Whilst I agree that a one liner teaser page is not good, I will disagree about "It’s a myth that people don’t read long copy. Of course they do."
They really don't. But the article is misleading, because the 'long copy' example provided, the highrise teaser page, is not an example of long copy. It's a well formatted bunch of meaningful information, strategically designed and placed carefully (flow) that keeps enticing users to read more of it.
It's a well documented fact that people DO NOT read long boring paragraphs. They DO, however, read highly entertaining webpages with a fairly big copy so as long as it breathes and attracts them.
So to wrap up, yes write more than a sentence, no don't write a book. Instead, carefully craft sentences to entice potential customers to turn into real future customers.
Sorry, but I think you're making the common mistake of expecting that most people will react to a particular sales tactic the way you would react to that sales tactic. Also, the example shown is absolutely a long form sales letter.
It may be true that people do not read long boring paragraphs, but I'd bet the research to which you're referring is not addressing ad copy. If it is, I'd like to see it. It is in fact well documented that long form sales letter DO convert better than short copy in many situations.
If you are selling a service, and in some case a product that has several features, then long copy works best. The buyer would want as much information as possible before parting with their dollar.
If you are offering a free product, then short copy is best. Users will trade trying to read what your product does to just using it instead.
What is really bad is wasting months building software no one wants. Or finding out after the fact that your cost of acquiring a customer is too high to make the idea viable.
Sure there are people doing it wrong, but done correctly its a powerful tool that raises the odds that your startup will become a success.
In a lot of cases the cost of acquiring customers is high in the beginning. Thats a business scaling issue that you solve when you determine that you have a real business.
The landing page trend is just for early adopters, I would venture a guess that it has little to no impact on the success of a startup.
I'm not sure I follow. How can getting (for free) a long list of people who may be interested in the product once it launches be a bad thing?
I think the OP's main point is that instead of having a landing page you should be concentrating on product/market fit by describing the product. I think startups with these coming soon pages are already doing that, just not on their public website.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Collecting email addresses is fine, but make sure you're really getting people who are genuinely interested in your product. My point is that people shouldn't focus on hoarding emails. The focus should be on testing certain message, certain angle of the product, whether they like the future vision, etc...
So you're saying startups should be A/B testing their coming soon landing pages. That sounds like good advice. I'd be surprised if that feature were not on the todo list of the LaunchRock guys...
I am currently working on my pre-launch startup and I would consider spending five minutes putting up a landing page like that. Not really to collect email addresses, but so I have something on my homepage, so I can go on worrying about the more important stuff.
LaunchRock is sort of a victim of its own success. Now that every startup wannabe has a hipster.com like landing page, we're all getting sick of it and looking for something better.
If your initial market for your new, innovative software company is early adopters then you're definitely a part of the problem of people getting burned out by these tactics.
So recently we've seen that anyone with a web app has a "startup". Then, anyone with a landing page has a "startup";
is it now even worse? That you don't even need to make the landing page yourself, just fill out a form, and you have a startup :P
Lots of opinion, no facts in the article. I would be useful if author split-tested personal/impersonal pages and told us about what gets the actual users engaged, rather than tell us what gets one random blogger aggravated.
agree with author 100%. If startups can attract users using a cookie cutter template with vague wording on what they plan on doing, then more power to them. I believe a startup should actually take a few days to think how they can best relay their product with copy, screenshots, customer proof, on their landing page, and get some genuine adopters.
They really don't. But the article is misleading, because the 'long copy' example provided, the highrise teaser page, is not an example of long copy. It's a well formatted bunch of meaningful information, strategically designed and placed carefully (flow) that keeps enticing users to read more of it.
It's a well documented fact that people DO NOT read long boring paragraphs. They DO, however, read highly entertaining webpages with a fairly big copy so as long as it breathes and attracts them.
So to wrap up, yes write more than a sentence, no don't write a book. Instead, carefully craft sentences to entice potential customers to turn into real future customers.