Pat Pohler had a teardown too. He should share his lessons learned as well... {Pat Signal}
None of us panelists ever said "This is terrible" or anything of that sort, or insulted anyone/anything, or discouraged any of the volunteers, etc. We said "This doesn't work" "That won't work" "That's weak" etc.… and then gave lots of supportive suggestions to make it better. The worst possible thing anyone said is when Patrick said [paraphrasing] "Please don't take this personally, but if your target market is designers, you need to have more of a… design."
Genuinely asking "Why would I be interested in this?" is not only not brutal, it's not even a criticism.
I guess more people need to experience actual brutal criticism in order to see how our teardown was anything but!
Then again, there's something to be said for being willing to be scrutinized by your heroes. Therein lies my admiration for Sean.
While the redesign looks better, I'm somewhat turned off because it follows the same design strategies as used by low-quality info products:
* Cheesy book shot. At least it's not a fake "book generator" box. If this will be delivered as a PDF, why not use the Acrobat logo below a thumbnail preview of the actual cover/first page? To me, seeing real content lends credibility.
* Thin column of text with bullet points.
* Periodic bolded keywords.
* The only things it's missing are a "P.S." section and a breakdown of the cost savings over the alternatives.
I have no doubt that the reason these things are standard is that they work. However, for me the site has the same look and feel I've seen in many low-quality info product kind of sites. As a result, I'm immediately more skeptical than I otherwise would be.
Don't forget, this book is being written to get profit and recognition (I think ;) and loosing a couple of "this looks too cheap for me" dudes is an OK price to pay to significantly increase the readership. And I'm pretty sure patio11 and brennan know quite a bit about this.
So, so long as "it works" I think he's going in the right direction.
> well, then I guess you won't be a customer. Guess what.. this
> doesn't matter, the loss is probably all yours
> ... is an OK price to pay to significantly increase the readership
> And I'm pretty sure patio11 and brennan know quite a bit about this.
That said I don't mean for it to look low-quality. That could just be a side-effect of my lack of design skills. :-)
TBH I actually like your first landing page copy (other than it missing an above-the-fold "what's in this book" statement) and the second one also feels like a work in progress, so it'd be interesting to see how they both perform.
So the question becomes do I trust the experts? I do. Therefore this landing page is my new baseline -- I'll split test from here.
FWIW, looking over the "after" page myself, I'd agree that it's a much more solid longish-form sales page. You'll probably be fine using that as your baseline!
So even if it's only this (which I'm sure it's not), huge improvement in the clarity of the message.
Do you have data on the conversion rates before/after redesigning the landing page?
Cheers.