How a single, brilliant page can boost your conversions by 150-300%

None of this means anything without advertising. Just because we live in a new era of digital content distribution doesn't change a centuries old rule of sales: get them in the door.

I read your article because I have a very non-traditional landing page. I drop you right into the main menu of my application. I do this mostly because I have users who I am supporting who do already know what my app is about and I want to make it the best possible experience for them (which includes me). And that means my site takes you right to work, no waiting for my sales page to load when all you want to do is log in.

After having spent a little on advertising, the hits are coming in. It's a pretty clear, linear relationship: money out, visitors in. My bounce rate is pretty high, though my returning user count is slowly growing. I get it. My app is pretty niche and like I said, I have no meaningful landing page for a raw user.

But after reading your article, it reminded me of that sales axiom, and I am now sticking to my landing page. I might do some pop-up hints for new users, but I see my job now as getting them in the door and using the product as quickly as possible.

For other people reading this, I get as much traffic commenting on a relevant LifeHacker article or HN post with my link (which I'm not going to provide here, you can find it easily enough, this isn't about me right now) as I get out of $25 of Google AdWords. There you go, actionable information. If I want more clicks than said LifeHacker article, then I spend $25. If I don't feel like spending $25 today, then I go trawling the internet and find somewhere to foist my link. This tends to find me in the range of 100 to 150 visitors, with about 1% returning and spending significant time on the site.

I think that is important because it gives me a clear trade-off line. If I spent $75 - 100/day on Google AdWords, I wouldn't be able to match the effort with my own postings on social sites, not unless I did it full time. And it works while I sleep, I don't have to stay on top of pages and refresh it over and over again. I don't know how much that is in the grand scheme of things, and I don't yet have the ability to spend quite that much on advertising. But I have a benchmark now and I can work from it.

There, 25% as much as you wrote and at least 300% more information.