Just finished listening to a webinar on optimizing landing pages put on by Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments. There was some great information in it–some I heard/knew, and some was new to me. Whether you’re looking to increase the leads your web site is generating or to sell more online, there was some sound advice when it comes to landing pages.
BTW, landing pages could be considered any page on your site, but for the purpose of this webinar the focus was on pages designed to get someone to take a desired action, such as request a quote, sign up for an email newsletter, etc. Although not necessary, these pages might be outside the normal navigation of the site, and only linked to from an ad or banner on another page.
- Don’t overwhelm people with form fields. Keep them as minimal as possible, asking as few questions as possible.
- Look at value vs. cost in the eyes of your prospects. If the cost (whether it’s time, effort or price) outweighs the perceived value you’re going to fail.
How do you fix this? Reduce the perceived cost and increase the perceived value.
You can reduce the perceived cost by reducing friction. Friction might come from unnecessary length or difficulty on the landing page. Look at your landing pages now. Is there too much text? Too much scrolling? Too many pages to purchase?
You can further decrease perceived cost by quickly answer the visitor’s questions:
- Where am I?
- What can I do here?
According to Flint you have “four inches and seven seconds” to answer these questions. If you don’t, your visitor will click the back button and you’ll lose the lead. When someone firsts gets to your landing page there’s a moment of disorientation; confusion is a big contributor to friction, so answering these two questions immediately will increase your conversion rate.
The next big fix is to increase the perceived value of your offering. Do this by identifying and communicating key factors that differentiate your from your competition. Use specific, quantitative & “instantly credible” language. Even if you’re not going head-to-head with your competition, you should still try and be as specific as possible.
I sometimes struggle with this (specificity) myself for our own landing pages. Do our web sites have 4x the awesome sauce of our competitors’ sites? Will signing up for our email newsletter make you 176% more smarterer? I’m still working on those metrics.
Some other bon mots I wrote down:
- Lose all caps in your headlines…difficult to read and frustrating to visitors.
- Use a strong headline; big, bold and dramatic.
- Include at least one paragraph of text, w/bold and/or italicized text to highlight the important ideas. This paragraph needs to overcome the natural cynicism of anyone surfing the net.
- Use images that draw the eye to the text, not that compete with it.
OK, now I’m off to optimize some of our pages and try some A/B split testing on them. Wish me luck!
Photo credit: Niffty
