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.