Draft Content for New Bitshares.org HomePage

[cass]

BitShares: The World's First Real Decentralized Crypto Currency Exchange

Switch that to

BitShares:The World's First Blockchain Currency Exchange



For some reason, people like and react well to the word "blockchain."  They don't react as well to "crypto currency" and "decentralized."  However, the term "blockchain" implies these things.

So much of changes... I remember 3 in last 2 months..
It looks like search in dark... why do not to a/b test (i mean slogans, messages, pictures etc..)? Conversion rate matter.

These are the next steps stay tuned ... this time it will be a good one!

[21xhipster]

BitShares: The World's First Real Decentralized Crypto Currency Exchange

Switch that to

BitShares:The World's First Blockchain Currency Exchange



For some reason, people like and react well to the word "blockchain."  They don't react as well to "crypto currency" and "decentralized."  However, the term "blockchain" implies these things.

So much of changes... I remember 3 in last 2 months..
It looks like search in dark... why do not to a/b test (i mean slogans, messages, pictures etc..)? Conversion rate matter.

[bytemaster]

I'm gonna back up Empirical here. Who can BitShares help? What do they need from it? How does it help them solve their specific problem or address their specific need? Make specific landing pages for traders, remittances, savers, libertarians, etc. Each one of those niches should be worth millions. No need to explain the whole ball of wax to everyone, though this explanation is available if they choose to delve deeper. Just show them how this can help them fill their need or solve their problem. As they use it, they will discover its other features in time.

Niche marketing. Specific landing pages. Boom, you're done. There's your marketing. No need to explain this whole freaking thing to everyone.

Ding Ding Ding... you have discovered the purpose of my blog.  I will be increasingly writing articles to pitch BitShares to different audiences. 

[donkeypong]

I'm gonna back up Empirical here. Who can BitShares help? What do they need from it? How does it help them solve their specific problem or address their specific need? Make specific landing pages for traders, remittances, savers, libertarians, etc. Each one of those niches should be worth millions. No need to explain the whole ball of wax to everyone, though this explanation is available if they choose to delve deeper. Just show them how this can help them fill their need or solve their problem. As they use it, they will discover its other features in time.

Niche marketing. Specific landing pages. Boom, you're done. There's your marketing. No need to explain this whole freaking thing to everyone.

[Empirical1.1]

What do people think of Dwolla? https://www.dwolla.com/

That's an example I kind of like.

- Clear, succinct  pitch with a call to action and learn more option
- Then it funnels target markets.

Then you scroll down and see a few more key points.

(Edit: Nice that we're 25X cheaper than their main selling point )

I love this type of page, clean simple and easy for anyone in any of the above groups to find what they want quickly.

Yeah, as I just said on NullStreet, my personal feeling is that we do have a couple of specific niches so just focusing on one or trying to be everything to all people on the one page is a mistake. The more I think about it the more we will need something like Dwolla

https://www.dwolla.com/

With funnels for 'individuals', 'businesses' 'traders' & 'remittance'

Or perhaps 'Decentralized Exchange' in place of 'traders.'

Their sell is

The best way to move money.

No percentages. No hidden fees. Just 25¢ per transaction or free for transactions $10 or less.

'Create an account'

Ours by similar comparison might be something like...

The best way to save, trade and move money

Send money anywhere in less than ten seconds for just 1¢ per transaction. No Hidden fees. Hold balances & earn interest in any major currency, incl. gold, silver and oil. All while maintaining your privacy.

'Create an account'

------------------

(A thread on Bitcointalk today also reminded me what a big market remittances were and that our dollar stable, 10 second, 1¢ transactions + the offramps John Underwood is working on means BitUSD will be the superior option there and it's probably worth having a remittance funnel too...)

[clayop]

https://github.com/bytemaster/bytemaster.github.io/blob/master/home.html

There is some discussion on this happening on nullstreet.

Instead, we need to distill out what we can sell.  So far, that's BitAssets with yield, the distributed exchange, and on blockchain hiring opportunities.  These are what we should explain on the site.

Those really ARE our main selling points. Great post.

 

[carpet ride]

https://github.com/bytemaster/bytemaster.github.io/blob/master/home.html

There is some discussion on this happening on nullstreet.

Instead, we need to distill out what we can sell.  So far, that's BitAssets with yield, the distributed exchange, and on blockchain hiring opportunities.  These are what we should explain on the site.

Those really ARE our main selling points. Great post.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Gentso1]

What do people think of Dwolla? https://www.dwolla.com/

That's an example I kind of like.

- Clear, succinct  pitch with a call to action and learn more option
- Then it funnels target markets.

Then you scroll down and see a few more key points.

(Edit: Nice that we're 25X cheaper than their main selling point )

I love this type of page, clean simple and easy for anyone in any of the above groups to find what they want quickly.

[pseudoscops]

What do people think of Dwolla? https://www.dwolla.com/

I like the Dwolla homepage on the whole. But I'd be keen to avoid the 'Learn more' button up there next to the main CTA (i.e. one choice not two). If there's support for a 'Learn more' button then I'd at least suggest we split test and monitor conversion rates. My feeling is that it'd be best to give people the link to download/create account and the information that allows them to easily create an account. Nothing else initially above the fold. The points we've been working on above should be written in such a way that they compel the user to want to download and install without any further information. We want to encourage impulse account creation as soon as possible. Not encourage visitors to read a long whitepaper and then maybe create and account if they get to the end of it. That said I do think there is a need for Whitepapers too.

I think a page similar to Dwolla's learn more - with a comparison table would be useful somewhere on the site. It's the sort of page people will find after creating an account when they've decided that they do actually want to learn more about the details of what BitShares is.

I think it'd also make sense that after the download stage we should encourage a range of social media activities. Ask people to do one of the following: tweet, facebook post, Tumblr post or email form that allows them to reccomend BitShares to friends. This would be entirely optional but should have an incentive. Perhaps 10,000 BTS prize draw or free beer given away every month. I'd suggest we split test this too (i.e. with and without and see which path generates the most users).

Many moons ago I once developed a mechanism to encourage viral loops like this using free beer on a small marketing site for a large international beer brand. The incentive was three crates if beer given away every month awarded from a random prize draw for anyone who'd completed a played a game on the site and performed some form of viral activity after playing the game. Within a month we had hundreds of thousands of users register to play the game. People like free beer 

I think below the fold having the option to find out information relevant to Merchants, Gateways, Investors is a good idea, as with the Dwolla example. But no other information, just links to those more tailored landing pages.

When marketing to those segments gears up then we'd direct traffic to those landing pages for those audiences, rather than the homepage.

The homepage should be all about the end users who have a need for the BitShares products e.g. Banking with privacy and security etc etc. Information for Investors and Merchants needs to be kept off the Homepage IMHO.

[James212]

My quick  take:

Secure
Being fully decentralized there are no centralized companies holding customer funds with a giant target on their back  becoming a giant target for hackers.  With BitShares you can take security into your own hands and not worry about a bank holiday. your funds are secure from hackers and and even bank failures. 


No limits
Being decentralized   For customers, not being beholden to a central authority means there are no withdraw limits.  You can trade or withdrawal any amount, at any time, from anywhere.  Any one can create an account regardless of citizenship and without any identification.


Maximize Privacy
With BitShares no one has to know knows your balance and there are no FBAR requirements.  The blockchain isn't going to file any forms with your local tax collectors, that is left in your hands.

Low Fees
Say goodbye to 0.5% trading fees. BitShares has a fixed fee per transaction of just $0.01, this means that you can trade any amount for the same price. 

Trade Anything
Unlike centralized exchanges that tend to focus on one or two national currencies, BitShares will allow you to trade in Gold, Sliver, Gas, and Oil in addition to all of your favorite national and crypto currencies. 


Fast
Just because it is decentralized doesn't mean it cannot be  This decentralized exchange is as quick and easy to use as any traditional exchange.  Trades execute amazingly quick - in less than 10 seconds from the time you place your order.   

[Empirical1.1]

What do people think of Dwolla? https://www.dwolla.com/

That's an example I kind of like.

- Clear, succinct  pitch with a call to action and learn more option
- Then it funnels target markets.

Then you scroll down and see a few more key points.

(Edit: Nice that we're 25X cheaper than their main selling point )

[werneo]

I literally think that this list/or some version of it is all that should be on the homepage. Take a look at these top websites:

https://www.tumblr.com/
https://asana.com
https://twitter.com/
https://www.paypal.com/
https://www.netflix.com
https://www.linkedin.com
https://www.pinterest.com

Each one of the above examples has minimal information on their homepage and one very obvious call to action to download or sign up - all of this above the fold. We should do something similar. You see this pattern with many successful online brands that require account creation. Don't give visitors the option to get side tracked or bored.

We should use the left hand side of the page above the fold for the points. Perhaps  the points could appear carousel style as they probably won't all fit on for standard desktop view, or just jquery fade in and out from one set of points to the next. The right hand portion of the screen should be reserved for a very obvious call to action button. A big download/create account button and perhaps a short youtube video taking you through the steps required to set up an account once you've installed the wallet. Seeing the wallet in action will show people it's a real working piece of software. A real distributed bank and exchange. We could auto-detect the platform (OSX, Win, Linux) so there is just one big button and not many. That's it. Everything else can be setup on specific landing pages (e.g. merchant specific stuff, whitepapers etc etc).

Within the format I've suggested above we should then start doing some A/B testing for the copy/order of the points, perhaps the videos (A/B test some of Max's longer BitsharesTV interviews)  and A/B the text used on the Wallet button download (e.g. Download Wallet, Open Account, Get Wallet etc...) and compare conversion rates based on these A/B experiments.

Yesterday we got 854 visitors (up from our usual 400-500 visitors):

https://clicky.com/stats/?site_id=100787377&date=2015-01-05

In the last 24 hours bitsharesblocks.com is reporting that we have had 40 new accounts created. That is a conversion rate of 4.6% visits to actual accounts - this isn't too shabby, but I'd wager it would be higher if we had a homepage that led people by the hand a little more and put downloading and installing the wallet in order to create an account right there first and front and centre.

Long term I would suggest that some web based sign up would be even better for conversions instead of pushing a download of the full client. I'm assuming some of the tech from the lightweight clients could be leveraged to make this possible on the main site eventually?

I'd be happy to consider working with Cass and Adam to make all this happen if it needs someone to code and project manage it. If BM and the team feel they need my help here then just ask. I'm spending so much time on this forum I may as well put some of my skills to use.

Anyway here's my mashup of all the suggestions, including some of my own. A little longer, but with the right design and optimization of the important one's, via A/B testing, I think we'd start to see better conversions from visitors to actual BitShares accounts. This as Adam mentioned is a very important KPI.

BitShares
The Decentralised Bank & Exchange

Secure
Ditch fractional reserve banking, risky centralised exchanges & fraudulent accounting.
Your balances are always 100% accountable & secured by an average of 300% collateral that's fully transparent and viewable in real time.

Maximise privacy
With BitShares your account is completely private. No personal details are required.

Low fees
Our fixed fee of $0.01 for any transaction or trade is one of the lowest in the world.

Earn Variable Interest
Balances earn a variable interest rate. Currently averaging APR X%

Fast
Transactions & trades execute in less than ten seconds.

Broad Selection
Keep balances in any major national currency or crypto-currency as well as gold, silver, oil & many more.

Decentralized
BitShares is simultaneously located in many countries at once, so it can never be shut down.

No Limits
Being decentralized means there are no withdraw limits.  You can trade any amount, at any time, from anywhere. 

Inclusive
Any one can create an account regardless of citizenship and without any identification.

Revolutionary
Remember how peer-to-peer file sharing revolutionized the film & music industry? The world of banking and finance is now evolving too! Get a wallet and see what all the excitement is about.

            Any Currency. Any amount. Anywhere. Anytime.

 

I hereby nominate  pseudoscops for Marketing Dir.

One thing: Maximise privacy = A Britishism. For a US audience, should be: maximize

[davidpbrown]

Following from what pseudoscops suggests.. I wonder that most important is finding ways to reach beyond those who are looking to find BitShares. The usual crypto-crowd is all very well but must we rely on Bitcoin and others to engage mainstream? If there are opportunities to get outside our comfort zone and promote well beyond the normal space, we might get an advantage from that.

Does BitShares have advertising - adverts places all over the internet, with a mind to targeting everyone?

[Empirical1.1]

I like pseudocops input of minimum info main page and call to action.

The rest of the input sounds good & well reasoned too. I don't know a lot about designing a good webpage myself.

I think we should focus more on being a decentralized exchange, rather than a decentralized bank. There's not really any (conscious) demand for a decentralized bank, but there's plenty of demand for a decentralized exchange. I much prefer pitching bitshares as a decentralized exchange first and foremost, that also happens to work as a decentralized bank.

I disagree. There's a huge demand, there just isn't a mainstream option yet. A lot of potential catalysts in place - negative interest rates, highly inflationary currencies, bail-ins & government over-reach. It will take a while to position ourselves as a viable mainstream option but Bank & Exchange for sure imo. 

The option they're looking at on NullStreet I think is to funnel people to three sections from the main page - individuals, merchants and traders. That could be a good idea and let us market to three specific groups. Each one potentially huge in it's right. No reason to miss out two of them imo and bank doesn't detract too much from exchange offering. Personally I think it's nice to have both.

[pseudoscops]

Also is there still an ETA for secure messaging? I think that would be a great point to be able to add to the mix. That's a product that many people really want. It could bring them in to BitShares before a distributed exchange and bank service would.