Ever seen the perfect landing page design?
I hope not, because it doesn’t exist. The reason why is because what works for one niche can easily flop for another niche.
Luckily, by the time you finish reading this guide, you’ll have everything you need to know about landing pages and how to optimise your website.
You know, I’ve seen websites that use gigantic long sales copy just to give something away, and it performs better than the sexiest bizopp opt in page.
Then I’ve seen ugly landing pages, with 3 lines of text and a subscribe form, and it goes and gets an 80% opt in. Go figure.
So, what are the secrets you can use to build your own landing page that gives you maximum success? Read on, and take notes.
I have some secrets to share with you, but first, I want to make sure you know what a landing page is.
A landing page is a web page whose focus and intention is to get the user to take a predetermined action. You want them to do one thing. By this, I mean it is a web page that is specifically designed to make the visitor interact with it. Usually, the action desired is to give an email address in exchange for more information, but an action could also be just a mouse click, or it could be a sales transaction (but generally, landing pages are opt in pages designed to get the visitors involved with the site).
(By the way, if you need to know how to make a landing page, you can download this landing page site template for free. )
Now, let’s get down to business.
You are about to discover the art of building a quality landing page that can make a huge difference in your business.
First off, you absolutely need be aware of the user experience, and what the average screen size people have, and to know what the average visitor sees without scrolling. Normally, a visitor spends 2-3 seconds on a page and then decides to stay, or to go back where they came from. This means they will never see the stuff below the “fold line”, the line where the screen cuts off on his or her monitor. You might hear the term “above the fold”…it means everything the user needs to see must be placed on the top part of the web page, so they don’t need to scroll to get all the information they need. If you assume the average screen is 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels long, and you place your message in that size, you’ll be doing fantastic.
The next critical step is to make sure there is a clear call to action on your page. Never assume visitors will read your mind! Be explicit in your words (and use plain everyday language, no fancy 3 or 4 syllable words if you can avoid it) and tell them exactly what they should do.
Also be sure your page has one clear action the visitors can take. Don’t clutter the page with multiple actions or distracting offers…save that for your other pages, but not for your landing pages.
While I’m on the topic of being clear, you should also try to make your webpage has everything needed without being unnecessarily long. Trim out unnecessary words. Be ruthless. Delete all the adjectives. Use emotional charged words (the kind that motivate people to take action).
What about images? You can use targeted specific images if it helps communicate your message more clearly, but try to avoid any stock photography image that adds eye candy without communicating essential information.
Another thing you can do is to write like you speak, and to get rid of any paragraph text. People will be resistant to any long textbook-type text, so use punchy short text, with lots of white space, and bullets wherever possible.
White space should dominate your landing page. People like short, breezy pages.
The next thing you should do is eliminate any visual distractions. For example, if you add a landing page to a wordpress blog, your blog’s template might add many distractions, like blogroll, recent posts, recent comments, and irrelevant links to wordpress.org and other sites. What you want is your offer, and nothing else.
Remember that everyone is sceptical, so adding any trust logos, like any media appearances you’ve had, or any endorsements you have, or any security seals – all these will help you as long as they are above the fold on your page.
If you are using bright images, or animations, try removing them and see if it improves your roi. Again, for some markets, they may help, but in the majority of cases, animations will reduce your response rate.
Once you have a good landing page online, the next thing you must do is improve it, and you do this by testing things, or what we call landing page optimization. By testing things on your page, and doing conversion rate optimization, you can boost your results, your roi, and your profits.
Rephrased, it means by improving conversion rates, you’ll get better and better results over time.
Google’s website optimizer is a great tool to do this kind of simple split testing and taguchi testing. By doing simple things like changing the page title, your landing page should often boost response rate by 40% or more. Another thing you can test is completely different layouts and looks. Often, a particular look will boost your results, and in most cases, the winner is not the one you thought it would be!
In general, I find great results by keeping the opt in box on the right hand side of the screen, near the top of the page (rather counter-intuitive if you have been using regular html editing software).
If you make any claims, make sure you back everything up with solid proof – testimonials, results you got, and endorsements. If you cannot back up any claims you make, take those claims out.
One thing you must always avoid is to avoid message mismatches, which means promising something you don’t deliver. This happens a lot with PPC advertising going to a ppc landing page, where the ads somehow become unrelated to the promises on the landing page. If people are in the wrong frame of mind when they land on your page, you’ll lose them every time. Other times, you might change your landing page to get better search marketing results, but get lower conversions because the message is muddled and confusing.
Another thing to do is trim down the amount of information you ask for. If you can get away with just an email address, then ask just for that. Almost always, every data field you take away will boost your opt in rates.
A lot of people ask about video, and whether a video will convert better than text. Fact is, there are many variables involved in a video, because you are providing a lot more information, and all this information must be congruent with the offer you are making. To say this simply, your message, your speaker, the emotions, the background music, the facial expressions, all must be aligned with the offer you make, in order to gain the trust of your visitors. If you slip up with any aspect of the video, you can hurt your results. This means you should probably stick with text until you get good with video sales presentations, and like always, test which one works the best for you.
Even a top peforming landing page that you design, develop and deploy will be need to be changed in the future, if only because people get tired of the same look and feel. It requires a creative, open mind to keep a great page performing well.
So there you have it – everything you need to provide you with the information you need to make better landing pages, and have greater success using your new skills.
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2. Right-Click then Copy
3. Paste the HTML code into your webpage
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Most landing pages don’t attract the same visitor over and over again so how will they “get tired of the same look and feel”? Could you elaborate on why you should change a page that is performing well afte it has been tested? I should never see the same visitor there once they have bought – they should be moved to other products and upsells not the same one shouldn’t they?
Karen,
Great question! All you need to do is track your conversion, test whenever you can, and you’ll get a good conversion rate. If your site has low traffic, it may never need to be “creatively rearranged”, but in cases where your target market has already seen your page, you’ll need to change to look of it once your conversion rate drops off.
Basically, with testing, your conversion rate will be ever-increasing, but if you ever see it dropping off, it’s time to do a makeover.
Very informative and thanks for the free template. I have been trying my luck with clickbank programs (as an affiliate) and have not made a dime!
Each time I think it is a sham; I find an article like yours that reignites the hope. This one gives me hope and the next thing I need is how to learn which products are profitable.
By the way, is Blogger as affective as WordPress? Which would be more lucrative for an affiliate page?
About your forth paragraph you said the average monitor screen was 800 px wide and 600 px long. I have always been told to put the size of your webpage to 680 px wide and 400 px long and you will get better results. No scrolling, if any, in any direction and believe it or not, a lot of people still have the smaller screens. It may seem small at first but you can still get your message out without getting past the page fold.
Look who id talking I don’t even have a website up yet or at least one that works. I just get hung up on parts of it and put off doing any more to it till I get the part that I am stuck on figured out. Working on it.
Things have evolved in the last 5 years, and it is practically impossible to buy a monitor in the civilized world that can only display 640×480…I think that was the base resolution in about 2005, and since we are in 2009, and nearly 2010, you can safely assume 800×600 now. Many of the new monitors are using 1080p aspect ratios (e.g. wide screen) so 800×600 is a good rule of thumb for the “above the fold” region.
If you want to stick with 640×480, go for it, but I think you are giving up real estate that you could probably monetize.