(Rant) What a snobby, begrudging comments section. Well done to OP for writing a detailed summary of a succesful productised service that they got off the ground as well as a solid list of actionable tasks you can take to improve your own product.<p>They've outlined how their clients have loved the service, it's been financially successful and everyone is happy, yet all people here do is complain about a) how this is the downfall of the internet b) there's some technical or editorial minutiae of the post itself they dislike c) how they could have done it better d) what they're doing is just plain wrong or unimportant.<p>If HN had its way, every product and service on the planet would be devoid of marketing, sales or design and the only way you could buy it was via the command line. Infuriating.
This sounded interesting so I clicked on TFA.<p>OMG it does that thing I can't stand in news publications of repeating the same thing over and over!<p>This is literally the first 8 lines of TFA:<p>- - -<p>What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages in 12 months<p>200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later.<p>What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages in 12 months<p>200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later<p>200 roasts, £70,000 in revenue and 642 cans of Diet Coke later<p>12 months of roasting landing pages<p>Over the last twelve months I've roasted the landing pages of 200 startups.<p>- - -<p>I get so annoyed when news articles do that, because they skimp on writing abstract leaders by simply duplicating text from the opening para.<p>I don't know what else this article says because I stopped reading and closed the tab.
"Nearly every founder was able to capture their product or business USPs gracefully in the form, but only about 1 in 5 had this language on their landing page."<p>I cannot belive how many landing pages I go to for prodcuts and I can't figure out what they actually do, or why to use them over X. It's shocking.
@ollymeakings, the key point I would have loved to learn was how effective your service was. So by implementing (some / all) of your advice, how much did the conversion increase over next 3 months or so? (with no additional marketing and other implausible but desirable assumptions). You do mention "as I built evidence of the roasts increasing conversion" but leave the evidence hanging. Or perhaps I read the otherwise quite comprehensive piece too hastily. Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing!
Olly here, founder of roastmylandingpage.com<p>Happy to answer any questions about the service or business not covered in the blog.<p>You can also see the post as tweets, with visual examples from landing pages here: <a href="https://twitter.com/helloitsolly/status/1390310904563224581" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/helloitsolly/status/1390310904563224581</a>
The article has acronyms (USP, CTA,...) that the author never cares to actually explain what they mean. I find that it's a really opaque and hostile way to approach a subject and it mostly makes me feel like the author wants to sound like he really knows what he's talking about. He stretches simple points (Have a clear mission statement/product description.) into longwinded statements with unnecessarily complicated jargon. Really just feels like I'm being pitched a service the whole time I'm reading.
Fantastic info, thank you, @ollymeakings!<p>As you mentioned in the comments here, your article assumes that the business already has product-market fit. Do you have advice for people who are at the idea stage and are building landing pages as a way of finding product-market fit?<p>I've been building a landing page to test out a consumer-oriented travel app idea before I build it. Ideally, I want to build a community of users before creating the app and learn from them what to build. Conversion at this point means signing up for an email list, then I reach out with a personal email. Not fancy, but it's a start.<p>I see the landing page in my use case as a conversation starter: "Sign up for this app! Actually, the app doesn't exist yet, but I'd really like to build something like this for you. Does it strike your interest?" Not in a bait-and-switch way.<p>Thanks again!<p>P.S.: I'm an engineer transitioning into entrepreneurship. Learning that marketing is my chief responsibility--and what marketing really means (way more than advertising)--has been an eye-opener for me. Here are some other landing page resources that I've found helpful:<p>Rob Hope's Landing Page Hot Tips ebook: <a href="https://gumroad.com/l/hottips/root" rel="nofollow">https://gumroad.com/l/hottips/root</a><p>Harry from Marketing's guide to landing pages: <a href="https://marketingexamples.com/conversion/landing-page-guide" rel="nofollow">https://marketingexamples.com/conversion/landing-page-guide</a>
I, for one, really enjoyed reading your advice and mostly agree with them. It's like that book "Don't make me think".<p>I've had some of the most confusing times when a HN link points to a landing page. I personally prefer getting a readme on github. But some of them completely forget to describe what the thing is/does/improves, too.<p>I really dislike landing pages. But I also realize I'm probably sitting on the porch shouting and waving my cane :)
//I generated about £20,000 in roast revenue, and another £50,000 of freelance marketing work from clients //<p>This guy made this much money with a simple idea. And he hasn't killed anyone. So even though I would never buy such service or think it is worth something to buy , I don't want roast this guy for earning money. All the best.
Thanks for the write-up! I don't get all the negativity in this thread.<p>It's a well-written and detailed post, filled with actual content. I liked that the author included the financial information too. I wish you all the best!
Something really irks me about how this site is using the word 'roast'. Feels like any of the following words, with relevant dictionary definitions, would've been more intuitive: analyse, improve, critique, assess, evaluate.<p>Instead, let's take a slang word, re-define it's accepted meaning by removing the interesting nuance of it's usage, and try and piggyback of it's coolness. Not to my tastes.
<i>reads this</i><p><i>ponders the front page of her art/comics site</i><p>Social proof... social proof... oh hey I have a couple of glowing quotes from Hugo winners for the cover of one of my comics, maybe I should put those on the link to it on the front of my site, too. Thanks, Landing Page Roast Guy.<p>Maybe next I'll even edit the css so they're not in tiny low-contrast type. Nah. Gotta stay humble.
Shameless Plug: I also roasted stuff, in fact over 200 pages, in public - on my YouTube channel: <a href="https://lf.gg/youtube/" rel="nofollow">https://lf.gg/youtube/</a><p>This started as a side project during the pandemic, I was really bored.<p>I am not as good looking as Oliver and my English isn't as fluid but I tried...<p>P.S. If you have ANY suggestion on how to improve my YouTube channel - could you share it?
In the article he embeds a Tweet showing his first version vs his 20th version. Then I went to the site, and what's live looks more like the 1st version so I'm confused.
Am I the only one who really hates these opaque landing pages? They all just look the same and you never know what the hell is actually being sold. Like that popwork one he's glowing over in the video.<p>It's like you're walking down the street and bums keep handing you shiny wrapped presents. At first they all look shiny and you want to open it but then you've opened enough of them to know they're probably full of shit.<p>So I stop bothering opening them. No, I don't want to create an account and give you my email so that you can spam me for months merely to know what's inside the box. Frankly my next stop is finding a video on YouTube of someone actually showing how to use... whatever it is. Or people talking about using it in a forum or something.
Am I the only one that thinks a table of contents would be great for this article?<p>It starts off salesy and when this happens I tend to avoid committing to it, so I think a table of contents would really help a user decide if this is a good read for them or not.
> Tools like Loom are amazing for recording video-in-video. But when they fail mid-roast recording it's horrible. When it happens 3 times in a row, you consider leaving your job, hiring a small dependable car, packing up your possessions and moving to a remote farm far away from everything and everyone you know.<p>Any particular reason for choosing Loom over, say, OBS? I know OBS is primarily for game streamers, but it would get the job done just as well and might be more stable since it's incredibly popular.<p>Or why not record your screen and webcam separately, and then edit the two together in post?<p>Or am I misunderstanding the issue?
> 95% of roasts were booked by male founders.<p>I'd be really curious what the demographics are for founders. I'm not in the SV area, and I'd love to know how representative (or not) of the general founder population that is.
Slightly off-topic, but I'm curious what your logo [1] is? Based on the first iteration of your website, it used to be the chicken drumstick emoji () or similar, but now it's a drumstick with purple and pink?<p>[1] <a href="https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6059199ee613ee15184e8810/606225da9e69310a9bf08c6c_landing-page-logo.svg" rel="nofollow">https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6059199ee613ee15184e8810/606...</a>
I feel like this useronboarding site (<a href="https://www.useronboard.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.useronboard.com/</a>) is the right way to go about this. It's informative, helpful but doesn't make the website its tearing down feel wrong.
Very nice. One minor correction -- The emoji you used next to "Processes I implemented" is unavailable on the latest OSX update for some reason. I'm not even sure what emoji it is, but it looks like stacked bars.
I wonder what the range in conversation change was for landing page tweaks. I’m curious how much landing page tweaks in general really matter. Do you see 50% changes in conversion by making copy changes, or 5%?
This is a lot of real effort - one per workday for a year. I just am trying to imagine what I could do similarly:<p>- a code review from an OSS project per day?<p>- a bug fix per day?<p>- document something every day<p>- add a line of code to an OSS project per day?<p>Any ideas?
> Focus your landing page on one conversion goal.<p>How does this help with SEO? Won't your pages be too thin and suffer in Google's eyes? I thought rich content is the way to go.
“Real pain PAS (pain - agitate - solve) is a common copywriting technique used to increase conversion. Most landing pages touched on the pain they were addressing, but only 1 in 15 agitated or amplified the pain with emotional language and vivid imagery. The ones that did this well created much more powerful landing pages that moved me to explore the solution.<p>Fix it: Agitate your visitor by painting a vivid picture of the pain using emotional language, stories and visuals.”<p>How is this not a dark pattern?
There are some technical terms that you need to explain, as not all of the readers are well-versed on your industry. I'd also like to roast your page, as it has no navigation page.
Sorry to be pain in the butt, but this is largely irrelevant. There are a lot of experts or 'experts' who analyze other people mistakes. However, the real data for landing pages comes from actual customers, not expert opinion, however good or bad it is. Second, the #1 mistake for landing pages happens before the landing page is even created. Namely figuring out what to offer, how to offer it, how to stand out and how to make your goods or services way better than competition. Make mistake at this stage and no landing page will save you and analyzing landing page for a bad product or a bad offer will only take you away from seeing the real problem /*rant off.<p>I see zero relevance in the post. The author may have learned something, but I as a reader did not. Usual marketing bullshit.