- They don't link from the blog to the site from their logo. Marketing 101 here, folks.
- Here is their pitch:
We allow startups to get the right exposure to media while bloggers are able to filter the stories they get.
Huh?
- Thier tagline:
The matchmaking platform for startups and bloggers
Unless the business is aiming at selling to bloggers, this line is not quite clear.
- I have to click on an image of a button to find out you have not launched and are just asking for my email. Double huh?
It is obvious there has not been a test run in this landing page. Which reminds me of rule #1 of landing page: Continually Test Everything.
Good luck to the Press42 team.
Title: Internal combustion engines will never work
Content: I saw this guy who forgot to fill gas this morning
There's only two sentences on the press42.com home page, but despite such brevity, I had zero trouble understanding their value proposition.
So what does this mean for a blogger? Filtering stories I can get? To read? Write?
Startups who are still figuring it out like to use ambiguous blanket statements in order to "capture as much of an audience as possible". They are afraid they are missing out on potential users if don't appeal to everyone.
We leverage over a decade of experience and are happy to offer individual startups advice. (We also have a conversion optimization program available for a fee.) I'm also happy to summarize our best practices (for paid search anyway). We preach this stuff all day long.
- What is the search intent of the visitor for each keyword you're buying? Own this question by pulling search term reports as often as possible. - Be sure the ad copy matches search intent
- Be sure the landing page matches the ad, which matches search intent
- Have a very strong offer that stands out from the crowd. This one usually takes a team to develop. Test different offers.
- If the all of the above are in line, get the @#$% outta the way! Don't fill your landing page with all kinds of unnecessary links, videos, white papers, history, about the team, etc. Just provide a nice big button to push them along the funnel.
- Some folks benefit from placing a signup form directly on the landing page. Others actually want to qualify the visitor a bit more by forcing a click to the next page. It all depends on you.
- Are you equipped to handle phone calls? Then provide a big phone number! And use dashes like this: 415-123-4567, not periods 415.123.4567.
- Test, test, and test some more. We swear by Optimizely for LP testing.
Hope this helps.
Any idea when it'll be back up? I'd like to check it out.
- we pivoted into WordPress market because talking with our prospective customers revealed a real need for a real-time WP support platform
- we changed our name to Codeable, because Carmivore didn't position all that well (the new domain will be codeable.io)
We already have 40 contractors (hand picked, invited) that are on standby (while we prepare the legalities to be able to process payments online).
Criticizing is easy, for example: a media company should know better than using grey fonts over a black background.
Also tyler-b's comment should help you focus on the important features of a landing page
Is there any advantage to having a visible e-mail address your site vs a contact form?
One of the suggested questions you could ask (when I last looked) was "What does this site do?" The examples page gives you a pretty good idea of how it works.
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.
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.
When faced with "build product" vs "prettify website" what would most people here do?
Seems like a lot of folks here are making assumptions about what's most important to a given startup at a given time by looking from the outside. I'm sure in some cases they're right but not necessarily all.
Admittedly for 'launching' at a conference I'd assume an informative website would be a priority but what do I know?
Pardon, but I don't believe there is a language the world speaks.
"three companies out of the sixteen had their webpage in their local language"
Does the author mean that thirteen of the websites were in English, and is complaining about the remaining three being in a different language? Would the author hold the same standard to English-first websites to translate them in to a variety of other local languages? If not, what an astonishingly self-centered perspective.
