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Ask HN: What type of splash page works better?

by ch00ey on 2/12/11, 11:10 PM with 6 comments

I've seen the anatomy of a perfect landing page (http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-page). But, I've seen two types of splash pages that have generally worked:

1) Simple straight forward sign-up now page. such as: www.localmind.com and www.dayri.me

2) Content driven splash page. Such as: www.webpop.com and www.thinkfuse.com

So my question is: Which one is more effective? And why?

Thanks in advanced!

  • by bobfunk on 2/13/11, 12:48 AM

    Co-founder of Webpop here. Honored to see our landing as one of your examples :)

    We actually had exactly this discussion internally when we created our landing. We even had at least one prototype of the more mysterious kind with little more than a signup form.

    I think both can work well, but for our beta we felt it was quite important that our users had an idea about what they signed up for. We're not doing a consumer product, and it wouldn't help us much getting lots of emails from people who would be completely lost when given access to a tool for professional web designers.

    I suspect that being more mysterious would work well for sites with more of a social networking or entertainment focus.

  • by ch00ey on 2/12/11, 11:12 PM

  • by GBond on 2/13/11, 4:15 AM

    Don't guess or make assumptions. A/B test both and make a decision based on hard numbers.