CRO breakdown of Modest Mouse's fan membership click-through landing page. How Apexure used dark aesthetic, immersive scroll, and benefit-led sections to sell exclusive access.
What is ConvertScore™? ConvertScore™ is Apexure's proprietary landing page performance metric. We evaluate every page across four dimensions — Copy & Messaging, Layout & Hierarchy, Trust & Social Proof, and CTA & Conversion Path — to produce a single score out of 100.
The Modest Mouse Ice Cream Party membership is a premium fan offer — exclusive access, early entry, physical merchandise, unreleased content. The challenge wasn’t communicating what’s included; it’s making each benefit feel worth the ask.
A list of bullet points would kill this conversion. The page needed to put each benefit in its own visual context, give it weight, and build cumulative desire as the visitor scrolls. That’s what the section-per-benefit structure achieves.
The deep space dark aesthetic with floating orbs and scattered abstract shapes creates the page’s emotional atmosphere before a single benefit is read. The background communicates ‘premium, exclusive, otherworldly’ — which is exactly the register the Modest Mouse brand occupies. This isn’t generic dark-page design; it’s brand-specific world-building.
for each benefit header — “Early entry to venues before general admission”, “New & unreleased songs, never before seen live footage, livestreams, & more” — function as visual anchors. The type is large enough that the benefit registers peripherally before the visitor’s eyes focus on it. This creates a scanning experience that conveys value even to visitors who aren’t reading carefully.
The exclusive T-shirt visual — a real product shot of the exclusive tour tee — appears first and does disproportionate work. Physical merchandise creates tangibility in what is otherwise a digital purchase. Seeing the actual shirt shifts the membership from abstract access to concrete ownership. We positioned this as the opening benefit rather than an afterthought.
The “JOIN US” CTAs appear after each benefit section rather than only at the top and bottom of the page. For a membership offer with multiple distinct benefits, this is important: a visitor might be completely sold by the early entry benefit and not need to read about unreleased content at all. Placing a CTA after each section captures those early-converting visitors.
The live performance video provides evidence that the concerts are genuine premium experiences. No amount of copy can communicate the atmosphere of a Modest Mouse show as effectively as 10 seconds of real footage. We configured the embed for auto-mute with visual autoplay so it doesn’t jar the visitor but starts building atmosphere immediately.
The section-per-benefit structure transforms scrolling from a chore into a reveal. Each scroll down is another reason to join. This mirrors the structure of a great sales conversation: here's something you want, here's something else you want, here's something more. Desire builds with each section — and the CTA appears when it's highest.
For an events membership, trust operates differently than in B2B or finance. The visitor already trusts the artist — they’re a fan. What this page needs to build is confidence that the membership delivers on its promises. The live performance video provides that confidence by showing real experience quality. The T-shirt product shot shows real physical quality. The specificity of each benefit description (“unreleased songs, never before seen live footage”) signals that the promises are tangible, not vague.
"For fan memberships, artist affinity does the trust work that social proof does in other categories. Fans already trust the band. The page's job is to prove the membership is worth the money — which means showing real product, real footage, real exclusivity. Every claim has to be backed by something visual."
Read more about how we approach trust signals in our guide to Landing Page Call to Action Tips.
The "Chat with us and The Ice Cream Party Community" section at the bottom converts the membership from a transaction into a community. Belonging is a more powerful motivator than access. Adding the community dimension at the end of the page — after benefits have been established — closes with an emotional appeal that reinforces the practical value built earlier.
This is a click-through page — the CTA goes to a membership purchase or checkout rather than a form. The key strategy is cumulative desire: by the time the visitor reaches the bottom of the page, they’ve seen five distinct benefits, each compelling in its own right. The CTA at that point is relief, not pressure — the visitor is ready to act and just needs the button.
"Good click-through pages don't push — they pull. By the time the visitor reaches the final CTA, they should have convinced themselves. The page's job is to show them enough benefits, in enough detail, that clicking feels like the natural conclusion of what they've just experienced."
Unbounce handled the dark aesthetic, video embed, and section-per-benefit structure elegantly. The floating orb decorative elements were added as CSS animations, keeping the page fast despite the rich visual treatment.
Fan membership pages are browsed and bought on phones — often immediately after a show or while planning to attend. We verified that all benefit sections were legible at mobile width, the video autoplayed correctly on iOS, and the “JOIN US” buttons were large enough for easy thumb access in low-light conditions (i.e., at a venue).
Rich dark-aesthetic pages with video can load slowly if not optimised. We used lazy loading for the video embed, compressed the T-shirt product image, and kept the animated background elements as lightweight CSS rather than video loops. The result is a page that feels premium but loads fast.
Three changes would strengthen this page’s performance:
This page nails the aesthetic register and the benefit-per-section structure. The live video footage and physical merchandise image are strong trust anchors. The score reflects opportunities to add urgency (countdown timer) and social proof (member count) that would help close hesitant visitors more effectively.
Browse our full collection of landing page examples to see how we apply these principles across industries. Want a fan membership or events page that converts? Talk to our team.
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The Ice Cream Party is Modest Mouse's fan membership programme. Members get early entry to venues before general admission, an exclusive t-shirt designed for the tour, access to new and unreleased songs, live footage, livestreams, and a private fan community. The landing page exists to convert curious fans into paying members before they navigate away to compare options.
Oversized type serves a specific function on an events page: it creates an emotional register that matches the live music experience. When text is this large, it functions more like a concert poster than a web page — it communicates atmosphere before it communicates information. This is intentional. The aesthetic primes the visitor for the scale of the experience being offered.
Each scroll section of this page presents a single benefit with a visual, a label, and a clear CTA. This structure prevents the page from becoming a list — instead, each benefit gets its own moment. The 'EXCLUSIVE T-SHIRT', 'EARLY ENTRY', 'RARE TRACKS & MORE' sections work like slides in a live presentation: one thing at a time, with the next thing revealed by scrolling.
A ticket page needs to close a transaction quickly — price, date, buy. A fan membership page needs to build desire across several benefits before asking for commitment. The visitor needs to feel the value of the membership exceeding its cost before they click. This requires more space, more visual evidence of the benefits, and a CTA that appears after — not before — the benefits have been laid out.
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Founder & CEO of Apexure, Waseem worked in London's Financial Industry. He has worked on trading floors in BNP Paribas and Trafigura, developing complex business systems. Waseem loves working with Startups and combines data and design to create improved User Experiences.
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"Events pages have to do something most landing pages don't: they have to make the visitor feel something. You're not selling features — you're selling an experience they haven't had yet. Every design decision has to earn emotional buy-in, not just communicate information."