

The rise of the startup landing pages - vantran
http://www.naivehack.com/2011/07/30/startups-landing-pages/

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keyle
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
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...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2977-behind-the-scenes-highrise-
marketing-site-ab-testing-part-1)

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rmason
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
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.

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Maro
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
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
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...

~~~
wisty
It might also be a good way to burn in your infrastructure.

I'm just saying, if you can't get a box collecting email addresses off the
ground, your own todo list will take a _very_ long time to finish.

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ma2rten
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
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...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&q=page+under+construction)
:-)

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nestlequ1k
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
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
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.

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jmitcheson
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

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DenisM
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.

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angryasian
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.

