Ask HN: What type of splash page works better?
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:
1) Simple straight forward sign-up now page. such as: www.localmind.com and www.dayri.me
2) Content driven splash page. Such as: www.webpop.com and www.thinkfuse.com
So my question is: Which one is more effective? And why?
Thanks in advanced!
Comments
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.
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.
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 :)
Clickables:
1) http://www.localmind.com and http://www.dayri.me
2) http://www.webpop.com and http://www.thinkfuse.com
Don't guess or make assumptions. A/B test both and make a decision based on hard numbers.
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.