As a startup, what are your must-have sections for a landing page?

Everything depends on the audience, but I tend towards speaking to what the audience cares about and that often isn’t features but instead the problems those features solve. I really want to show the audience that I actually understand their problem.

I like the Storybrand method a lot:

https://www.amazon.com/Building-StoryBrand-Clarify-Message-C...

Getting the hero section right w/ how my solution will make the audience’s life better and the next step for them to take is important, too.

A clear description of what the product actually does with no metaphors, humor attempts, introducing animal bunnies or "Laser Optical Vertex" and "Segregated Cloud Optimizer", or unnecessary synergizing-360-transformation bullshit. I try not to be dumb in my life, but sometimes I'll read a landing page on something in my domain and I, for the life of me, can't figure out what it does. Just call things by what they do.

Clear copywriting and messaging that will resonate with people having the problem. I've had so many conversations with prospective customers and users and it is helpful to get the messaging clear, because when you start talking and describing problems they just had to deal with that morning and their eyes open wide open and burst out laughing and cover their heads or they tell you "Oh my! Yeah, it's horrible!", you know you're onto something. You then shave off anything that's superfluous to get to that reaction faster.

Shaving off syllabes, as comedians like to say or "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." to quote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

I can ignore most things if I understand what the product does. If it's something useful and valuable, I don't care if the site is designed with basic HTML/CSS. I don't care. I can make the effort to try and sign-in, get on the list, track down people behind it and emailing them to figure things out, I'll do what it takes.

I'd distinguish features vs benefits. Highlight the benefits first = what do I get by using your tool (e.g. save time by...). Then the features later, how does it works (e.g. 1 click sync...).

Social proof if you have it great, if you don't just skip it and add it later.

Julian Shapiro put together a really solid guide on this exact topic that I highly recommend reading. We followed this pretty closely at my last co and it performed well (devtools product).

https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/landing-pages

As a startup, some must-have sections for our landing page have been the following:

-A clear and compelling value proposition that explains the benefits of our product or service

-Social proof, such as customer testimonials or case studies, to build credibility and trust

-A visual design that is consistent with our brand and helps convey our message effectively

-A simple and effective call to action that guides visitors to take the next step

We recently hired a Blockchain page (https://www.ratherlabs.com) to help us build our web3 project, and they were able to incorporate all of these elements into our landing page. Their expertise in web3 technologies and user experience design was invaluable in creating a landing page that effectively communicates our message and converts visitors into customers.

If appropriate, a frictionless way to try the product.

For example, it could be a link to a page where people can play with your interface. If you have a low-code or an analytics product, generate some fake data and let me play with them by, e.g., dragging and dropping stuff, experimenting with menus, making dashboards, etc.

You can put a CTA there to let people register and explore their own data on your free or trial (no CC) account.

To put it differently, unless you are an established player with an amazing value proposition, don't force me into creating an account and/or giving you my CC number just to try your stuff.

For an ecommerce business, products. For SaaS? Maybe the time saving aspect. For direct to consumer focused brands, other things... This varies so much and there's really not a lot in common between different products, services, markets, etc. I'd suggest testing – running testing with users, find what they're missing.

I don't know why testimonials are so underrated, use testimonials. Potential customers want to know WHO has used your product. Any big companies? Any famous users?

I feel that the only products that avoid testimonies are the ones who don't have too many users.

Dev blog / dev milestones / product roadmap?

Testimonials