From an Aug 7, 2014 blog post by Marc von Brockdorff on outside the jar, link here.
Homepages are key to a website’s–and product’s–success. Marc surveyed 20 top startups and these are a summary of his findings
The sites covered are:
- ZenDesk
- Basecamp
- Boostable
- Intercom
- Optimizely
- Contently
- NextBigSound
- CampaignMonitor
- KISSmetrics
- BrowserStack
- Trello
- NewRelic
- MixPanel
- Wistia
- Recurly
- Geckoboard
- Sqwiggle
- Hootsuite
- UserVoice
- Pingdom
Some key stats he compiled:
- 100% included a slogan
- 75% had a description with it
- 95% had a CTA above the fold
- 20% included one field (email or website) with the CTA
- 50% used “free” in their CTA text
- 10% had an entire sign up form
- 5% had pricing details
- 20% listed benefits to using their product
- 65% listed product features
- 20% had a video
- 35% had screenshots
- 85% had a header; 30% of those were fixed
- 100% had a footer
- 80% had a type of social proof (testimonial, case study, client list etc)
- 50% had testimonials
- 15% had case studies
- 60% had client lists
Keep in mind, Marc had no access to metrics of how successful these pages were. But he came up with some conclusions. (Be sure and check out the link–Marc pulled a bunch of great examples for support!)
- Your slogan has to pop and explain the essence of your site in seconds. Test them out with friends–or even strangers, say at Starbucks
- Catch your readers’ eyes with a CTA above the fold–throw in “free” if applicable and consider adding a field with it to prove reader engagement
- Test your CTA as much as possible
- Built trust and engagement through adding social proofs
- Explain the benefits of your product along with how it works. Consider including screenshots and/or video
- Keep answering the question, How is this helping our customers? Remember nobody cares about your product strategy
- Give users something to do elsewhere on your site through links, FAQs, etc
Again, check out the link–Marc includes 20 great ideas for how you can test your homepage’s effectiveness!
Thanks, Marc, for a great and insightful post.
