Does Your Landing Page Make This Costly Mistake?

Answer this quickly Does your online sales page or landing page leak? Chances are that you have a great looking page and it has menus, links and tabs like: About Us, Contact Us, Blog, Products and Services, Privacy Policy, Different images, etc This is the biggest mistake that many bloggers and website marketers make. They put a lot of time, effort and money to drive traffic to a webpage that can be quite distracting to the visitor in that they move away from the page and on to other things or other sites. Why is it a mistake? Because it distracts your potential customer from the very action you want them to take – subscribe to your list. What you need is really quite simple. You just need a simple page that just does one thing. And that one thing is to capture the visitor’s information. Such pages are commonly called as a landing page. There are just 2 key types of landing pages that can make a significant difference to your business. They are the:

1. Lead Generation Landing Page

How does it work? It works quite simply. You offer something of value to your audience for free and in exchange for this they fill out the email sign up form giving you their email address and or name. What can you give away? It can take many forms. Here are some ideas – whitepapers, an ebook, an infographic, a mini course via email, an educational or instructional video or video series, free trial, discount coupons, free software etc. It does need to be in digital form that the visitor can access immediately and it does need to have value in the eyes of your potential customer. How do you set it up? Technology continues to evolve and there are a number of ways to do this but the simplest way of getting started is with an email marketing provider like Aweber (they have a $1 trial) and Selz.com (you can use the free option, if you are giving your digital product for free) or Premise. Selz and Premise will both work with Aweber to capture the lead information and deliver the digital download to the subscriber. The best part is no programming or complex design skills are required.

2. Sales Landing Page

The sales landing page is most effective after you have established trust with your subscribers. That entails building your credibility and proving value over time. The simplest way to do that is to provide a steady stream of free content over time. The bigger the dollar value of the sale the more trust is required. The sales landing page will need to have excellent copy including more information on what the benefits and features of the product or service in order to convince the potential customer to go ahead and click on the Buy Now button and proceed with the sale.

Essential elements of high converting landing pages

As I said earlier the main point of a high converting landing page is to focus on one single objective, to get a visitor’s details. With such a goal it is better to have a minimalist approach to design in order to ensure that visitor’s attention is focussed on that clear call to action. Psychologically research has proven that giving people choice can add to the complexity of decision making and actually reduce sales. According to Unbounce and their conversion centric design principles there are a few elements required of any high converting landing page. They break the elements as follows –

The design elements involve: Encapsulation Contrast and color Directional cues White space The psychological elements include: Social proof Urgency and scarcity Try before you buy

So how does this work on landing pages? Lets take a look at a few examples Wistia Learning center Wistia does a great job with a learning center dedicated to providing helpful tutorials on how to develop great videos. At the end of each video are email sign up forms, so the request for sign up is made after great value has been given . The minimal approach with a white background, introductory blurb on the video all encourages website visitors to watch the various videos. Path The path home page is also a great landing page with the primary focus of gaining a registration and email lead. The background image relates to the heading and the call to action. The try for free incentive makes it a compelling offer. iDoneThis The iDoneThis home page also has a number of elements working for it such as the use of whitespace, use of testimonials and focus on getting people to sign up for a trial for a free via the short yet visible sign up form. Linkedinfluence The Linkedinfluence page is a sales page that uses long form copy. You can view the entire sales page here. Lewis Howes uses a video, clear copy that explains the benefits, social proof, great use of imagery to show what people can expect, testimonials all of which lead to the Add to Cart button towards the end of the page. The 60 day no questions asked money back guarantee also helps assure prospective customers (try for free incentive). HubSpot HubSpot offers a number of free ebooks design to educate and assist their prospective customers with various aspects of inbound marketing. Each of their landing pages have been tested over time and use conversion centered design principles. Notice the long email sign up form. HubSpot does this intentionally so that they can understand their audience better and produce resources that meet their audience’s needs.

Over to you…

Do you use landing pages? What do you think of the minimal design approach to building a high converting landing page? What would you do? Let me know your thoughts and comments below. Please take a moment to share this with your friends who blog or are online marketers along with your thoughts on it.