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The rise of the startup landing pages

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Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#11

Post by wisty »

Maro wrote: post #9
vantran wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. Collecting email addresses is fine, but make sure you're really getting people who are genuinely interested in your product. My point is that people shouldn't focus on hoarding emails. The focus should be on testing certain message, certain angle of the product, whether they like the future vision, etc...

So you're saying startups should be A/B testing their coming soon landing pages. That sounds like good advice. I'd be surprised if that feature were not on the todo list of the LaunchRock guys...

It might also be a good way to burn in your infrastructure.

I'm just saying, if you can't get a box collecting email addresses off the ground, your own todo list will take a very long time to finish.

Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#12

Post by nedwin »

redguava wrote: post #5
nestlequ1k wrote: post #4

LaunchRock is sort of a victim of its own success. Now that every startup wannabe has a hipster.com like landing page, we're all getting sick of it and looking for something better.

It depends on your target audience. Perhaps if it is HN readers, but there are many markets that are not saturated by this type of launch site.

If your initial market for your new, innovative software company is early adopters then you're definitely a part of the problem of people getting burned out by these tactics.

Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#13

Post by ma2rten »

I am currently working on my pre-launch startup and I would consider spending five minutes putting up a landing page like that. Not really to collect email addresses, but so I have something on my homepage, so I can go on worrying about the more important stuff.

Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#14

Post by bbwharris »

rmason wrote: post #7

What is really bad is wasting months building software no one wants. Or finding out after the fact that your cost of acquiring a customer is too high to make the idea viable. Sure there are people doing it wrong, but done correctly its a powerful tool that raises the odds that your startup will become a success.

In a lot of cases the cost of acquiring customers is high in the beginning. Thats a business scaling issue that you solve when you determine that you have a real business.

The landing page trend is just for early adopters, I would venture a guess that it has little to no impact on the success of a startup.

Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#15

Post by DenisM »

Lots of opinion, no facts in the article. I would be useful if author split-tested personal/impersonal pages and told us about what gets the actual users engaged, rather than tell us what gets one random blogger aggravated.

Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#16

Post by rokhayakebe »

keyle wrote: post #2

Whilst I agree that a one liner teaser page is not good, I will disagree about "It’s a myth that people don’t read long copy. Of course they do." They really don't. But the article is misleading, because the 'long copy' example provided, the highrise teaser page, is not an example of long copy. It's a well formatted bunch of meaningful information, strategically designed and placed carefully (flow) that keeps enticin…

If you are selling a service, and in some case a product that has several features, then long copy works best. The buyer would want as much information as possible before parting with their dollar.

If you are offering a free product, then short copy is best. Users will trade trying to read what your product does to just using it instead.

Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#17

Post by angryasian »

agree with author 100%. If startups can attract users using a cookie cutter template with vague wording on what they plan on doing, then more power to them. I believe a startup should actually take a few days to think how they can best relay their product with copy, screenshots, customer proof, on their landing page, and get some genuine adopters.

Re: The rise of the startup landing pages

#18

Post by lee337 »

ma2rten wrote: post #13

I am currently working on my pre-launch startup and I would consider spending five minutes putting up a landing page like that. Not really to collect email addresses, but so I have something on my homepage, so I can go on worrying about the more important stuff.

I spent 5 minutes (and $4) yesterday doing the same thing for http://jsocial.io It's (a) a placeholder, (b) incentive for me to stick to a launch date, and (c) it might, just maybe, collect a couple of email addresses.

I'm under no illusions that it's going to generate any sort of buzz, become vital, etc. It' just better than a 404 or something like http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&#3... :-)

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