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Ask HN: Building a splash page: what are some great insights you have learned?

1 points by wtvanhest ↗ HN
I'm interested in finding out what people have done to maximize the conversion ratio for splash pages they have created. Or any ideas they have seen that really worked.

It is a splash page for crowd funding so the more user data I get about state location the better.

Ideally I'd like to find interested people that would provide the following information: Name Email State (city would be bonus)

Any ideas and advice would be helpful.

3 comments

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BlackCloud
I have found A/B/n testing to be very helpful. The more you can track about the users interaction with the page before a successful or failed conversion the better. You can use this info the determine where along the line users are falling off the path you want them to be on. After a few days to a week (depending on traffic) take a look at the results of the A/B tests and eliminate what isn't working. Apply the lessons learned from the in page analysis to build a new B test and repeat. I've found that over the course of a month or so following this method I can double and sometimes triple my conversion rates. Sometimes the smallest details that you wouldn't have predicted make all the difference.
negrit
What tools do you use to track the users ?
BlackCloud
It depends on the specifics and complexity of what I'm trying to track. For simple things Google Analytics works pretty well. You can just do some simple searching or reports to show you the averages of user usage.

For more complex situations (often within the application itself) I've actually built some APIs which allow me to store generalized data about any page interactions and relate it back to a particular page load instance. Once I have this data I can slice and dice it to figure out exactly what users in general are doing and also allows me to drill in and follow a particular page load and what that user did specifically. I can be as complex as simulating sitting behind the user and watching them use the app. It's surprising what you sometimes learn about how a particular user or group navigates a page and how different it is from what you initially expected when you designed the app.