
Writing copy for landing pages - HeinZawHtet
https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/landing-page-copy
======
chiefalchemist
1) "What's in it for me?" Is __the__ questions everyone asks.

2) If you address that then it's "Can I trust they'll deliver on that
promise?"

3) And then finally "Does price being asked meet the value of that to me?"

Call to action.

p.s. "Doubt is the deal breaker." __Anything__ in the UX that makes me wonder
"What is that?" __must__ be avoided. This includes any thing from a "weird"
layouy, to misspellings, to you name it.

If you make me second guess you're going to increase the odds I default to my
default. That is "no thanks. I'm out."

~~~
CrLf
Actually, the question everyone asks (first) is: "what _is_ it?"

Unfortunately, this question seldom gets answered _at all_. Which is OK,
because it says a lot about whatever is being peedled.

~~~
Uehreka
Agreed, I feel like often on HN someone will post a link to a new release of a
tool, and the page will start off with “Version 2.3.2 of FabricMelt brings
advanced DNS configurations, support for multi-factor SSOs and better support
for high availability deployments.” At this point, I have no idea what
FabricMelt is. Maybe that’s because it’s something I don’t need, but if
there’s a prominent link to an “About” page that starts with the sentence
“FabricMelt is an open source framework for easily building eCommerce sites
and deploying them to Kubernetes”, I now have some reference points. I’ll log
that away as “Apparently some people on HN find this useful, maybe I’ll take a
closer look the next time someone wants me to build an eCommerce site.” Too
often release pages for tools have no such “About’” page link, or if they do
it somehow spends a paragraph not saying what the tool is.

TL;DR - When you publish a new release of something, make sure to either
include a link to an About page or prominently include the sentence
“[TOOL_NAME] is [words I either already know or can easily look up].”

~~~
sonnyblarney
"FabricMelt is a distributed Blockchain protocol with embeddable AI directives
for hyper-optimizing DNS lookup K8 containers, specifically designed for
AR/Virtual Cannabis tokenized grow operations."

What's so hard to understand?

Only old people (aka over 25) won't get it ...

~~~
smacktoward
_> Only old people (aka over 25) won't get it ... _

Also known as "the people with all the money"

------
DisruptiveDave
Best landing page I ever designed/wrote had this headline: "Fuck it, we like
Reddit and we got some shit to sell." By every single metric (views, clicks,
time spent on page, conversions), it murdered every other landing page in that
campaign. Point is: experiment, have fun, be creative, copy other people's
work, add your own flair, do things totally against best practices and logic.
Marketing isn't a set-it-and-forget-it kind of activity. It's always moving.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"F __* it, we like Reddit and we got some shit to sell. "

As a headline is essentially click-bait.

That you had blowout conversions is great, but it's for the same reason
Taboola and Outbrain also have ridiculous headlines and images, and not more
informative content.

~~~
DisruptiveDave
That's a bit reductionist. You're not considering the full context (which, of
course, I didn't lay out) of the targeting + the ad + the rest of the landing
page. It wasn't click bait. Taboola and Outbrain click bait has shite
conversions, that's one way to measure "click bait" (it's not called
"conversion bait" for a reason).

------
SnowingXIV
Stripe defines modern looking pages. I've been so pleased using their docs and
it's a treat to use their services as they always look incredibly polished.
Many companies try to copy their look and it ends up looking like a poor clone
purchased from a themeshop and gets lost in the startup ocean but Stripe seems
to do design in a very precise way. I can't really explain how they do it but
major props to their design team for keeping consistent quality.

~~~
freyir
They're really on another level.

------
weinzierl
Part of their second point and the 7th paragraph on the page is:

> Patterns may be used to subtly reference a logo or map out a theme. Take a
> logistics company that transports goods by railway. Perhaps it not only
> wants to deliver a message, but also simulate a train with a pattern of
> evenly spaced dots in a horizontal line. To mimic that visual, rewrite
> landing page copy to link only words of similar length, such as three- or
> four-letter words.

I find this very weird advice, even more so when it is presented so
prominently.

------
rebolyte
"Everybody Writes" by Ann Handley is a great resource along these lines.
Includes general writing advice and useful content-specific tips. For example,
make the About Us page on your site not a dry description of the company, but
of the company in relation to the visitor, giving more background information
on how you help solve their problems.

------
mangoleaf
Hacker News landing page is excellent in that it gets me to the info/product
immediately. I don't need to scroll though walls of text about Ycomb and
endless stupid photos.[1] But for a first time visitor, there is a lot of
"WTF?" because of no what/why being answered, which could be done in one
sentence.

Craigslist's home page is excellent again because it gets you immediately into
use, but it again fails miserably in the what/why question. [2] Just a single
line saying "find stuff locally" is all it needs.

Example of a site that gets you into the product immediately and gives you a
one liner that answers the what/why would be vqRN. [3]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/) [2]
[https://www.craigslist.org](https://www.craigslist.org) [3]
[http://vqRN.com](http://vqRN.com)

~~~
aerovistae
Idk if you needed the link to HN in a comment on HN

~~~
QasimK
I found it useful to make sure there wasn’t something I missed

------
mbesto
Landing pages in a nutshell: remove objections.

Typical objections (as noted by many people here):

\- I don't know what this is

\- Is it relevant to me?

\- How is this going to help me?

\- Who else uses this thing?

\- Why should I use this over the competition?

\- How much time will it take for me to get set up?

------
nautical
Stripe landing page says " The new standard in online payments" ... out of
genuine curiosity how is it fitting "Focus copy on them." ?

~~~
djm_
It's an Atlas Guide written by Joanna Wiebe who is not a Stripe employee.

Even if she was, companies are companies - not individuals.

------
skilled
Some of the analysis looks a bit over the top. Generalization of an audience
on this scale doesn't happen in 'landing page marketing'. You can give a turd
a new name, but you cannot change who it is by doing so.

From a marketing point of view, I'm more impressed by the fact that the author
got Stripe to publish this piece.

------
kvanderd
6 questions that should be answered above the fold of the page. These
questions should be answered again in different ways throughout the page using
pictures, text and video.

1\. What is it?

2\. What does it look like?

3\. How big or small is it?

4\. Can it be delivered?

5\. Can I return it?

6\. Can I trust it?

People consume content in very different ways. And showing, telling and
demonstrating the product/service helps achieve #6.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hmm, it depends.

Elsewhere someone bemoans that landing pages don't answer "what is it?".

Some (most!) sellers couldn't care less if it's right for you, just if you buy
it. Spelling out what a product is can lose customers.

Example: Back in the day I bought a minidisc player-recorder as you could
easily put/remove tracks digitally. Turned out you couldn't do that properly,
only from computer, not to computer, making it terrible for live recording (my
need). If they'd told me properly "what is it" then I would instead have
bought an mp3 player.

Yup, still bitter - cost me many hours that mistake.

A corollary to this though, they made the sale, but I've never bought from the
company (Sony) again.

------
ricardobeat
Apple would never ever use the “it’s got Dolby Atmos” line. Can’t explain why,
just doesn’t fit their tone of voice (historically).

I also find that advisory articles like these lose a lot of their luster when
you start trying to outdo other people’s work.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Selling benefits you'd say "hear your music at it's freshest with our
unrivalled audio fidelity" or somesuch, which of course is a lie; but that's
marketing.

------
abainbridge
The advice is begin sentences with "You" or a verb. Seems like weird advice.
There's nothing wrong with, say, this landing page:
[https://www.7-zip.org/](https://www.7-zip.org/)

Following their rules would make it cringe-worthy.

Maybe for certain audiences, in certain types of corporate website, their
advice is good, but the article doesn't define the domain to which the advice
applies.

~~~
sacado2
You're not trying to sell 7zip. Imagine 7zip is a $1000 software. Would that
page make you buy it?

Now, starting every sentence with "you" is a bit odd, but the general idea is
to focus on the user's problem rather than characteristics of the product.
Fetures are boring, bland and frightening. I'm an user, I have problems, do
you solve any of my problems?

"7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. 7-Zip is free
software with open source. The most of the code is under the GNU LGPL license.
Some parts of the code are under the BSD 3-clause License. Also there is unRAR
license restriction for some parts of the code."

vs

"Are you fed up with buying hard drives after hard drives or choosing which
files to delete and which files to keep, only to regret your decision
afterward? Well, that time is over. With 7-zip, you can compress files more
efficiently than ever and save space on your hard drive".

Or, if you're promoting free software:

"You don't want to buy one more software to archive your important files. At
7-zip, we heard you. 7-zip is free and open source, meaning not only you don't
have to pay for it, but you can modify the source code if you really want to.
You can even include it in your own, commercial software".

Technical landing pages are good when you address technical people that are
already sold to your product.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I guess this is a reminder of how being too nerdy warps my thinking. I mean,
of the examples you've given, I'd pattern-match the middle one to "company
selling bullshit", and I'd consider the last one needlessly annoying.

Do regular people really don't care about accurate information, and buy based
on who can make nicest sounding blurb?

~~~
coldtea
> _Do regular people really don 't care about accurate information, and buy
> based on who can make nicest sounding blurb?_

Not only "regular people", but you too are disproportionally affected by
"nicest sounding blurb", and just don't realize it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe? I don't know. Whenever I notice someone using nice blurbs _instead_ of
a honest list of features and problems they solve, I immediately weigh the
product _down_ in my list.

~~~
coldtea
For stuff in your expertise yes, but for consumer products and services?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd say yes to most of them. It doesn't take more than high-school level of
education and a nonzero interest in how things work to be able to evaluate
such blurbs for consumer products and services. I may find myself lost when
dealing with _specialized_ products and services for areas I have zero
experience with, but in those cases I try to completely ignore any information
from product vendors, and read up on recommendations from communities in the
area (a good starting point is usually /r/$area).

~~~
sacado2
It can be very hard in highly niched domains. Very niched products typically
have a high price / low number of customers profile, meaning you want to
really be sure the product is right for you, but won't find any (or very
little) recommendation online.

Imagine a consultant who offers consulting on using cryptocurrencies as a
payment method for your online business. The fees are $250 per hour. You're a
paypal user and briefly considered using bitcoins for your online business,
but are not sure about it.

Or imagine a physiotherapist who offers a treatment for a very rare (but not
life-threatening) condition no traditional medicine could cure. It is rather
expensive, but the guy says he can help you, yet you won't find any
testimonial on the web because of the rarity of the condition.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In those niche cases I'd push for a contract, or otherwise ensure I have some
recourse if the product/service turns out to be fraudulent. I admit I'm
somewhat risk-averse with meaningful sums of money.

------
waffle_ss
Can anyone recommend any services that provide copy critiques like Stripe did
to the websites in this post? I don't have the time to read and digest the
book suggestions and I don't want to open a business with Stripe Atlas.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys)
FTW

------
novagrint
Am I the only one who is confused by the word "copy" in the headline? Is it
meant in the meaning of "text" or am I missing the point here? I also can't
find any synonyms used in the text below which would make its meaning in this
context more clear to me.

~~~
kowdermeister
That's a rather well known lingo in web/marketing circles.

~~~
Angostura
It's use in journalism, predates marketing, I believe.

