5 ways to improve dapp landing pages
Dappradar is privileged in that we have team members that peviously spent years working in the mobile application industry. People, who witnessed first hand the app and mobile game revolution and watched as developers clambered for space in a crowded market.
People with knowledge and experience in the factors most important to the dapp space right now – user onboarding, retention, and the monetization of active users.
We want to share this information with dapp developers in the hope that they can position themselves for the best success and do everything within their power to achieve their goals.
A landing page is potentially the first point of contact a potential user or customer will encounter and the place dapp developers will endeavor to drive all traffic. So – its a pretty big deal.
At DappRadar we see a lot of examples, ranging from the utterly useless, to absolutely awesome. Some developers seem to have grasped that if they are to on-board a user that the first point of contact must be slick, fast, relevant, and explain what is going on!
We are going to break down some of the key features of a successful landing page able to convert potential users into customers whilst all the time keeping focus on the objectives and delivering the core message.
There are numerous quotes in life about making assumptions and at DappRadar it has become apparent to us that many of the mistakes we observe are caused by dapp developers simply assuming that the audience knows everything they know. A huge assumption!
Video Content
The use of engaging video content on a landing page that quickly shows the direct benefits of being involved is a surefire way to grab people’s attention. Ideally, that video should be no longer than 45 seconds. “45 seconds” I hear you cry, “how do we condense months of hard work into 45secs! No way…”
Yes, way – the average attention span of a human being in 2013 was just 8 seconds! Correct – less than a goldfish! We dare not search for more up to date results for fear of the answer in 2020.
Dapp developers should be looking to show the dapp to the potential user, show the fun, the benefits, show the user a reason to engage with you and your dapp. Put the video you create in front of a variety of people before you finalize it, utilize differently aged and gender people, and ask them for their feedback. Family and friends can come in handy here.
Actual Gameplay
I know this probably seems way too logical to include in the list, but If your dapp project is a game that is already live and playable then it makes sense to show the gameplay and tease potential users in with your slick graphics and artwork, fast gameplay or unique offering.
If your project has none of these things perhaps it’s at this stage you start to evaluate your efforts.
If you are doing a pre-launch this becomes harder as the ambition here is to sell in-game assets ahead of any actual game being available to play. This appears to be a backward process to the uneducated, in reality, this has proved a trendy way of funding dapp projects from the beginning (Gods Unchained) and building a strong community around it.
But how the hell do you get potential users excited about something that doesn’t actually exist yet? Dapp developers could try the BitConnect methodology… but I think we all know how that will end.
If the project is still in development and you are trying to drive users to early purchase then the goal should be to show the user what the potential benefits to being involved early are.
How will their early purchase give them an advantage over other users? How will the purchase potentially rise in value? Perhaps the offerings are completely unique and will never be available again?
Communicate these facts, concisely, and in an engaging way. Think bullet points, rather than big paragraphs of jargon-filled text. Videos showing the store can work here and combined with the use of great audio can attract potential users.
Note how with the sound turned off the video loses quite a lot of its impact. The use of familiar ‘winning’ sounds here has turned the flipping of a digital card into an event!
Combined with the fact the cards you might get could be special, this all works in the dapps favor.
Speed
The loading speed of your landing page can have a huge impact on user retention and conversion. It pays here to focus on a load speed that is acceptable to gamers and app users currently – yes, we know, that’s fast! But that is who you are competing with.
Look at those numbers! There is still a 32% chance of losing a potential user if the landing page takes more than 3 seconds to load! The moral of the story? People are very impatient.
One tactic we’ve seen used successfully is to allow the user to actually ‘do something’ whilst they wait for the required loading. The FIFA franchise introduced a challenge section to the game when the users were waiting for the game to load, keeping them entertained and most of all – engaged.
Playable tutorials and walkthrough videos can keep people engaged whilst they wait, but these obviously have their own impacts on loading speeds.
Mobile Friendly
Given the fact that the majority of the world accesses the web through a mobile device, this would seem far too logical to include in the list. It’s just not that simple.
With dapp games, in particular, we are dealing with projects that liken themselves to desktop games like those seen on Facebook in the early days and through platforms such as Steam.
Given that fact, it can be strange for the development team to consider mobile a priority here, especially when a lot of dapps are built to only work on a desktop computer. But in our humble opinion, it is just plain wrong to ignore the simple facts of life. If you want to appeal to a big audience, engage with them where they hang out.
Rather than trying to convert them on mobile, engage with them there, and give the potential user a compelling reason to repeat the process once they have access to a desktop computer.
A built-in mechanism to send one’s self an email or social media message to remind them could be useful here.
Language
There are two points to be made here. First is that one of the biggest markets on earth for dapp products simply don’t all speak English. Asia and South America are huge markets and as such, dapp developers must consider them a part of the community.
Having a landing page that translates to simplified Chinese/Spanish would be an excellent starting point and for those projects residing in Asia and South America trying to communicate with the rest of the world, you guessed it. Just reverse the order and offer English translations.
For the savvier of you out there, you may now be thinking about social media logins for the dapp – yes, you need to integrate WeChat, but we’ll get to that later.
The second and equally important point is the current overuse of tech-specific language, particularly in dapp games. We would like dapp developers to create a list of ‘dirty words’, here is ours:
- Mint
- Burn
- Blockchain
- Smart contract
- ERC 20
- Token
- Crypto
These words are literally irrelevant as all they do is describe the underlying technology. Instead, consider how to make them more in line with your offer and appealing. Mint can become ‘create’ for example. To prove the point, please take a look at a list of similar ‘dirty words’ that used to be associated with what we now call, the Internet.
- Modem
- Dial-up
- Bandwith
- RAM
- ROM
- CPU
- Plug&Play
Words are words, and actions are actions. Let’s not forget the core message here: People, generally, don’t care what’s happening in the background, they care if it works and if it will make their life better or easier.
Keeping user experience and journey at the heart of decision making when building a landing page is very important. Furthermore taking the time to consider and analyze how that landing page will actually convert users before the day of launch is vital.
At DappRadar we have witnessed many times a situation where a project has been promoting a launch or event for weeks/months and then 10 mins before the big moment the landing page breaks or simply won’t load due to the high volume of visitors.
The result – weeks of hard work down the drain. Unless a strong community and quick fix are available that is.
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