HN Explorer

Ask HN: What landing page do you love?

199 points by richardreeze ↗ HN
I saw this question today on Indie Hackers and thought it would be interesting to ask the HN community.

For me, the answer would be Stripe Atlas (https://stripe.com/atlas)

154 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] thread
eat_veggies
Stack Overflow actually has a landing page! Usually your entry point is via a Google search, so you never see it.

https://stackoverflow.com/

thejj100100
Note that it only shows if not logged in.
noer
That's a homepage though, I'd argue that questions pages are more like landing pages for SO.
ColinWright
None. Absolutely none. I have never "loved" a landing page. They are always too clever, too designed, too cluttered, too austere, too "gorgeous", too self-indulgent, too self-important, etc.
spiderfarmer
Is there anything you do like?
toolz
to be fair, it's just a landing page - not a life changing experience. I don't know that I share OPs enthusiasm, but I've definitely never liked or loved a landing page.
ColinWright
Yes.

I like a landing page whose implementation makes it clear that the people behind it have thought long and hard about the people who will visit, and what they want.

I like a page that's clean, clear, spare, easy to find the things people are looking for when they come to a landing page.

The XKCD panel nails it: https://www.xkcd.com/773/

There are so many things I really don't care about when I land on your site, and a few things I really do care about. Visit the web site for a museum to find out how much it costs to visit[0]:

  > Plan your day
   > Your visit
    > Discover
     > Become a friend
      > Memberships
       > Admissions
        > Audio guides
         > Day tickets
          > $18
Then you want opening times and which holidays they are closed, and the page is comprehensive and detailed, and from 2008 and clearly wrong.

Absolutely no thought about what a visitor is trying to accomplish, and instead is all about trying to ... well, I don't know what they're trying to do.

I like a landing page that has clearly catered for the visitor, and not just to show off how wonderful their web design skills are.

--------

[0] Adapted from here: https://twitter.com/sophie_gadd/status/1213126700625739778

rimliu
The only true and lasting love: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com
solarkraft
I find it pretty hilarious that a substantial part of it is an ad for Geico.
nojvek
Well. BH owns Geico or prolly the largest shareholder. Also one of their most lucrative investments.

I personally dislike Geico’s spammy marketing but I guess it’s minting billions for BH.

If it were to me, they’d be a law that all insurance companies need to be a co-op or non profit. Profit in insurance (esp for health insurance) makes no sense for a country.

richardreeze
"If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can write us at the address shown above. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response." Lol
gitgud
For anyone wondering, Berkshire Hathaway is worth over 400 billion USD... Their site doesn't use css or JavaScript...
baxtr
I think landing pages are overrated. I like good products no matter how they are presented...
lnalx
However you can have the best product in the world, if you can't sell or market it (via a landing page for example), it will never be used (or very little).
Finnucane
>For me, the answer would be Stripe Atlas (https://stripe.com/atlas)

Why? It seems very generic and bland. Or is that the point? Also, it make you scroll through a lot of stuff to find what you are presumably going to the site to find. They bury the important stuff way down at the bottom.

Yeah, most 'landing pages' are pretty useless exercises in annoying your user.

richardreeze
I believe it gives you all the "big picture" information you need in a very simple way (maybe that's why you call it bland). But I do find simplicity important.

This is hard to do with a product as complex as Stripe Atlas (just Google "form a company" and click around to see what I mean). But they pulled it off. And it looks beautiful.

TLDR: I love a landing page that turns complexity into simplicity.

JohnFen
Maybe my brain is broken, but I found it uninformative on the surface, and it makes it hard to locate any actual information about the project.
kp98
Pitch.com

It is a start up to compete with powerpoint that raised 50 million pre-mvp... yea ... sweet landing page tho

richardreeze
Geez... Love the landing page though it feels like a Pixar movie.
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tnolet
Notion is great https://notion.so. Will probably rip it off for my company soon.
HocusLocus
New topic, Landing pages like notion.so that are blank with JS off

:)

sumnole
Not just a great landing page but a great product, which helps.
djangowithme
Which features do you like most, that makes it a great product?
nojvek
Wouldn’t call notion a great product. I found it incredibly hard to use.
nojvek
The thing I absolutely hate about both Notion and Airtable is that both have all sorts of dirty dark patterns in hidden ways. Like signup with gauth will ask for permissions to read contact list. They’ll then secretly spam your contact list for “explosive growth”. Fuck that!

Seriously Google. You need to disable that shit. I signed up and immediately regretted my decision.

jacob_rezi
https://rezi.io
apazzolini
The page is blank in Firefox until you've scrolled down.
solarkraft
Not on mobile, but it did take a good 10-20 seconds to load.
keyP
Quick feedback, the video on the landing page doesn't have a full screen button, or double click support, so the text can't be read (I'm using Firefox on desktop). It's pretty self explanatory so the text isn't super important but I think it takes away from the video unnecessarily.
kapilkale
https://muzzleapp.com/
ai_ia
Just checked out. It's hilarious for sure.
MontyCarloHall
Hilarious, but you can just option click the notification center icon to silence all notifications. No need for a standalone app.
omni
The point of the app is it does this for you automatically when it detects screen sharing, negating the chance that you forget to turn it off yourself.
mihaaly
my favorite solution is still disabling the damn notification center altogether for good. nothing to be forget about then.
some1else
To those who find the concept hilarious.. The specific value proposition of this app is "automatically turn off notifications when screen-sharing." Automating everyday tasks seems like exactly the type of thing we use computers and software for.
frereubu
Pretty funny, but it looks like macOS Mojave does this already - there's a "Turn on Do Not Disturb when mirroring to TVs and projectors" setting in System Preferences > Notifications > Do Not Disturb - which might explain that development seemed to stop more than a year ago: https://muzzleapp.com/updates/ Unless there's something else that it does which isn't covered by that preference setting?
sdoering
Damn. I didn't know that. thanks an awful lot...
jedberg
For future reference, the smart person creates a second login on their machine with no notifications allowed and with nothing logged in for presenting.
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filleduchaos
Presumably this wouldn't cover screensharing from an app like Slack or Zoom?
frereubu
Ah, yes - that’s what I was missing. Thanks for pointing that out.
dx034
And I guess sometimes you're sitting in front of your Mac with others without using any presentation mode. Muting notifications could be really helpful then.
natdempk
You can manually turn on Do Not Disturb mode also to accomplish this.
mthoms
This is from the same developer as CodeKit. His documentation, sales copy and release notes are always hilarious.

Check out the "reviews" on http://codekitapp.com , Especially this gem:

>Your app is lame, your face is lame, your friends are lame, and your continued existence deeply offends us.

>Hacker News, Where Self-Esteem Goes To Die

:-)

calferreira
"CodeKit: it's at least 183x better than iTunes."
nojvek
The contrast on that side is super low. I’m viewing with grayscale inverted in low light (at night) and the site is totally unreadable. Wouldn’t call it a great landing page.
ThePowerOfFuet
Is it a good thing if I didn't even scroll, but just watched events unfold? Surely that's a compliment, right?
bradchoate
https://panic.com is pretty great and so is the landing page for their upcoming hardware product: https://play.date
huhtenberg
Playdate site is awful. It appears to be designed for people sitting 2 meters away from their 8K screens.
kjs3
Not only do I completely agree, the original 'panic.com' site is generic looking and usability annoying. "We do generic icons for a living...you have to hover over them to get any info". Really?

I'm assuming huhtenberg works there.

huhtenberg
You probably meant that the GP worked there, not me.
kjs3
MY bad. Sorry for the misattribution.
Swizec
I’m partial to https://reactfordataviz.com because it’s the best one I ever made and reaches 7th on Google for important keywords even tho it’s a sales page.

I like it because it loads fast, isn’t very designed, and focuses on decent copywriting instead of A/B testing quackery

And it converts well at an average of 50 cents per pageview.

Took about 4 years of customer research and conversations to arrive at that copy.

solarkraft
> Took about 4 years of customer research and conversations to arrive at that copy.

And nobody caught the "havign"?

limbicsystem
And 'andn' and 'youll'. But still pretty cool...
soneca
I struggled to answer that question myself while researching for my own product's landing page.

I decided to go for a very different path and create something that could showcase the product as soon as possible, with simple and objective copy for people who wanted to understand it better.

I do very much love it as it is right now, but of course I am biased, and of course I am open to criticism to improve it. But the principle (clear copy + showcase the product working) I will probably keep.

Here it is to receive your judgement: https://www.quidsentio.com

pryelluw
Copywriter here:

Use a more common font.

Headlines over buttons.

kamranahmedse
Looking at my "Designs" bookmarks folder, half of the websites have been shutdown and the other half I don't "love" any more.

This proves two things for me, design has nothing to do with the success of a product, and the second: design is subjective and changes not only from person to person but also for you, there is an absolute chance that one design that you love now, may hate in future.

psychstudio
I have to agree. I agonised over the design of our landing page but eventually came to the same conclusion.

Plain text that gets as many selling points into the eyes of the visitor above the fold is what I believe is the most sensible route if you're debating bit to design your landing page.

jjeaff
I think clean and attractive is key. At least for me. If you have a product I want and your landing page is well designed and clearly explains the product, then I am much more likely to try your product.

I assume, right or wrong, that if you out that much work into your landing page, you must have put the same into your product.

Now if your product stinks after trying it, I'll leave just as fast. But at least I have it a try. I'm sure I'm not unique in that regard.

Now, if you are resource constrained, focus on the product first, of course.

richardreeze
This is an ongoing debate in my head.

Obviously, there are examples of both cases (e.g. Facebook is an "ok" design but Stripe is beautiful).

Then there are other things. For example, this CB Insights post (https://www.cbinsights.com/research/personal-finance-apps-st...) mentions a study where "Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg gauged people’s reactions to various websites and asked them what factors played the biggest part in their assessments, design was unanimously the most commonly-cited reason for trusting or not trusting a particular site."

So I wouldn't say design has nothing to do with the success of a product, but it is true that it's not enough to make a product good.

puranjay
I might be biased since I'm a marketer, but more businesses die because of bad or absent marketing than bad or absent design.