Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
meetingburner.com
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
#2There'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 MeetingBurner in the first paragraph (above the fold, as we like to jargon-ize it).
People don't really read things online, they scan. some things jump out, and only if you're very intrigued will you actually read the individual words. In fact, very few of you will even get to this line that I'm writing. The chances that you'll read each line decreases exponentially.
Note that I've made all of my main points in the first sentences of what I've written. Did you even read everything, or did you just scan through and pick up on a few words? The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue.
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#3I can't click on any links in the top 155px pixels of the window because of the cloud header (even when scrolled down, it remains fixed at a higher z-index).
OSX, Firefox 15.0.1
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#4There'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…
I don't disagree with what you state but another important difference between the two is that the "boring biz" version mentioned Noah Kagan of Appsumo (semi)fame. Everybody on HN knows who Kagan is, Appsumo has been discussed in more than a few HN submissions over time. In addition Kagan was just in the HN frontpage and tech blogosphere about how he got canned from FB and lost out on $100 million. I think the "boring biz" article, by mentioning him in the first line, piggy-backed off his fame and credibility within the tech/startup community. In other words somebody did some name dropping (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Readers probably thought: "hmm, if Noah Kagan paid this thing some attention, maybe I should too."
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#5TL;DR: One article converted because they were talking about and pitching their service throughout the whole piece (4 calls to action), while the other was about their experience of hiring family members with no real discussion or pitches about their business (0 calls to action).
Duh?
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#6TL;DR: One article converted because they were talking about and pitching their service throughout the whole piece (4 calls to action), while the other was about their experience of hiring family members with no real discussion or pitches about their business (0 calls to action). Duh?
Yes, totally obvious. Would have been more interesting if any of those results hadn't been completely expected.
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#7TL;DR: One article converted because they were talking about and pitching their service throughout the whole piece (4 calls to action), while the other was about their experience of hiring family members with no real discussion or pitches about their business (0 calls to action). Duh?
Yes, totally obvious. Would have been more interesting if any of those results hadn't been completely expected.
Take a look at how many articles on the frontpage today today don't follow those principles.
For instance the current #1 post - "Living in a van" - has one mention of Priceonomics in the article, no explanation of the service, and no call to action within the story content.
Not saying that this isn't obvious, just saying that despite it being obvious people don't necessarily employ those strategies and are tossing out a huge number of potential new users as a result.
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#8There'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…
Note that I've made all of my main points in the first sentences of what I've written. Did you even read everything, or did you just scan through and pick up on a few words? The attention paid to each line decreases exponentially as you continue.
I read every single sentence.
Everybody else scans.
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#9Great advice for other startups trying to exploit HN for traffic!
Re: Two front page Hacker News posts and why one converted 20x higher
#10While this is some solid advice, the methodology used is rather err stupid. It's like comparing how fast somebody will find a treasure, and then in case A put the treasure in the middle of times square, and in case B put it somewhere in the sewers.