🎨 Crafting the perfect landing page

Hey you 👋

We analyzed over 100 homepages to discover what the best ones have in common.

Here’s what we learned.

When people visit your website, this is what generally happens:

• 100% of people visit a website

• 10% sign up to try

• 5% become active users

• 1% become paying subscribers

• 0.3% stick around and become repeat customers

Note that this is a healthy representation of what could happen. Unfortunately, there are many startups and companies out there that have a conversion rate problem.

And this problem can be better understood by the “Knowledge Spectrum” — a term created by user interface designer Jared Spool.

All conversion rate problems occur because of a Knowledge Gap. Closing this gap is how you improve your conversion rate.

You either have to increase, or decrease, the amount of knowledge that is needed by a visitor to sign up.

It’s fairly simple, but hard to accomplish in practice.

When you look at a homepage, or landing page, you should ask yourself, “do I need to increase knowledge on this page or decrease it?”

The best way to approach this is to start with just 1 button (your CTA) on a page. In this case, let’s say it's a “sign up” button to get someone to sign up for a free trial.

Then you need to ask, “what do I have to put on this page to get someone to click this single button?”

To help understand what needs to go on your homepage, you should address the 7 questions your visitors (whether they’re consciously aware of it or not) will secretly ask themselves:

1. What is the CTA? And how quickly does it lead me to the “aha moment” of a product?

2. What is this product (or service)? What is this “aha moment” that this service provides?

3. Is this product right for me?

4. Is it legit?

5. Who else is using this product?

6. How much is it? What’s the catch?

7. Where can I get help?

If your homepage can answer all 7 questions clearly, you’re 10 steps ahead of most brands.

Webflow does a great job at following this structure. Here is how Webflow answers these questions on their homepage:

1. The CTA is to get started with building a website. This is the main CTA on the entire page.

2. This product is a SaaS that lets designers and marketers build custom websites without developers (says in the headline).

3. Has multiple product feature sections to make sure designers and marketers know if it’s the right platform for them.

4. Has a clean website design and looks like a real company (not a spammy-looking page).

5. It's used by 200K+ organizations and highlights customer case studies (social proof).

6. Says you can create and launch a website for free.

7. Includes resources (and people) that will help you create a website.

Next time you think you have a conversion rate problem on a landing page, ask yourself the 7 questions (from the perspective of your ideal customer). If you have multiple CTAs and MBA-writing jargon, chances are you need to decrease knowledge (simplify things). If you have just one CTA, but people aren’t signing up, chances are you have to increase knowledge (answer the 7 questions clearly).

If you want to learn more about this, check out Y Combinators' video on this topic.

With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):

• Marketing news from the past week

• A look at Snyk’s $8B growth loop

• Iconic pieces of content that helped startups break through

• A recent major shift in Google’s search results

• What social media marketers need to focus on in H2 2023

• Ad from the past

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• Elon Musk rebrands twitter to X, replaces bird logo on headquarters

• How the Threads hype slammed into reality, one data point at a time

• Meta and Microsoft introduce the next generation of Llama

• How Warner Bros. pulled off the marketing campaign of the year with ‘Barbie’

🚀 All things growth & product

A look at Snyk’s $8B growth loop, a guide to B2B referrals, doing a channel check for SaaS companies, and showing prices vs hiding prices.

✍️ Content, copy, & emails

Iconic pieces of content that helped startups break through, converting blog readers with verticalized CTAs, a way to test your copy, and how to re-active subscribers with the right emails.

⚙️ SEO (Search engine optimization)

How to get a Google knowledge panel, how to explain the value of SEO to executives, 74 SEO statistics, and a major shift in Google’s search results.

💻 Social media, psychology, & websites

What social media marketers should focus on for the rest of 2023, why this ad is psychological genius, landing page mistakes to avoid, and how to build your website right the first time.

🦖 Extra stuff

How to pass first round interviews,

📣 Ad from the past

💻 Website of the week

🏝 Cool marketing jobs

• Product Marketing Manager @ Vercel

• Growth Marketing Manager, Paid Search @ Octave

• Lifecycle Marketing Lead @ Kyte

• Head of Growth Marketing @ Notion

• Founding Marketer (Content/Brand) @ Perspective

Okay, that's it for now 💚. See you next Tuesday!

“One day you will be grateful you kept going. Stay for that day.” — Brianna Wiest

Riddle answer: They have experience with churn.