Show HN: custom landing page for press day -- wise or unwise?

[scranglis]

We knew we were going to get a bunch of press today after releasing the news of closing our round -- so we decided to build a custom landing page for folks coming from the publications that ran stories about us. (You can see it here: edulender.com/march8. Our normal home page is here: edulender.com/) We will publish some summary stats here in an update in the next day or two -- but we'd like to know what y'all think about this method.

Wise or unwise? Enlighten us.

[bigohms]

A generic welcome message doesn't improve the communication of a product's offering nor improve functionality in this case. This is valuable real estate that is being given up. Additionally, you want the product to appear stable, successful and applicable to the perceived user's problem regardless of where the user comes from. In short, it looks desperate and inefficient.

What I would do is subtly tailor an interface to two major user's persona expected to visit on press day. Then set up A/B testing on conversions and use the traffic to your advantage.

[tnorthcutt]

Addressing people as "blog readers!" doesn't feel very personal, to me. It'd be one thing if you had a page for each publication, but pointing them all to a generic one isn't as good, IMO. Might have made more sense to just tailor the content to what you think they'll be looking for, and leave off the semi-personalized greeting.

[scranglis → tnorthcutt]

<blog> changes per the referring publication, eg. try clicking through to edulender from here (http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/08/edulender-raises-1-million-...) will get you "welcome, techcrunch readers!".

[tnorthcutt → scranglis]

In that case, well done!

[bmelton]

As somebody who's never heard of the product, I think that the IDEA is gold -- however, there is significanly more information on the regular ol' landing page.

I'm guessing if you split tested them, it would convert better by a lot.

Regardless, I'm eager to hear the results.

[scranglis]

live links: http://www.edulender.com/march8 and http://www.edulender.com/

[rgbrgb → scranglis]

When I click that I get "TechCrunch readers", not "HN readers".

[martinshen]

I like the current one better. Also, I see some kickstarter styles here. :)