MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Increase Con­ver­sion rates with an Opti­mized Land­ing Page

In a recent  tele­phone con­sul­ta­tion with a skin­care com­pany Inter­net mar­keter Vishen Lakhi­ani reviewed and tested their land­ing page and indi­cated how to improve it to bet­ter convert…

Well, here’s their land­ing page:

Cre­at­ing a killer land­ing page can have an absolutely remark­able effect on your con­ver­sion rate as long as it deliv­ers cer­tain key ben­e­fits and doesn’t fall into the com­mon pit­falls that can can fall way wide of the mark. Before I share these take a look at the for­mat of their land­ing page below and make up your mind on it.

Test)

 

 

5 Qual­i­ties of a Killer Land­ing Page

1. The head­line and copy cor­re­spond to the ad that trig­gered the page.

If your ad is tar­geted to peo­ple look­ing for golf attire, your land­ing page should focus on golf attire, and not on other items that could dis­tract from the main focus, such as golf clubs.

2. The focus is on get­ting vis­i­tors to take one spe­cific action.

The land­ing page works on the basis of a most wanted response (MWR). It is designed to get the tar­get audi­ence to take ONE spe­cific action, such as mak­ing a pur­chase or sub­scrib­ing to a newslet­ter.

3. There are no dis­tract­ing nav­i­ga­tional links.

Unlike the home­page, the pur­pose of the land­ing page is not to get the users to browse the site, but to stay on the page and carry out the MWR. Tests have shown that land­ing pages with too many nav­i­ga­tional links con­sis­tently under-perform. Just stick to the basics: a com­pany logo or header for recog­ni­tion along with a link to the home­page are suf­fi­cient. Avoid hav­ing any links that dis­tract from car­ry­ing out the MWR.

4. The copy is short.

The copy on the land­ing page is usu­ally shorter and more straight­for­ward than the copy on your home­page. Remem­ber to keep the look and feel of your land­ing page con­sis­tent with the rest of your web­site.

5. There is a promi­nent sub­scrip­tion form or check­out option.

The action you want the user to take should be avail­able on the land­ing page itself; the user should not have to click to another page.

5 Qual­i­ties — How did the Skin­care Com­pany Fare?

I really don’t know what you thought of the land­ing page — whether you were engaged by it, BUT…

Here’s my take — to be hon­est with you I don’t think it ful­filled a sin­gle one of the cri­te­ria I out­lined above. Let’s take a look:

1. The head­line and copy cor­re­spond to the ad that trig­gered the page

 ‘Skinny Truths’ is a head­line that doesn’t really con­vey any great mes­sage and it cer­tainly doesn’t cor­re­spond to the key­words of the ad that trig­gered the page. It has no men­tion of the key ben­e­fits of the offer­ing — it doesn’t men­tion skin­care treatments.

2. The focus is on get­ting vis­i­tors to take one spe­cific action.

Although the focus of the copy is to try and get browsers to carry out the most wanted response (MWR), to get them to down­load a free whitepa­per,  it by no means focuses on this response. It’s just a long string of plain text with no real atten­tion being drawn to the MWR.

Another thing is the way to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple on the Inter­net is to engage them on per­sonal level — this means NO CORPORATE TALK:

Does this lan­guage bore you?

“In an effort to serve and inform the gen­eral pub­lic, this FREE 4 page report clearly explains how & why the skin­care process works and exposes the most com­mon ‘skin­care myths’ being sold. This effec­tively empow­ers con­sumers to make intel­li­gent dis­tinc­tions about the afford­abil­ity and effec­tive­ness of each product.”

This is like an aca­d­e­mic report in style. Wake from your slum­ber! You see what I’m try­ing to share with you here. A com­par­i­son and good prac­tice is on its way. 

 

3. There are no dis­tract­ing nav­i­ga­tional links.

OK so there’s no actual dis­tract­ing nav­i­ga­tional links that will lead you directly away from their copy, HOWEVER there’s fea­tures on their copy that’ll have a mas­sive neg­a­tive impact on their land­ing page. You should never put large pic­tures, such as the ones on the right hand side bar, on your copy.

Loads of tests can back me up on this — eye track­ing tests have proven that it’s detri­men­tal to your copy.

• makes your design confusing
• increases the time it takes to load
• peo­ple are nat­u­rally drawn towards human faces, they are no longer focus­ing on the key ben­e­fits you’re try­ing to portray 

 

4. The copy is short.

A long copy of plain text is not going to inspire your land­ing page. All the pro­fes­sion­als use every trick of the trade to high­light and empha­size what the MWR is and smack you in the face with the key ben­e­fits of what they have to offer. Once again cor­po­rate talk is a big NO-NO!

 

5. There is a promi­nent sub­scrip­tion form or check­out option.

Even though you can’t see it there’s a sub­scrip­tion box right at the bot­tom of the land­ing page. That’s where the prob­lem lies — it should be the most promi­nent thing on the page, above the fold, as it’s the means to the MWR.

It appears their land­ing page has been absolutely pulled to pieces and let’s face it — it has. But these are easy things to put right and in no time at all they can have a land­ing page that converts.

Let’s get some inspi­ra­tion from some best prac­tice examples:)

 

5 Qual­i­ties of a Killer Land­ing Page — Best Practice

Here’s a major con­trast that I’m sure you’ll notice. Go from the land­ing page that Vishen reviewed over the phone to 2 best prac­tice land­ing pages and the dif­fer­ence is stark.

Check out these land­ing pages and iden­tify the key fac­tors that cre­ate a pow­er­ful land­ing page:

A) — The Silva Ultra­Mind System

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B)- Ask Data­base from Alex Mandossian

1. The head­line and copy cor­re­spond to the ad that trig­gered the page

Let’s com­pare headlines:

A)

“Expe­ri­ence Deep Med­i­ta­tion with the Free Silva Audio Training”

 

B)

“Mod­ern Research  Into 2,437 Year-Old Mar­ket­ing Tech­nol­ogy Reveals The Secret To Increase Your Sales, Uncover Quick-Profit Niches And Helps You Uncover What Your Prospects And Cus­tomers Want To Buy Most!”

 

Test)

“Skinny Truths”

It’s so easy to see which head­line is the ama­teur­ish one. Head­lines A and B hook the browser in com­pletely and cor­re­spond directly to the ad key­word that trig­gered the page. ‘Skinny Truths” is so ambigu­ous and is not related to the key­word that led the browser to their page.

2. The focus is on get­ting vis­i­tors to take one spe­cific action.

4 or 5 key ben­e­fits ver­sus a long copy of plain text?

There’s only one win­ner in this com­pe­ti­tion. The 2 best prac­tices land­ing pages out­line the four or five key ben­e­fits of what they have to offer and don’t share any fur­ther infor­ma­tion what­so­ever. This means that a browser isn’t going to get lost in plain text and not carry out the MWR.

 

3. There are no dis­tract­ing nav­i­ga­tional links.

sim­plic­ity ver­sus over-engineered design?

The use of high­light­ing and bul­let points on the 2 best prac­tice land­ing pages means that a browser is drawn towards the copy and not towards any­thing dis­tract­ing like pictures.

4. The copy is short.

Con­cise focused copy ver­sus long copy?

Some­how the mes­sage is com­pletely lost in the long copy of the test’s land­ing page. Short, con­cise copy ensures that the mes­sage is clearly con­veyed, only infor­ma­tion that is ben­e­fi­cial to the cause is shared. Unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion sim­ply dilutes your message.

5. There is a promi­nent sub­scrip­tion form or check­out option.

Both best prac­tices exam­ples have an extremely promi­nent sign up box that spans a third of the copy. It’s a sim­ple box with two boxes to fill in — First Name and Email.  The test’s sign up form isn’t even above the fold, you’re not imme­di­ately drawn to the box and you have to scroll right down to the bot­tom to see it. It also has unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion field boxes to fill in.

Why would you ever need to know a person’s last name and where they heard about the site from?

The more has­sle you give a browser the less likely they are to sign up. The sign up but­ton should also use lan­guage such as free instant access or ‘I want my free report’ rather than unat­trac­tive lan­guage like submit.

We’ve ana­lyzed and frankly crit­i­cized the orig­i­nal ‘Skinny Truths’ land­ing page… SO What’s the solution?

Vishen pre­sented 5 rec­om­men­da­tions that will dra­mat­i­cally boost the per­for­mance of the page; here’s an idea of what it should look like.

 

The New Land­ing Page 

 

Vishen’s 5 Rec­om­men­da­tions To Cre­ate The New Killer Land­ing Page

1. A killer title that cor­re­sponds to the ad that trig­gered the land­ing page. In this case the key­word that would trig­ger this page is ‘Skin­care’. Both the new title and sub­ti­tle deliver a hook to the reader and express the key ben­e­fit with the MWR star­ing you in the face.

2. Dis­play the founder’s image and estab­lish them as an author­ity on tooth whiten­ing. This has been tested a lot and proven to dra­mat­i­cally increase results. It elim­i­nates the need for long copy and devel­ops integrity in such a sim­ple way.

For exam­ple…

” This is Joe Bloggs, Vice Pres­i­dent of Com­pany X, the last 5 years of my life have been ded­i­cated to study­ing the field of skin­care and der­ma­tol­ogy and there’s noth­ing I don’t know about the US mar­ket … As a ser­vice to you I’m deliv­er­ing the most com­pre­hen­sive whitepa­per on the skin­care environment…”

3. Short, tar­geted, ben­e­fit laden copy with a Most Wanted Response smack­ing the browser in the face. In this case it’s achieved by hav­ing the four key learn­ing points out­lined in dis­tinct bul­let points. The sen­tence below the key ben­e­fits spells out the MWR for the browser.

4. A Promi­nent sign up box that works. The new sign up box should def­i­nitely be above the fold and ide­ally on the right hand side of the land­ing page. There should only be two fields to fill in and an invit­ing opt in but­ton read­ing “YES Joe Bloggs! I WANT MY FREE REPORT TODAY”.

These four rec­om­men­da­tions have been illus­trated by the new tem­plate for the land­ing page above. BUT there’s another tac­tic which is vital — you need to cus­tomize your copy so that it’s spe­cific for the indi­vid­ual AdWords groups.

5. Use PHP To Cus­tomize Spe­cific AdWord Key­word Groups. Using PHP you can eas­ily change your head­line to be spe­cific to the key­word which the browser searched for. For exam­ple if some­one types in ‘facial skin­care’ the head­line should read ‘Facial Skin­care Myths Exposed’ AND if some­one searches for ‘Body Skin­care’ the head­line should read ‘Body Skin­care Myths Exposed’.

Don’t For­get to do Split Testing

For test­ing sign up rates on land­ing pages Click­Muse can be an essen­tial tool. It also has the effect of cus­tomiz­ing your key­words. In pre­vi­ous arti­cles we’ve shown how the small­est of tweaks of your copy can have an enor­mous effect on the results of your land­ing page.

Read more infor­ma­tion on:

• Land­ing Page Opti­miza­tion
• Split Test­ing

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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