Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher

Allow me to flip your methodology upside down.

So one article converted well because you actually had hyper-linked calls to action and the article was half the length. Well duh.. you didn't need to run an A/B test to crack that nut.

So 700 leads compared to 30 - seems like a pretty definitive victory for the first article, right? Not necessarily. Consider the quality of these leads. In one scenario, signing up was served up on a silver platter and as soon as the word "free" was baited, a lot of freeloaders probably bit the hook. Yes, they might enjoy your service and some might even convert to a paid customer when they can afford it... or maybe not. How many of them even need your service? How many just wanted to scope out what the author was actually selling because they are at the budding stages of some get-rich-quick scheme (a likely scenario considering the entrepreneurial, "how-to" content of the article).

I think your second article is much more brilliant, and barring the absolute absence of clickable links to your actual product, would actually produce much more qualified leads for you. I like that it talks about working with family, subtly suggesting the respect with which you treat your customers as well. This lends genuine credibility to your business and excites happy/warm feelings in me about working with you and giving you money for your services. The 30 leads that put in the effort to seek your product out after reading all that are far more likely to convert to a paid customer later on than the gang of what could very well be 700 hormonal over-caffeinated teenagers with big business dreams but no cash (gross hyperbole but you get my point).

So in conclusion I think yes, calls to action and clear succinct messaging is important - no secret there. But the content is even more important for the long term results. The story you tell should be crafted with the customer in mind that'll ultimately pony up the cash for quality service. I think you should've run with the family narrative, but included a few calls to action.

There's a principle at work that true marketers use to their advantage. It's quite simple, and is avoided all too often, especially by detail-oriented people who operate a little bit differently than non-detail-oriented people. I assume that HackerNews has a lot of engineers who are by nature detail oriented, and therefore this principle is ignored far too often.

The post that converted at the better rate had a link MeetingBurner in the first paragraph (above the fold, as we like to jargon-ize it).

People don't really read things online, they scan. some things jump out, and only if you're very intrigued will you actually read the individual words. In fact, very few of you will even get to this line that I'm writing. The chances that you'll read each line decreases exponentially.

Note that I've made all of my main points in the first sentences of what I've written. Did you even read everything, or did you just scan through and pick up on a few words? The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue.

TL;DR: One article converted because they were talking about and pitching their service throughout the whole piece (4 calls to action), while the other was about their experience of hiring family members with no real discussion or pitches about their business (0 calls to action).

Duh?

This is such a poor choice for an article. It's not even like an A/B test - not even remotely - yet the author portrays it as such. This is really more like "Here's how an article converted that I posted in July on subject 'A' and title 'A' with no call to actions, and here's another article that I posted almost four months later about subject 'B' with title 'B' that had call to actions in it." There's just no meat here - were they both posted on the same day of the week? Were they both posted on/about the same time? Were "world events" about the same when you posted each (or was one overshadowed by a major event that people were focusing on)? I could go on and on... Anyone who draws conclusions from this article is walking a fine line. It leaves you with more questions than answers (and they are "big" questions that invalidate the article's whole point).

I see it as just asinine link bait junk and I'm disappointed to see it get so many upvotes.

Great advice for other startups trying to exploit HN for traffic!

While this is some solid advice, the methodology used is rather err stupid. It's like comparing how fast somebody will find a treasure, and then in case A put the treasure in the middle of times square, and in case B put it somewhere in the sewers.

I can't click on any links in the top 155px pixels of the window because of the cloud header (even when scrolled down, it remains fixed at a higher z-index).

OSX, Firefox 15.0.1

Wouldnt it be possible that the great difference is due to the fact that the first article was published in july and most of the HN people interested in the service already signed up that time?

More interesting is how this guy keeps getting on the front page. I do wonder what his conversions will be on this more meta article.

HN is getting more and more meta.