Let’sLunch’s Landing Page
Let’sLunch helps professionals schedule business lunches. They take information from your social profiles (linkedin, twitter), your location and availablity, run it through their algorithm, and match you up with relevant professionals to have lunch with. Think of it as Match.com + Linkedin + Grubwithus. I Love it. When smart people get together, great things happen!
So for this second project I decided to redesign the landing page.
I was initially going to (attempt to) redesign the dasboard, but before I had started any work, I asked my roommate to check out LetsLunch (he works at a tech company in San Mateo). When I asked whether he was going to sign up, he said no, because he feels like he’s not in an influential position. The site, he says, looks like it’s good for entrepreneurs and CEOs.
And that’s a reason I hadn’t thought of yet that could deter new visitors from signing up. I suppose all those founders, CEO, and venture capitalists would be a bit intimidating to your typical file-and-rank employee. But you know, there’s a lot of file-and-rank types who are smart, with great ideas, who would add value if you can show them the benefits of getting out-and-about.
And so, I felt like improving the landing page was more important.
One thing I noticed was the amount of clickable content on the page.
All those portraits of Lunchers show additional info upon mousover and can be further explored by clicking. Where’s the sign-up button? Nestled between all those clickables. Those press links should open a new window when clicked on as well (they current don’t). Might have lost a few potential conversions who got lost when directed outside the site.
When you scroll down there’s even more Lunchers to steal your attention and a newsfeed! You can even click on those “added to wishlist” or “invite to lunch” actions buttons on the newsfeed, which will prompt you to log in. They may or may not come in handy for members, but it’s definitely distracting to first time visitors. All you want them to do is sign up!
Those Lunchers on the right definitely are a bit intimidating. I saw a lot of VPs, CEOs, founders, and directors upon mouseover. I suppose it’s social proof for powerful, smart people, but let’s be honest, they don’t need any convincing to use a networking tool —it’s the not-as-social/powerful, yet intelligent folks you have to lure out.
What if you’re wondering how this works? You might. LetsLunch was just launched last year and is somewhat of an unique product. It should be somewhere more apparent than a small link in footer.
If you click the sign-up button you’re directed to a page where enter your information. There’s also a twitter widget that shows LetsLunch mentions which occupied me for a bit as I waited to see if anything cool came up. But at this point after I’ve already committed to clicking “sign-up”, you want to block out potential distractions and have just me sign up! Yes, even the “Why you should join” reasons. The users already clicked the sign-up button —they know the benefits —list them on the landing page instead.
My take on what could work better:
I mentioned earlier that maybe file-and-rank types would be overwhelmed by all the influential people, so for this redesign, I want to focus a bit less on the users, keep the site clean, and explain the benefits plainly to attract more casual folks to try networking over lunch.
The only clickable one the first screen (aside from the header) is the sign-up button. The admins will pick a diverse group of members to use for the left portrait. And yes, if you’ve seen Linkedin’s landing page, I was influenced by it.
I extracted a quote from each piece of press (1st and 3rd are dummy quotes) so users get information without clicking. In fact, they don’t even have to be clickable. And below that, a simple how-it-works.
Listing admin selected success stories/testimonials will replace the twitter widget and newsfeed. Could make it 9 testimonials too, but 6 fits perfectly into one screen along with the headline text on my resolution. Also, I remember reading about the human brain only being about to hold 5-7 items at a time, or something. Will have to look it up. So 6 it is, for now.
Tie it up before the footer with a big call-to-action button.
It’d be possible to put VIPs before the footer too. Maybe something like, “Be a Move and Shaker” with a subtitle of “Even our Silicon Valley VIPs are Lunchers.” and a handful of the VIPs right below it. But I’m not convinced that it’d improve conversion rates. Would have to test it to know for sure!
HTML mockup of the site here.
Hit me up if you’ve got comments!
