My landing page is beautiful but I think nobody gets the message.
Hi indie family!
I've been watching recordings of people visiting the Crammut landing page (https://crammut.com/) and signing in for the first time (I use Hotjar for the recordings). I'm starting to think that people don't understand what Crammut is about.
People sign up for trial accounts, but they don't try any feature. They just see the tool at a glance and log out. And I have the feeling that is because the landing page isn't communicating properly. Maybe they were expecting another thing, or maybe they need to watch the tool for themselves to really understand what is about.
I've asked for feedback a lot of times, but the feedback received was more about the design and not about the message.
Do you think the landing communicates this properly?
Crammut is a tool to turn videos, posts, books, and other resources, into learning paths. The purpose is to encourage self-learning among employees. You can create a learning path for yourself, or a leader can create a path and assign it to you. Crammut makes self-learning easy because motivate users to complete learning paths with game elements, and schedule tasks automatically (this week you have to read this post and this book, next week you have to watch this youtube lecture...). And it's great for CEOs because they can track the employees' progress.
These messages are the basics. Have you got them reading the landing page? Do you think it's difficult to understand? Do you miss something?
I have the feeling that we were trying to sound cool and fancy because we didn't want to sound amateur, but people aren't getting it.
What do you think? Thanks! You're awesome! :)
My problem is primarily with the language. In that it seems too conceptual and abstract. If you come to the landing page without a clear idea of what "path" or "learning path" means, nothing makes much sense. The term is refered to in practically every paragraph, but never properly explained in itself.
Great point! Copy is so damn hard, and it takes a lot of big ideas to convince people to be curious about, let alone try, a new site.
My first instinct with landing pages is to go into crazy details about how the app works and the features, and most copy writing info says that's the opposite of what you should do.
It's confusing to me because before I sign up for a site, I want to see details about how it works.
I have to second this. You need to explain what a learning path is (with a couple of sentences, max, ideally coupled with a small illustration since your page is so visual) and highlight one or two strong benefits of this/your approach right off the bat. Try not to be too technical or abstract.
Since it is a central concept of your entire product, this explanation needs to come early. Either as part of your hero copy, or just under it, IMO.
P.S. Love the illustrations! :)
Yep, this is really it. I had seen Crammut's post the other week and loved the design. But gave it another good look-through now, and there's no tangible value proposition. What, exactly, is an example of something my team is going to learn? I see "business goals" but how is that learned? Are my employees learning about coding? Agile in general? Other?
Some small design tweaks that may go a long way (since the visuals are so nice): many of the illustrations have "monster-related" text. Let the monster theme speak for itself and change "Do Something" and "Scaring 101s" to actual real-world learning tasks. Hope that helps!
I completely agree with you. Our problem is that we're from Spain, and our English is very Spanish-biased haha. But yeah, we can't take for granted that some terms can be understood easily. Thanks! :)
As a UI-lover, I melt into a puddle when I look at your landing page. I'm also familiar with making landing pages that look good but don't convert well. :(
However, I don't think your page is that bad. I agree that the wording could be changed though. Here are some changes I would make:
The heading should be something like: An exciting way to learn at work
The subheading should be: Create and complete learning paths with Crammut!
Font sizes should be harmonized. Some are 16px, some are 18px. The CTAs should also be 18px because right now it looks too small.
Something I found confusing was completing a task on the path. I didn't immediately know what to click to access the task. I signed up the Introduction to UX path and my first task was to complete 50% of Don't Make Me Think. I didn't know how to complete this -- do I buy the book and read it? Will Cramut offer it to me so that I can read it within the site? In the end I clicked complete because that was the only option, and it just completed the task (which I hadn't actually done).
OMG, this is gold! Thank you so much, Dani! I'm going to keep you around. Maybe we need to hire your services! haha
I'm taking note of everything! Yeah, it's true that at the moment we don't have a way to verify if a user has really completed the task. But when we made the first tests with companies that adjusted to our target, they didn't care about that issue because they trusted their employees.
Thanks again, Dani! =D
:D You're welcome!
What I meant about the completing a task was I wasn't sure whether:
a) I was supposed to go out and purchase the book it suggested and read it offline, or
b) Crammut would let me read it on the website somehow
i.e Is it like Udemy or a self-guided type of thing?
In regards to tracking if users have completed a task, you should definitely look into it. I think it's the most important metric for your website (along with tracking paths complete vs started). You should establish one metric that you use to judge growth, and aim to improve it. If you can't track that metric, well you can't see how well you're doing! Relevant video (what I talked about starts at 13:00).
Good luck 😊
Hi again, Dani! =D
With Crammut, it's the A) option. We arrange a list of learning materials and help users to manage them and schedule them. But you don't consume the learning materials on our platform.
So in the case of a book, you should buy the book. But if the company builds a learning path for some employees, the common thing here is that the company provide the book to them (the company buys it, or there's a copy in the office).
We provide some learning paths. These are useful and you can learn, but they work as an example of what you can do in Crammut because we want to sell a tool to facilitate and track self-learning, not to sell a curator service.
About the metrics, yeah, we track if a user completes the tasks. We even track which kind of task (video, book, article, etc) are the most completed by a user or by a department in order to build better learning paths in the future (if the data tells you that X employee prefers videos rather than book, you can build him/her a path only with videos). What we're not tracking is if a user tells the truth when he/she clicks on "complete" because the CEOs told us that they trust their employees.
Tomorrow I'll check the video (It's getting late here on Spain haha)
Thanks a lot, Dani! =D
Ah, got it 👍I think you should put that on the website, or make it clearer somehow.
Also, for copy, you should read Cashvertising. Awesome book
Cashvertising. Get it. I'll read it soon. Thanks! ;)
Hello.
After the brief exchange with Maria, and as I had already provided some feedback, and had to go, I decided to start off with your manifesto this time for it was apparent that you have serious issues at the heart of your startup, rather than just the home page.
So, as you can tell, I am not saying it is just your home page at fault for the predicament you are in, and to blame it on the home page is at best inaccurate. Not saying your home page can’t be improved, it can, but you could have the wrong audience, poor on-boarding, horrible UI/UX, hollow sales funnel, etc.
So, we need to take it from the top, which is your manifesto: https://medium.com/@crammut/the-crammut-manifesto-how-lifelong-learning-spaces-at-work-kill-enterprise-status-quo-98cd0f645779.
Taking certain points from that:
Made for companies
Problem (Which is it, for there are differences between them):
a. Teams lack of professional development,
b. Teams not achieving professional development effectively,
c. Teams not achieving professional development effectively despite a plethora of information available.
Made for SME’s
“Take advantage of all this free content available on the Internet would boost half of the European business fabric”. There is some great free content on the net, but there is also such utter absolute *******s, same rinsed out 2 bit **** coming at me from so many angles, that the question I am left asking is, who is going to decide that content y is in, and content x is not in, when both are on the same topic?
“So, if companies are able to train their teams with less budget and greater speed thanks to curated content from the Internet, a constant feedback system will increase the commitment between the employee and his/her professional development, making it a more satisfying process. “ Where is this from, or is this your own proposition? Who is doing the curating?
“And once your employees fall in love with the process, results will eventually come along.” No company wants to read “eventually”.
“specially for those where the founder team is still in charge of the talent management tasks”
“If Crammut becomes the tool all SME to manage their team’s professional development”
The conclusion I get from your manifesto is, your hearts in the right place, but there are issues elsewhere. I also get a severe lack of focus, for it reads like your audience is European SME’s. Ok, you said “if”, but even so, your net is bigger than the Iron Curtain ever was. So to me, this is your biggest issue, and it needs amending.
You need to hone in on your core audience, or define the core audience.
Wrong Audience: Where are the trial non-users coming from? Product Hunt? Where else?
Poor on-boarding:
So, with that said, I would look into guided tours, but not signing up without you or Maria present. Thus, when they declare an interest you send them an email asking them what they are looking for, (goal, problem, particulars, etc), as well as setting up a time for the guided tour. That way you learn, and are prepared in order to show them specifically how Crammut sorts them out.
I created an account. If you are actually focused on companies, then your home page needs even more work on, will come back to this. Also “Officionally”, second registration screen, needs correcting.
Your on-boarding needs serious work on, it is non-existent. I click on the Complete button to earn 40 coins? I came on to learn, if I earn along the way, that might be ok, can’t say depends what I can do with the money, but you’re throwing money at me for clicking on a button when you don’t know if I even care about the money, which I don’t. Your perception of what I deem valuable, and what you deem valuable are way off.
You enable people to create learning paths, so your first learning path should have been an on-boarding one, for your users, hitting two birds with one stone, being on-boarded and learning how the system works. There not being one is strange.
I also checked out your library, History of VideoGames, History of Film? Unless your target audience are film buff employers and videogame buff employers, what’s the point of this? This is ill thought out in my opinion. It leaves a negative impression, for your system could be great, but when I see those things, I think, irrelevant, and you don’t want anyone to bring that word into their head.
Horrible UI: quite the opposite, a very pleasant UI. Value delivery efficiency for SME’s: unknown.
Hollow sales funnel: certainly is lacking. No case studies, no user stories, no social proof, no demo, no demo video, no comparison matrix, no guided tour, no FAQ, no blog. I can appreciate you have just launched so hollow funnel is to be expected, however no guided tour option? I don’t know what the state of your email marketing is, nor if you are using any lead scoring, but basically anybody who shows a degree of interest you need to be in communication to ascertain what they are looking for.
Before your home page:
When it comes to the copy on your home page, I see no point in attempting to amend it, without knowing for whom we are writing it for. It can’t be for all SME’s, because you don’t know what to say, how to say it, etc. The following should have been done as part of your customer discovery, or problem validation stage, but we are where we are. We need to define some situations within which an employer has to train / inform / educate an employee, (I am not talking about customer persona’s, too early), so quick and dirty with a lot of assumptions:
Section 1: Employee training
New Employee on-boarding and orientation: company culture, standardized operations, what’s expected of them, etc
Employee promotion: training material in order for a more seamless transition to the new position, certainly if this is a promotion where they now lead and/or manage others
Employee development: some SME’s offer this, but not all. Looking into why this is the case; well one reason is if there is a lack of talent in the area, then you want to make sure your employee is feeling challenged, growing, etc, basically how to keep them.
Adherence to the latest recommended practices for reasons of obligatory compliance (for example businesses in the care industry have to provide training on up to date practices, and continue to train them up).
Section 2:
I would then look at defining the make-up of easy wins for you:
Drop that you will do the curating
Drop that you will make the learning paths (unless you have a degree of knowledge in many areas, or have domain experts in many areas, I would say you are not in a position to offer this). However what you can say is that you will recreate the learning paths on the system, for employers that already have the materials. From this you can then clarify the benefits that would transpire
Work with employers who already have training materials et al in place
Section 3: Business objectives
I would also look at what do businesses want:
Make more money
Spend less money
Regulatory and legal compliance
Employees trained with an increase in efficiency and efficacy (ties back into previous 3 points)
Section 4: SME makeup that makes them potential core audience
Has to be of a certain size, money in the bank, etc
Frequent new employees
Actively attempting to solve training material problems, inefficient or ineffective training of employees, etc
For point 2, need to find out factors for why they would need new employees and why frequent
Growing, expanding, etc
High turnover
When I look at these two points, I have to ask, do SME’s meet these two criteria? I can see point 1, but number 2? Do they pay poorly, what’s this one about?
What about large intake, who does that? Staffing agencies, so now I ask why the focus on SME’s?
Anyway, finally, your home copy:
A faster, low-cost way to learn at work. Sounds like the message is for employees rather than employers. Faster itself, isn’t the sole goal, proper orientation and on-boarding that is more effective and efficient is.
Low-cost, yeah I can see some caring about that, but leaves the door open to justifying to the audience when someone cheaper comes along, or having to address previous price anchoring, etc.
Learn at work: learn what? Be specific here.
Crammut is the place where you and your team can create, keep track and complete learning paths. Agile tailored learning has arrived with Crammut.
Your name twice above the fold to go with the name in the logo, what’s the point of this? Where you and your team? To whom are you speaking? Employers or team leaders? Pick one, choose the one who will benefit the most, choose the one who will keep you in business.
Create, keep track and complete learning paths. How many times have you had to explain learning paths to people? Agile tailored learning? Are you aiming for developers?
Your options for the header and sub-header text are:
Problem (either overall or sub-problem)
Goal
Benefit
Vision
You can put solution in that, but it needs to contain 1 or more of the above points. UVP can also be made up from those 4 things as well as the solution. If it was me, and considering I don’t know that much about this area, I would aim at employers only, and have sub-problem and vision in one line, encompassed within the overall problem:
New employees spend more time learning, and less time earning, or
Header: Effective (or efficient) Employee On-Boarding (or orientation), Sub-Header: They spend less time learning, and more time earning
They spend less time on-boarding, more time on working, etc, etc.
Sometimes you can use your audience’s words, other times, get the gist but put your own flavor on it, whatever works. Throw a few lines out that cover various aspects and factors that you should either obtain first hand, or unfortunately as you are live already, second-hand for now, first-hand as you progress. You can break this recommendation, but you will need a good reason to do so, and at your stage, early doors, need traction, it will be risky, so I don’t recommend it.
How Crammut Works: overall. You jump straight into the solution. In some cases this is acceptable, and that is normally when a lead has been qualified enough to do so. Home page people are all sorts, so I don’t recommend this. Basically how can you sell when you don’t know what they think / feel about the problem? How can you sell more effectively if you don’t remind them of their pain?
Talk about the pain, on a level that shows understanding, resonance, clarity, insight, etc. Warm them up with some of reality’s cold slaps.
Now that they have been tenderized you sprinkle a little introduction of yourself, provide your reason for existing, add a touch more pain, leave to simmer, touch of parsley, dash of wine, and voila, you have created an environment that has facilitated contrast, and positioning of the audience so they welcome the solution with open arms.
Now you can go into how it works. You use a lot of learning paths, but you need to associate it with an actual benefit or an objective employers care about, on their own they don’t mean anything.
Anyway mate, that is enough from me, I have work to do. I saw your previous post and didn’t have time to reply, you can see why I need time, hahah.
Cheers, Ace.
Ace, I have no words to thank you for this exhaustive review of our product. We've taken notes of everything and we'll definitely keep you posted. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Wow, Ace. There aren't enough words to express how grateful we are. Thank you a lot for your feedback and your effort in helping us. Your analysis is awesome and is going to help us to improve a lot. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
We're planning our next steps to fix all these issues, and of course, we'll keep you in touch!
At the moment we're going to interview our early adopters to find out the correct pain and target, and learn how to communicate that info properly.
We're also shutting down the creating an account feature until we fix the onboarding. We're changing this for a contact bottom. We don't want to lose leads because of a terrible onboarding.
Thanks again :)
Definitely can see value of Section 3. From a sales perspective, you need to understand the pain points of the customer. Right now it seems like there is a lot of features and capabilities listed, but what is the benefit of your software? How does it help my team reduce time to onboard, increase/track effectiveness, etc.
I think the issue is not so much are the features clearly defined on the landing page but is it clear what problem are you meant for.
Think about it in terms of:
Who is the person having what kind of problem in their business/job responsibility whereby making it easy to create employee self-learning is the right next step?
Yeah, I think I understand it. Maybe we talk too much about the product in a general way, and we should talk about the product thinking about our target and her/his problems. It makes sense haha. Thanks, Vanessa!
So glad you’re getting some great feedback in this thread. I watched the product walkthrough video and finally figured out who else is solving this problem and you can see what approach they take - Trainual
You’re not trying to compete with off the shelf curated learning subscriptions (like Udemy for businesses) but helping small businesses with about 15-75 employees who’s owner is tired of inconsistent skills and output from the team, especially when there is turnover. The owner or manager wants to move away from tribal knowledge and into systematized learning for their team by the time they sign up for a trial.
@alexhillman knows what he’s talking about for how to rewrite the landing page. 🤴
I'm checking Trainual and the concept is very similar to ours! (but they are focusing on onboardings are we're focusing on skill developing). I'm going to pay attention to how they communicate because we have a lot in common. Thanks again! =D
Hey, @alexhillman! I'm checking Stacking the Bricks! Your content is awesome. I've just subscribed to the newsletter. :)
Excellent :) enjoy
To give you some background, our company has been developing internal training materials and videos to help people self train or review some tasks. This is because we are opening many locations around the country and we cannot possibly be sending a trainer to each location to train for months at a time.
Given that, I think you are not really addressing a problem, at least for me. Some parts of your message revolve around fast and low cost and fun. I understand the reasoning behind them but it doesn't speak to me because the only part that attracts me is only the fast word. However, fast by itself is useless if training is not effective and accurate. So fast is good if it is linked to accuracy.
Fun is not really the point for us. We want our people to be able to learn and start being productive on day one. For our people, I don't think they care about fun either when it comes to this. People understand that they need to perform and pick up things quickly; otherwise they may not even stay there long enough to enjoy any fun. So they are also focused on making sure they are doing the work properly. The gist here is that first one needs to become productive fast. Fun can then come later. But not that training without fun does not mean it's not interesting so it's not like learning is boring.
The next one that we like is to monitor what videos our people have gone through so we can keep track of what they have learned and what they have not. This way, we don't waste time going through things they already know. This I believe you mentioned so it does hit one of.our needs.
One thing we added to our videos is a quiz that the person would take after watching them. This helps to solidify the learning a little bit.
Finally, we also like the ability for our people to be able to search and find the specific materials needed quickly. This is helpful when they need to perform some tasks and kinda forget the steps. So they would need to go through them again.
In conclusion, if you are able to create a software that helps us organize our different training materials, keep track of what they have gone though and ultimately solve the problem of helping us get the hire to be productive on day one, then that's something I'd look at. We currently make use of variously techonologies to piece all of this together but it would be good to have them all in one place. I'd probably say we'd be willing to pay around $100 monthly for this, maybe more if there are more users being tracked through this platform.
Perhaps you might be able to test the message of making new hire productive on day one and see if that rings with people.
Of course, this is entirely from our point of view. We may not be your target market. So I would recommend that you find out first who your target market is.
I've read all your background and I'm sure Crammut could solve your problem and you're our target. With Crammut, you can track employees progress, get statistics about the completed items, about the user's proactivity, search among learning paths in the library, create skills and categories in that library, etc.
The only feature we don't include at the moment is the final quiz. But this is still an MVP and we're on an early stage, so we could think about include this feature if clients ask for it.
We would love to talk with you and show you the tool. If you want to be one of our early adopters, you'll pay a super special price (because you'll help us to polish and improve the tool with your feedback. This could be great for both of us).
I've tried to send you an email, but it hasn't appeared on your profile. Ping me if you're interested: jaime@crammut.com
Thanks again! :)
Who is this for? "Employees" is vague - technical employees? Entry level employees? Something else?
What is the problem those people have? What is at stake if they don't fix the problem?
I highly recommend @amyhoy's teardown and rewrite of this sales copy as an example of how to go from vague hand waviness to concrete and vivid: https://stackingthebricks.com/is-bad-copy-killing-your-product/
Thanks a lot, Alex! I'm checking the post and the video and they are very useful. Definitely, a bad copywriting is killing our product.
@amyhoy if your content saves my company, beers are on me! :P
Very pretty but I agree with the rest, the headline needs some work. Here's my .02:
"A faster, low-cost way to learn at work" => "Build repeatable courses to level up your development team, fast"
"Crammut is the place where you and your team can create, keep track and complete learning paths. Agile tailored learning has arrived with Crammut." => "Our agile learning platform improves knowledge retention by 20% and takes 30% less time to complete compared to others"
Put a link to case studies next to the "Try Crammut Free."
I'm assuming you have validated or proved that this works better than other platforms? :)
I would replace the illustration with a testimonial video.
Don't use "Crammut" so many times, I know I'm on your site. You can say platform or just be more descriptive about what you're describing.
Going back to the "niche down," the examples not say "do something." Put in actual tasks so I can envision myself using this.
If you have any proof that process does work better than other platforms put in a pdf and send it as a lead magnet. I would replace this with the newsletter. As a customer, I'd rather see how this works then signup for another newsletter.
You can follow up with those people individually, they'll be more likely to be a customer than subscribing to a newsletter.
Good luck! The site looks pretty and it's an interesting concept.
p.s. Your media kit is a .rar file... make it a zip.
Thanks a lot, Brian! That's a lot of actionable advice, thanks!
Definitely, we're going to work on all these things. If someday you'll visit Valencia (Spain), beers are on me :P
Thanks again!
Is it an LMS? Is it focussed on a specific sector? There are several references to ‘agile’ which makes me think it’s aimed at dev teams?
It's like an LMS, but you curate and link online content instead of creating it. So you can build a 'course' in minutes, but having the tracking power of an LMS.
It's perfect for SME who wants to manage and track employees' learning but can't afford to build an entire course from scratch, or don't have an HR/talent department. It's cheaper and faster than a traditional LMS, that's why it 'agile'. There's a trend term called "Agile learning" that applies the agile rules to employees training.
Visually, it's awesome, but what you just explained should be a part of the landing page. It also wasn't apparent to me that you require the SME to build the course or if learning paths and courses are available immediately.
I agree with you.
We tried to sound fancy and use few words to keep it short, and the result is that all the message is too abstract and vague.
Thanks for the feedback :)
I didn't understand what it was until I read this comment. Make your copy more direct, less flowery/abstract.
We're completely right. Too abstract. Thanks! :)
Where did the name come from? Given it's a learning related product, makes me think of 'cramming' for a test
We're thinking about merging an animal with a word/verb, and we merged Mammut with Cramming. It's a learning tool, we thought that playing with "cramming" could be cool :)
Thanks for asking!
I think it could use some simplifying when users get dropped on the app. It looks like there are too many options and users may get lost on what to do first.
Maybe adding an onboarding pointing out the initial steps could help easing out the friction.
Hey Jaime,
Nice work, and very cool concept!
Perhaps the phrase 'continuous learning' might resonate more with your audience than learning path? That's a term I've heard frequently in terms of workplace culture/professional development.
Also, I have a slightly negative connotation with the brand name itself - sorry, not meaning to be harsh, just honest. Brings me back to having way too heavy course load in college and "cramming" for exams. Maybe that's just me ;)
I'm excited to keep an eye on this project!
LOVE the design it is really neat, I think you are on the right path to create something great:)
I don't wanna get bogged down in details, but I think your targeting should be more direct, who is user, who gets the benefit and what is the value they get out of your services...
I like the how-it-works part, but I think the screenshots, on the right are too small and are rather confusing that visual - although their goal would be to present the user interface and use of the platform.
I would be happy to help you with creating a short explainer video, that would be really useful for you to communicate your message. Message me for more info!
Thanks, Chris! Great feedback :) We're working to fix all these issues! Thanks :)
You misdiagnosed the problem. If you are getting app signups but they aren't using the app, the issue isn't with the landing page.
The problem is with the app. If people aren't using features, there must be an issue with onboarding.
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, we've been analyzing all the feedback received and we detected two problems, one with the landing and another with the onboarding. We have a lot to fix! haha Thanks
May be you could make an explainer video ,dropbox had a similar problem back in the days it started and he simply made a screen recording with him explaining everything and that generated a lot of initial users!
Read the blog on how an explainer video helped dropbox grow from 1-100 million here .
https://www.indusnet.co.in/explainer-video-helped-dropbox-grow-0-100-million-users/
Thanks, Vimal!! =D
We have the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi-w4M5EUI&
We're going to add it to the landing page because everybody is telling us that it helps a lot.
Thanks! :)
People sign up for trial accounts, but they don't try any feature. They just see the tool at a glance and log out. And I have the feeling that is because the landing page isn't communicating properly.
Why do you think it's the landing page? I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong with the page and some things could indeed be improved, but it seems to be working from what you're saying. People are signing up for a free trial.
If, on the other hand, your goal is to keep people engaged once they sign up I would be looking further down stream:
whats it like when a user first logs in? e.g a specific first time login flow
Is there a clear goal for them to achieve? e.g. a clear initial job for them to complete
How do you keep them engaged when sign up? e.g. follow up emails, in product messaging
You've done the hard part - people are willing to give it a shot.
----
(I'm not your target audience so take this with a pinch of salt; I would invest in HotJar or a similar product to get some recordings of this and also sit with some people as they sign up for the site)
I did have a go at signing up - Creating the account is really smooth, but it breaks down a bit after that:
-- the first didn't really tell me anything, it said I could do things but not why I would want to do them or what i should do first.
-- The second told me I had skills, but not why that matters to me. I almost closed this one on instinct before realising theres a button on pressing it. That took me off to a screen I didn't understand. At this point you've lost me - theres a lot of information there and I don't understand why I would spend time understanding it.
There's some more things, but I don't want this to turn into a wall of text.
Hopefully you find it useful.
Thanks a lot, Peter. This is very useful! :)
We totally understand. In fact, we're thinking about shutting down the "self-service" feature and go back to "traditional sales" (a client asks for a demo, and we set a new account on a video meeting). We have a lot to learn about our users and onboardings before automatize the selling process. And all your feedback proves it.
Thanks a lot! Loving your "wall of text", so useful :)
I have trouble understanding what this is. After scanning the page a few times, I guess it is some kind of company-central Coursera where bosses can create courses for their employees, consisting of adding things for employees to watch, read, and maybe real-life conversations as well?
BTW. please make me a landing page this nice as well -_-
Yeah, you've got it right. But a common user is not going to read it so many times to understand the message so we need to fix that haha. Thanks a lot :)
The design is absolutely beautiful I must say!
A few suggestions.
Maybe consider hiring a freelance copywriter.
A skilled copywriter knows how to catch the attention of the user and draw them in.
Always focus on your audience.
Know your market and put yourself in their shoes what do you see.
You’re targeting team leads, so let them know exactly how this will benefit their team.
Keep it short and simple enough to allow for easy digestion while conveying your message.
Average attention span these days is about 3 seconds.
Thank You social media!
Serve a few quick bites of extremely delicious (informative) info and then funnel them to learn more.
Video is easy to digest as well, but remember short and simple.
5 minutes is a bit long for most people.
Neil Patel is arguably one of the best at internet marketing and conversions.
Here’s a link to a landing page checklist:
https://neilpatel.com/blog/landing-page/
Hope this helps out a bit!
Thanks for the feedback and for the link, Joshua! :) I'm checking the checklist and it's very useful.
We'll try to fix it on our own, and if we can't solve the problem we'll hire an awesome copywriter. Thanks again!
Your copy in the hero section confused me, and I've been in the tech scene for several years. Dumb it down. Keep it really simple. Rest of the site looks good tho.
Thanks, Hans! =D
We'll definitely work on that :)
you need to create a tour of the product. It's way to confusing. Do I create a learning path? How do I decide what to add?
yo really need to ease people into the product.
Thanks, Bob!
We've recorded this video tour for email prospecting. We could add it to the landing page. But maybe 5 minutes long is too much for a landing page. What do you think? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP8doruwddw
Wow it really is a beautiful designed landing page. Nice work on that front at least.
Thanks, Patrick! :) Glad you like it!
Yeah. Im on mobile and I see right away there are mixed messages here. I don't know where to put my focus. Maybe if the headlines were a different font size. It consumes a bit like a blog rather then a landing page.
I'm taking notes of everything. We'll review that too. Thanks! :)
The landing page looks awesome. Big fan of the illustrations! ✌️
What I didn't understand was if the "courses" are provided by you or I have to prepare the courses for my team and use your site as a platform for that.
Thanks for the feedback! We provide some learning paths. They are useful but they work as examples. We want to sell the tool itself, not the curation service. Definitely, we have to make it more clear! Thanks!
Another thing to think about conversion is also upstream channels.
If you can have a best messaging in the world, if the channels you get your visitors from tends not to be your target audience, it won't convert well.
Also, if the number of visitors isn't big enough, some of the analytical tools or as A/B tests on conversion may not give you actionable data.
Yes, we know about that. In fact, we're getting some traffic from tech communities and Product Hunt and we understand that our target is not there. But anyways I was surprised when a lot of people signed in to do NOTHING hahaha. This is why I started to think that something on the landing page was wrong. Maybe we're creating the wrong expectations, or maybe nobody understands anything and they need to click some buttons to understand the tool.
Thanks for your comment! :)
From my reading of your messaging, your target audience might be bigger companies where managers are concerned about training their employees. In that case, indie hacker or product hunt people who are more hackers or entreprenures who probably are curious about new products, but may not be serious about using your tool (since assume most indie hackers don't have an army of employees to worry about training). Their actions on your website as you described (sign up and do nothing) seems to matches that expectations.
So you may know this already, find the best channel that can reach your audience, and not let data from non-target audience discourage you or lead you to optimize for the wrong audience.
Yeah, I completely agree with you on everything and you nailed it the target. But I still think that the effort of filling a signup form could be a waste of time if you know that this product is not for you. I know that there are curious people that want to sign up anyways and try things even if they know that this is not for them, and I'm fine with it, that's cool! But it's not the case because they don't try ANYTHING and it happens A LOT hahaha. At least they would try some features I guess.
That's why I think maybe people don't understand the target of the product, or maybe the landing page is creating the wrong expectations. In both cases, communication is not working. This is what I want to fix.
Thanks for your comment :)
Hey Jaime, are you familiar with the now defunct "Gibbon"? They tried to solve something very similar with the succinct tagline, "playlists for learning".
They originally targeted individuals but eventually pivoted to organizations
I know Degreed (they were bought by them) but not Gibbon! Yeah! I'm checking it and their mission was very similar to ours! I can learn a lot about their experience, I'm going to dig in more. Thanks for the info! =D
Are you targeting the correct audience? Have you tried reaching out to someone in a company that would be responsible for implementing something like this?
I was going to sign up to try it out and give some specific feedback, but stopped when I realized I need to create an account that would be for a company.
I'd imagine if your targeting is off, you might get people like me who want to learn, but stop when they realize they have to create the learning structure (or do they?).
How about a video demo or a page that goes more in-depth into how it works? On my site, since it's open source, I just built a fake "backend" using IndexedDB (browser-based storage) that implements the full functionality so users can try without signing up.
Hi, Andrew!
An individual can use Crammut perfectly, but a lot of features are thought to be used by a company because our business model at the moment is B2B, not B2C. We should communicate this better.
I've made this video. We're going to embed it on the landing page. Do you think it's more clear here? Or do you think that the video has the same problem? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi-w4M5EUI&
We've recorded a short video tour too. But maybe 5 minutes it's too much for a landing page, I don't know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi-w4M5EUI&
Thanks for the feedback! :)
Both of those links go to the same video ;-)
First, I have to say those videos are slick and beautiful, just like your home page!
A 5 minute video might be too much for the landing page, but it could be a useful link or non-automatic popup for those interested. I'll give you more advice when I can actually get people interested in my home page haha.
My best advice would be to try to talk to people in the space. Someone with the job of employee learning and onboarding. But I guess if there were an easy way to do that, we would all be doing it.
Damn, I'm so dumb hahaha here's the "long" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP8doruwddw
Yeah, I think that video is good. Probably not something to put on the landing page (except as a popup link or something ?), but maybe you could create a Learn section with more in-depth videos and information about how it works.
But, yeah, as I'm not the target audience, you would get better feedback from someone who would be paying to use your service :)
Great! Thanks a lot, Andrew ;)
Sorry I can't help. But I have to ask, how did you develop your landing page design skills? This is something I've always lacked in.
Thanks for the comment, Joe!
There's a designer on our team. We're bootstrapping but luckily one of us is an awesome designer. I think his secret it's just practicing. As we're bootstrapping, at the moment we have to look for freelance jobs to earn a living, and he made a lot of design works. :)
Your graphics are v. cool, who made those?
Thanks!! =D
We have a designer in our team. We're bootstrapping and can't hire at the moment, but luckily, one of the team members is an awesome designer :)
I have a few questions:
Have you tried a video on the homepage? It would stop the people signing up who are just being nosey about the UI as they'd get a glimpse.
Are the people signing up actually your target market i.e. people/HR/operations teams, CEOs, business owners etc? If you don't know then you need to find a way to target the correct people, that will also lead to getting better feedback.
Thanks for the feedback! :)
About the video:
I've made this explainer video tool. We're going to embed it soon. Do you think it will help? The message is more clear here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi-w4M5EUI&t=1s
We've recorded a short video tour too, but maybe 5 minutes is still too much for a landing page. We're going to use it for email leads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP8doruwddw
About the target:
Maybe you're right. At the moment we're getting some traffic from tech communities and websites like Product Hunt. And this is awesome, but let's be honest, they are not exactly our target and they are not going to buy. But I'm still surprised that they sing up to do NOTHING hahaha. That's why I have the feeling that the problem was the website: Maybe we're creating wrong expectations, or maybe users don't understand anything and need to click buttons to get it.
Thanks again!
Hey Jaime,
First video is somewhat helpful and it can't hurt to have it on the homepage! For me I'm still struggling with the value proposition generally. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice idea/product, but what are your thoughts around the following points:
Perhaps one selling point could be 'hire faster with the ability to nurture new talent' i.e. the job market is getting crowded and highly competitive salary-wise for experienced talent, but if you can bring in slightly less experienced staff then you could increase their skills and knowledge with crammut.
Companies hire people with a presumption of them already being knowledgeable unless it's a mid-senior role, at least in tech sort of roles that you seem to be targeting. You could be more effective by pivoting to low skill, high staff turnover companies like fast food restaurants. That way you can charge a fee to build bespoke learning paths for their businesses.
The name Crammut I assume is to do with the word 'cram' which (at least in the UK) carries negative connotations around people being unprepared and trying to rush their knowledge acquisition. It suggest quick wins that don't embed in peoples minds.
Another thing on the logo - the text is hard to read and not memorable. The elephant is a bit silly but I've designed elephant logos before and know that's not easy, I think yours is fun and work sticking with. I'm assuming the idea is that 'elephants never forget' which again, conflicts with the idea of cramming!
On the second video, I agree it's a little long, but honestly it can't hurt to have it on the homepage somewhere, or else send a link to it to new signs ups via email (or prospects as you've said). Or you could make it available once people log in.
And yes, coming back to the target...product hunt users are not your target for sure. You want to get in front of people in HR and People teams, they love any new tool that can get employees settled in a workplace and be assured of their level of competence so it's an easy sell. I don't know what you do in terms of live demoes, but a few companies I have worked with relied heavily on getting stakeholders at their target business onto a video call and talking them through the product.
I don't mean for me input to sound negative it's just the nature of this sort of feedback! You've done a great job so far from what I can see just don't be afraid to pivot and/or refine your pitch :)
Wow! Thanks a lot! =D
Of course, you don't sound negative. I'm here to be roasted, I asked for that hahaha
Thanks for the feedback! I love your ideas. I think that focusing on employee onboardings could be too restricting, but I get the idea: we need to focus on a specific pain.
About the name, we're now surveying people about this issue. We're from Spain so we know the meaning of words but not the exact connotations, so thanks! =D
About the videos. We're going to add two videos, a short explainer, and a video tour (we're going to edit another one. Less than 2 minutes).
Thanks a lot! This is a lot of info to process, but definitely, we're going to work with all of these. :)
Have you considered adding some sort of live demo? Even an explainer video would be good.
Thanks, Josh!
I've made this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi-w4M5EUI
We're going to embed it on the landing page, but I'm not sure, I think we're gonna have the same problem. Do you think the video helps to understand the tool? Or maybe the message is too similar?
We've made this video tour too. It's 5 minutes long. We're going to use it to explain the tool to leads by email, but I think 5 minutes it's too much time for a landing page video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP8doruwddw
The first video is amazing. You may want to try trimming it down to ~60s. Less is more in this instance.
You seem to have the resources to make this happen — have you considered consulting an expert for the landing page issue? I did have to read it a few times to get the idea. After seeing the video it makes much more sense though.
ps. I hope your designer(s) and illustrator(s) are being paid well because their work is amazing and I am incredibly jealous.
We don't have any resources, but we pretend very well hahaha
I worked as a video maker some years ago, that's why the video is cool (and free for us).
And the designer-illustrator is a member of the team too (But he's now working on Facebook because he's so talented!). This is a side-project, we're bootstrapping. I don't know if we can afford to hire an expert, I doubt it. Indiehackers is my adviser hahaha
Thanks again :)
Whats your tech stack?
AngularJS and Ruby on Rails ;)
I took a quick look at your landing page just like I would normally do at any random website.
I didn’t understand what the the product does and more importantly what the benefit to me is and within 5 seconds I left. So I agree with your deduction.
Your landing page is really beautiful by the way. What tool did you use to build it?
Hey Andrea! Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, we need to be clearer. We tried to sound fancy and use few words to keep it short, and the result is that all the message is too abstract and vague. Moreover, we need to think more about the target's pain and how we resolve it.
About the tool to build the landing page, I'm going to ask it to my teammate and I'll tell you when he answers me ;)
Thanks again!
Don't think that's the issue, people are lazy, they don't want to create the learning paths, is quite some work, so you either need some pre-made ones or offer creating one as a service too.
I personally tried to see if there is some marketplace/curriculum or so, other than this the top right image doesn't tell me nothing, would rather see a product image.
Thanks for the feedback! :)
I think laziness it's not the problem. (Well, it's a problem, but not for our target). When we were making our first tests, CEOs and team leaders loved the idea because they were doing this kind of "training" for years on Excel sheets, Trello boards, and emails. But their experience was awful because of the lack of follow up. A lot of people and bosses created learning paths, but only a few finished them because tracking them and managing them was very difficult. So, in this case, laziness is not the problem.
We'll think about the header image too. Thanks! :)
Use cases and live examples will probably go a long way. It took me a few reads of the copy to get the idea.
Thanks for the feedback! :)
We've recorded a short video tour, but maybe 5 minutes is still too much for a landing page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP8doruwddw
I've made this explainer video tool. We're going to embed it soon. Do you think it will help? The message is more clear here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi-w4M5EUI&t=1s
After watching the videos and reading the site, I think that I understand the problem: that there great learning resources available online (reuse existing materials, don't rebuild them for your company!) but no great way to collate these materials and track users' progress through the series of materials. I think that this is actually a pretty good idea to solve. The problem is that it takes several go-rounds to understand the value proposition. I admittedly only watched the videos on mute, but I think that the shorter one is a sweet spot for length- I'd consider embedding it on your homepage. A working example that users can play with, live on the site, is probably the best way to understand what you're trying to build.
I don't know how you'd monetize it, but there's probably a decent use case for this tool in a B2C sense. E.g.: users can post curated lists of materials on specific topics for other users (outside of a corporate context) to consume. Just a thought.
Yeah! You nailed it! But we need that people understand that at a glance, not after re-watching videos and the site again and again haha That's why we need to polish the copies and the message.
We know that this could be useful in the B2C world, but we're starting into B2B because in our case it's easy to get traction and validate the idea with a B2B model. But we get B2C in our minds too.
Thanks four your feedback :)