Roast my (beta) landing page
Hey Y'all,
I'm currently working on a new project, a newsletter for finance. Currently, I'm working on the homepage, but I'm at a loss for direction. So I'm throwing it to all of you.
https://learned-ink-drawbridge.glitch.me
Let me know what you think of the page, what needs to be improved, how it can look better.
From my own thoughts, I feel like the page needs more to it, like a little more "WOW" factor. I also need to design some sort of logo, and the copy still needs work. And I need to work on the signup section, with the Facebook login and whatnot.
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I love the idea of having a condensed email of market news. However, I am afraid to enter my email as it looks a little sketchy. A few things to make it better:
Center the page (not the text).
The page needs a more legit look. If you do not want a template, use a framework like Bootstrap. Plus, the images look like clipart. Use Font Awesome or better yet, hire a designer to make a set of icons for the website.
Get a real logo. The text spelled out is one of the things that makes it look sketch.
Use a nicer font (see Font Awesome or Google Fonts) and pick something clean. Do not use Arial or Sans except as a fall back for older browsers.
Make the titles larger. It took 3 times to understand it is a newsletter for traders. Also, consider increasing the size of the text. Red is a little hard to read. Maybe Black instead.
Reduce the amount of text. There is allot to read before I can make a decision to give you my email.
Replace "Sign Up Below, It's Totally Free!" with something that points to value. Traders do not care if it's free. They only care if it can make them money. For example, "Market briefings, straight to your inbox". Then change the button text to "Join Free". This gives value and lets me know it is free.
Give me a reason to sign up. Market News that I need to know does not do it. I can get that in a million places. What makes your news briefing the best. Tell me close to the email form.
In short, I do not believe in looking at the page that you can help my trading. Make me believe. Give testimonials, the number of subscribers (when it is large), why you can provide this service better, etc...
Thank you so much for this critique, it's very insightful. I'm probably gonna use most of these in my new page. Honestly, thank you. This is super helpful
You're welcome.
If you need custom illustrations to build customer trust I've curated a list of the best Fiverr illustrators, many at $5 and you can see their work. List is free to view here: https://www.meetserge.com
Took a look at the page, if I need this I will go through there!
You know, I could help you set our startup widget (https://www.insteps.io) for free for your FAQs while you upload your landing page. It's very easy to get started, and we're using it as well. Let me know if you would be interested in it. :)
This looks really interesting, If I need this on the final page I'll totally hit you up. Good luck with your project!
Yay! I'd be delighted to have your support. :)
There are some cool ready to go templates for cheap that you can buy and give it a professional look, right now it looks a little amateurish, but I like the idea, we are somehow competitors I’m running https://bullish.email
Hey I've seen your hacker news post about it, I say we're in the same field but not directly competing lol. I have considered using a template, but the engineer in me wants to do all of this from scratch. Good luck with the newsletter man.
Thank you, yeah. I also love doing it from scratch although email templates are a pain in the neck.
I am not a fan of the full width layout, very hard to read on a large monitor.
Thank you for bringing this up, I'm only on a laptop so I didn't even consider how it would look on a larger monitor
I moved things around a bit: https://i.ibb.co/9qFzRJg/image.png
will also probably make the header words MUCH bigger, see how Apple does it: https://ibb.co/PjS30KK
one more, the call to action close to your value proposition will increase your sign up rate: https://i.ibb.co/wCmpKPb/image.png
I'm really liking this one a lot, it feels way cleaner than the one I created. Thank you so much for the effort you put into these, it really means a lot
There is a strong diagonal from the 'Five Before Nine' name and the 'upgrade your Trading'. For me, my eye is taken quickly to to red horizontal rule and it is difficult to look and concentrate on anything else because of those two design elements. There is another user who made a figma update which overall looks better, but the diagonal movement I feel is still too strong. Consider center all of the content and add some void between the sections.
Thank you for your reply. I originally tried to make this fit on one screen, but from the feedback I've received I'm going to use a lot more of the page, so more white space will be included. I really appreciate the design feedback.
I think you should add a lot more content to sell me on why I should sign up for this. What makes this newsletter so good? What's it going to help me do? Who are you, and why should I trust what you have to say about the markets? Who else subscribes to this newsletter? Etc. Sell me!
On the flip side, I don't think you need to be clever with the design. You're prioritizing visuals, here, with this unique, horizontal, minimalist design. Why not just make it simple and standard, keep it to one column so it's easy to read, and focus more on writing copy that convinces readers to subscribe.
For inspiration, look at other newsletter businesses:
Thank you so much for the reply. I'm trying to find the balance between content and minimalism. If you take a look at TLDR newsletter, his landing page is barely over 20 words, yet his newsletter is over 100k+ subscribers. I feel if I make a huge landing page, I might reduce the number of people who will subscribe. I want to sell, but to do so in as few words as possible.
The main sell of this is to get all the information you'd need to trade the markets, without having to go to dozens of websites to get it.
It's mostly a myth that lots of text turns people off and drives them away. In fact the opposite is true: text is persuasive, it answers questions, it responds to objections, and it convinces people to buy.
If you put yourself in a visitor's shoes, anyone who's going to come to your site and click "subscribe" without reading anything is someone who was already sold on what you do beforehand. They already go the information they needed elsewhere.
Another group of people might only subscribe after reading a small amount of information. These are people who are either naturally easy to convince, or who (again) were already interested in what you were offering before they showed up.
But what about the people who don't belong to either category? Somehow they ended up on your website without know much of anything, or without being properly convinced. They need more information.
Where the myth comes into play is this idea that people in groups 1 and 2 won't subscribe if you provide more information for people in group 3. That's actually not true. Just keep your call-to-action at the top of the page, and put the supplemental information below, like Trends does. Then it's optional and doesn't get in the way of anyone who just wants to quickly sign up.
Sam Parr talked about this in our recent podcast episode. For whatever reason the idea that we must always be minimalist has caught on among tech founders, even though the most successful companies (e.g. Amazon, Apple) use long-form sales pages to make billions of dollars selling their products. Sam is on track to make $10M/year from his newsletter Trends, so I think he has good advice.
All of that said, I would guess that group #3 will be your smallest group of visitors. For a mailing list, most people should be showing up to your site as a result of a recommendation from a reader (e.g. a forwarded email), or an article or tweet about you, or something else that informed them about what you do and why they should sign up. So it's probably more important for you to spend time honing those channels than your website. But that's just a guess.
Most importantly, since you're inspired by @tldrdan, I highly recommend just reaching out and seeing what he did in the early days to get subscribers!
Yeah just to be clear, one reason I am able to keep my landing page so minimalist is because my funnel is pretty targeted so by the time someone finds my landing page they're pretty well vetted (my traffic sources are currently mostly referrals from people who already read my newsletter, Facebook ads who target lookalike audiences similar to people who read my newsletter, referrals from tech sites like HackerNoon and CodeinWP with lists of "newsletter for developers", and a few from my Indie Hackers articles). The less targeted your top of funnel, the more information you need on your landing page to get the right type of people subscribed to your newsletter. I think @csallen is spot on here, "it's probably more important for you to spend time honing those channels than your website".
I would say just in terms of newsletter sign up pages, I see a bit of divergence between the free ones like TLDR and paid ones like the ones mentioned in @csallen's post. Compare Sam Parr's newsletters, thehustle.co which is free and trends.co which is paid. IMO it does stand to reason that more copy is required to convert a user to a paid product than a free one.
Again this advice is all generic, you'll have to test your own landing page to find out what works for you. Looking at your landing page, I think the two obvious things that need fixing are the domain name (you really should have a domain that people can say/remember easily), and the sign up form on mobile is below the fold (meaning it's out of view when a user lands on your home page).
Good luck, and feel free to ping me here or on Twitter!
Thank you so much for replying on this post. Your posts here are super informational. I do need to work on branding a little bit, hence why I don't have a domain name yet. I get the need to develop the funnel far more than the landing page.
Just as a side question, I know in most of your posts you talk about using FB ads to get new subscribers, but how has your success been in non paid or organic reach?
Easy organic reach can come from forum posts like this one, or more effectively reaching out to blog posts that are already at the top of Google that have lists of similar newsletters or posting on Quora. Then whenever you get positive feedback, say thank you and remind them to let their friends know about your newsletter!
Thank you so much again for this reply, I've honestly never thought about landing pages. I guess I'll flesh out the page more. That was super insightful
Had some time on my hands so I tried to do a bit of a redesign, tell me what you think: https://www.figma.com/file/2iDY8t2L4zHN94LHoBelrF/FIVE-BEFORE-NINE?node-id=0%3A1
Also take a look at: https://www.figma.com/proto/2iDY8t2L4zHN94LHoBelrF/FIVE-BEFORE-NINE?node-id=2%3A61&scaling=scale-down-width
These look awesome! I'll probably not use these verbatim, but I really like the new design that's so much different than what I was thinking.
It's short and descriptive. I didn't have trouble understanding what's the point of the service, but it looks cluttered.
Hope this helps!
Thank you for your feedback. I know i need a domain and whatnot, I'm just waiting to finish before I go for those purchases. I appreciate the rest, I do think the page is still cluttered despite how few elements there are on the page.
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Yeah I basically have the content down for the most part, I just want to make the landing page really good. And you bet I will be telling everyone once it's finished!
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So I'm better off only trying to make a super good landing page until I've measured how well the current one I have does? I know it still needs improvements, but I think you're saying its better to make the content better than spending a lot of time on the landing page.
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.