Somebody, somewhere, is doing what you are. There’s probably even lots of them. That means you ain’t a special snowflake (hate to break it to you).

You can differentiate on design. On features or service characteristics. However at the end of the day, to an unsuspecting eye, you’re gonna look similar to everyone else.

Getting your landing pages to stand out from the competition and be memorable is critical in today’s saturated world.

Another tactic to try is injecting a piece of yourself (arguably, the only truly unique aspect of what you do).

Dropping in little hints and surprises, like website ‘Easter eggs’, are an easy way to entertain visitors, while at the same time inserting your unique personality to make a lasting impression.

Here’s how.

How ‘Easter Eggs’ Came to Be

During the late 70’s, a lowly video game designer was toiling away at a new game for the Atari 2600. In those early days, no game designers were given public credit for their troubles. There were no cinematic credits that rolled like today, similar to most theatrical productions.

But this man was proud. Satisfied with his work, he craved even the slightest bit of credit and recognition for his craft. So deep in the catacombs of the action game Adventure, the game’s designer buried a tiny treasure for those lucky or clever enough to find it.

When a user performed a very specific action at the right moment, a simple screen would flash with the designer’s credit.

It was actually Atari personnel themselves who first referred to this scenario as an Easter egg when they caught wind of what the designer, Warren Robinett, had done (because of the similarity when users had to ‘hunt’ to find the secret message). Warren is credited with the first deliberate Easter egg in this context. Although, many have since come forward with earlier examples of software designers or programmers making similar moves.

Fast forward to 1985 and Kazuhusa Hashimoto found himself trying to bring over the arcade game Gradius to home consoles on the first-edition NES. Testing was proving difficult, however, because the game was infamously difficult to play.

So Kazuhusa entered a little line of code that would replenish his ‘power-ups’ when he hit: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. When the game went live, Kazuhusa reportedly ‘forgot’ to remove the line of code, giving rise to the Konami Code. It went on to become one of the first true cheat codes that have been used in many different areas since (as we’ll explore in a second).

Putting a creator’s stamp of approval on their work of art was nothing new at the time, however. Think back to Alfred Hitchcock, who legendarily made tiny cameos in all of his major feature films.

Even Walt Disney inserted these tiny gags into early films like Snow White, which originally showed up in 1937. A pair of tiny Mickey ears made out of some bubbles hovering over Dopey’s head. Since then, the Walt Disney Company has become notorious for hiding Mickey’s across Disneyland and other current films. Yes, he even makes an appearance in Frozen (look on the shelves behind Anna when she’s in the trading store).

Beyond amusement, these gags also have an ancillary benefit. They’re an inside joke, a wink-and-a-nod to those ‘in the know’. Parks and Recreation lasted as long as it did (seven years), despite mediocre-to-low ratings for most of it’s run, thanks in large part to their loyal following. It’s no surprise; they used Easter eggs liberally to amuse their rapid following.

At our most fundamental levels, we want to feel like we belong. And a well placed Easter egg is just one easy, tiny way to give your most loyal followers something interesting to enjoy and remember. With a tiny bit of creativity, they’re also insanely easy to pull off. Which means you don’t need any elaborate planning or specialized skills to implement.

Let’s take a look at some current ones to see how you can use this in context.

How to Incorporate Easter Eggs like Google, Asana, Wistia, and More

Easter eggs have become a little more mainstream in recent years compared with the early Atari and NES days. Even Microsoft got in on the action along the way, including a hidden flight simulator and a pinball game in the 1997 versions of Excel and Word respectively.

It should come as no surprise then that Google is perhaps King of Easter Eggs online today. For example, the simple but always delightful barrel roll is one example. Simply type in ‘do a barrel roll’, hit enter, and watch your screen immediately revolve.

Dizzying. And endlessly entertaining.

Another sly favorite is when you Google ‘the loneliest number’ and up pops their calculator, displaying the correct equation:

Asana is another software company that prides itself on including subtle little jokes or gags as a way to make their products more enjoyable (while at the same time showcasing their personality). They have a bunch of examples, like the unicorn that flys across your screen when you complete a task.

However when you hit ‘Tab + B’, you’ll get another random example inspired by a love of their founders:

There’s almost no better example when it comes to competing on personality than Wistia. They pull it off extremely well, which also supports their primary value proposition of making it easier for companies to showcase who they are with video.

However, my favorite is located on their team page. Type out DANCE and hit enter. Music drops unexpectedly, and everyone’s image on the page begins showcasing different dance moves to the beat.

Plenty of other well-known websites today also pay homage to the original Konami Code.

For example, go to Digg and type in the same up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A sequence. (Also make sure you have the music turned WAY up).

Even BuzzFeed gets in on the action, replacing all images and text on a page when you enter the keystrokes.

So far, all of these examples have been fairly elaborate or sophisticated. Fortunately, yours doesn’t have to be.

The end goal here is to simply incorporate personality in place of the same old, boring, expected routine. You can hide your “eggs” everywhere, like in notification messages, and be a little more playful with the execution.

HubSpot showcases this on their Social Publishing tool. For example, when you type out a 140 character tweet (matching that number on the nose), you get this delightful response:

Nothing crazy, but it stands out just the same. Another example happens when you try typing out a tweet that exceeds 500 characters:

Funny in a slightly sarcastic way, yet still mild enough to fly under the radar and not offend anyone.

MailChimp is known for having one of the best brands around. And it’s not by accident. They take personality very seriously, complete with a style guide entitled Voice and Tone that deliberately spells out exactly how their company should look and sound.

When using their product, you’ll see countless examples of their quirkiness come into play. A perfect example that showcases their friendly, clever and slightly snarky sense of humor is one that references ‘alcoholic Vervet monkeys’, linking to the related BBC segment.

My company has even tried to get in on the action with our homepage form, directing visitors who’re interested in our ‘free services’ to something, well… I won’t spoil the surprise.

As you can see, most of these latest examples don’t require a whole lot of extra time or resources. They’re simply taking what’s typical or common, and flipping them on its head. Injecting whimsy into a routine in order to get a tiny rise of out people.

If you’re interested in seeing more examples for inspiration, HubSpot has compiled a great list, while Digital Telepathy also includes some design oriented ones.

Conclusion

Most websites or landing pages today look the same, sound the same, and essentially are the same to a great extent.

That’s not necessarily a knock, as the number of people doing exactly what you do is staggering. You describe yourselves the same (more or less), offer the same products or services (more or less), and typically follow the same design trends too.

What’s harder to copy, though, is You. The unique blend of personalities and behaviors that make up your ‘culture’ and other hard-to-define, yet immensely valuable elements.

Incorporating clever little gags or jokes along the way, taking a page from creators of the past, is one insanely easy way to make your site’s experience (and even your product or service’s experience too) more memorable and enjoyable.

Because the reason people aren’t sharing your posts or talking about you to their friends is that you’ve become nameless and faceless in an effort to be ‘more professional; indistinguishable from everyone else that talks like you do and does what you do.

Being interesting and worth talking about starts by taking small risks to resonate specifically with a small group of people.

Inserting a few Easter eggs along the way can make for an unexpected surprise, driving home the point arguably more efficiently and definitely more cost effectively than any splashy ad campaign.

What about you? Have you ever dropped some Easter Eggs along the way? Share the fun with us!