
Why stealing best landing pages is a bad idea - hren
https://hren.io/blog/stealing-best-landing-pages/#contact
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CM30
In addition to the points on the list, you need to take context into account
too. A large successful company has built up a lot more trust than your one
might have, and can get away with design decisions that are less than optimal
because everyone knows who they are and takes them seriously.

It's why eCommerce sites can't just get away with cloning Amazon's layout.
Because while it 'works' for them, it works in part because people are willing
to forgive certain bad design decisions and performance issues due to brand
recognition.

They likely won't be as forgiving towards your site.

It's also worth noting that if it's too obvious that you copied someone else's
design, people are likely to distrust you because of it. Especially if they've
stumbled across the page/site that inspired you before.

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pgm8705
As a non-creative, copying ideas from other landing pages is the only way I
can make my own pages look even remotely attractive. Of course, this is for
side projects. Professionally, I agree and think hiring a good designer to
come up with original ideas is always worth the money.

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itsmeamario
Same here, but I just check for good designs and buy them.

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ryanwaggoner
There's a little bit of truth here, in that just ripping off someone else's
successful design (of almost anything, not just landing pages) and applying it
to your own situation is unlikely to get you the same results.

However, I think the author could have fleshed out a little more the fine line
between stealing without insight and using as a starting point or learning
guide for your own process. There's a very long history in copywriting of
keeping a "swipe file" of headlines, ad copy, etc. that have performed well to
learn from and use as inspiration.

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davidivadavid
This. I wrote a whole book based on that premise, and as a practicing
copywriter/landing page designer, reusing/remixing elements of a growing
swipefile is a huge part of a the workflow.

Obviously, none of that replaces actual testing, and it's useful to be able to
separate the two (idea generation / validation). If there was an official list
of best practices that always works, things would be easier.

It's important to note most products don't ever reach the stage where they can
test and reach statistically significant conclusions. In that scenario,
building landing pages by learning from the best is more about improving your
messaging, your sales pitch, and so on, than about scientifically improving
your conversion rate. But you must take things one step at a time.

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nottorp
From the potential buyer's point of view:

I skip all sites that look like they have a tried and tested landing page and
don't actually have anything to say about their product.

If it's the same structure but with a slightly different text, it means the
product isn't interesting so they have to resort 100% to marketing
optimizations and I just move on.

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sixhobbits
Yep. Relatedly, A/B testing is still, in a majority of cases, "run both pages
until one shows an x% difference in conversion"

WHICH IS TOTALLY TOTALLY BROKEN. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

I know people don't really like to remember high school stats, but surely we
can get the world to a place where CMOs etc know enough to not do this and not
let their teams do this?

Or are they incentivised to show that they're "adding value" without really
caring about whether that value is real or not?

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boredgamer2
I'm not particularly convinced by the content of the article. But there is a
glaring typo I hope the author fixes:

> 2\. They do not know how WHY their copywriting formula works

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hren
Fixed. And thanks, that typo was really bad.

