The rise of the startup landing pages

The rise of the startup landing pages(naivehack.com)

79 points by vantran 14 years ago | 18 comments

keyle 14 years ago |

Whilst I agree that a one liner teaser page is not good, I will disagree about "It’s a myth that people don’t read long copy. Of course they do."

They really don't. But the article is misleading, because the 'long copy' example provided, the highrise teaser page, is not an example of long copy. It's a well formatted bunch of meaningful information, strategically designed and placed carefully (flow) that keeps enticing users to read more of it.

It's a well documented fact that people DO NOT read long boring paragraphs. They DO, however, read highly entertaining webpages with a fairly big copy so as long as it breathes and attracts them.

So to wrap up, yes write more than a sentence, no don't write a book. Instead, carefully craft sentences to entice potential customers to turn into real future customers.

dhbanes 14 years ago | |

Sorry, but I think you're making the common mistake of expecting that most people will react to a particular sales tactic the way you would react to that sales tactic. Also, the example shown is absolutely a long form sales letter.

It may be true that people do not read long boring paragraphs, but I'd bet the research to which you're referring is not addressing ad copy. If it is, I'd like to see it. It is in fact well documented that long form sales letter DO convert better than short copy in many situations.

Read here for context of the example used: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2977-behind-the-scenes-highri...

rokhayakebe 14 years ago | |

If you are selling a service, and in some case a product that has several features, then long copy works best. The buyer would want as much information as possible before parting with their dollar.

If you are offering a free product, then short copy is best. Users will trade trying to read what your product does to just using it instead.

rmason 14 years ago |

What is really bad is wasting months building software no one wants. Or finding out after the fact that your cost of acquiring a customer is too high to make the idea viable.

Sure there are people doing it wrong, but done correctly its a powerful tool that raises the odds that your startup will become a success.

bbwharris 14 years ago | |

In a lot of cases the cost of acquiring customers is high in the beginning. Thats a business scaling issue that you solve when you determine that you have a real business.

The landing page trend is just for early adopters, I would venture a guess that it has little to no impact on the success of a startup.

Maro 14 years ago |

I'm not sure I follow. How can getting (for free) a long list of people who may be interested in the product once it launches be a bad thing?

I think the OP's main point is that instead of having a landing page you should be concentrating on product/market fit by describing the product. I think startups with these coming soon pages are already doing that, just not on their public website.

vantran 14 years ago | |

Perhaps I wasn't clear. Collecting email addresses is fine, but make sure you're really getting people who are genuinely interested in your product. My point is that people shouldn't focus on hoarding emails. The focus should be on testing certain message, certain angle of the product, whether they like the future vision, etc...

Maro 14 years ago | | |

So you're saying startups should be A/B testing their coming soon landing pages. That sounds like good advice. I'd be surprised if that feature were not on the todo list of the LaunchRock guys...

ma2rten 14 years ago |

I am currently working on my pre-launch startup and I would consider spending five minutes putting up a landing page like that. Not really to collect email addresses, but so I have something on my homepage, so I can go on worrying about the more important stuff.

lee337 14 years ago | |

I spent 5 minutes (and $4) yesterday doing the same thing for http://jsocial.io <- click here and be disgusted vantran.

It's (a) a placeholder, (b) incentive for me to stick to a launch date, and (c) it might, just maybe, collect a couple of email addresses.

I'm under no illusions that it's going to generate any sort of buzz, become vital, etc. It' just better than a 404 or something like http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch... :-)

nestlequ1k 14 years ago |

LaunchRock is sort of a victim of its own success. Now that every startup wannabe has a hipster.com like landing page, we're all getting sick of it and looking for something better.

redguava 14 years ago | |

It depends on your target audience. Perhaps if it is HN readers, but there are many markets that are not saturated by this type of launch site.

nedwin 14 years ago | | |

If your initial market for your new, innovative software company is early adopters then you're definitely a part of the problem of people getting burned out by these tactics.

mogston 14 years ago | |

Simple answer - LaunchRock needs to develop more landing page templates to choose from

jmitcheson 14 years ago |

So recently we've seen that anyone with a web app has a "startup". Then, anyone with a landing page has a "startup"; is it now even worse? That you don't even need to make the landing page yourself, just fill out a form, and you have a startup :P

DenisM 14 years ago |

Lots of opinion, no facts in the article. I would be useful if author split-tested personal/impersonal pages and told us about what gets the actual users engaged, rather than tell us what gets one random blogger aggravated.

angryasian 14 years ago |

agree with author 100%. If startups can attract users using a cookie cutter template with vague wording on what they plan on doing, then more power to them. I believe a startup should actually take a few days to think how they can best relay their product with copy, screenshots, customer proof, on their landing page, and get some genuine adopters.