Elements of a Winning Landing Page

If landing pages didn’t exist and you were designing one for the very first time, what ingredients would you need to make your new creation a success?

On day 1 of our 7 Days to a Better Landing Page series, we’re going to take look at theanatomy of a landing page, and we’ll define the building blocks of a successful online marketing campaign.

The purpose of this first post is to define the types of content that you should consider for your landing pages. As we progress through the week we’ll build on this foundation piece by piece.

So grab some paper and a pen and sketch out a page for your next campaign as we step through the 7 elements. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can create a basic page outline using this technique.

Our gallery of landing page templates show the elements applied to some different landing page layouts.

A Simple Example

This diagram represents a sample layout with the 7 elements placed in fairly standard locations. Your specific landing page may vary greatly, but it’s helpful to look at this for reference as we walk through each element.

A sample landing page layout showing placement of the 7 elements.

1. The Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The starting point of a marketing campaign often revolves around defining a point of differentiation. What is it about your product or service that sets it apart from the competition? Often, this has already been defined at a higher brand level and you just need to re-iterate it in a succinct way on your landing page. If not, this is your first task. Try to break down your offering to its most basic level, to describe the specific benefit your customers will get by choosing your product/service.

A classic example comes from Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less – or it’s free.”

A well crafted USP sets clear expectations for your customers and allows them to understand why they should care.

On your landing page, the USP should be delivered using a combination of the following page elements:

• The primary headline: the Domino’s example above is a perfect illustration of a page headline.
• Sub header: Sometimes you will need a secondary headline (typically smaller in size) that provides some clarification about the primary headline. Most commonly, this is used to allow the primary headline to be very short and punchy.

2. The Benefits

Following on directly from the USP is a more detailed description of your offer’s benefits and features. By crafting an effective headline you gained the attention of your customer, and now you have to provide a little more detail to the offer to answer any questions they may have. Try to focus on answering the question “What will this do for me?”, as this will help you to write copy that speaks directly to your customers questions.

It’s important to strike a balance here and not get into so much detail that your landing page feels like it’s full of text. Write a brief one paragraph summary and 3-5 bullet points for clarity. Come back to this section many times and edit the copy to remove any bloated or unnecessary verbiage.

3. The Hero Shot

The adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially true in the short attention span world of the landing page. The hero shot is the visual representation of your offer and can help people to gain a better understanding of what it is or what it looks like. It will most commonly be one of these types of visual element:

• A photograph of your product/service – preferably shown in it’s context of use (see point 4 below)
• A diagram illustrating how it fits into the realm of an existing problem (like a series of steps)
• A chart comparing it to the competition
• A large graphic simply stating the numerical aspect of the offer – 200% Bonus, FREE, $100 off etc.

4. Context of Use

You should aim to showcase your product or service being used in real life. The idea here is to get your customers to empathize and place themselves in a scenario where they are using it. There are many ways in which to achieve this, including:

• A photo: Consider an example of a collapsible step ladder. A standard white-background photo of the item would work for the hero shot, but to add extra effect you could provide supplementary photos of someone unfolding it, using it to reach somewhere high, and placing it neatly into a small cupboard afterward.
• Video: While the camera never lies, video is an even more compelling way to showcase your product. Think of the common Shamwow and Slapchop commercials currently running. While cheesy, they impart a sense of need by illustrating direct benefits to everyday life.
• Testimonials: Show that you already have customers, but keep them real.
• Client lists: By listing known brand names that are using your service provides an implied sense of context and adds to the feeling of trust.

5. Request for data

It’s common – especially in the B2B marketplace – for the main purpose of your landing page to be lead generation. Usually this will involve asking the visitor for their Name and Email in exchange for some sort of freebie (we’ll be covering this in Thursday’s post). If you are requesting data from your customers, keep the form as short as possible and include a privacy statement near the button or email address field.

TIP: There is some thought and opinion on the placement of lead generation forms that suggests placing them on the right-hand side of the page yields higher conversions. This is likely due to the way westerners read from left to right. As such, placing the form on the left is akin to asking for something before explaining the benefits involved.

Read more about creating the perfect length lead gen form.

6. The Backup Plan

Not all visitors will become paying customers after the first kiss. To give you the opportunity for a little extra foreplay, leave a non-committal escape route from the page. This is what’s known as a Safety Net, and its purpose is to capture the attention of someone who is interested but not ready to buy. Examples include:

• Follow us on Twitter: Once someone is following you on Twitter they can be exposed to your other marketing and brand messages, which may entice them to buy in the future.
• Remind Me: Provide a way for them to be reminded (via email) at a predetermined time in the future (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, specific date etc.) and be sure to place a trust statement beside it that explicitly states that you will not contact them at any other time.
• A Free Takeaway: Provide a link to a free download-able brochure (without having to complete a form).
• Bookmark This Page: A classic technique that isn’t likely to yield great results as people don’t really check their bookmarks a a matter of process. It does however enable someone to find you again if they want to deal with you later on – especially important for standalone landing pages that are reached via an Ad they may never see again.

7. The Call To Action (CTA)

The final part of your landing page is the all important Call To Action or CTA. This is the statement or copy that instructs your visitor to take a specific action. Often it will be the button on a form, or a large graphical button that takes your new customer through to a final destination somewhere on your main website. It’s critical that the CTA is very obvious and is written in a way that describes what clicking on it will actually do.

Poorly written CTA’s are the standard CLICK HERE or SUBMIT. A good example would be “Get your $50 spa coupon” which clearly articulates what you will be receiving in exchange for your precious click.

For a more detailed look at CTA’s download our 101 Landing Page Tips eBook which contains 10 ways to make them more effective.

By Oli Gardner 

Source : http://unbounce.com/

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Guide to Optimizing Your Funnels for Maximum Conversions

Maximizing your conversion funnels can only happen when you experiment with each element of customer interaction, dig deep into the analytics and then optimize the design.

Fortunately, you don’t have to test everything at once. But where should you start?

In this article I’ll tell you:

• Where you should start
• The most important interaction points to test
• The essential elements at those interaction points to test
• And different tests you can run.

Let’s get started.

1. Create Google Analytics Funnels

Your first step to building a well-built online conversion funnel is to set up a funnel visualization in Google Analytics.

If you don’t have this set up…stop right now and go set it up. The data you will collect will reveal where your users are abandoning the conversion funnel.

The requirements are simple:

• Goal Name – Give the goal a name that will help you recognize when looking at your data reports. For example, “white paper A download” or “free trial subscription.”
• Define The Funnel – Google Analytics allows you to add up to ten pages in a conversion funnel. This is where you will find out where users are dropping off before completing the “goal”…so get this path right.
• Give The Goal A Value – To calculate ROI and other metrics in Google Analytics, you need to figure out what a completed goal is worth. For example, if 10% of people who download a report spend $500 with you, the download value might be $50 (10% of $500).

This tracking will help you discover when and where people are leaving your site during the conversion funnel.

For example, you may see that visitors are bouncing off of one page in the conversion path. You discover this page is where you have the price listed. Can you improve conversions by moving the price further down the sales path? Would adding trust elements on that page help?

If you ask these kinds of questions as you work through the data you’ll be able to fix the leakiest parts of your online conversion funnel.

To learn more about how to set up funnels in Google Analytics, please read our articled called How to Get Actionable Data Out of Google Analytics.

2. Analyze Your Landing Pages

Once you’ve got funnel visualization set up, your first round of testing should focus on your landing page. Here are the elements you should test:

• Headlines – Test different headlines to see which ones attract and keep the most visitors.
• Copy – The copy should be full of benefits to the reader…leading off with the most promising. The PAS copywriting formula is the best way I’ve found to write sales copy.
• Color – Test different background and text color to improve conversion. I’ve done extensive testing of color on my own blog to come up with the current color scheme.
• Font Size – Try different font sizes to see which size keeps readers on the page longer. Also test different font styles to see how they impact conversion.
• Purchase Path – Test the path to purchase to eliminate any friction you uncover. Tip: lowering the page loading speed may be your biggest culprit when it comes to abandonment rates. Use Google’s Page Speed Report to test your conversion funnel. You can also uncover the impact slow page load has on conversion during a usability test. Use both in combination to get the optimal purchase path.

Click on this image below to get an even better understanding of what elements you can test on your landing pages:

The one final piece to creating a high-converting landing page is to limit distractions. Anything that is unrelated to the focus of that page should be cut immediately.

3. Analyze Your Sign Up Forms

The next interaction step to test is your sign up forms. The common elements to test are as follow:

• Headlines – Try out different headlines on your sign-up form and test their effect on sign up pages. Don’t take this lightly. You can boost conversion rates by 29% alone by testing different call-to-action headlines.
• Text Box Words – Make sure the words you use are not confusing…otherwise you could drive away visitors.
• Text Box Placement – Test how you position the text boxes on the form to see which arrangement produces the best conversion.
• Text Boxes Per Page – Analyze your completion rate to see if fewer boxes will boost conversion rates. Keep in mind, fewer text boxes don’t necessarily mean more conversions. You can actually increase back-end conversion by collecting more information.
• Captcha – These filters are great for keeping spammers out, but when they are too difficult to read…conversions can drop.

4. Test Your Trust Elements

Trust on the web is huge…especially when you are trying to get people to give you their money. This is why you have to build trust into your landing page and throughout your online conversion funnel.

At minimum, you need these elements:

• Guarantee – Will you give them their money back if they are not satisfied? Will you do this in 30 days? 60 days? 90 days? Test different variations to see which pulls the best.
• Better Business Bureau Logo – Applying for a BBB logo for your site is pretty straight forward. You have to be a member of your local chapter and pay somewhere around $400/year…but that’s inexpensive when it comes to putting your customer at ease.
• VeriSign Logo – The VeriSign logo is an internationally-recognized symbol that your online check-out process is safe and secure. That’s huge. Try to do business without that seal and your online conversion rates will plummet. You can get a VeriSign seal for less than $300 a year.

I think for the best results you should use all three of those trust elements above, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do a few rounds of A/B testing, experimenting to find out which logo is the most effective. You’ll especially want to find out the best position of each trust element on the page.

Zappos is a company that uses trust symbols and guarantees really well. On every page they have what we call “The Extreme Guarantee”:

The Zappos footer also has all the relevant trust symbols:

Be sure to read our article 10 Ways to “Guarantee” More Sales and Conversions for more information and examples on this topic.

5. Test Your Email Conversion

Building an email newsletter list is an essential part of your online conversion funnel. Test these elements in your emails:

• Open Rates – Your email newsletter will live or die based upon your subject lines. Make sure you are using the most compelling copy. Test different variations constantly to raise conversion rates.
• Copy – Test short or long copy in the email, preferably finding out if the bulk of your audience wants to click through and read everything on your site.
• Click Throughs – Open rates alone won’t tell you the whole story. Embed links throughout the copy to see if more or less links drives people to click. And test different anchor text copy.
• Plain Text vs. HTML – Find out if your audience prefers email in plain text or HTML based. A great way to find out is to use a simple survey.
• CTA – Test different calls to action to see which drives more traffic to your site. Also test the position of these CTAs on the page.

By the way, check out my article 5 Reasons Why You Can’t Make Your Email Marketing Work for more advice on this topic. Also, KISSmetrics provides the tools to measure all of these elements in your email campaign.

Let’s shift gears now and talk about how you can test these different conversion funnel elements.

6. Combine Usability And A/B Test Results

Talk to most people about metrics and they’ll either talk about user testing or A/B testing…but never both. That’s unfortunate because they work together perfectly.

Let me explain.

• Get qualitative feedback from users during a usability test – Your first step should be a usability test. This user test can be casual, but tightly-focused…as in just have them focus on the page where conversions matter the most (sign up form). You would be surprised how much insight you can get from feedback from a very small group.
• Analyze your user testing results – This user feedback should help guide your design of the page in question. You should walk away with three or more design alternatives.
• Run your A/B testing – Once you have those alternatives and insights from user testing, start you’re A/B testing. Your A/B testing should help you narrow down your choices between design alternatives and on-page elements, eventually landing on the most optimum performing page.

In the end, A/B testing will confirm your usability test insights…giving you more effective results than if either were used alone.

If you’re new to usability testing, here are some resources to check out:

• Usability 101: Introduction to Usability – By Jakob Neilson, godfather of usability.
• Seven Common Usability Testing Mistakes – By Jared Spool, easily one of the smartest guys doing usability work.
• Usertesting.com – For $39 you get a video of a user talking about your site as they work through it, and written summary of problems they encountered.

And if you’re new to A/B testing, check out our KISSmetrics A/B testing guide.

7. Run A Mom Test

Okay, so it doesn’t have to be your mom…but make sure it isn’t one of your internet savvy friends. In other words, it should be a normal web user.

Call this person and ask them to find your site on Google and complete the conversion process. Make sure you tell them what you expect users to do at your site.

Stay on the phone and ask them to talk out loud as they do their search. Record the phone call and take notes until they are finished.

Make tweaks to your conversion process and repeat the process until people can work through the process without abandoning the process.

8. Run An Online 5-Second Test

Finally, when it comes to creating a well-built conversion funnel, you need to keep things simple. Eliminate all distractions.

I’ve found that by running a simple visual presentation you can learn a lot about the simplicity of your funnel.

This is where the five-second test comes in.

Vinod Khosla originally created this test to show executives and VCs that slides thick with information would fail. The test involved nothing more than putting a slide in front of someone and then pulling it after 5 seconds. Khosla would then ask the tester to tell him what he remembered.

The lesson was always the same…less is more. The 5-second test has been adapted online to help you test web designs with a tool like fivesecondtest.com.

You can use this to test wire-frames, mock ups and call to actions. And it’s easy to get started:

1. Get a free account.
2. Upload a screenshot of the web page you want to test.
3. Let members test your web page.
4. See your results.

You can see in the red outline that in a quick glance what most users were seeing as the most important goal of the web page. In this case it was “download this.”

Is that what you want to be the main goal?

If not, then you need to change the design and re-test. The tool is free so you can do this as many times as you want!

9. Take It To The Next Level By Tracking Individual People

In this post we talk about how to optimize your funnels in Google Analytics for maximizing conversion. You can take it a step further by using KISSmetrics to track individual people. With KISSmetrics you can dive deeper and witness more actionable data at a more granular level. This will allow you to make even greater gains towards improving your conversions.

As always we’re more than happy to educate you on how much further you can take your conversion optimization with KISSmetrics. Feel free to contact us to learn how you can do just that.

Conclusion

When it comes to creating a well-built conversion funnel, you should be testing all the time. You’ll get plenty of actionable data that will help you improve your conversion rates.

Listen, if you’re not testing, you’re leaving money on the table. And as I shared above, there are so many easy and inexpensive ways to test that you really don’t have any excuse. Besides, who wants to lose money? Not me!

What other elements in a conversion funnel should you be testing? And what other tools do you know about?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the VP of Marketing of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

Source ; http://blog.kissmetrics.com/

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