Startups, your landing page sucks • Hacker News Board

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#21

Post by lnanek2 » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 3:55 PM UTC

Haha, yeah. I find it hilarious when a startup founder is running around doing business meetings and asking for tech cofounders and all this stuff, and I go to his landing page, and it has no information whatsoever. Like a tag line and a picture.

In one case I met the guy and he actually had a decent demo, but there was no way for anyone to ever see it and get some interest in working with him unless you already knew him ahead of time and were willing to meet him to see it. People like this just don't get the power of the internet at all.

Later on I mentioned his idea to a VC who was very into that space, and the VC got interested and immediately tried to lookup the app on the app store while I was talking to him, then asked for a web page. So the guy even blew VC interest by hiding his demo in his pocket. A YouTube video would have taken him 5 minutes and at least gotten him to YC "ugly duckling" demo day status.

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#22

Post by StavrosK » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 3:57 PM UTC

webbruce wrote: post #6

What's some good examples of well put together landing pages then?

What I've settled on is sales letters:

http://www.instahero.com/

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#23

Post by cnlwsu » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:00 PM UTC

skreech wrote: post #9

Regarding "have your contact details on your website, not an ugly, stupid and useless form that no one uses." Is there any advantage to having a visible e-mail address your site vs a contact form?

well, they could email you :) hard to put screenshots etc in a form but its pretty easy from mail client. I would think adding a little footer with an email and phone number wouldn't hurt. Be nice for people who don't like the "contact us" forms (ie me, especially when they don't work).

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#24

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:03 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#25

Post by jules » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:20 PM UTC

fduran wrote: post #19

The Spanish web site I think he's referring to has an English version: http://greenmomit.es/en/ , but the link is buried at the bottom of the page instead of at the top. The sarcasm of the author is a put off for me, like startups in an international competition didn't know about having pages in English. Criticizing is easy, for example: a media company should know better than using grey fonts over a black background…

He also criticizes startups for not defaulting to English. Not to mention the arrogance of making that statement when there are more native Spanish speakers than native English speakers.

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#26

Post by xster » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:24 PM UTC

sritch wrote: post #8

The irony here is how bad the press42.com landing page is; your value proposition is pretty unclear with your one sentence. Try working on your own landing page before dishing out criticism, (not to say that what you said isn't true).

Pretty link bait-y. I could also write an article with:

Title: Internal combustion engines will never work

Content: I saw this guy who forgot to fill gas this morning

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#27

Post by martin-adams » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:47 PM UTC

ytNumbers wrote: post #11

sritch wrote: post #8

The irony here is how bad the press42.com landing page is; your value proposition is pretty unclear with your one sentence. Try working on your own landing page before dishing out criticism, (not to say that what you said isn't true).

"There's not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault." - Cervantes There's only two sentences on the press42.com home page, but despite such brevity, I had zero trouble understanding their value proposition.

I think you are the exception to the rule. I could guess what I think it means, but I shouldn't have to.

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#28

Post by citricsquid » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:54 PM UTC

tzaman wrote: post #10

Our landing page is suffering from the same disease - anyone willing to help us out, we're missing a marketing person in our team :)

I think if you had a marketing person they would be slapping you for letting your site remain down for an hour while you have people interested in checking it out :D

Any idea when it'll be back up? I'd like to check it out.

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#29

Post by dohertyjf » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

YES, THIS.

While I wish this article actually provided some examples (I did that here too - http://www.johnfdoherty.com/landing-pages-that-rank/), it's a decent rant.

Re: Startups, your landing page sucks

#30

Post by kevinh » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 5:13 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #25

fduran wrote: post #19

The Spanish web site I think he's referring to has an English version: http://greenmomit.es/en/ , but the link is buried at the bottom of the page instead of at the top. The sarcasm of the author is a put off for me, like startups in an international competition didn't know about having pages in English. Criticizing is easy, for example: a media company should know better than using grey fonts over a black background…

He also criticizes startups for not defaulting to English. Not to mention the arrogance of making that statement when there are more native Spanish speakers than native English speakers.

I don't think native speakers is that meaningful of a metric in this case. Fluent speakers is the more interesting case and as far as I can tell, many more people are fluent in English than in Spanish. Additionally, the average income of fluent English speakers is likely higher than the average income of fluent Spanish speakers.