

Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher - ifficiency
http://www.meetingburner.com/blog/2012/10/05/a-story-of-two-front-page-hacker-news-posts-and-why-one-converted-20x-higher/

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mladenkovacevic
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.

------
austenallred
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.

~~~
ryanbraganza
> 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.

I only read that first sentence of that paragraph.

> 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.

Then I read this and went back through it.

~~~
bpatrianakos
I went back and read the first sentence multiple times and didn't see a point.
There's a principle at work? That's the point? If it was then I'm
disappointed. I thought there might be some kind of mention of what it
actually was.

------
ryanio
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?

~~~
rpq1480
Yes, totally obvious. Would have been more interesting if any of those results
hadn't been completely expected.

~~~
aresant
Take a look at how many articles on the frontpage today today don't follow
those principles.

For instance the current #1 post - "Living in a van" - has one mention of
Priceonomics in the article, no explanation of the service, and no call to
action within the story content.

Not saying that this isn't obvious, just saying that despite it being obvious
people don't necessarily employ those strategies and are tossing out a huge
number of potential new users as a result.

~~~
rhizome
Users...eh. Signups are not revenue.

 _[cue 'signups can too be revenue!' HN submission]_

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ScottWhigham
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.

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

~~~
Camillo
Indeed. Why would conversions even be the point? Yet most other commenters are
not even raising an eyebrow at this. Is this still supposed to be a news site,
or is it now understood that we're browsing advertisements?

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CWIZO
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.

------
sawyer
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

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Ecio78
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?

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guelo
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.

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sethbannon
HN is getting more and more meta.

~~~
cryowaffle
HN Comments are getting more and more and more meta.

