Why stealing best landing pages is a bad idea | Hacker News Reader

Why stealing best landing pages is a bad idea

hren.io

20 pointshren10 comments

In addition to the points on the list, you need to take context into account too. A large successful company has built up a lot more trust than your one might have, and can get away with design decisions that are less than optimal because everyone knows who they are and takes them seriously.

It's why eCommerce sites can't just get away with cloning Amazon's layout. Because while it 'works' for them, it works in part because people are willing to forgive certain bad design decisions and performance issues due to brand recognition.

They likely won't be as forgiving towards your site.

It's also worth noting that if it's too obvious that you copied someone else's design, people are likely to distrust you because of it. Especially if they've stumbled across the page/site that inspired you before.

As a non-creative, copying ideas from other landing pages is the only way I can make my own pages look even remotely attractive. Of course, this is for side projects. Professionally, I agree and think hiring a good designer to come up with original ideas is always worth the money.

Same here, but I just check for good designs and buy them.

There's a little bit of truth here, in that just ripping off someone else's successful design (of almost anything, not just landing pages) and applying it to your own situation is unlikely to get you the same results.

However, I think the author could have fleshed out a little more the fine line between stealing without insight and using as a starting point or learning guide for your own process. There's a very long history in copywriting of keeping a "swipe file" of headlines, ad copy, etc. that have performed well to learn from and use as inspiration.

This. I wrote a whole book based on that premise, and as a practicing copywriter/landing page designer, reusing/remixing elements of a growing swipefile is a huge part of a the workflow.

Obviously, none of that replaces actual testing, and it's useful to be able to separate the two (idea generation / validation). If there was an official list of best practices that always works, things would be easier.

It's important to note most products don't ever reach the stage where they can test and reach statistically significant conclusions. In that scenario, building landing pages by learning from the best is more about improving your messaging, your sales pitch, and so on, than about scientifically improving your conversion rate. But you must take things one step at a time.

I agree. Using something as a basis isn't a bad idea and I have benefitted from this over the years. You DO need to understand what you are doing and not just blindly copy, but having a starting point is often very useful

From the potential buyer's point of view:

I skip all sites that look like they have a tried and tested landing page and don't actually have anything to say about their product.

If it's the same structure but with a slightly different text, it means the product isn't interesting so they have to resort 100% to marketing optimizations and I just move on.

Yep. Relatedly, A/B testing is still, in a majority of cases, "run both pages until one shows an x% difference in conversion"

WHICH IS TOTALLY TOTALLY BROKEN. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

I know people don't really like to remember high school stats, but surely we can get the world to a place where CMOs etc know enough to not do this and not let their teams do this?

Or are they incentivised to show that they're "adding value" without really caring about whether that value is real or not?

I'm not particularly convinced by the content of the article. But there is a glaring typo I hope the author fixes:

> 2. They do not know how WHY their copywriting formula works

Fixed. And thanks, that typo was really bad.

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