With the evolution of Direct Response Lead Generation and leveraging CPM and CPC arbitrage. It has become very important to understand the basic’s of landing page optimization . There is a simple goal of each affiliate landing page create a “want” and then quickly satisfy that “desire”. You have to show enough information to get the client interested in your services but don’t give them to much information where they will lose interest.
To create killer high converting landing pages you have to first off understand your clients and understand your traffic sources that you are using when you build your landing pages. As an example if you are building landing pages for affiliate marketing, usually this perspective customer is responding to an email Ad and isn’t a browser but instead is a person who is really interested in your product. To open up an email , read it, then click your ad that is a lot of actions from the consumer. You want to make the sign up process as simple as humanly possible and get their attention quickly.
On the other hand the customer you might get from SEM might be your casual browser. The person who is looking for a specific product but wants to see what differentiates your product from other products so it might be a good idea to have more informative landing pages then just a straight hard sell. For further resources on this the Landing Page Optimization book is a great read and highly recommended.
Below are my Top 10 Do’s and Dont’s
1. Do NOT make users have to scroll to make an action. Always have a lead generation or some call to action sign up right where the eyes can see when a user hits the site. This web site is excellent call to action site that should be referenced for landing page development. They have many different call to actions formatted around quality content.
2. Do NOT give up to much details about your product on the page remember this is the age of web 2.0 and you only have a certain amount of time to capture and keep your users attention plus the goal is to get people sign-up to learn more about your product if you give up too much details they won’t feel compelled to sign up anymore. Your call to action should be 1-2 lines. DONT have NAVIGATION BARS on your landing PAGE this will distract the user.
3. DO HAVE Action Words are key. Always have some sort of action words in your content that will create an urgency or need to either order a product or sign-up for as a lead.
4. Images – DO understand your audience if you are trying to appeal to an older demographic don’t have images of young people using your product and on the other hand if you are trying to have mass appeal don’t come across as to corporate.
5. Design Colors- DO USE use easy readable web 2.0 style colors that are easy on the eye to read and pick up. If users can’t or have trouble reading your page this will obviously hinder conversions. This Landing Page a great example.
6. Spacing- DO NOT create content, images, and videos on a landing pages with out correct spacing. The user must be able to easily read and understand the content you put out there. Bullets are always a great way to create separation in your content.
7. DO CONSTANT Testing. Landing Page Optimization is trial and error and constant tweaking and testing is all apart of the process of increasing conversions. Try maybe to switch up the Headline or make your form longer or shorter. Also if you have a 2 page form maybe convert it into a one page form and see which one converts better.
8. DO Create Specific Landing Pages to the places you buy traffic from- As an example if your doing a display media buy with a certain site it would be a good idea to create a custom landing page for all the people reaching your page from that specific site.
9. DO Make sure your page loads quickly and make sure it works on all browsers this is very important.
10. DO NOT– Use Fake Testimonials or if you do try not make it obvious. Users are a lot smarter than we give them credit for if you use fake testimonials users can see that and will quickly navigate away from your page due to trust issues. If you are going to use testimonials use real pictures and videos if possible this will help with conversions in the long run.
