The Landing page magic
How to build a landing page that converts like crazy!
First let me introduce you to the concept of landing page, it can mean differently for different people.
For affiliates a landing page is the first visible page to the traffic that they send by promoting that particular product, for affiliates landing pages can be the deciding factor for sale or no sale. It is also the squeeze page from where you effectively build your list.
For Website owners, a landing page merely means the first page or the index page [also known as the home page] of their entire site, this is the page that gives the site its identity and provides visitors with an overview of what is inside the site, just like a index page does on books or the introduction in movies.
For Product owners, the landing page is where their affiliates send the traffic to, this is the most important page of any website because it is that page which will provide the user the information about the product and everything regarding it, its also that page which has to be good enough for the visitor that it converts him into a paying customer. But lets keep that aside for now.
The above mentioned are examples of how one can describe a landing page, but am not going to go deep into those topics, i will make detailed post about them later. But the Landing page which am going to talk about now is the one for a ‘list-builder’, this list builder can be anyone, a website owner, a affiliate, a product owner or simply a company doing research. Also known as a squeeze page. See my previous article for more information on list building.
Like i said, for a list-builder the ‘landing page’ means everything, because the ultimate goal of a list – builder is to convert the visitors to his site into subscribers to his list! And all list-builders depends on the landing page to do its magic.
Landing page is also known as squeeze pages or lead capture pages so don’t get confused when you hear those terms as they all mean the same.
First things first – The tools:
Before you start building the perfect landing or squeeze page make sure you have the right tools, because sometimes having the right tools reduces your work, saves a lot of time and money along with giving you great results. Here are the top tools i recommend.
- WebHosting: HostGator (for hosting your pages – use code ‘SJRECOMMENDS’ for discounts)
- Domain Names: Namecheap, Godaddy
- WordPress Based Themes: Elegant Themes (for bloggers)
- Products to promote or sell: Click Bank (once you build a list, click bank is basic you can find many other programs out there)
- Get an Autoresponder : Aweber (the back bone of your email marketing campaign or alternatively you can use getresponse)
- Exit pops & pop ups: Pop Up Domination (for bloggers – or else use an exit pop, search online you can find one for free)
- Link Cloaking: PrettyLinkPro (wordpress plugin, use free version or get the pro with added features – useful if you have internal links or in your mailings or ebooks, etc very helpful since they are easy to edit anytime without changing the link and redirect it anywhere you wish)
- Automatic Squeeze pages: Profits theme (for wordpress, build a squeeze or sales page with click of a button)
- Outsourcing: Fiverr (for traffic, videos, voice overs, content, ebooks, anything you can think of!)
The landing page magic:
Ready to build a list yet? So how can we create that magic to get excellent conversion rates? follow these points to create the magic for your landing page.
- Stick to the topic: Your landing page should be product specific, niche targeted and to the point
- Give something free: Landing pages are more effective when your offering something for free
- Use my writing techniques from here to optimize your landing page
- background of your landing page should be white or the same color as that of your website,according to my research white backgrounds get most ‘time’ a visitor spends on the page
- Their should be images for any product that your giving away or offering trials for, these images should be placed in the left hand side for optimum results
- Use buttons to highlight important points, red buttons works the best – bullet points are the key here.
- Use ‘highlighting’ to mark important features of the offer, such as ‘free’, ‘limited’, etc.
- Remember that your building a list, not a membership site, so don’t force your visitors to fill invaluable forms or provide lots of details, most list subscription forms requires email and first name, stick to that because i have found that the more the information you ask for the lesser are your conversion rates.
- Stick to the title, if your offering free goodies or report, or a trial to your brand new product then stick to that don’t deviate from topic and start talking about things that are not needed, this is not a product page – your not necessarily selling something so there is no need to have a ‘story’.
- Keep your landing page as short as possible! Most affiliates and product owners tend to make their landing pages[which are also their sales letters] into incredible 10000 + words articles. Study shows that average visitors to your website are more likely to convert if you give them information about what they can expect in brief and since your landing page is meant to convert traffic to subscribers their is no point in writing a article about it, because no one will bother reading it.
- Promote your landing pages effectively, you may not promote your site at all, but you must promote your landing page because you need traffic to convert them into subscribers so promote them in all possible ways you can.
- Use points instead of paragraphs, because short points are much better to read then entire paragraphs with so many words
- Show the visitors the aim of your offer, don’t hide things, be open – or in other words, provide users the trust that your not going to spam their emails or sell them to others.
- Avoid lots of internal links to external sites on the landing page, links in landing page is like a leak in a pot, your valuable traffic may just run away from your page which is what you don’t want! So keep links limited unless important ones.
- Brand your page, don’t let it look dull and unimportant, give the professional look
- Do SEO even on the landing pages. yes some people argue about this but this is actually very helpful, because you get organic traffic to those pages and that traffic is very laser targeted and converts at very high rates!
- Be clear and write with the flow, don’t use hard words, make sure the reader understands what your trying to convey
- Provide your subscription forms more then 1 time! This is important and so is the location of the forms, your goal is to make sure at least one form is visible to the visitor at all time, so when he scrolls down to read till the end their should be 1 form visible to him at all times!
- Use google analytics and the tools provided by your email marketing solution, track your traffic and conversion rates and find out where you lack and where to improve.
- User drop down menu buttons instead of radio buttons, because the shorter a form looks the easier it is for visitors to fill it and the higher you convert
- Cause urgency, tell the visitor that the page will vanish after certain time or the offer won’t last long so that they take action the very moment they read it
- Talk to the user, about the user and for the user, no one actually cares about what you the list builder gets from it, everyone cares for themselves so instead of using words such as ‘we’ user words such as ‘you’
- Most visitors are likely to read the starting few lines and the last few lines, and the same goes for the paragraphs, make optimum use of it then they might read the middle portion, so you know the major ‘hot spots’ where a visitor gives most of his or her attention
- Don’t use too much flash work or pop ups, those things are irritating even for you, so the visitors to your site are also humans, avoid torcher!
- Test before trying and compare before starting, make sure your better then your competition or any other list builder, also visit their landing pages to find out how they are doing and take out the best portions of their tricks and apply to yours
- Make sure your page is fast loading, the slower it loads the lower it converts because no one is going to wait 2 mins for a page to load!
- Don’t use clip art or artworks[unless your promoting or offering art related items], instead provide images
- Location of the page, make it discoverable don’t hide it, in fact study shows landing pages with their own domain names convert a lot better then the ones hosted on sub-domains, but it all depends on what type of offer your giving to your visitors.
- Use a good simple design, but make sure the design is not too good also. Keep the major elements of your page visible while keeping the prospect into the ‘flow’ of your page, they should not feel or tempt to close the page, be creative!
- check your conversion rates, think of how much you convert and track the major sources of traffic that convert effectively.
- use exit pop ups, when a visitor is about to exit your page give pop ups with a even better offer to catch their attention again!
Updated June 2011:
Here are a few more pointers that i have learned since posting this:
- Use Videos: Videos are the new trend and video landing pages tend to convert much better.
- Show your self : either show your picture or record a video with your own voice, don’t be afraid or nervous. These are the ‘trust’ factor and would definitely get you more conversions.
- Use captions for images: If you use images then put captions underneath them, these little captions are very powerful and according to Ryan, people look at title, sub headings, images, captions and post script. So these must be the converting factors!
- One field tactic if your desperate: If your page doesn’t convert, simple remove the ‘name’ field and just ask for their email, that’s it! This one field tactic will take away the ‘personalization’ value form your list but will increase conversions.
- Offer a double bait: If you don’t get good conversions then here is another tactic, offer your ‘freebie’ that you are giving away or part of it to your visitors without them having to opt in, you can use this with exit pops and convert exit traffic efficiently. Simply put a link back to your opt in page inside the freebie or better split the freebie in 2 parts, give one for free and ask them to opt in for the 2nd.
I think this much information is enough for you to create the landing page magic, if you need any help feel free to ask me. I would also like to know the methods and tricks that you use to convert effectively so don’t hesitate to tell!
Don’t forget to share this post, subscribe to my RSS feeds & follow me on twitter @sameerjoad and like my fan page on facebook, till then have a great day,
SJ
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I would like a website but it’s all greek to me. Using your idea is, so far, the best I’ve come across. The idea you have inspired is a collection of multiple blogs. I’m a writer and I’ve written several books yet to be published. Would it be possible to have a directory for each of my stories on the landing page and then each secondary page going to one of my books. There, I could keep people appraised of each story’s progress to include links to buying those that have been published. I’d like to make that interactive so that visitors can comment etc. Is that possible? How would that work?
Hi anna,
i am glad you found my tips useful and yes what you have planned will work the best for you. Provide your readers the ability to comment and you will see many sales.And if your having multiple books, then i recommend creating separate websites for them or atleast seprate information areas to each.
Also if you want help publishing your work online and distributing them through out the world then i recommend lulu.com to you.
If you need any help regarding websites or help setting up and managing your sites, then feel free to send me a message on sj@sameerjoad.com i will do all i can if i have the time to help you out.
cheers
I really enjoy reading The Landing page magic | Sameer Joad.Com – Make money online and more . It’s very interesting. Hope you will post something like this again.
So nice of you sharing this with us, i’m looking to improve my salesman skills so always on the hunt for new ideas and materials.
Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!
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Nice article, i like it. I thought I would leave my first comment
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hi!, thx for the information, many compliments … this blog is very very great ! …sooo I have some experience too in internet marketing …. and I’m getting good results using Quick Squeeze Pages. I suggest to use it to create good squeeze pages without a webmaster
Nice article, does anyone know a good squeeze page creator for wp?