To recap: A landing page is the webpage you direct traffic to from a specific email, ad or piece of marketing. Its goal is to convert that traffic into sales or sign ups.

Be Personal

When designing your landing pages the golden rule is to be personal. People like to buy from people, not computers, or websites. It’s inbuilt in all of us to relate better to other people. The more you personalise your message and offer, the more you increase the connection with your visitor. Why? Because it increases their comfort and trust when buying from you. A great example is to add your phone number to your site, as Brandon Eley points out.  Once a visitor realises there is a person on the other end of the phone to help, IF needed, conversions increase. The knowledge that someone is there to help is enough to reasure the user.

Likewise, if there is any way you can make your message more personal and targeted for your page visitor the better. At the most basic, you need to know where in the world they are coming from and what site or advert they are visiting from. Are they an existing customer? Do you know their name?  Can you tweak your message to include these details?

Link the landing page to the advert

Here is an example of an ad for Eircom Broadband on Google. Note the wording and information contained. Yet when you click through to the landing page, pictured underneath, where is the mention of the “Value Business Bundles”?

Repeat the Promise

You need to repeat the wording of the original ad and give a clear call to action. Repeat the wording and the graphics. It should be obvious to the visitor that they have come to the right page, with the offer they were expecting. The key point here is, you made a promise in the initial advert so you must fulfill that promise on the landing page.

Scantastic

Make sure your pages are scanable. Here is the text from the first third of an Amazon product page for Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow.

This amount of information should be overwhelming but Amazon didn’t become the leading online retailer by confusing and overwhelming shoppers. Here is the designed Amazon landing page for Purple Cow. What a difference.

You can see now how design and formatting of the content makes information much clearer and easier to find. This example highlights one of the misunderstandings of landing page optimisation. Your pages do not have to be short to be effective. It doesn’t even have to be that simple.  Your landing page needs to be long enough, detailed enough and clear enough to make the sale. It can be 1 page or 5 pages. No one size fits all, so you will have to test what works for you.

An interesting side note regarding the addition of review on Amazon. You have probably heard how reviews increase sales. But recent data from Amazon has shown that products with both positive and negative reviews sell better then ones with positive reviews alone.

The reason attributed to this is twofold. First, we are a suspicious bunch and we don’t trust something that everyone gushes about. The second reason is that negative reviews are not necessarily bad. A bad review from a large corporate CEO might tell a small business CEO that this is the book to buy.

Wording

Simple word changes can have a huge impact. 37 Signals wrote about some of the wording variations they tried on their Highrise CRM  sign up page. Here are three types used with the percentage increase in conversions for each one.

Their original wording had the worst conversion rate “30-day Free Trial on All Accounts.”  Variation no. 2 – “Sign-up takes less then 60 seconds. Pick a plan to get started!” gave a 30% better conversion rate. When you are attracting the level of traffic that 37Signal products do, 30% means a significant jump in revenue.

How to increase conversion with four amazing words.

Jason Fried said that they tested various phrases on the Highrise homepage for the call-to-action button. They had originally used various permutations of “Free Trial” and “Sign-up for Free Trial”. Then they tested the phrase “See Plans and Pricing” this resulted in a 200% increase in sign-ups. That’s right. 200%.

Fried believes it’s because people are afraid if they click a link that says “Free Trial” then they’ll somehow automatically sign up for something and be trapped. However, “See Plans and Pricing” encouraged them to explore, without the fear of commitment.

Euocottage Case Study

This landing page from Eurocottage highlights a common failing for websites where they ask for too much information upfront. Ask for the least amount of information and at each step and clearly explain why you need this information in the first place. Explain to the user what the benefits are by imparting this information.

We redesigned this new landing page for Holiday Cottage search site Eurocottage.com. We simplified the process and gave users the information they needed to trust the sign up process. The new page is clearer and easier to use. It’s friendly and welcoming and is much more inviting to users. We are testing the new landing page at the moment. It will be interesting to see the performance rates for the new page. We will keep you posted.

Tools for testing

There are a few must have tools if you decide to try and measure and optimise your landing pages. Website Optimiser is a specific tool from Google for doing A/B and multivariate testing. If you use only one tool for testing this is it. Use Google analytics of course for basic numbers and tracking goal funnels.
5 Second test is an interesting site for checking what parts of your page people actually notice.

Be a pirate!

Be a pirate for your user. Sites like Amazon spend millions of Euro in usability and conversion tracking every year. Look at what the successful sites in your market are doing and copy them. No need to reinvent the wheel but try and make your own improvements. Landing page optimisation is not rocket science it is just a series of small simple tests. Devote an hour a week to it and track your progress.

Why bother?

You can spend 6 months building a level of traffic converting at 1% and to double that turnover, you can spend another 6 months.
Or you can simply test and tweak the landing page to convert up to 2% or 3% in a fraction of the time.

Recommended Reading

Seth Godin The Big Red Fez
Don’t Make Me Think – Steve Krug
Landing Page Optimization – Tim Ash
eConsultancy
Marketing Experiments
Google Website Optimizer
Which Test Won

Image above from Scurvy Pirates

What is a landing page?

A landing page is the webpage you direct traffic to from a specific email, ad or piece of marketing. Its goal is to convert that traffic into sales or sign ups.

On the right is a landing page:

If I asked you right now to hand over your credit card would you do it?
Feeling nervous? Why? What do you mean you need more information?

Some information you are looking may include:

• Who are you?
• What am I buying from you?
• Is the service/product good?
• Do I want it?
• Do I want it now?
• Can I trust you?
• Who else thinks this is a good deal?

The tricky bit is to get the balance right; giving just enough information to get the conversion. Include too little or too much information, or add unclear messaging and you start loosing sales.

Typical components of a landing page are:
The typical components of a Landing Page are:

• The Primary offer
• The primary offer
• The total solution being offered
• Headline
• Sales copy
• Image(s)
• Pricing
• Call-to-action
• And anything to indicate a limit (number, time) to the offer.

Here is an example of a landing page for the site Rudder.com. It comes from a case study by WiderFunnel.

In this case study Rudder redesigned their landing page to try and increase conversion.
The resulting page managed an amazing 45% increase in conversion.
So how did they manage it?

Here is the new landing page. Can you spot a few differences?

An article over on I am a landing page designer offers a good explanation why this new page converts so well.

• The redesigned page swapped the main header copy and image positions – copy on the right, image on the left.
• The value statements are in bullets along with check marks. An image of a lock is placed next to the security statement.
• Lots of white space is used above the button to draw in the eye.
• Button size is increased and the call-to-action text is much more descriptive.
• A testimonial is placed directly underneath the button, as it gives that extra push.
• 2009 Webby Awards nominee icon is included along with an iPhone App notice and iPhone image.
• As Featured in the Press, icons of CNBC, TechCrunch and Cnet, logos added to the bottom of the page.
• The Truste icon was removed.
• McAffee and Verisign logos are also added.

In summary, adding these visual references and clarifying the layout of the page gives the user confidence in signing-up for this service. Benefits are clearly outlined and, most importantly, we know that Rudder is free and secure; a vital element, not to be ignored when dealing with issues of personal finance. Rudder has since redesigned again.

Redesigning order pages for maximum conversion


Here is an example of an order page for a free Audiobooks Catalogue featured over on Which Test Won. The old version is on the right, new redesign is below.

As you can see, in the redesign, an image of what you are signing up for is added. The most interesting thing about this new page is what’s been taken away. Sometimes simplifying things is the best course of action. In this case, the new Landing Page is much better off for this decision, as users know exactly what this form is for. You must be absolutely sure that every item, piece of text or image you add to the order page, adds to a visitor’s knowledge about why they’re signing-up.

In the first page version, the left and right column had no relevance to the purpose of the page. At the very least, they distracted a visitor or at worst, led a visitor to click away from the order page without taking any action. The result? The new order page resulted in 42% more visitors registering for a free catalogue, a dramatic increase.

Clarity Trumps Persuasion

The answer then, lies in not making a form ask for fewer details but just enough to secure the sign-up. Shorter pages are not the goal either. They need to be long enough to make a sale. See how SEOMoz added $1million to their revenue with a longer sign-up page. What converts best, on any landing page, is clarity above all else.

Part two can be found here.

Give us a shout on info@toddle.com if you would like to discuss improvements to your landing pages.

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