The highest ROI way to increase signups: Make a minimal homepage (Guest Post)

Whenever I see a minimal homepage with nothing but a glib sentence and a signup form I just assume this is a service that only cares about getting my data and bleeding me like a turnip.

I understand that it might work and why it might work and yes, a minimalist layout gets the clutter out of the way and comes straight to the point but personally it's not a model that inspires confidence.

How well would it work if I walked into a store, and they insisted on having me agree to a purchase before I even got to see what it is they sell? Much less a tiny store whose interior was nothing but a blank white room with a credit card machine inside, that just said "The Best Thing Ever" over the door, and nothing else?

... actually that would probably work and that's what annoys me.

Just like Manish, I too do not agree with what Andrew is saying. It is ridiculous to compare DropBox, Linkedin, Quora, pinterest to the home page of some unknown startup. I am also not convinced you can do any kind of testing for homepages for startups which have very low volume traffic.

IMO, I think you should just stick to your gut feeling, do what looks and feels right for home page, if this mean putting more content, so be it.

This is easy if you have an established brand. The home pages in example made perfect sense to me as I know those companies. I am not sure this would work for startups that are new to the market.