Watching things flit around the screen impresses your no-code friends, and maybe even your parents, but does little to excite people about your product.

Good design is important, but this ain’t it.

It’s not a 'grandslam offer'.

Everyone read the same books, and now everyone’s inbox is full of the same sensational offers in cold-email form.

Usually, from anonymous folks promising you the world on a stick if you’ll only write them a check (pinky-promising they won’t run off with your hard-earned cash if they can’t deliver).

People are rightly wary of too-good-to-be-true offers.

People never asked you to give them the world.

People don’t want to be convinced.

People want a good time and less problems.

So give them that.

It’s something they can’t get where they are

If you have a page with words and a picture, why click from an IG ad to see it? Or a Twitter thread?

We’re suspicious: surely that could have just been given to us where we are already? Why do I have to click to a page to view it?

It’s something that actually solves a problem

Every other landing page on the Internet talks about the problem, or shares pithy/incomplete instructions on how to solve it.

That’s a lot of pages.

Why not actually solve the problem right there on the page?

It‘s something more fun than what they’re already doing

We don’t look forward to things that are objectively less fun or useful than what we’re currently doing.

So why not make your page objectively more fun and useful than what they’re currently doing?

I know. Doing those things seems impossibly hard:

"But my solution requires lots of questions and understanding of the customer before I can tell them what to do!"

So make a quiz, full of visuals and wit, that shows them what to do and offers to help implement it. Make that quiz so useful, visitors want to share it with their friends, as they feel it’s genuinely insightful enough to genuinely help them with their problems too.

"But my solution is riddled with varying paths and options that I couldn’t possibly know in advance!"

So make an interactive walkthrough of the journey that lies ahead, and what to do in each circumstance, so they can see the full journey ahead. Give them a guide on how to tackle each step, and offer to support them if they need help.

The question is not "What page should I make?"

The question is "What will genuinely help them and be a blast to experience?" then work out how to make it work on a page.

Wouldn’t that get you far more interested than a "killer sales letter trapped in a 2002 Powerpoint presentation with too-good-to-be-true claims on it"?

Question for the week: Which of these landing page sins have you committed? What could you do about it?

Reply to this email with: Which sins you committed! I’ll reply with some ideas on how to wash those sins away.

In edutainment we trust,