How we increased landing page conversion from 5% to 55%

1.)“ You didn't show what you were using before, but at a dismal 5% conversion I am guessing it was straight screenshots that weren't "posed" on a device or anything?“

I looked hard for a screenshot of our original landing page but couldn’t dig one up. The screenshots were of the parts of our site that were resonating the most with our most engaged users, and we got good feedback on both the screenshots themselves and the visual design. However, we found that the additional complexity for our average user in having to parse and understand a bunch of screenshots is not as effective as a sports-related photo with a simple, powerful tagline and explanation.

“I don't think I would call a football and baseball image "random" on a sports site, though.”

You’re right, random wasn’t the right word. We meant that we didn’t experiment much with the photo itself or ask for feedback from a wide list of sources.

2.)“Your original headline was a classic mistake.” We are not just talking about taglines or even comparing the two taglines we showed here. In fact, “A Social Network for Sports Fans” is almost as vague as “Follow Sports Together”. We experimented with a lot of other options for messaging and many which were more detailed and clear (3 bullet points on the key benefits of the site, for instance).

In these experiments, we consistently, we found that simple but curiosity-inciting messaging works better than more detailed and clearer messaging.

4.) This lesson is obvious to us now, but was not obvious from the start. By sharing our results we are hoping that others will avoid our mistakes, even the ones that may be obvious to you.

5.) That sounds like a cool study. I'd love to read about it even you can find the link.

6.) Thanks!

"So you're saying providing details is bad and vagueness is good. Vagueness "incites curiosity" which increases signups."

Not really, we're saying that for certain kinds of free consumer apps, curiosity can be a very strong motivator for someone to try a product. (This kind of tactic would never work for a paid product for instance or a product targeted at business users.)

Vagueness doesn't necessarily incite curiosity, but asking first time users to parse detailed messaging often kills it prematurely, and you've got to find the right balance that optimizes conversion. This is what worked well for us.

Finally, there are many other tactics that we're successfully using to turn the users who just signed up into active, engaged users and they are mentioned elsewhere on this thread.

Demographics and invitations Whose invitations are more accepted And so forth