Are your landing pages lacking that special something?

I took a rare trip to Starbucks this morning, faced with an empty fridge and hungry children who had to be fed before school.  

There was a time not so long ago when my visits to Starbucks were daily. I was a regular for many years and gladly stood in line to wait for my brew, chatting with the team behind the counter who not only knew my name but how my kids were doing in school and my plans for the weekend. What drew me back everyday? It might have been the coffee, the pastries, the people, the location, or none of these things at all. Was it the smell of fresh coffee (now gone the wayside to the automatic machines and pre-bagged beans)? Or the constantly changing, seasonal merchandise bursting off the shelves, begging me to buy something I definitely didn’t need? I honestly don’t know—it was just part of my morning ritual. It was a pleasant experience, one I looked forward to. My local Starbucks was hustling & bustling, bursting with activity and ‘newness’ everyday. It felt like a place where people cared about your experience. It was filled with that special Starbucks essence. 

These days I visit one a month, if that.  Just as I don’t know what kept me going back everyday, I don’t really know what sent me away. My trips just became less and less frequent until they became rare. And now when I step into my local Starbucks everything is the same, and everything is different. The same shelves, just stocked differently. The same pastry case, just filled with a few new things. Different faces behind the bar, doing the same familiar things all the other baristas in the world are doing. Same floor, same counter, just not as sparkly clean as they used to be. While the similarities to my old Starbucks are very apparent, it’s the differences that keep me away. 

When I do occasionally pop into Starbucks (usually now only prompted by my lack of breakfast for the kids) my mind wanders to these similarities and differences. I try to put my finger on the defining difference, and I can’t. This morning as my mind was pondering how & why that special ‘something’ has waned, I realized my Starbucks is a lot like an untended landing page. It might look & act like a landing page, but maybe it’s been running for a year and hasn’t been updated. Maybe it’s a formulaic replica of ever other landing page out there on the planet. Maybe it was launched in haste and never tested. Maybe it’s just lacking that special something that shows someone cares about the user’s experience. 

Are the shelves a little dusty on your landing pages? 

I have a lot of time to ponder these things when I visit my neighborhood Starbucks because the line is shorter and the wait is a lot longer, and I can’t for the life of me figure that one out!

Comments

[Jeff Ogden]

Keeping things fresh and making it a compelling experience are critical elements of a coffee house or a website. Way too many are static and rarely change. I rarely go to Starbucks anymore either.

Google does not like unchanged pages (doesn't rank them) nor do prospective customers like to see the same boring stuff over and over. It is the process -- the experience -- that truly matters. Make it fresh and compelling every time.