Wouldnt it be possible that the great difference is due to the fact that the first article was published in july and most of the HN people interested in the service already signed up that time?
Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
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Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#22This is such a poor choice for an article. It's not even like an A/B test - not even remotely - yet the author portrays it as such. This is really more like "Here's how an article converted that I posted in July on subject 'A' and title 'A' with no call to actions, and here's another article that I posted almost four months later about subject 'B' with title 'B' that had call to actions in it." There's just no meat here - were they both posted on the same day of the week? Were they both posted on/about the same time? Were "world events" about the same when you posted each (or was one overshadowed by a major event that people were focusing on)? I could go on and on... Anyone who draws conclusions from this article is walking a fine line. It leaves you with more questions than answers (and they are "big" questions that invalidate the article's whole point).
I see it as just asinine link bait junk and I'm disappointed to see it get so many upvotes.
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#23There's a principle at work that true marketers use to their advantage. It's quite simple, and is avoided all too often, especially by detail-oriented people who operate a little bit differently than non-detail-oriented people. I assume that HackerNews has a lot of engineers who are by nature detail oriented, and therefore this principle is ignored far too often. The post that converted at the better rate had a link…
> The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue. Man, with that writing style ... absolutely! Or maybe I'm just writing a comment that is intentionally long to prove my point that people don't read comments, which are long and very obviously without much more content. Here I am admiting that this comment is longer than it needs be because I'm lazy and trying to prove a point which was margin…
It's not as interesting, you're right, so it depends on your purpose. If your sole purpose is conversion (not providing information), that's the style of writing you should use.
Of course, where you are in search of more legitimate and technical discussion, you would be much more elaborate, but that is (strangely enough) unlikely to convert as well.