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.
- 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.
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!
Hey Rebecca,
Great post!
One of the most important parts of any landing page is telling the visitor what they need to do. We have seen some big conversion bumps by clearly stating what the person needs to do.
Another big one is try to give them only one option. The more options/choices they have the less likely they will do what you want them to do.
~Brett
Good call Brett. A lot of times we over think conversions and try to come up with crafty ways to make the sale or download or form enticing be not commanding, telling someone what to do right off the bat grabs many that get to a page and think, "Now what do I do?"
Yup. Sometimes it is as simple as saying "click here to buy". Just placing mysterious text links and thinking that they know they need to click them to buy is just asking for a low conversion rate
In summary:
Don't throw this heap of crap together
Don't create just another spammy piece of poo
Don't show up to a date with a dirty shirt
Don't confuse and alienate your user
People skim, scan, and scoot.
No flashing boobies on a private school website (debatable)
Dive the hell out of the way when a rampaging fat kid lumbers over to take the bait.
If you're gonna say stuff like "Yo yo yo, check out dis pimp sneaker, wassup" - make sure you have the goods and the words on the landing page.
Yes folks - another Rebecca gem.
Hah, good summary.
Nice post. While I agree with many of these ideas and they are all great test ideas one thing struck me.
No. 7 (minimize your branding) I've found is not a good idea.
First of all you want to do everything to make sure your visitor remembers you if they leave. Not every conversion happens in the first visit. They might not remember their kw query but if they remember your company name they can find you again. Also they might think of telling a friend about your site.
Also, brand is something that instills trust. Even if you brand is not well know a strong name relevant to what you offer can help conversion rate and provide an immediate level a legitimacy.
I company's identity is not always "secondary to the offer." Often times offers are very similar and this is the deciding factor. Often times people purchase a worse offer but they do so because of the company identity.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Hey Jonathan!
Have to push back a bit on the branding question. I agree brand is important, but many inexperienced clients think it's EVERYTHING, and over-emphasize it to the detriment of other content. So the thinking behind "minimize your branding" is not to eliminate it, but to put it in better balance. Which, in retrospect, strikes me as a much better subheading for that section - "Balance Your Branding". Darn hardcopy, anyway. ;)
--Sandra
I agree Sandra. I think you need to "connect and reinforce" the brand, but not overpower the focus on the product or service being presented.
I recently had the pleasure of hearing Sandra Niehaus speak on optimizing landing pages for conversion. That seminar prompted me to write about the design and layout of landing pages. Great summary Rebecca.
A landing page is always the first page that determines whether your website will be a hit or miss with the user. This page must be extremely simple to use and something that reflects the intial advertisement, that persuaded the user to click on in the first place. This article is extremely useful and demonstrates the key factors of good web design. In reply to 'Kimber's comment' - a big problem we've run into when developing landing pages is that the client sometimes is dead set on what they think they want, convincing them otherwise is the hardest part'. I completely agree, getting a customer to understand the true benefits or potential of a site can be extremely tricky. Therefore you must take everything into account, incorporating their ideas but also helping them in the right direction, so that their website is both functional and attractive to others.
Brett makes a good point; sometimes, you have to guide people towards the right choice.
After all, didn't Steve Krug have something to say about not making people think?
Additionally, might I suggest some SEO-ishness in the form a point 27?
Try to find a web address to use for your Landing Page, or at the very least, use strong keywords for the file name...
All great suggestions here. You may also consider Part 1 as the ad, Part 2 as the landing page, AND part 3...what ever it is they get once they have converted. All three need to be a tight combo. While I've seen great conversion rates for ads that played well into the landing page...I've watched retention rates of only a few months at best because the relationship wasn't there with the product.
When the campaigns were adjusted so some of our ads and landing pages were highly relevant to the product given after the conversion, we didn't get nearly as many conversions, but as you can expect, the life time value of those conversions is MUCH higher.
Great post! Thanks!
I think marketers often forget to be clear in their messages. Having a clear call to action is key.
I would also (still) LOVE to see som examples..! Thanks.
Hey Christian & Mighty Workshop -
For further examples, I'd encourage everyone to check out case studies on MarketingSherpa, Marketing Experiments, and Enquiro, to name a few great research groups. You'll not only see visual examples, but also summaries of what worked and what didn't. Lance and I included examples in the book to help illustrate concepts, but no example should be taken as a literal cookie-cutter solution to follow. Every business+site+product+audience combination is unique, and should be approached that way.
To expand on BillyShih's comment above, testing is crucial. In my view, iterative MVT (multivariate testing) should be an assumed, everyday part of every landing page launch. It should be as basic to your process as ensuring your pages are cross-browser friendly. There's really no other way to know for certain whether you've designed the best possible landing page.
That said, you can get MUCH closer to that perfect solution when you know the basics and have decent design and usability/conversion chops. It's tons better to start with an already-good landing page than one that's clueless and junky. You learn more, and you learn it more quickly.
So, the upshot is -- superior design is still important, but it's only the first step. Organizations need to foster a culture of testing, measurement & analysis in organizations. This avoids unnecessary arguments, conjectures, meetings, etc. Not sure which (well-crafted) headline to use? Test it! Not sure which (carefully chosen) image will work best? Test it! And with free tools like Google Website Optimizer and Analytics, there's no reason not to be doing it.
Hi Rebecca. Thanks for the detailed information on landing pages. I am sure that this will be helpful.
Great article, it will be shared with the team at our office.
Rebecca both your post and the supporting comments should be of a great help to the web development agencies out there, many of which in my humble opinion (especially here in the UK) have a lot to learn about landing page optimisation.
What I will say is that many of our UK developers prove to be good mechanics that can 'build websites' but there are quite a few, especially within smaller agencies who do not demonstrate being a skilled marketer in order to get their page to achieve conversion from the visitor.
With thanks to Rand who came to Scotland and helped me launch the OnlineXcellence program to help both business owners and web developers get to grips in producing websites that convert visitors. Here is an example of what has been achieved and seen as a good landing page.
There was a lot of thought that went into the example I provide. What was important - getting the product and all the buying decisions within the screenshot. But what was equally important was to put in place a design that was not cluttered and took into account providing an area that could contain a sufficient amount of 'unique descriptive content' to give some weight to the page for SEO purposes.
It would be great to see others provide here what they believe makes the ideal landing page.
Great tips, basically we should focus on landing page for good conversation page and it should be look like professional, readable and understandable for everyone visitor.
Thanks for sharing.
Lots of time you spent to make it.
We just created a gallery of well designed landing pages and thought SEOmoz readers might be intereted. https://landing-page-galery.com
Let us know what you think and hope it helps someone looking for some needed inspiration :)
-David
Another great checklist from SEOmoz.org. Rebecca, can you please show 2-3 examples of landing pages that, you think meet most of your requirements?
Hmm, I'll have to hunt around for some examples. The book provides some good screenshots of some landing page layouts. I'm sure Sandra can provide some stellar examples as well.
Now Rebecca, I need your affiliate link for me to buy this book :-)
Quality, relevant post that will convert!
Congratulations and thank you
I'm so glad to read this! You put all the hard work into getting the traffic but if they don't convert then it's a huge waste of effort.
Landing pages are really difficult to get right - I love the statement about it having to do all of your sales for you. But it's even harder because it's much easier for them to walk away so you have to grab their attention really quickly.
Great tips. Thanks!
Plenty of great optimisation tips here! I particularly like the bit about features v. benefits - people generally want to know what something does for them, rather than just being bamboozled with jargon...
this is good stuff. looks like i'll have to get the book, but in the meantime i'm sending this one to all of my co-workers. great tips for anyone involved in SEO/SEM.
i really like the analogy for #8...a 2 part television episode from ad to landing page.
a big problem we've run into when developing landing pages is that the client sometimes is dead set on what they think they want. convincing them otherwise is the hardest part.
That analogy is all me, baby!
Hi Rebeca, great post. Do you know if it's possible to get the book in PDF format? I'm in Costa Rica so can't get the book sent down here. Do you know of the "Landing Page Handbook" from Marketing Sherpa? Will you recommend it, it's a bit expensive $496 us.
I don't think there's a PDF of the book. Is there a reason why you can't purchase it? Will they not ship to Costa Rica?
Also, I've not read the Marketing Sherpa book, so if anyone has, please share your thoughts.
Thanks Rebeca. I have never tried buying a book in the States from Costa Rica, will have to check on that with Amazon.
Surely SEOmoz must have a copy of the Marketing Sherpa Landing page book. It has several pages dedicated to the SEOmoz landing page contest.
As to whether it's worth it; I think it's the definitive guide on landing pages. Any serious professional should own it.
Thanks Sean, will have your advice regarding buying the book in mind. Appreciate it.
Haha, whoops. Looks like I've got some more reading to do...
@SEO Practices - Yes, there is a PDF version of the book available from the publisher's web site, here: https://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321515420
Looks like it's currently priced at US$28.79.
And yes, I'll chime in on the MarketingSherpa Landing Page guide as well - totally worth it.
Thanks for linking to the PDF, Sandra!
Having so much to think about SEO and trying so hard to get my site ranked high, I tend to care less about "convert visitors into customers." bad habits.
so, this post is a good reminder for me, and the list of suggestions are so usefull.
Thanks, Rebecca!
Insightful rundown of landing page info.
I always thought the product/service dictates the structure of the landing page a bit. Some target markets will respond more positively to certain structures, language, images, etc. As you stated, test until you find the magic formula.
Haven't been around in a while... who's bringin drivl back?
How can you tell where the 'fold' is? Surely it's going to be different depending on what screen size you have.
Hey Tyssen,
Yep, it'll depend on screen size and screen resolution. A rule of thumb I use as a lowest common denominator is 450 pixels from the top of the page - that's *about* where a 15-inch screen displaying at 800 X 600 will put the fold.
Your site's target audience will influence this as well. For example, an older audience may have their screen set to a lower resolution so they can see things better, so if your site is targeted to seniors you'll want to accomodate that. A more tech-savvy audience is likely to have larger screens, in general. Another consideration is the increase in laptop popularity, which means smaller display areas. <<Sigh>> So you can see why a rule of thumb can be helpful ;)
Here's a great resource to help, although these stats aren't broken down by demographics: https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and
https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp
-Sandra
Sandra, thanks for the links. I would be careful about browsers' stats. They are based on w3school web logs and Firefox share - 37% in March 2008 is much higher than average (North America average, for example, is 21.7% according to xitimonitor). The site is visited by tech people and they tend to prefer Firefox over IE.
Great insight regarding a fold and resolutions.
Wow, what an exhaustive post. I haven't looked at Web Design for ROI but I might check it out now. I have read The Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Handbook though, and I would recommend that to anyone.
I think the only thing missing from here is the role that multivariate and a/b split testing can take. All these suggestions are great, but their effectivness should be tested.
Does more direct button copy work? How much or is any 3rd party validation required? Questions like these are best answered with testing.
The chapter did suggest A/B and multivariate testing at the end, but the post was already getting pretty hefty. I agree wholeheartedly though--test, test often, and test well.
awesome. you hit all the best points.
i must admit that my landing page rocks!