It’s awful tempting to dive right into a landing page project with the first glimmer of inspiration; however even a brilliant concept is destined for failure if it isn’t objective driven.

In order to accomplish your goals, you have to know what they are. Is this an eCommerce website focused on transactions? Is the purpose to generate leads, or is it about branding or relationship building, or is it about increasing your database through membership registration? A good marketer will often start at the bottom of the sales funnel and work their way up to the point where the visitor first enters the funnel.

After you decide what constitutes “Success” you best figure out exactly who your ideal customer is. Remember; it’s NOT about YOU! Many businesses feel compelled to tell their story to what they perceive as a captive audience. There is no captive audience on the Internet. Check your ego at the door, it’s just too easy for a visitor to leave and find what they really want.

Before you can tell your story… you have to know who you are telling it to. A tried and true technique for defining your customer is to actually create one… complete with name and age and marital status, etc. You may even have multiple profiles; just make sure that you prioritize them. Remember…if you try to appeal to too many different customer types, you will wind up appealing to no one. Once you know WHO you are selling to, you can craft your message so that it appeals to THEM.

Stephen R. Covey said in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” to begin with the end in mind. In the world of landing page design, you have to know what YOU want and what your CUSTOMER wants. Then work from there.

I’ve mentioned in previous articles that you have between 2-8 seconds to interest your visitors before they decide to leave, or go deeper into your website. Naturally they will only see so many elements of your landing page before they make that decision.

Remember, people don’t read on the Internet, they scan. They see headlines, images and bullet pointed lists. We scan over web content at such a great rate, milliseconds become very important. You don’t want to waste any of the visitor’s time, and make sure you get all your USPs to the user’s eye as quickly and as clearly as possible.

So how do you know what they are likely to look at during that brief amount of time while you control their fleeting interest?

Well you could conduct a focus group, but that is time consuming and expensive. The easiest way is to subscribe to eye tracking software that through a series of complex algorithms is able to simulate the path the human eye is likely to take based on size, position and color of the elements on a given page.

Eye tracking is a technique used to determine where a person is looking. It allows you to see your website literally through the eyes of your users. The concepts underlying eye tracking are deceptively simple: track the movements of the user's eyes and note what the pupils are doing while the user is looking at a particular feature.

 Eye tracking is great for determining:

• Whether or not users notice adverts and/or key calls to action
• What users pay most attention to and what they don't notice
• The order in which users notice items on the page
• Where users look for navigation links to take them to another page

The technology helps you explore whether users:

• Notice the logo?
• Discover the main navigation quickly?
• Attend to the critical information on the page?
• Absorb the information on the page or simply scan it?
• Observe how users interact with your site by following their point of gaze

To summarize, we already know that the hierarchy of elements on the page will greatly influence your click-through-rate and what your visitors will target, however it is nice to actually see it with your own eyes. I do recommend taking a look at Eye Tracking software, or working with an Internet Consultant who is familiar with the process, however I do not consider it to be the absolute definitive answer to what users are drawn to on your site. As with anything, an objective dose of reality goes a long way.

Step 1: Define Success

In order to accomplish your goals, you have to know what they are. Is this an eCommerce website focused on transactions? Is the purpose to generate leads, or is it about branding or relationship building or increasing your database through membership registration? A good marketer will often start at the bottom of the sales funnel and work their way up to the point where the visitor first enters the funnel.

Step 2: Define your Customer

It’s NOT about YOU! Many businesses feel compelled to tell their story to what they perceive as a captive audience. There is no captive audience on the Internet. Check your ego at the door, it’s just too easy for a visitor to leave and find what they really want.

A tried and true technique for defining you customer is to actually create a persona… complete with name and age and marital status, etc. You may even have multiple profiles; just make sure that you prioritize them. Remember…if you try to appeal to too many different customer types, you will wind up appealing to no one. Once you know WHO you are selling to, you can craft your message so that it appeals to THEM.

Step 3: Selecting Domains

Most businesses consider their Home page their landing page. That may be perfectly acceptable in some instances, but it is not always the best choice. Your landing page may be part of a micro-site or single page with its own domain name. You might consider one or more “vanity names” targeting a specific product or service. That is particularly effective when the domain will be visible such as on printed material or other instances where the domain will be visible such as on Sponsored Links advertising (pay-per-click).

Step 4: Wireframing

Essentially a “sketch” of the page layout. Start by listing all of the elements that go on the page and lay them out on a piece of paper taking up approximately the amount of space they will warrant. You should do this “before” you write the copy because the space available will dictate the amount to copy you have to work with. Make sure that you place the most important elements above the “fold” (the spot on the page where most visitors will have to scroll down to see more).

Step 5: Copy writing

People don’t actually read on the internet...they scan. They see headlines, bullet points and graphics. Headlines should refer back to what the visitor was looking at before they landed on your page. Only about 20% of your visitors will actually read the body copy... still, it has to be good (less is more).

Don’t forget the call to action! You might test matching up the call to action with the headline since that is almost certainly the one element on the page that you can be sure they will read.

Step 6: Testing & Tweaking

This is not a spare time activity. It is something that should be scheduled at regular intervals. Examine your metrics, make incremental changes and reexamine the effect. Don’t make too many changes at once or you won’t know what you did to effect the changes. Your testing and adjustments should match your original goals (Transactions, Lead Generation, Branding/Education, Relationship Building, Registrations, Viral marketing, etc.)

There is no one size fits all checklist of elements that comprise a good landing page. However there are some common elements… a menu you might say, of various concepts and best practices you might want to consider.

Don’t try to force-feed these elements onto your page just because they are on my list. Instead consider the basic concept of what I am trying to accomplish in my example below, and why I designed this landing page as I did.

1.   Branding: WSI is a brand unto itself and using our logo in a prominent position serves two purposes. First it enhances the overall branding effort of the organization, and second, it allows my targeted PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign (for which I designed this landing page) to capitalize on the already established WSI brand. If your brand isn’t already established, this is a step in the right direction.
2.   Local Appeal: Naturally this is only important if you are a local company serving a specific area, or a national company with local representation. Studies show that most people gravitate to doing business with local companies. It is less about regional patriotism, and more about their own sub-conscience comfort level. My office has a toll-free number, and we serve the entire USA, but I chose to put our local phone number on top because the targeted nature of this PPC campaign will restrict this particular page from being seen outside this area code. I WANT people to see the local area code.
3.   Calls to Action: The topic of “Calls to Action” is worthy of an entire book, (and has been). I will cover this on a separate post. Suffice it to say that you want to reverse engineer what you want to accomplish, and then direct your visitors to the “top of the Sales Funnel” to get them started. Don’t rely on them to figure out what to do, or to be insentified to do it without prompting.
4.   Credibility: In this particular instance we recognize that the Internet is full of hucksters and pretenders. Touting one of our qualifications with a seal representing our qualifications is designed to elevate us and establish a sense of confidence in our abilities. This is particularly important in any industry involved in health, wealth, legal or large investments.


5.   Visitor Oriented: People want to know they are in good company (or at least appropriate company). These particular local search services are geared for the small and medium sized businesses. Displaying an image of our target market allows the targeted visitor to identify themselves with our service.
6.   Justifications: The target market is small and medium sized businesses. Although most people buy on emotion, they justify on reason. In this case I merely listed some relevant statistics as published by respected sources.
7.   Rich Media: People would rather watch than read. Rich Media is more engaging than the written word and statistically increases “time on site” and conversions. This particular video is of me explaining how we operate so our future clients will understand that we have a standardized process with repeatable steps, and presumably establishes a sense of confidence with my organizations and with me in particular.
8.   Above the Fold: The expression dates back to the way newspapers were displayed at newsstands. They were typically folded in half, thus you would only see the top portion at a glance. It was the visible headline on the top portion that attracted attention and drew the viewer in. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Today’s fold is the point on the computer monitor where you have scroll to see more. It is not necessary to squeeze everything above the fold… just the important stuff.
9.   Clarification: You have to make it very clear what this is all about, what you want them to do and what you will do for them.
10.   Bullet Lists: People don’t read on the internet… they scan. They see headlines, images and bullet points.
A note on positioning: Where you place the elements on your page are just as important as what you place on the page. I will cover this in a subsequent post about Eye Tracking.

So what’s below the Fold?

What you don’t see on this example is what I place below the fold. To support the Call to Action, Clarification and the Call to action I am offering my visitors a sample of our WebScan™ report, typical of what we would do for them.

To build credibility I offer 2 Testimonials from actual clients who have used these very services. It culminates with an invitation to fill in the form and contact us for a “FREE Evaluation”.

You can see the actual landing page in its entirety at: www.wsieworks.com/local-search.

“Advertising is the art of getting people to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have”.  That statement predates the Internet by a number of decades, yet it is as true today as it was back then. A bit cynical? Perhaps, but let us not forget that in the Internet world people rarely stumble across a website without actively searching for something.  If you have what they are looking for, your job is to help them find it.

The problem is most websites are so ill conceived and poorly constructed that they are little more than monuments to their owners.
 
Let’s make something transparently clear; people do not read on the Internet… they scan! They see headlines, images and bullet points. Depending on the personality type of your visitor, you have between 2 and 8 seconds to convince them to stay on your website and delve deeper into it. They click in… take a quick peak… and click out. Those are the conditions in which business is conducted on the Internet.

Why are effective Landing Pages essential?

A Landing page is where visitors land after clicking on an email link, a search engine result, a banner ad, or manually typing in a specific advertised address. Actually making use of that tidbit of knowledge is a little more complex.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of throwing money into driving traffic and living with your conversion rate. Want more customers? Just buy more traffic. Not exactly efficient…or cost effective.

The scenario below illustrates that a mere 2% increase in conversion results in 240 additional customers WITHOUT increasing traffic. Depending on the lifetime value of those new customers, that might be a game changer for this particular business.