How would you go about explaining your product on a landing page, when your website is like a social network?
Hey everyone, I have been working on https://www.captionfy.io/ and I struggle to make a more explanational landing page without hurting the social network aspects of the site (showing early on in the front page community created content). Would you guys give me your thoughts on this? I want to avoid making a long scroll with a lot of explanation and then only in the end display user content... Any idea here is very helpful! Thank you!
It may hurt you in the long run if you try to do too many things on your social network landing page. Take a note from the big guy (Facebook) and focus your page on the most desired outcome :)
If you still want to stick to doing doing both and avoid a "long scroll" then do either a short video or showcase videos as examples for your "What you can do with Captionfy" section.
Love how the site looks! Although it feels a little compacted.
Thank you! I agree with you, I shouldn't fill the landing page with technicalities or long scrolls, almost hiding the community built content. The videos idea is also really cool, some others suggested me this and I am definitely creating a concise and simple video tutorial.
And awesome that you like it! Could you let me know what you mean by compacted? Then I can try to improve it :)
Again, thank you so much for the insight!
By "compacted" I meant that it feels a little bit clump together.
There are is too much happening above the fold. There are 2 images (one while cute doesn't tell me anything about the site, the second one is too small and not easily understandable).
Oh I see! Yeah true I have been thinking a lot about the "cute" one, because I agree with you that it doesn't tell anything about the site. I am going to experiment removing it / switching with a different one soon, and also see if I can spread the content a bit more around the page, so it doesn't get too compact. Thanks a lot for the details Piotr!
Nobody initially cares how it works!
What they want to know is why they should be interested, what unique value does your product have, why is it different, why should they care? Generally none of these revolve around how it works -- even for technical products -- but about the difference the technical stuff enables for the end user.
It's a subtle difference, but it's a gamechanger. This took us ages to figure out at our startup. We made landing page after landing page explaining how our tool worked, thinking people would then be able to see all the value it offered. Not the case! Now we don't bother explaining much about how it works on our landing page, instead we focus on the biggest problems we solve for our users.
You can see what I mean -> Our landing page is all about value, benefits and problems we solve. Our How It Works page isn't even overly technical, it's also focused on output value but shows at a high level how that output value it produced through our unique product format.
Hey Daniel, thank you so much for your insights. This is really helpful, I guess I should think more about the product's unique qualities and what problems it solves, and leave the more technical details in a separate page. I like your landing page's structure and having a How It Works Page. Thanks a lot for this suggestion!
Try making a short "talking head" video talking about what the site is for and why you created it. Maybe show off a few features too.
I would keep it around 2-3 mins long. If you are comfortable with it, show your face. People love buying from people.
Then have the video displayed very prominently on the landing page.
Thank you Nick, I agree showing a video on the landing page can be very easy and informative. I have been planning on creating a short tutorial Youtube video and this fits perfectly!
Wonderful! Great minds think alike :)
Move the base explanation to a "how to" page of sorts
Cleanup the URL to be mostly the "enter YouTube url" - "captionate" button or something
And the social part of like "discover"
You can also have the description in a popup with like a question mark going what is this
But it's pretty simple so make the flow as such
So like YouTube itself, they need ppl to upload content but besides a small button it's not on the main page, it's like in a user section
Thanks a lot, I like the "How to" page idea, the landing page will get much cleaner using something like that.
Also the the popup idea I actually never thought of, this seems suitable to other parts of the website as well.
This helps a lot, I am going to think through these points and make some updates accordingly. Thank you!
The best thing to do is test it with your real life audience. This is something I do as part of my homepage crit and it's always so insightful - if you haven't read the Mom Test, I highly recommend it!
Feel free to reach out if you need any more help, I'd be more than happy to have a chat!
Thank you, Meri! I haven't heard of this book and I just looked it up and seems awesome, thanks for the suggestion :) I will let you know if I need any help here, really appreciate it!
The idea is interesting and the site looks great. It is immediately clear how and why I should use the app.
There are various ways of balancing community content and product introduction. However, the primary question to consider is whether a random person landing on the page would find the community content relevant. My first impression is that this is a tool. I would use it to caption my video and leave a link in the description on YT. Maybe you know that there is a specific group using your app or you have a specific idea of how people would use it.
Thank you Artur, this is a really good insight, I should think more about whether a random visitor would find the community content relevant, and also I should think more about the current public who is using the site, and how important the landing page content is. I am planning on making an update with a small tutorial on the landing page (maybe just a button to a tutorial), and this will help me test these things! Thanks a lot for the comment!