Jameson, CEO, here. We haven't done A/B testing against the previous site, but we closely watch our metrics and have seen a lift since the new product went out. We were confident in the new app, and would have rolled back if necessary (it was out for a week before we announced it), but all signs were good. Actually setting it up to do a proper A/B test would have taken a lot of engineering time, and we judged it to not be worth it at this point. A lot of that has to do with our goals which are more about expanding the platform than optimizing the "launching soon" feature set.
We look at this as a place to start building a relationship. Our company today is about landing pages, but it's not staying that way. The things that are coming soon are all about what you do with the list after you have it.
Jameson from LaunchRock here. It's not uncommon to see 30% on a page. It all depends on design and copy. I was originally skeptical, but people are willing to give out their contact info if you peak their interest.
Where we see the opportunity now (and what we're building) is how you interact with that person after they show their trust and allow you to contact them. it's very important to win them over in a way that is authentic.
Jameson from LaunchRock here. We're literally days away from doing a full roll out, but hit me up at [email protected], and I'll get you an immediate invite. In order to do video, you'll need to use the widget on a page.
I'll let you know a dirty little secret. We're not currently filtering bots from our own stats, so it's even higher than that. Since the current app is mostly what we built over a few weeks after our Startup Weekend, it's missing a few details like that.
We're adding filtering in the next version of the app which we'll be opening to the public.
I'm coming in a bit late on this one, but just so everyone knows, at LaunchRock we're working on tools/best practice guides to make sure that people are continuously engaging their users.
We're also writing a blog post about this that I'd like to get up today. If you've got any input that you think is valuable, email me at jameson [at] launchrock [dot] com or hell, call me: 717-808-4908
Anyway, LaunchRock is best when you're using it to create that initial feedback loop with interested parties.
If you want a priority invite to LaunchRock, just email me at jameson at launchrock dot com. We're going to open it up as soon as we can, but we're focused on scaling right now and a few other things before we're 100% comfortable letting the masses in.
Thanks for the mention. If anyone on HN wants an invite, just email us at hello [at] launchrock [dot] com and mention that you heard about it from Hacker News.
Advice wise, we've found that the pages work really well, and not just for us, but it does require for you to spend some time thinking about the design, your messaging, and more importantly, how you'll get people there in the first place. It's kind of an amplifier of sorts.
Anyway, we'll have some great data to share, but we're just trying to get to/through SXSW right now.
We're concerned about that as well. The basic game dynamic that we're employing will only go so far. The key is to enable interested parties to share with other people who will also be interested. There's a lot of ways you can do that, and we're thinking hard about them.