D

Users end up at a landing page for all kinds of reasons, and with hugely variant degrees of preconceived knowledge about the product or service. Creating a page that speaks to everyone who visits your site is nearly impossible, but it’s a challenge that must be tackled. So how can we create a framework that allows us to think about the challenges of communicating with visitors without trying to single out each individual personality? I’m not convinced that anyone can answer that question, but there are two key aspects of the design that I’m thinking about as needs to address: emotion and information.

Emotion: Regardless of how much we like to consider ourselves intellectual beings, we’re hard-wired to have emotional responses to visual stumuli. The web, as a very visual medium, requires us to consider the way designs impact the emotional satisfaction of those that visit our pages. There’s an instant response to the overall aesthetic of a page, driven by things like color and symmetry. Designing landing pages that create an emotional response is, by its very nature, an art more than a science. But it can be tested – five second tests, word association questions, and eye-tracking are all tools that can be used to get a general sense of what creates and emotional response and what doesn’t. The thing to remember about the emotional component is that it’s the first thing triggered – long before any text is read or any language can be processed. In fact, it’s likely that the initial emotional response prevents the processing of text and language until it’s over.

Information: The other side of the equation is the need for users to be informed. If the immediate emotional response is positive enough to keep a visitor from closing the page, the cerebral aspect of their brains will start searching for clues that satisfy curiosity and setup expectations. What’s going on here? What do I have to do? What’s going to happen next? These are the questions that a user is asking him or herself when they encounter any new service or application. Answering these questions as specifically as possible is important, but over-specificity can drive people with pre-conceptions away. If the service is described as something that’s useful for people who need mustard-spreading widgets (they’re in high demand these days), then you risk driving away those who might want to use the product to spread ketchup. Beyond the language of the initial description, we want to make sure we provide enough information to keep those who aren’t convinced on our domain as they continue to consider their options. While I’ve thought before that providing fewer options for more information might lead to more conversions, in recent weeks I’ve come to believe that it’s more effective to keep someone on your domain for as long as possible, and provide them with as many chances to convert as possible. If they’re not sure, I’d much rather have them click through to a ‘Learn More’ page than hit the back button and leave me forever.

Finding the right balance between emotional response and information expectations is difficult and probably impossible to master. But thinking about the ways that people respond to the design of your landing pages is critical to creating pages that convert well and create positive feelings for people that choose to convert. In the coming weeks we’ll be rolling out a new series of landing pages that can hopefully address these challenges in interesting and creative ways, and I’ll try to chronicle as much of that process as I can.

In the meantime, what are your own thoughts about landing pages? What do you look for as a user, or if you’re a designer, which challenges do you focus on? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Gannet just rolled out paywalls at three of their regional papers. I found out because I follow paidContent.org on Pinyadda, which, ironically, is a free publication. After I got through the painful period of disgust/anger/befuddlement/hilarity that ensues when I hear about new paywalls being erected, I went to visit the Tallahassee Democrat, one of the sites sporting the shiny new system. It didn’t go very well.

At first glance, the site looks like every other newspaper site, replete with all the design failures and clutter that you’d expect: flashing banner ads, a confusing structure of headlines and highlights, and whole bunch of moving parts that I don’t really understand. There’s no mention of a paywall and no indication of what’s about to happen when I click on a story.

I clicked on the feature story in the top left corner, which at the time was about the race for Mayor of Tallahassee (the module rotates). So far, so good; aside from the expected clutter and the annoyance of moving banner ads, I was able to move toward my goal of reading the news on the internet. That single goal is important to keep in mind – the only thing I’m hoping to accomplish is reading a news story on my computer. Here’s what I saw next:

The paywall rears its ugly head.

Once the page loaded, I was able to see the headline, byline, and about half of the first sentence. Not much of a teaser. The items with the most visual weight are an image of a heavy padlock, a series of large, black buttons, and a bright yellow banner ad. Before we dive into the actual payment options, it’s worth noting some things about the design. The padlock image makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong, perhaps by choosing this article over another, perhaps by committing some internet sin in another life. I’m not being invited inside, I’m being locked out. People don’t like being locked out.

It’s not immediately clear to me which button I should choose, as they share identical visual characteristics. This isn’t make or break, but it takes time to read the text, weigh my options, and make a decision. It’s enough time for me become distracted from my original goal, which, I think, was to read an article about the Mayoral race in Tallahassee. After some deliberation, I chose the third option – ‘Purchase a day pass for $2.’ There is a link to see more subscription options, but I didn’t notice it while I was on the page.

As a user, this step was complicated. When the page loaded, I was presented with an unexpected result that triggered a negative emotional response. I has to decipher what was going on, consider several options, and make a purchase decision. This presents a large barrier for the average user and diverts all attention away from the original goal of reading an article. The $2 isn’t the most significant deterrent in this equation. In fact, the financial commitment may actually be the least important factor in my decision to continue beyond this point in the process.

Once I chose an option, I was taken away from the page and presented with this screen:

The form monster emerges.

As far as forms go, this one is relatively clean and accessible. I’m not thrilled about having to switch my brain into data-entry mode, but at least I understand how this page works. I just fill this out and I get to read my article, right? Not so fast.

Red ink, take one.

I’m pretty good at the internet, and I was terrible at this form. Three errors spit back on the first try. First, my username didn’t fit in the 6-13 character window of bliss. Second, my Gmail alias (which allows me to filter messages later) was rejected. And third, I mistakenly entered my full birth date instead of my birth year, as was requested. I don’t particularly appreciate being asked for my birthday (I bet you don’t either) and so the last error left a particularly poor taste. At this point I have no idea what my original task was. This one is quite challenging enough. After fixing the form, getting two more errors during validation, and then clicking submit for the third time….

Nothing happened. The form submission hung for about 60 seconds (if you look closely, you can see the loading message ‘Registering…’ in the error field at the top of the form) and never submitted. I started looking for a way out and found the only viable option to be the ‘Send Again’ option buried beneath the submit button. I clicked it and was presented with a nice-looking but terribly annoying modal window that didn’t really solve my problems. Nevertheless, I threw in my email address and clicked the button.

Error. Despite entering a perfectly valid address, the form rejected my  submission. Back to the drawing board. Let’s remember that I haven’t been asked for any payment information at all up to this point, and my incentives to abandon the process are numerous. This feels like work. Why should I have to work to give someone else money (especially for something I can get for free elsewhere!!)? But I’m an internet masochist. I trudge on. I really want that article. I think.

Finally, I get to the payment screen. Lean to the side, get out my wallet, set the card up on the keyboard, and enter the information.

The phone number seemed a little intrusive to me, and there was no indication it was a required field, so I left it blank. Should have known better. Maybe they want to call me later and see how my experience with the paywall went. I grudgingly entered the number – a piece of information I’m loathe to part with in the rest of my life – and click the OK button in the alert. Finally, it’s over. But then…

I have to confirm my information again. They’re almost daring me to bail at this point, and I sure as heck can’t remember the article I wanted to read way back at the beginning of this newspaper odyssey. But what the heck. This is surely the end.

Nope. One more step, another chance to forget why I came here, and one more screen between me and my original goal. Finally, I click the submit button of death, shut my eyes, and hope for the best.

Voila! Magic! I finally get the prize! It’s …. a 500 word article smattered with flashing yellow banner ads. I’m confused. And tired. And poorer than I was a few minutes ago.

Am I here to bash Gannet for their ineptitude? No. Is it concerning that this attempt at paid content  is the result of formally architected effort from one of the largest newspaper chains in the country? Yes. While I understand the value of reporting like this – local, public-service-based journalism that truly does improve our communities – I’m not willing to believe that I got an equal amount of value from the deal. I feel like I got the short end of the stick. And the $2 is the least important part of that feeling.

You want me to pay for content? Fine. But you’d better understand that I’m a discriminating shopper, that I appreciate customer service, and that I value my time and energy as much as my wallet. I wanted to read an article about the mayoral race in Tallahassee. It took me a total of 12 screens, well over five minutes, and two of my hard-earned dollars to accomplish that goal. During the process, I was confused, frustrated, and rejected multiple times.

I really hope that we can work with publishers, large and small, to improve the user experience that goes along with finding news online. Because there’s a generation right on my heels that won’t wait for the old guard to get it right.

Are you a publisher? Have you been the victim of a poor paywall experience? We want to work together as we build a new future for news – a future that’s sustainable, powerful, and pleasant for all of us.

– Being lean is about doing things that make sense and about being efficient, not necessarily about following every step of the ‘methodology’ to a T.

The lean startup movement/philosophy/methodology has lots to teach businesses and entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes, but it’s not a live-or-die guide to building a successful company. In building Pinyadda we’ve done some things a little backwards and maybe a few others a little out of order, but for us it’s become clear that being lean is about lightweight, fast product iteration and hands-on customer development. The exact methods we use to achieve these goals have changed and will continue to change and evolve along with us.

Did we smoke test hundreds of landing pages? No. Did we build a product with the absolute minimum feature set? No. Have we learned and improved by integrating customers early and continuously iterating based on their feedback? Yes. The main point here is that it’s a good idea to read and absorb as much as you can, but don’t drive yourself crazy trying to implement the latest and greatest trends. Every business will have different customers and different products that demand different tactics and different solutions. Do what’s best for you.

– Measurement takes many forms.

With most Web 2.0 – style products, what you’re building is not so much a ‘product’ in the traditional sense as an experience. In this vein, while it’s really important to measure things like clicks and actions and pageviews that can be quantified, it’s also important to realize that actions are often dictated by psychological and emotional reactions which cannot be easily quantified.

A careful reading of most lean materials will reveal that qualitative data (surveys, interviews, observations) can often be as useful or more useful than all the numbers in the world. There are certainly instances where the reverse is also true, but the main point is not to throw feedback out the window because it’s not numeric in nature. Some of the most important feedback we’ve ever received about Pinyadda has come in casual conversation over a few beers.

– There’s no magic button.

At first glance, it can seem like the lean startup approach makes for clean periods of structured action, where one piece fits nicely into the next. The truth is that it’s nearly impossible to suddenly declare yourself “done” with one stage and simply transition cleanly to the next step. Often (especially in the early stages) things are muddled and it’s very difficult to tell exactly where you are in the life-cycle of the company (this isn’t made any easier by the fact that most entrepreneurs are, by nature, somewhat delusional). And even if you can get a good sense for where you are, trying to plot a course into the next phase can be daunting.

Going back to the first point – there’s no formula for this stuff. We have a general idea about where Pinyadda stands with our customers and we’ve defined some tangible goals for ourselves that should manifest over the foreseeable term (for us, about 3-6 weeks at a time). But we don’t sit around wondering if we’re in Phase 1.3 or 1.4. Set a goal, use your core philosophies as a guide, and then do everything necessary to achieve it.

Here’s the video of the presentation. Thanks to Matthew Mamet of EditMe for the recording. Matt’s original post on the meetup is worth a read as well.

Boston Lean Startup Circle – Pinyadda from Matthew Mamet on Vimeo.

Turns out this stuff is useful for people who are pirate-neutral, maybe even those with an aversion to pirates (I don’t understand you). I could sum it up  but you’re much better off checking out the presentation or watching a video of Dave giving the basic talk. But the gist is pretty simple: measure the stuff that matters, don’t measure the stuff that doesn’t. This might seem like an easy thing to do, but in reality it can be pretty easy to confuse getting a lot numbers with getting the right numbers.

We’ve measured a whole bunch of stuff over the course of our time at Pinyadda, and we’re still zeroing in on exactly what we need and what the best ways are to quantify those metrics. What works for our business almost certainly won’t work for yours or anyone else’s, and it takes time to figure out the magic concoction that can quickly and easily provide accurate insight into what’s really going on.

In our current phase, we’re focusing on two key aspects of the AARRR model – Activation and Retention. At the moment, these are the two most important things that we need to figure out: how and when are people getting to the ‘aha’ moment with Pinyadda, and what keeps them coming back? By drilling down and taking a really close look at these specific aspects of our product over the last month, we’ve been able to do a couple of key things that have kept us focused on making the right product iterations instead of spreading feature lists all over the whiteboards and then spinning around in tight circles:

1) We asked some really specific but straightforward questions about how people were using our product. These are things like “how many people does someone need to follow before they start Pinning articles consistently,” and “of the people who login most, do they follow more people, sites, or topics?” We’ve had this data all along but we’d always cast it in terms of feature use or product analysis. Spinning the questions this way, to make them centered on the people instead of the product, makes the information more useful, easier to understand and much more actionable.

2) We invested a small but invaluable amount of time in building some reporting features for ourselves. Raw data is wonderful and we have lots of it, but if it takes an hour harvest and organize it’s not really useful to us on the daily. Taking hours away from pure product development to work on this is a little hard to swallow, but sacrificing a few Friday nights to do it might save weeks of wasted effort later if you can avoid building a single doomed feature. Plus, it’s a good environment to mess around with some new toys (I used a lot of CSS3, which I don’t use much in production, and also got comfortable with a great visualization library called Flot). Here’s a sneak peak:

3) We set some tangible goals for user activity and retention. We’ve always done goal setting but narrowing the focus has helped everyone on the team look at their area of focus from a common perspective. When you’re as small as we are it can be hard not to get lost in your own little corner. Keeping our eyes on a small and focused goal set makes it easier to stay on the same page. The results have been great and it’s been awesome to feel the team catch its collective stride.

McClure’s language may be a bit blue, but the message should be taken to heart by small teams everywhere. It’s helped us not because we follow it to a T or take every word as truth, but because it just makes sense. Every business will have to find its own way, and what makes sense to measure will vary widely. But by thinking critically about metrics before spewing numbers all over the place, coloring the things you measure in terms of people and not faceless features, and keeping team members aligned toward small but focused tasks, you can channel the spirit of pirates and strive forward in the search for internet booty.

“That’s it?” you ask, “no fanfare or press releases or oversized bottles of expensive booze?” The simple answer is, well, no. We’re having a small gathering with some people who’ve helped us along the way to talk about where we’ve been and give a quick demo, but that’s about it. While we’ll remember this as a milestone in the life of our business, there’s a lot more work to be done, and we’re excited to do it. Maybe later there’ll be time for a post about how far we’ve come and all that jazz, but for now we’re focused on getting the product as tight as it can be and listening really closely to our early users.

What I will take the time to do here is briefly describe a couple of fun new things we built, largely based on the feedback from our small but dedicated group of alpha users:

1. Bring links from anywhere into Pinyadda -  A lot of people asked for this and we made it happen. So far it’s been a great asset and people are doing all kinds of neat things with this functionality, from sharing YouTube videos to posting deals from Amazon to promoting their favorite blogs. As the first of many steps that will allow users to directly shape the Pinyadda system, we couldn’t be happier.
2. Share to other networks – This was a natural evolution of the product but we’ve introduced the ability to share articles and blog posts found on Pinyadda to Facebook and Twitter with a single click. We’ve also used these integrations to make it much easier to connect with existing contacts on Pinyadda.
3. A little facelift – If you’ve used Pinyadda before, you’ll notice we’ve cleaned up the interface and drastically simplified the functionality. If you’re new, this new cleaner design should help you get up and running faster and easier. Either way, we’d love to know what you think.

In truth, these are just a few of the changes we’ve made around the site, all focused on our goal of making Pinyadda the easiest way to find and share articles and blog posts. We need your help to do it.

If you’re a current user who’s been waiting to invite some more friends, now’s the time. If you’re a new user, hit me up on Twitter and let me know what you think. And if you’re still slogging through RSS feeds, email chains, and thousands of emails, sign up now and come on over to the light side.

Side Note: If you’re in the Boston area and would like to participate in one of our customer development programs, please let us know at info[at]pinyadda[dot]com.  You’ll get a change to check out new features, meet other early-adopters in Boston, and help us make Pinyadda exactly what you want it to be.