2014 - First Landing is a Struggle

Hello!
I'm doing a renewal of our index page and wanted to share some observations we made, until it's gone and forgotten.

Anyone who once was on your landing page – or just learned about you in any other way – is virtually taking palce in one of these 3 groups:

1 – will become your customer now - right after that (means sign up)

2 – will become your customer later (you won't know when)

3 – won't use your products or services, won't become a customer at all leaves quietly)

But. Here's the thing:
People who won't pay you a cent in a lifetime are still valuable for your business. Probably, one just doesn't have a need for your product, but has sympathy for you or even strongly likes you. Sees that you care and strive. Aim to make things better.

They might participate, just not by signing up for your services or offering you a contract.

They will talk about you. They will spread the word about you. At the beginning you won't probably notice (beacuse they don't email you right after they told a friend or a colleague, heading for a coffee). But they do speak about you.

How to act now that we know this:

– give everybody an opportunity to follow, to keep an eye on how it's going

– provide a variety of opportunities to INTERACT (other that just start a trial and sign up)

Give an opportunity to follow on different platforms, include a simplest form to ask a question, even a mailing list subscribe block may help.

For people who like you, are interetsted, but will come back later (2)

(think about them as somewhat hesitant, or anticipating a need in the future)

– clearly explain what you product does, who is it for and how it can make their life better, accordingly. At least, show some FAQ articles or a knowledge base widget.

Your someday-customers-to-be look for a kind of a roadmap. The question here is:
– Will there ever be something useful for me?

They also may shoot you an email, asking if you'll have this or that feature soon. But not many do.

– so, add a roadmap
Or, if you can't do that for some reasons, explain what are your goals and where are you heading.

Our mistake was trying to force things and certainly not providing clear options to learn about our product and follow updates without performing that much desired action – sign-up.

Other thing that surprized me was that people ask for more text. A reasonable Post Hoc explanation is that, well, we don't communicate solely through drawings or pictograms. Modern European writing system is comprised of letters, right? :-)
But it didn't come this easily to me in the beginning.

And, of course, design is a secondary thing. Words reign here and it's words that persuade and convince.

But it was what it was – a temporary page. Oh well, these temporary things tend to stick for so long.

If you are interested, here we are https://storry.is/en (waiting to be renewed)

Have a great day today!
Alice

ask anything here or by email
alice@storry.is