HOT: Don't do it!!!

How do you know when someone is serious about succeeding in this industry? When they go from an awful splash to a powerful thing of beauty like this splash page in the course of weeks. It shows dedication, both from the fact that he's obviously searched for, and found, a mentor; and that he's doing as he's told. The results are stunning, and if it was my place to do so, I'd give him a medal (though the money that will be made in the coming months will probably be more appreciated anyway :)).

Great job - the splash catches the eye, and immediately triggers an instinctive strong emotional response in the brain, which is an innovative idea that I don't really recall ever having seen yet. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people that surf without looking on a normal basis will find themselves scrolling down and reading the page (or at least a few lines of it) before they even realize that they're doing it.

I think that the bottom portion of the splash (not shown here, sorry) can still use some work, but after such a drastic improvement, I look forward to seeing what's next.

Seen first today at TS25

HOT: Caveman discovered the rock... and the laptop!

This is a great eyegrabber. It's cute and funny and that's the top priority a splash page needs to meet.

However, I don't know that I'd actually opt-in (despite the TRUSTe seal, which is a VERY powerful trust enhancer, and the "We haven't discovered spam" which is funny & trust building) for the form for a number of reasons. It's vague - I'm not sure what kind of information is being offered beyond "Make money online". Big friggen, whoop.

It's also a bit overdone. The smile face, the person (this is important for personal branding - but it's just adding to an already over-busy splash), the arrow and the money.

It's a great start and I think with a couple of bullets in the top-right part of the splash it can still be fixed

Seen first today at I Love Hits

HOT: I know you - you're the Ketchup guy!

Here's an example of great audio marketing. Do you all remember Paul, the Rice & Ketchup (above the headline, in reeed) guy? Apparantly I do. I was surfing and came across this site and saw abvsolutely nothing interesting about the page, so I clicked on. But as my hand was going for the button, I heard a familiar voice, and though my eyes were moving on, my ears picked up on that and my brain said "Hey, that's Paul the Ketchup Guy!"

So good work - 3 months of telling the world about rice & ketchup has marketed you (well, your voice) really well!

Seen first today at TS25

Update (1 hour later): So I was looking for a link to the ketchup and rice page (I found it here), and it turns out that it's not even the same Paul! Foolish me. But that doesn't make the audio branding any less effective.

HOT: Where do you stand?

Another classic example of a good use of splash pages. Anyone who's been around the TE industry for the past 3 months should only need to glance at this for a moment to think "TrafficEra" (it's branded in case you haven't been around that long - or have just been living under a rock). But it's different enough to grab attention which is what a splash is supposed to do. Good call to action, slick graphics. No personal branding, but hey - not every splash needs to do that. I like :)

Seen first today at Traffic Splash

NOT: I can type not english good

C'mon folks. The only reason I noticed this at all is because someone probably set this to 10 at TrafficEra. I don't have a problem with your not knowing English, but you have to realize that people looking at your site are native english speakers, and bad english projects unprofessionalism to them. If you've got something else to make up for it, good - but all you've got going for you in this splash is the text, so if you screw it up, you've got nothing!

Seen first today at TrafficEra

UPDATE: Apr-2-08

I just saw this again (at TS25) and was very pleasantly surprised to see a face and a name. The english is still bad, but now there's personal branding which makes a big difference. It's now HOT as far as I'm concerned. I can hope that this was due to seeing my post :)

HOT: Cindy Battye's a Copy Cat!

Fortunately for her, she's copying from herself - taking a good idea and making it better! I refer to, of course, the new spash page she has for TrafficBunnies which is a twist on the personalized splash page that I raved about last week. Unfortunately, my browser crashed whilst writing this (the first time) so I lost the URL. Feel free to post a pointer if you see this, Cindy!

Seen first today at TrafficEra

NOT: A 2 Year Birthday Celebration

This has annoyed me for a while (but it's harder to get NOTs than HOTs because I tend to instinctively click on so fast). I really don't understand how Traffic Roundup could possibly be celebrating their 5th birthday now, given the copyright notice at the bottom of the page (Copyright (c) 2006). Either their 5th birthday was in 2006 and they're still keeping this outdated splash up, or they started in 2006 and the 5th birthday isn't until 2011 (and I haven't been active in the TE community long enough to know one way or the other, but I assume the former is the correct assumption)

In all due fairness, I'm going to assume this is a really well converting splash which would explain why it's up, but still, I have a bone with such an obviously outdated ad - personally, it turns me off of the exchange because it subconciously associates them with "liar" in my head, regardless of their intentions. (NOTE, I'm not out to call the TE owner - or anyone else - a liar. I'm just stating what initially went through my head the first time I saw this splash...)

Seen first today at Traffic Era