70 first impression videos, here are the biggest takeaways and repeating themes

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As some of you know, a bit more than a week ago I volunteered to review people's landing pages. Close to 100 of you requested that I look at your page and so far I got to about 80 people. And by the way, thank you for being brave to submit your pages to constructive criticism!

Individually recommendations varied quite a bit, but collectively I saw the same repeating themes.

Here are the 3 biggest areas of opportunities for IndieHacker projects in terms of initial website impressions and conversions:

Opportunity #1: Make it clear what your product is, and who it's for.

This would seem common sense, but many websites I looked at made me scratch my head.
Unless digging deep into the copy, it's hard to tell what some of your projects are and who is their target audience.

The biggest area of impact to do this is in your headlines and subheadings. There are more than one way to do this, but the most straight-forward one is just to make sure your headline and subheading answer these questions:

1. What is it?
2. Who is it for?
3. What's in it for them / why read further?

You don't need to get creative with #1 or #2. The answer to the third question can be more creative and used as the main headline (as long as the subheading supports it and explains further).

If you have a consumer-facing product where everyone benefits, you technically do not need to answer "who is it for?" Instead, focus on the value provided by your product.

Opportunity #2: Make the product benefits obvious

Despite the back and forth debate over benefits vs. features, it seems this is an area startups struggle with.

Some of your pages that I reviewed did a great job of showing the product features but did not explicitly state business benefit of that feature or of your overall product.

My biggest recommendation in this area was to make these items very clear:

1. What is it?

2. Is it for me?

3. How does it work?

4. What do I get out of it?

Explain the first 3 and how they affect #4. While this would make for basic copy, it would be fairly straight forward and easy to grasp.

Here’s a good example from Evernote that answers all 4 (could use a bit more clarity on #2, but overall decent):

Opportunity #3: Add social proof to your pages

I know this is an area many projects on IndieHacker struggle with because they are just starting out. It makes sense!

So, how do you get some social proof when customers are scarce?

8 Ways to get social proof when it’s hard to come by:

1. Offer your service at a reduced cost or for free (some people will hate this idea) and ask for honest feedback. If feedback is positive, ask if you can use it as a testimonial. Use negative feedback to improve your product.

2. Check to see if anyone has tweeted anything great about your product. Screenshot or embed the tweets.

3. Launch on Product Hunt and use the PH counter on your website.

4. Screenshot positive comments on Product Hunt and include on your site.

5. Check to see if anyone has said anything great about your product anywhere.

6. Talk about large companies in the same space who are solving similar problems (use their logos) or name drop in the copy.

7. Show your real number of customers or newsletter readers. Obviously best if the number is not small.

8. Create some case studies featuring one of your customers.

If you do have some testimonials or other trust symbols, move them up to the top of your page. Seeing those things early on sets the tone for the visitor and keeps them slightly more engaged to figure out why people like your product.

Check out the vague but effective use of Basecamp's review snippets at the top of the page title:

Besides those 3, here are the other common issues I noticed in the first impression videos:

• Missed call to action opportunity (after visitor is engaged). For example, if you have a demo page or an individual sub-product page, you can easily capture people's attention and excitement by adding a sticky button to take them to the next step.

• Website images not helpful - overuse of illustrations where product demo images would have been much more helpful.

• Too wordy - assumes people will read when they are more likely to skip it entirely. I recommend keeping each section as brief as possible.

• Too difficult to scan -

• Asking for too much information (forms) - conversions typically go up with fewer fields. Easy win: no double inputs. Ask yourself if you REALLY need this field.

• Unclear headline - may make sense to you but to an outsider they must read further to understand.

• Subheading better than headline - I found this to be the case at times. When in doubt, try using your subheading as your headline.

• Unclear call to action (what is the next step?) - "Get started" to do what? Try making the CTA more concrete - "Start your 14-day free trial"

• Talks down on me - this is probably the worst thing that any page could do is to instult the visitor's intelligence. Step outside your sales mode and just talk to me.

• Not sure how it works - very common theme where I could not figure out how the product works. A simple "how it works" section or a short intro video would have done the trick.

• Video too long (over 2 mins) - In many cases attention falls off at ~1 min mark. Try to keep your videos under 2 mins. Preferrably under 1:20.

• No company name / logo - rare but this did happen, which brings about doubt in credibility.

• We/me/us-focused - classic mistake but easy to fix - focus on "you" language.

• Text too small / hard to read (contrast) - check to see that your text is legible on all resolutions. Run through a contrast checker.

• Could benefit from a reversed signup flow - for example, let people explore selecting options as part of an onboarding quiz or get into a demo before giving up more info. See carrd.co for an example.

• Hides important information in a video - some people never watch videos. Your pages should stand alone without videos. If the video contains important information, add it to the page as well.

• Lacks preview of the type of information to expect after signing up - mostly applies to service businesses where I have no idea what happens when I contact you. Explain in plain language what happens next.

• Clever but confusing copy - straight to the point usually works best. I get that people don't want to sound boring and generic, so in this case maybe run your copy by as many people as possible to see if they get it.

• Offers annual option but does not allow to pay annually - simple fix, but if you have an annual tier, let people select it ;)

• Video preview too fast - came across this a few times - basically the video for a feature was too fast to understand what was happening.

• No examples to preview offer - this ties back into product screenshots, but also multiple small demos if possible.

Thanks for participating! I had a great deal of fun doing this!

If I haven't gotten to your page, feel free to leave a comment here. I'll also try to catch up in the other thread.

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