite" and "University" might look better. My thinking is two-fold: One, they seem to catch my eye a little. That's not a big deal, really, but I wonder if removing them will make the map points more attractive since they would then be the only period-like character on the page.
Maybe try it and see what you think. It may look off to you when implemented, maybe not. Obviously, this is just a stylistic suggestion, so go with whichever you think is more attractive.