Chapter 4 of Web Design for ROI is all about landing pages, and it’s the best and most valuable chapter thus far. The chapter starts off with this little gem of a quote:
Enter the custom landing page. It’s a web site’s stand-in for ambassador, concierge, and superstar salesperson rolled into one. It’s been carefully crafted to meet, assist, and convert visitors into customers.
Carefully crafted, mind you. I think a huge problem with landing pages is that they’re slapped together with a feature, a price, and a "Buy" button. You throw this heap of crap together and then wonder why your conversions are so poor. Well, it’s time to get it through your head that a considerable amount of time and effort should be spent on your landing pages. Think about when someone clicks through and ends up on your page. They’ll likely ask themselves, "Is this what I searched for? Does this site look legit or is it just another spammy piece of poo? Is it worth my time to stay on this site?"
You simply need to get out of the "Here’s what I want" mentality and shift to "Here’s what users want." Users are searching for things — products, services, information — and if you happen to appear for that search, you need to deliver and satisfy their expectations should they click on your result. If you don’t, goodbye, they’re off to find someone else who can.
Not only should your landing page satisfy user expectations, it should also reflect your business goals. Do you want to collect contact information? Sell a product? Pitch your services? Whatever your goal, make sure your landing page, sign up procedure, and overall conversion process are constructed with your goal in mind. Establish your goals and get a good mental image of a searcher landing on your page. If he scratches his head, clicks at random stuff, and ultimately leaves, then congratulations, your goal of "I want to confuse and alienate my user" has been fulfilled. Wait, that’s not what you want to accomplish? Well then, back to the drawing board!
Loveday and Niehaus, the authors of Web Design for ROI, discuss some unique issues for landing pages, which I’ll summarize below:
They have to essentially perform the entire sales process. The landing page must offer a product, service, or information, capture your visitor’s attention long enough to pique his or her interest and ultimately want to convert, and entice the user to take action (fill out a form, provide payment, etc). Basically, your landing page has to act as your best salesperson. That’s a lot to ask of one little page.
They have to capture attention very quickly. People skim, scan, and scoot. Your landing page has only a few precious seconds to keep your visitor from hitting the back button.
They’re viewed by a lot of new eyeballs. A lot of new visitors see your landing page compared to your built-in audience. These new people probably aren’t going to know what your site’s about or whether it’s a reputable company.
Now that a landing page’s duties have been made clear, it’s time to go over some design guidelines. The authors provide a lot of great suggestions that I’ll share below. Hopefully you’re already implementing some of these on your site–if not, there’s plenty to test, so take these ideas and implement them on your own landing pages.
Establish credibility. Is your design professional-looking? Are there any formatting or spacing issues? Has your copy been checked for spelling and grammar? Remember that your landing page is your visitor’s first impression of your company. Don’t show up to a date with a dirty shirt–you want to woo, not repulse.
Make sure your design looks professional and is industry-appropriate. The book recommends looking at your competitors’ landing pages and comparing them to your own. Even go so far as to print out the various pages and spread them out on a table to compare them. Keep in mind that while you don’t have to exactly mimic your competitor’s landing page (well, maybe you do if theirs is vastly outperforming yours), you do want your landing page to be industry-appropriate–no flashing boobies on a private school website, no glittery ringtone offers if you’re marketing whitepapers, etc.
Include positive resources and testimonials. Choose a few (emphasis on "few"–don’t clutter your page with 20 testimonials and make it look like a friggin’ love fest) quotes, awards, badges, etc from reputable sources, satisfied customers, and established colleagues, and display them on your landing page.
Make sure nothing’s broken. Does the landing page function or are there broken images and links? How does the page look in various browsers? Remember that a poorly functioning page reflects equally poorly on you–how’s a visitor supposed to have faith in your product if your landing page doesn’t even work properly?
Simplify and separate. Simplify your landing page’s design compared to the rest of your site. As Loveday and Niehaus put it, "Think of a landing page as aplace to showcase your offer, like putting a spotlight on a Lamborghini or surrounding a diamond ring with a swirl of blue velvet." You should eliminate distractions so that your visitor can focus his or her attention on your offer.
Reduce or eliminate navigation. People don’t come to your landing page to check out the rest of your site, they come to see if what you’re specifically offering on that single page aligns with what they’re looking for. Don’t give them ways to exit off the page; instead, provide them with what they’re looking for, and nothing more. It’s kind of like setting a cupcake at your feet and then diving the hell out of the way when a rampaging fat kid lumbers over to take the bait.
Minimize your branding. The authors stress that, on a landing page, "a company’s identity is secondary to the offer." You have limited real estate on your page–don’t waste space with a giant logo or multiple brand images. Keep it simple and small to avoid distractions and to maximize the space that’s available for your offer and benefits.
Think of your landing page as a continuation of your ad. Your AdWords or banner ad should provide a message that is continued onto your landing page. Think of a two-part television episode–the "To Be Continued" end of Part 1 doesn’t lead to a completely different episode in Part 2. Provide searchers with a "consistent, seamless experience."
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you promise free shipping in your ad, your landing page better offer free shipping. Don’t be misleading and offer incentives you have no intent on delivering.
Match your ad’s call to action. Your Google Quality Score will be better if you offer a consistent message on both your ad and your landing page, and users will benefit from the consistency as well. If your ad says "The best printer money can buy," your landing page should say something to the effect of "Introducing the SuperPrint 5000: The Best Printer Money Can Buy." Use the same keywords and phrases in both messages.
Use consistent graphics and images. If your banner ad shows a picture of a frog leaping, use the same image on your landing page. (I think I’m noticing a theme here–do you think consistency is key?)
Keep the language consistent. Don’t be all "Yo yo yo, check out dis pimp sneaker, wassup" on your ad and then have your landing page say something like, "The most luxurious running shoe you’ll have the sublime pleasure of slipping your foot into."
Segment for different audiences/customers. For example, we offer PRO memberships, but what if we offered different packages based on the size and scope of the customer? If we were to offer segmenting options on our landing page that provided paths for a single consultant, a small search marketing firm, and an "enterprise" edition for Fortune 500 companies, we’d probably have a better conversion rate than if all three visitors searched for "seo tools," came to our landing page, and saw a one-size-fits-all offer that would either be too much for the single consultant or too limited for bigger companies.
Personalize to your visitor. If you have an email marketing campaign, use the name of your recipient on your landing page when he or she clicks through from the email ("Hi Jane!"). If you offer state-specific information, use geotargeting to offer up the Washington state landing page when someone from Washington clicks through. Little personal touches like these are simple yet effective.
User fewer but better graphics. As I said earlier, you have limited real estate on your landing page. Don’t waste it with giant, superfluous graphics and images. If you do have a graphic or image, make sure it clarifies or supports your offer. Don’t decorate for the sake of decorating.
Make sure the medium is what’s best for your offer. Don’t have images, charts, videos, and Flash all on your landing page simply because you think that more is better. Do you really need a video demonstration, or are you just annoying visitors and driving them away? You need to be able to justify the medium and determine if it is truly augmenting your pitch.
Speak the customer’s language, not yours. Sometimes visitors are Average Joes, not the CEO of corporate headquarters for your company or industry. Thus, they might search for your product using laymen terms and not the technical jargon you’re used to. This is where keyword research comes in. In order to provide what users are searching for, you have to know what search terms and phrases they’re using.
Emphasize benefits, not features. Loveday and Neihaus stress that "Answering the questions ‘What does my audience truly care about?’ and ‘What problems does my offer solve for my audience?’ will help you write truly compelling copy." Too many landing pages get tripped up on features and end up overlooking their products’ benefits to the searcher. Great, your product comes in electric blue or sea foam green and it can fit in your pocket for easy transportation. But why do I need this product? How will it make my life easier?
Weed out all but the most essential points. Your time and space are limited, so don’t waste your visitor’s time with tons and tons of information. Determine what the most pertinent, relevant questions are and focus on those. (Note: obviously everyone has seen examples of long sales forms converting well. Why not test a short sales page against a long form and see which converts better–after all, the conversion rate is what it boils down to.)
Cover all your bases. Bold words and sentences for the skimmers, include concise but information-rich paragraphs for the readers, and throw in an image for the visually oriented visitors.
Be intelligent about how you display your information. Keep your most important information above the fold. If your landing page requires scrolling, repeat your call to action every couple of paragraphs (once per visual screen). Avoid "false bottoms" at the fold–visitors can miss information if they think they’re at the bottom but there’s actually more information below the fold. Put an image or a paragraph at the fold so users will know that they have to scroll down to continue reading or viewing.
Provide a clear call to action. Here’s where we start the conversion process. You need to make it exceptionally clear as to what your visitor’s next step should be. Don’t use stupid messages in an attempt to be clever–stick with direct, succinct, clear, and to the point words and phrases. "Start Living!" is vague and confusing compared to "Book a Vacation."
Consider providing a secondary call to action. A secondary call to action is a safety net that can potentially catch visitors who aren’t ready to convert but still want to learn more. The secondary call to action should be smaller and less prominent than the primary call to action. An example a primary vs. a secondary call to action is "Add to Cart" vs. "Download a Product Brochure." Other secondary calls to action would be a preview of the product or the option to view the first page of a whitepaper or article. If you do offer a secondary call to action, make sure you track it so that you can follow up on these leads and try to get them to convert to a primary CTA.
Provide offline alternatives. Offer fax information or a phone number in case customers don’t want to provide information via the ‘net.
Don’t request more than the minimum information necessary. Your forms shouldn’t require any superfluous information that will make your users uncomfortable. Web Design for ROI goes more deeply into form optimization in a later chapter, but the general rule is not to create a gigantically long form with information that you don’t actually need to know.
Make your buttons look like buttons, and make sure to optimize them. Generally, buttons have a rectangular or square border around them, and they look clickable. Don’t go against conventions or else you’ll confuse your users. Also, make those suckers noticeable! Don’t make your buttons so small that they get lost within the rest of your landing page’s content. Your buttons should be prominent on your page, and their labels should be concise yet clear and inviting. The book uses a good example of three buttons, one that says "Register," one that says "Register now," and one that says "Get free newsletter." Which of the three do you think is the most enticing? Lastly, your button should, once again, keep the message consistent. If your button promises a free newsletter, link it to a free newsletter.
Geez, there you go. 26 suggestions and tips for your landing pages. Of course, there’s no perfect cookie cutter mold you can stuff your landing page into–different combinations work for different products and different websites. The most important thing to keep in mind about landing pages is that if something doesn’t work, test a variation. Do some A/B or multivariate testing. Have several copies of your landing page and test a change on each one. Secondary calls to action don’t work for you? No problem, get rid of them. Do you yield a great conversion rate from incorporating more images? Fine, throw in some more pictures. The above suggestions aren’t necessarily set in stone–a lot of them are best practices, sure, but many are simple tidbits you can test for yourself.
Now that we’ve gone over some landing page best practices and some suggestions on various layouts and iterations you can test, I’d love to hear if any of you have further suggestions or perhaps would like to share which tips have converted well for you. Let the sharing begin!
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Matt once again hits a home run with this post detailing a conversation he had with a local dry cleaner, and how people should look at the opportunities available to them to create great viral/social post ideas.
Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.
Learning all there is to learn in Search Engine Marketing is no easy feat. There’s no real text book, and if there was it would be outdated right after it was published I’m sure. The best place to get the best information in Search Marketing is from immersing yourself in the blogs of SEO and SEM.
Thankfully, Matt McGee comes to our rescue with the SEMMY’s (note…SEM=search engine marketing, the rest is to give it the Grammy’s feel). This “award ceremony” goes through the best posts in the previous year in the search marketing world. The nice thing is, it gives you a fantastic list of articles to read and get caught up on in any of the following categories:
Matt even made some cool little badges for nominees, which I’m not really into, but I thought I’d branch out a little:
I do think there is a ton to gain from reading the articles being nominated, which I bet you could do in a couple of days. And if you’re really looking for the cream of the crop, the judges are going to be narrowing each category down to a handful of articles (and even letting us vote on them).
Head on over to the SEMMYS for some great reading!
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
This started out as a comment about the post, this month in seo, which is an excellent post with a mediocre headline.As I was writing my thoughts I realised it would be better as a post and to give Van Gogh a link for his effort.Lets leave whether or not this post is linkbait or […] More SEO Tips…. Tags: web 2.0free blogsfree hostingsphinnblogospheredelishio
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
John Carcutt talks about people still placing way to much weight on Google Page Rank. He showcases some great examples on companies offering special discounted services for web pages that have a Page Rank of 5 or better. Its a good read for all that
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
It’s often said that there’s nothing that your competitors can do to your site that would get it penalized or in trouble with the search engines. While this may be true for a mature site, it doesn’t hold for new sites.First Impressions Are CrucialNew sites have little history in the search engines and your […] More SEO Tips…. Tags: free hostingsphinncylonpage rankseoblogospheredelishio
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
In this week’s edition of the video search buzz, I talked about the Yahoo, Google and Live Search tax day updates. I also talked about the new Yahoo slap and a new AdWords slap. Google’s bot is now crawling forms and Yahoo releases Slurp 3.0. Plus many more topics - make sure to watch to win search related schwag!
To win, watch the video and comment at this post below with the correct answer. Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
March 2008 marks the 1 year anniversary of aimClear Blog and WHAT an amazing year it’s been! We covered 7 major SES, SMX, and PhocusWright shows, immersed in Sphinn, I became an ongoing contributor to SearchEngineWatch Blog and recently posted my inaugural article regarding reputation management in SearchEngineLand.This year we took on StumbleTrolls, discussed […] More SEO Tips…. Tags: bloggingmyspacerand fishkinseosem
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Do you know this man?We all know social media is powerful - But how powerful? We want to find out so we have set up a test. This test involves making a video offering $100 to a random stranger pulled from a random social media profile. The catch
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Some of you know that I’ve been working for a while on an advanced SEO suite. I am getting ready to officially launch the beta program and I would like to ask for your help with some of the details.If you want to be the best at what you do, you need to be […] More SEO Tips…. Tags: wordpressweb 2.0free hostingrand fishkinseodelishio
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Yesterday I inaccurately reported that Yahoo’s new minimum bid prices were live. That was wrong. What is live is the new user interface that shows one’s minimum bid. In fact, I showed a screen shot of the location of where Yahoo will show you your new minimum bid:
But, an official Yahoo representative, YahooPete, came to WebmasterWorld to notify us that only the user interface has changes and the new prices have not yet gone live. That honestly surprises me, because I was told the new prices were coming early this week and being Thursday, we are not late this week.
In any event, YahooPete clarified saying:
Since we’re close to launching minimum bid changes, some advertisers may notice user interface changes. We expect the actual bid changes to go live soon.
I will keep watching the space and let you know as soon as I see an update.
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Google Universal Search was launched last summer and while it didn’t go unnoticed within the industry, many brands didn’t seem to realise the potential impact this could have to their websites traffic and sales. But since the new search box within a search feature they now seem to be catching up, I’ve received many questions […]
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
I was amused and a bit irked by this irrelevant and disturbing spam post from a fluff website promoting Wealthy Affiliate. I enjoy reading material plagued with disconnects and false information like this post. You can really learn a lot from both your mistakes and others’.
They attempted to compare The Rich Jerk, SEO Book and Wealthy Affiliate. Of course, since they are an affiliate of Wealthy Affiliate, guess who the BEST company was? The point here is that they did a poor job persuading me that the three subjects are relevant and from the same category.
Here are the disconnects:
1a. Rich Jerk Up-sells 1b. Seobook.com changed its business model and market one product. This was a good move because it eliminated folks who weren’t serious about learning and keeping up with the ever changing world of SEO. 1c. Wealthy Affiliate??? I honestly don’t see how this company is different from hundreds of sites like it.
2a. Rich Jerk offends people as a gimmick. 2b. Seobook.com is praised by Fortune 500 clients, best selling marketing authors, an Ivy League business professor, and countless webmasters. It’s not our job to make everyone in the world happy but we try and work our ass to give supreme value to our members. 2c. I can’t find the USP of Wealthy Affiliate
3a. Rich Jerk is a marketing gimmick that worked. 3b. Seobook.com is a very active member of the SEO/Webmaster community and writes for other Technorati Top 100 Blogs, including this one. 3c. The pop-up that attacked my screen disabled me to click further on Wealthy Affiliate
4a. The attack on the Rich Jerk was 3 long paragraphs. 4b. The dismissal on Seobook was a short paragraph including a positive statement about the quality of the product. 4c. Wealthy Affiliate is God’s gift to mankind.
I don’t know where they got the information that Seobook was free. They need to stop visiting sites that steal copyrighted content. ALSO - they admitted that they heard Seobook was good stuff.
Persuading the Reader to Take Action
When you hard-sell a reader, especially how terrible other products are, never mention anything positive about the subject you are lambasting and destroying. IN FACT…. When you want to persuade a person to TAKE ACTION, you need to speak in their own terms. How will this post convince a buyer? Will or can they be trusted? How will it help their buyer’s needs? What are the benefits and potential gains?
As a newbie Internet marketer, they failed in so many levels:
made absolutely false statements
comparison of three different products further dimmed their sub-standard ability to determine relevancy, which is really what selling online is about.
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
An interview of a two part series was published over at Elance, 13 Ways to Make Your Blog Viral. I will be doing another interview this week that will go live in the coming month about basic SEO. If you are not familiar with Elance they are one of the largest market place websites for […] More SEO Tips…. Tags: bloggingbloggerfree hostingwordpress themessphinnreddit
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
Last May I decided to start this blog as the key driver for my personal branding strategy. The idea was that, in order to attract attention, I would share my most valuable ideas and insights. My geeky side loves to teach and share, but my business side tries to prevent me from releasing potentially sensitive […] More SEO Tips…. Tags: bloggerwordpressfree hostingseomozsemsocial mediaredditdelishio
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
As a young American boy growing up in the 70’s Evel Knievel was one of my role models. Aside from being a daredevil Evel possessed a strong understanding of marketing and engaged in a level of shameless self promotion that would have made PT Barnum proud.When Evel was just getting started he got the crazy […] More SEO Tips…. Tags: bloggingwordpressmyspacefree blogsfree hostingpage rank
Social Media Marketing is sweeping the ‘Net now as the best way to market. Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are helping sites get additional traffic, and working to achieve a better backlink strategy. Search Engine Optimization techniques vary greatly, and you should research the company you hire to help you with this. Make sure everything that is promised to you is in the form of a contract.
