Ask HN: Must haves' when building Landing Page from scratch

24 points by fluroblue 9 years ago | 9 comments

Hey there,

I'm building my first landing page from scratch with the purpose of validation. My goal with it is to see if there's interest in the service and to hopefully be able to reach out to any interested parties to get feedback.

Is there any services that are must haves in this instance? I know to include MailChimp and I've seen A/B testing packaged with services like unbounce which I need to see if there are easy ways to implement that. Are there any services that I must include to make stats and testing easier?

Thanks

brudgers 9 years ago |

Random advice from the internet.

1. One of my goto articles: https://blog.ycombinator.com/minimum-viable-product-process/

2. Don't build a landing page with mailchimp and A/B testing and unbounce. Do something easy. By "easy" I mean easy for you to do right now. Your landing page is not your product. A landing page is, in agile terms, a chore with no points assigned and does not contribute to velocity.

3. Focus on something people can use. Mostly an email list is not that.

Good luck.

RickS 9 years ago |

Trust trust trust trust trust!!

This is the single biggest piece of feedback I see for landing pages in user tests. Customers need to feel like it's safe to proceed, whatever that means for your product (signup, buy, etc).

Lots of things that laymen trust feel cheesy to dev types. Things like BBB badges, excessive checkmarks and lock icons, the norton badge, etc. SLATHER em on there. Go crazy.

Don't think of the landing page as a stack of services. It could be a wix site if you really wanted it to be. The goal is to get the people you're targeting to feel like they know enough about the situation to go forward, and that you're a good candidate to go forward with.

s3b 9 years ago | |

Great idea. Would you have any links to more things to do to improve the trust-ness of a landing page?

sova 9 years ago | | |

Getting your webpage to pass with at least an A- on https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ is also a great way to get "Secure" status.

paulcole 9 years ago |

Here's how I do it:

1. Make a list of the things your service offers customers. 2. Make a list of the thing(s) you want from customers.

In your page, tell the story of your service, using the items from list #1 to get the desired result(s), list #2.

Also focus on showing instead of telling. This is a pretty common concept that most people without a writing background aren't familiar with. Imagine the difference between saying, "My service uses trusted web technologies to ensure security." and showing a collection of AWS, etc., icons.

sharemywin 9 years ago |

Try putting your face on there and offering to do a good job. Also, why not add something like drift for chatting with potential users.

AznHisoka 9 years ago |

Focus on how to market that landing page before creating it. its a waste of time ab testing 100 visitors

tomatohs 9 years ago |

Screen Recording software can help you understand how your first visitors are using your landing page. Check out my own product for this, http://screensquid.com, and send me a PM if you have any questions.

imron 9 years ago |

Must haves?

Say what your product does in clear and simple language.

Say what problem it solves.

Tell me the price, or have a clear link tithe pricing page. Don't make me hunt for it.