After a/b testing tractific.com we saw that if we make a hero the only thing visitors see after clicking on the link, it decreases the conversion.
We put features block a little up and added how it works instead of graphs. (if you are variant b then you will see it)
Making hero the only thing on the screen makes scrolling a must to see what is it about and most of the visitors don't do it. It does look amazing but doesn't worth it.
This is a very valuable lesson! A lot of themes these days are designed with huge hero images that push call-to-actions below the fold. Like you said, they look great but they just don't convert.
Yeah but fortunately you can always conduct a/b tests and see it yourself. We discussed it for days but at last, a/b test showed the truth :)
Best way to learn, for sure!