

What's wrong with being wrong? - emilepetrone
http://housefed.tumblr.com/post/6944643989/whats-wrong-with-being-wrong

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dexen
Under this provocative title, there is a quite insightful post. Reinforces
importance of focusing on actually selling your service/product rather than
flattening yourself with cute homepage. I am gonna talk with teammates about
taking this insight at tomorrow morning coffee.

An earlier post that started the discussion, with more reasoning:
[http://housefed.tumblr.com/post/6690059612/delete-your-
homep...](http://housefed.tumblr.com/post/6690059612/delete-your-homepage)

~~~
consultutah
Very interesting post. Whenever Facebook tries out a new design, people
scream, but if it keeps users on the site longer, Facebook keeps it and the
users eventually quite down - until the next time. ;)

If you dont keep trying, you're never going to find the one thing that moves
you from ordinary to extraordinary.

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makmanalp
> "I can compete by coming up with creative, effective solutions that can’t be
> implemented by my established competitors."

It looks like it all boils down to this but I can't for the life of me figure
out what it means.

Solutions like what? What makes you think that your competitors can't
implement them? If you yourself aren't exceptionally good at design or
engineering like you humbly mention, what edge could you possibly have? If
you're referring to deleting your homepage, that's very easy to duplicate!

> "signups increased 3x, and the bounce rate was down 10%"

The other alternative is that your blog is working as a marketing tool. People
read your previous blog post, thought it was interesting, and decided to give
it a spin. I'd wait for the effects of that to die down a little before I jump
to any conclusions.

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tzury
I think this guy just got on something. He's doing just right, and for a guy
who had no clue of programming 12 months ago, it is quite impressing.

The fact we are talking about it in here (and perhaps in other places as
well), means, the marketing strategy just worked.

See the comments I quote from his blog

    
    
        __Shripriya__
        Saw this post on HN. I went to your homepage. I have no clue what the 
        service is, why would I sign up? 
    
        Making the user give up information and do work before showing them 
        value almost never works. At least for me...
    
    
        __Emile Petrone__
        Thank Shripriya for the comment! Fair enough. I'll know I've done my 
        job right when you sign up :)
       
     
        __danoprey__
        I've heard it's the "AirBNB" for food, but otherwise I'd have no idea 
        either. I agree, I come across lots of landing pages, some sell me, some
        don't. Unless a friend recommended this to me, I wouldn't sign up. Word 
        of mouth is great, but this seems to exclude other methods for the sake 
        of it.

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kstenerud
Good point, but he takes it wayyyyy too far.

Less emphasis on the landing page = good. NO emphasis on the landing page =
bad.

I had no idea what his site was about until I read the blog post. And even now
I'm still not very clear on what service he actually provides that can't be
accomplished in a facebook or twitter post: "BBQ. My place. Sunday at 6."

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zeteo
In the attention economy, being wrong in a spectacular manner is way better
than being right. My suspicion is that the controversy was a bigger factor in
the sign-ups increase than the homepage deletion itself.

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lucian1900
While overal an interesting post, I don't get why he considers Facebook and
Twitter very successful.

