

Ask HN: What type of splash page works better? - ch00ey

I've seen the anatomy of a perfect landing page (http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-page). But, I've seen two types of splash pages that have generally worked:<p>1) Simple straight forward sign-up now page.
such as: www.localmind.com and www.dayri.me<p>2) Content driven splash page.
Such as: www.webpop.com and www.thinkfuse.com<p>So my question is: Which one is more effective? And why?<p>Thanks in advanced!
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bobfunk
Co-founder of Webpop here. Honored to see our landing as one of your examples
:)

We actually had exactly this discussion internally when we created our
landing. We even had at least one prototype of the more mysterious kind with
little more than a signup form.

I think both can work well, but for our beta we felt it was quite important
that our users had an idea about what they signed up for. We're not doing a
consumer product, and it wouldn't help us much getting lots of emails from
people who would be completely lost when given access to a tool for
professional web designers.

I suspect that being more mysterious would work well for sites with more of a
social networking or entertainment focus.

~~~
atgm
The mysterious types of landing pages are complete turn-offs for me. If I go
somewhere and see a place for my e-mail address with no real information on
what I could be signing up for, I just leave and forget.

It takes a strong amount of buzz to override that impulse in me.

~~~
bobfunk
Feel the same way, but it seems there are quite a few people who are happy to
put there email address just about anywhere pretty :)

------
ch00ey
Clickables:

1) <http://www.localmind.com> and <http://www.dayri.me>

2) <http://www.webpop.com> and <http://www.thinkfuse.com>

------
GBond
Don't guess or make assumptions. A/B test both and make a decision based on
hard numbers.

~~~
bobfunk
You need a high level of traffic before you can really start drawing any
statistically meaningful conclusions from A/B testing. People don't magically
start showing up just because you publish a landing page, so some assumptions
are necessary for the first version.

Sites like <http://fivesecondtest.com/> or <http://www.usertesting.com/> are a
lot more useful than A/B testing when you're about to launch your first
landing.

