Ask IH: I need your advice--what's good and what's meh about this landing page?
We help B2B founders and marketers design and build bots that generate leads and grow sales. Would be delighted to hear your feedback on how we can improve our positioning, visual design, messaging, call to actions, anything!
Thanks for reading!
Harry
As far as the visual design is concerned, your landing page lacks vertical rhythm. The spacing between different elements isn't consistent, basically.
Also, regarding the video, your camera angle makes it seem like I'm looking down towards you (https://cl.ly/1t2q1x0Z3f2L). I know reshooting is the last thing you'd want to do, but maybe consider revising the camera angle if you decide to recreate the video later down the road.
Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback Bibhas. Is there any clear example of the vertical rhythm issue? Would love to have a practical example to draw on.
Thanks for watching the video--that's a great point. I've just stood up a DIY video production studio in my office so it's not too much of an effort to re-shoot. So far I've just filmed it by myself. The bigger takeaway is I need another set of hands to make sure the camera angle and other details are spot on when recording.
Have a look at the measurements here (https://cl.ly/213y2g1i3v3R).
That said, I'm not a designer myself. You'll probably need to consult with someone way better at design than myself.
This is a great point, nice attention to detail ;)
The big problem here is not that the spacing is not the same, the problem is that it's noticeable even if people can tell what it is, it just "feels wrong".
This is because some of your elements feel a bit too crowded and makes everything harder to read.
This is quite tricky to pull off even for designers so my suggestion is that you try to think of spacing in scalable ways, meaning you have a base and then you do 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x and 3x that to make everything as consistent as possible and to create good strucutre as easily as possible.
Thanks Pedro this is a useful practical suggestion.
Pedro and Bibhas, I found this useful resource that gives you a vertical rhythm grid on your site. It's very helpful because it quickly highlights where the biggest issues are. Thought I'd share! https://basehold.it/
Bibhas this is very helpful thank you.
It's not bad, but unfortunately you look like a kid so not sure big businesses would trust the sales pitch / experience. Trying hiring an actor for and have them read the script for $50. I've done it before for my first company when I was in my 20s.
What site did you use to hire said actors? Sites like Fiverr?
@perrier Just wanted to personally reach out and say thank you for your feedback a few weeks ago. I recorded a quick video to say thanks and give you an update on changes I made based on your suggestions.
Click the link below 👇 to view the video.
https://soapbox.wistia.com/videos/xKMLsGHbAI
Perrier thanks for your feedback. I think more can be done with the video to engender trust, experience, and expertise while also humanizing what we're doing.
What I might do next is wear a dress shirt and a blazer to see how that feels. I think framing the video a bit better would also make a difference.
Hiring an actor is a really interesting idea. How did you find your actor for your first company? What age were they?
the main plug reads odd for me, I think I'd say
Generate leads faster using bots
Generate sales leads faster using bots
'more X faster' is kind of weird phrasing
Thanks Keith I'm going to noodle on this. I bet I can make it flow better.
Some animated visual steps in a workflow format of what the bot would do might help explain it better. I'm blanking on an example, but I've seen other landing pages that do that and it does help clear things up.
@QuaffAPint Just wanted to personally reach out and say thank you for your feedback a few weeks ago. I recorded a quick video to say thanks and give you an update on changes I made based on your suggestions.
Click the link below 👇 to view the video.
https://soapbox.wistia.com/videos/lZSzaMpsRJ
Agreed with Matt. Would love to see examples of conversations with the bot on the homepage, like Statsbot. Great if animated, but simple screenshots would already be a large improvement.
Thanks Bastien this is a great point.
Thanks Matt that's a great suggestion! Visuals can definitely help make things easier to understand.
Hey Harry, this sounds pretty cool!
You have some common problems:
The CTA could use some more contrast, I would make the background less noticeable.
make the text below the headline have a smaller font-weight otherwise, they blend in too much and ruins the purpose of the headline.
Why is the guide your main CTA? that sounds like a secondary type thing to grab leads for the long term. What is your strategy for that?
This community is amazing, you can get so much feedback from some pretty smart people in a matter of hours but I think you are not taking full advantage of that.
We need more info like:
What is your goal with this?
What problems are you facing with the page currently?
What results is this landing page or your business getting currently?
What have you learned about what your customers want?
To get the right answers, you need to ask the right questions ;)
Please update this info so we can go deeper on this!
Have a great day :)
Hey Pedro thanks for your feedback.
Your point on the CTA contrast is a great point. When you say the background do you mean the solid blue card the CTA is on? Maybe drop the opacity on it or would you change the color itself?
I'm going to play with making the sub headline less pronounced compared to the headline.
The guide is my main CTA because I'd like to educate folks on how using a bot can really improve their marketing results. I'm leveraging a Facebook Messenger bot today. Once someone has accepted the guide they are now "subscribed" to my messenger bot. It's similar to trading an email address for a lead magnet. I can subscribe them to drip sequences pushed via messenger instead of email ultimately to educate them over time. Open rates on FB Messenger are ~98% vs email is an average of ~20%.
With that said, multiple people in the Indie Hackers community were turned off by the need to have a messenger account. Plus Facebook could change their rules around communicating with people via Messenger at any date so there is more platform risk using a FB Messenger bot. It may make sense to switch to an email opt-in even though engagement rates are on average lower. Either way, just got to make sure my messages are super helpful to those interested in getting started with bots.
Here are some thoughts on your questions.
I'd like to help people get started generating leads with bots and build a profitable sustainable business doing so.
In the short-term that means providing free and premium educational articles and courses to help people market with bots.
It also means providing productized consulting services to design, implement, and manage bots for people using best in class tools like Drift, Intercom, or Facebook Messenger. Kind of like http://wptheory.net/ which builds Wordpress sites in a day.
I strongly believe we're at the beginning of a huge wave in useful applications with bots. In sales and marketing bots, we're just at the beginning too. As Convo.ai helps more businesses improve their marketing using bots we'll educate the market on the potential of bots more broadly as a new software interface.
The bot ecosystem will develop in the next 3-5 years. We'll see the rise of people who specialize in building bots, designing them, and optimizing them. People who specialize in bot UX and in adding AI selectively to bots.
We'll see a ton of startups that are bot first or bot enabled. These new B2B SaaS bots will need software tools to help build, design, monitor, and instrument their bot applications just like they need for web or mobile applications.
In the medium and long-term I want to be in a position to build a software tool to serve B2B SaaS businesses that want to build bots or provide a bot interface to their services.
My current problem with the landing page is figuring out exactly who I could serve most effectively and get the most traction with out of the gate within the broad niche of B2B founders. Figuring out what the best CTA should be to get folks into my community to start educating them as quickly as possible about bots.
The landing page is really early. I'm focusing on generating consulting clients in my local Atlanta area through networking and face to face meetings. It's serving well as a place to send folks I meet in person to see the brand and engage with the Convo.ai facebook bot.
My customers want to be educated and informed on how they can best use bots in their marketing. They want to know and trust they are getting expertise and advice from a bot expert. They want to be able to interact with a world class creative bot on our website.
Hey Harry, sorry for the late reply ;)
Awesome insights here, this changes completely the feedback I would have given you!
Quick points you asked:
I meant the background of the header needs to be a little litter probably around 10-20% just so it doesn't blend in too much with the CTA.
Make the subheadline 70% opacity it should make the headline read better and the CTA stand out a tiny bit more.
About your 4 points:
1.If that's your plan and you are able to provide them with consistent content then that's perfect, I asked just because this changes what you need to sell on the website.
Now that I know your goal you are selling the wrong thing on the website, don't sell them the bots sell them "the assistant" the "lead generator and so on...Basically, you are explaining how the bot works not how a bot makes money, explain the later first to get them in and then the first point is the process of getting them there.
If you are focusing on getting the first clients and leveraging networking skills then if you send people to the website to get the guide they will convert higher than normal, so keep that in mind and for sure do that as your MVP until you know more how to target your ideal clients.
How did you get that info? Who did you ask? I don't see any direct business goals there, maybe you should pitch bigger companies. You need to get them to think they can make money from this not "how they can use it for marketing" that's low value they think about a ton of things they can use all the time and it makes it harder to make them take action if you don't change their mind and make them more focused on bots.
My suggest structure for this:
Header - your's could work
How big startups are using bots - just a normal title with a small description a bunch of logos of B2B startups and a link (that links to the guide)
What bots can do for you - makes this section have a small list of benefits and use cases.
4.Who are we? - this is to describe who's is behind this and how they are qualified to give them this info, creating authority for you.
Try to add some result focused CTA.
Final CTA - makes this shorter and create some FOMO, of how other b2b businesses are already using this.
Let me know how it goes ;)
My feedback
Video doesn't look professional. I would like to use animated video instead
When I'm trying to get a tour bot sends me a message without attachment
It will be cool to have examples of working bot for your potential clients. Like bot for e-commerce, for some product etc
Some use cases when bot really shines
Maybe it is just me but I don't like when landing page beats around the bush with general marketing slogns. I would like to get right to the point.
Hey Neir0 thanks for your feedback.
Thanks yes we could do more to up the professionalism on the video.
Which link did you click to chat with the bot? When you chatted with the bot did you see a link that said "Get The Guide"?
Yes! That's an awesome idea.
Agreed more use cases and examples will help!
I agree clearer and direct is better. What do you think would be clearer?
" agree clearer and direct is better. What do you think would be clearer?"
For me it is examples, price, technical specs.
This product can increase bla-bla-bla....you deserve...it might work for you...
Show me what you offer, give me some hints how can I use it in my business and I will figure out the rest by myself.
The main question for me is how good your bot are. Maybe it doesn't work at all, so why should I use it or perhaps it is better than some humans then it is definitely worth to try. I wanna know how bot will learn about my product and how I can customize it.
But again, it is me.
@Neir0 Just wanted to personally reach out and say thank you for your feedback a few weeks ago. I recorded a quick video to say thanks and give you an update on changes I made based on your suggestions.
Click the link below 👇 to view the video.
https://soapbox.wistia.com/videos/bijsk2h1Dg
Thanks I appreciate the follow up. I'll review the links and double check that they are working.
Nope not just you at all. Your main question, how good are your bots, hits the nail on the head. I'm just getting started but I'll be releasing more articles, guides, and courses which will help to provide a good answer to this question.
Neir0 what's your product by the way? I don't see it in your bio.
I like the color blocking and I like the CTA button!
Thanks Lindsay! Appreciate your time and feedback.
I tend not to watch videos like this because the pacing is too slow. You should separately include screenshots or animations of conversations that give people an idea of how it might work for particular industries.
The primary above-the-fold link is off-site and to something that requires me to login. I don't use Facebook/Messenger so it wasn't useful to me. You could add something besides the button like "Do you use Messenger?"
Isaac thanks for your feedback. Adding screenshots, graphics, or animations could help a lot especially for visitors who prefer not to watch videos.
It's valuable feedback to know you're not using FB / Messenger. Today we have a bot setup on Messenger that show cases how we can design and build bots for our clients as well as help us qualify leads and book appointments.
We have expertise in other bot platforms like Drift and Intercom. It may make more sense to host our website bot using another platform that wouldn't require a Messenger login and just have the Messenger bot on our Facebook page. Thanks again.
This is a point I make quite a bit, but I absolutely refuse to sign in to this kind of service using facebook, gmail etc. For me it's more of a wall than a barrier. The exception for me is twitter, everything said is public domain.
Thanks David that's great feedback.
Would love to see a live sample of a chatbot on the landing page. I would have interacted with it and given an email to take it for a spin.
The chat icon in the bottom right seemed to link to FB messenger. If I knew that was part of how yours worked, I would have tried it out.
I think adding captions/subtitles to the video could go a long way (maybe the built-in YT subtitles would show here?). I love how the video auto-plays but I never clicked on the video to watch/listen.
Great start!
Baird thanks for your feedback man! So if you click "Teach me about chatbots" it takes you to the Convo.ai bot on Facebook Messenger where you can chat with the bot and learn more.
Regarding the chat icon in the bottom right, you're exactly right it links to the Convo.ai bot on Messenger as well.
Given finding our bot was still confusing, any suggestions on how to make our bot easier to chat with?
Subtitles on the video is an excellent idea thanks for the suggestion. Really good idea. The video autoplays but is muted which makes it much less intrusive. Had to custom code the youtube embed widget to make it work like that. I'm happy how it turned out!
Eventually, it could be cool to have a bot welcome the visitor in a more direct way. For example like Adrian Zumbrunnen's bot on his personal website: https://azumbrunnen.me/
I agree with what someone else said, that the page has issues with vertical spacing. These small details matter when talking selling a technical product.
What's missing overall is a description of positioning. Is this a competitor to Drift? What exactly are you selling? A chat bot that pops up on a landing page? Why isn't there one on the page I'm on right now (i.e. your own sales page)?
To your last question, we have a Facebook Messenger bot currently on the website. It's got some great flows and I'd love for you to try it out!
Your not seeing it is great feedback in itself--do you use Ad Blocker?
Hey Bryan thanks for the feedback. Is there a specific example of the vertical spacing you can point me to? I agree these details are very important when selling a technical product.
Convo.ai is not a software product but a service. We consult with B2B businesses to help them get started with a bot or get more out of their existing one. We can help with the conversational flows, branding the bot, the personality, API integrations, managing the bot across multiple messaging platforms, monitoring, reporting, etc.
If the use case allows, we'll reach for Drift or Intercom or another existing platform. If the use case is more custom we can build them a bot using Botkit or another technical bot engine.
In terms of our roadmap, we'll be launching educational courses, articles, and guides next. Some free and some paid. For example, we'll be launching a course soon called "Mastering Drift".
After, we'll look to productized our service offerings. Standard prices, conversational skills (i.e. features), and tiers for different buyers with a really fast turn around time. Kind of like http://wptheory.net/ which builds Wordpress sites in a day.
Personally I believe we're at the beginning of the wave of useful bot applications across all verticals and functions in business. As Convo.ai helps more businesses generate leads and grow sales using existing bot tools, we'll discover new needs for bots in the marketplace. New roles will solidify like bot builders, maintainers, and optimizers.
Starting with services, educational products, and working up to software will ultimately position us well to meet these emerging needs with useful software solutions. At least that's the vision! ;-)
Your explanation helps. I think the distinction between productized service vs a widget I'm putting in my page is a huge positioning distinction that doesnt come through on the page.
If I'm hiring a consultant to help me use or develop a bot, it sets up a totally different expectation about price vs a self-serve JS snippet I'm adding to my landing page.
Bryan thank you--you're definitely right. More can be done to distinguish us as a productized service / consultancy vs. a self-service JS snippet.
I'm going to look at refining the copy tomorrow.
Beyond copy changes on the page, here's what I think will really help... We need to create a high value free course that teaches how to generate leads using a bot. Then make signing up for the course the main call to action.
Use the course as an opportunity to educate, build a relationship, and position us clearly as a service. We can also build out more free articles and guides in on our Topics section which should help too.
Thank you again for your time and feedback.