Happy Wednesday! It’s landing page examples time. Today, as a special treat for CCD week, I’ve compiled a list of 36 landing page designs to critique, most of them are awesome, some need a bit more work, and I’ve also included a few that are down right awful (as a lesson of what not to do). Each will get my customary “what I like” and “what I’d change or test” so you can get some ideas and inspiration for your next page.

First things first, in case you’ve not been here lately, we’re on day 3 of Conversion Centered Design week, where every day is focused on certain principles of psychology and design – which I’ll get to in a jiffy. Just to recap, here’s what’s come before and what’s coming next.

• Monday: A free ebook “The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Centered Design” – (68 page PDF)
• Tuesday: 5 Tested Conversion Design Tactics You Should Put to Work. Right Now.
• Wednesday (today): Don’t Design Another Landing Page Until You Read This [Plus 36 Examples]
• Thursday: How To Design Call-to-Action Buttons That Convert
• Friday: 10 Killer Posts on Conversion & Design

The 7 Principles of Conversion Centered Design (CCD)

To recap the 7 principles of CCD covered in Monday’s free ebook – “The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Centered Design“, here they are broken down by design and psychology. I’ll be leaning on these ideas throughout the critiques later on.

1. Design: Encapsulation
   This is a classic technique used to hijack your visitors eyes and create a tunnel vision effect. You can think of it like creating a window on your landing page where your CTA is the view.
2. Design: Contrast & Color
   Some say button color is important, but this a falsehood. In reality, it’s the contrast of the color that you need to focus on. A green CTA may well outperform red in some circumstances, but if the page is dominantly green, that green button is going to get hidden among other page elements. If you focus on contrasting colors you will be much more successful at making it stand out. In the case of the green page, a red button would be suitable.
3. Design: Directional Cues
   Call attention to the most important page elements by using strangely placed and angled arrows. Tie a sequence of arrows together to define a path for the visitor to follow, ending at your CTA.
4. Design: Whitespace
   Give your page elements breathing room to produce a calming effect and allow your CTA to stand out from the rest of your design.
5. Psychology: Urgency & Scarcity
   Common psychological motivators are the use of urgency (limited time) and scarcity (limited supply).
6. Psychology: Try Before You Buy
   By opening your product to scrutiny before the purchase you appear confident. This increases trust and is an important factor in boosting conversions.
7. Psychology: Social Proof
   Social proof is created by the statistics and actions of a particular crowd and it can greatly enhance the “me too” factor. The major benefit is a level of authentic believability.

A Practical Application of CCD

To demonstrate how you can apply the CCD concepts to a landing page, I’ll show a before and after template design example. The purpose of this particular template is to facilitate the download of an ebook in exchange for the standard name and email.

Note: This template is available for use within the Unbounce landing page platform suite of landing page templates.

The Template Before CCD Treatment

The Template After CCD Treatment

36 Landing Page Examples Critiqued for Conversion

Are you excited to see some sweet examples? You should be… there’s 36 of them. Most are from Unbounce customers, but I’ve thrown in some scary ones too, just to mix it up, and scare you into making your own pages better.

I’m sure this isn’t your first landing page rodeo, so saddle up, get your design hat on, and take a ride with me down landing page lane.

Let the critiques begin…

1. Mobile Commons

What I like

• Clear and enticing headline: Your headline is the first thing that people need to see on your landing page, and Mobile Commons do a good job of utilizing their headline to describe what they do, and make you want to keep reading to “Find out why” .

Things I’d change or test

• No back up to claim of 10x conversions: Stating that you’ll get a 10x conversion improvement is a very bold claim. It would essentially mean that someone converting at 10% would have a conversion rate of 100% which isn’t attainable. It would be more effective to have a customer testimonial talking about the conversion improvement they achieved.
• Button copy needs to describe it’s purpose: This is a simple one to remedy. Your CTA button should always explain explicitly what will happen when it’s clicked, for two reasons. Firstly, so people will know what they are going to get, and secondly, so there is another element on the page backing up its purpose. In this instance, I’d suggest something along the lines of “Arrange a call back to discuss a mobile solution”.

2. Macquarie University

Thoughts

This one’s hard to critique. It’s a really good landing page. Oh, but there is the dreaded Submit button again! Tsk Tsk. There are a few things I’d suggest to keep the landing page experience intact. Firstly, I know people are afraid to remove links (or “leaks” as I call them), but you really don’t need to cite every claim you make at this point. It’s not a whitepaper, it’s a marketing device. Secondly, the form area needs a little work. I’ll describe a hypothesis for each.

Hypothesis for A/B Testing

The form area:

By enhancing the messaging of the form area to explain, and focus on, the purpose of the page, the clarity of communication will improve and encourage more people to complete a form they know will benefit them. This will also increase the number of relevant and qualified leads.

Page leaks:

Distractions remove people from the reason *you* have paid them to be here. Removing all links on the page so there is only one action, will increase the engagement with the page’s conversion goal, increasing form completions and reducing the bounce rate.

A/B Testing Advice

Suggestions on what to test to prove the hypothesis:

• Clarify the form’s purpose: The form header is your one chance to describe the reason why you’re asking for personal data. Here the wording suggests that you complete the form to “Register to their event”. Yet, having skimmed (that’s all people will do) the page copy, I see no mention of an event. And the dreaded Submit button does nothing to clear it up. Will you receive information about the university based on your level of study (Current? Desired?) or a prospectus for available courses? So my test advice is to say exactly what you will receive in the header, and reinforce that in the CTA.
• Never submit: You were warned.
• Leaky page: Take away all of the links on the page (except for the privacy statement). If you really need to link to something, do it in a lightbox to keep prospective students on the page.
• Add a FAQ: You can remove the need for so many questions by opening a FAQ page in a lightbox that addresses all of the questions you are currently answering via external links. This will reduce your total points of interaction to three: The CTA, privacy policy and the FAQ.

3. American Bullion

Thoughts

Oh dear. What am I supposed to do with this one? It’s a great page. So I’m going to do a 180 here and talk about what I like about it.

What I like

• Descriptive headline: The headline tells you what the page is about in three words.
• Simple intro paragraph: Describes what you’ll get for completing the form.
• Perfect form header and CTA: A descriptive form header and button copy.
• Supporting information: Everything you need to know is pretty much above the fold, but if you’re not convinced then you can check out a large amount of social proof below including: testimonials, media mentions and trust symbols.

The only thing I would add to this page would be a sub-header above the 3 steps to say what they are about: such as “About Gold Investing”.

4. Florida Hospital – TAVR

Another excellent landing page. Although I don’t get a clear sense of what TAVR is right away (the tiny description of the acronym is hard to see). If you have highly targeted ads, then you need to make sure the headline is a clear match with them.

Hypothesis for A/B Testing

By being more explicit in the headline about what TAVR is, more people will be able to relate, staying on the page and completing the form as a result.

A/B Testing Advice

Suggestions on what to test to prove the hypothesis

• Headline change: I would test using the full name of the procedure, placing the acronym as a second element.”Is Valve Replacement (TAVR) Right for You?” followed by an explanation of what the acronym and procedure are in the first intro paragraph.

  Note: I can’t say if this enough information for people to understand it.

• Optimize for Pay-Per-Click: If there are any paid ads (AdWords etc.) driving traffic to this page, I would change the header to be text with a graphical background, compared to having one giant image. This would increase the Quality Score and the test would compare the change in Quality Score by making the header bot-readable.

5. SweetIQ Whitepaper Download

Thoughts

This is a fairly standard whitepaper/ebook download page, however the underlying design doesn’t support the aesthetic you’d expect from a brick and mortar targeted page. As an electronic document delivered online, it’s important to make it obvious that it’s for local businesses.

There are a couple of ways to do this. Use imagery to show physical businesses, either on the ebook or the background of the page or make the CTA very explicit about the ‘local’ aspect.

Another thing to mention here is that the copy doesn’t really say anything about what you are downloading! Is it a report? An ebook? This absolutely needs to be addressed.

Hypothesis for A/B Testing

By focusing on the local business aspect in the CTA, there will be a better understanding of the local brick and mortar business relevance and more targeted downloads (creating better qualified leads).

A/B Testing Advice

Suggestions on what to test to prove the hypothesis

• CTA copy: I would test the current CTA copy against something more explicit like “Download your location based whitepaper now”, with a short supporting line beneath the button that says “For brick and mortar retail businesses”.

6. Benchmark

Thoughts

There are two different CTA’s on the page, both in color and copy. These could use more consistency, and represent what the next step will reveal (I’m assuming the homepage).

No clear value proposition. I don’t know how the company differentiates from the 100 other email service providers out there.

Hypothesis for A/B Testing

By including a strong value proposition that illustrates why they are unique, people will be more willing to click through to the next step.

A/B Testing Advice

Suggestions on what to test to prove the hypothesis:

• Tagline: There could be a tagline right next to the logo (to use some of the wasted space up there) that helps define the company right away. After all, Benchmark doesn’t say email to me.
• The primary headline: This could be stronger, again, differentiation is key here. Why should I care about Benchmark? What’s the main difference? I’d suggest a 2-level headline where the main header explains the core benefit, and the secondary headline backs it up with supporting information (stats, number of customers etc.) Then I’d move it over the top of the first paragraph and video.
• Image or video of the software in use: Instead of focusing on a testimonial at the first level, I’d include some bullet points that support the headline again – and a video or screenshot of the software. (Then move the testimonial further down).

Test it and see…

7. Spousal Immigration to Canada

Thoughts

Well this is a first! An infographic on a landing page. Very cool. Although time consuming to read.

The opening headline is too situational, rather than descriptive. It would be stronger if it were simplified, rather than ‘cute.’ The infographic has it right: “Sponsor your spouse to Canada”.

Hypothesis for A/B Testing

By changing the page title to directly describe the purpose of the page, the bounce rate will be lowered, and conversions lifted.

Replacing the infographic with key facts in written form will improve the clarity and time spent reading, resulting in more people completing the form, as they will have a better idea of what the benefits of using FWCanada are.

A/B Testing Advice

Suggestions on what to test to prove the hypothesis

• Page title: Change the page title to “Sponsor your spouse to come to Canada” and use a sub-header that says something like “Let FWCanada make your sponsorship easy”.
• Replace the infographic: Take the key points out of the infographic to inform readers who can apply, who can be a sponsor, and how to apply. Probably in the form of an intro paragraph and sectioned sets of bullet points.

8. Falcon Social

Thoughts

This page is actually a microsite, so I would first suggest ripping out the header and footer navigation to increase the on-page engagement and turn it into a promotion specific landing page.

What Falcon Social does really well is something that I’ve been preaching for a long time, namely the use of lightboxes to show extended content without leaving the page. This happens if you click any of the ‘learn more’ links.

However, the page lacks explanation of what the solution provides prior to asking someone to start a free trial. This could include having an introductory paragraph beside the video that mentions how long the trial is along and include a benefit statement.

Hypothesis for A/B Testing

By changing the CTA copy to a benefit driven statement and telling the customer what they would be when they sign up, more people will start a trial.

A/B Testing Advice

Suggestions on what to test to prove the hypothesis:

• CTA copy: To test different CTA’s, I’d run the original against a core benefit CTA such as “Grow Your Brand Socially” and a 3rd CTA that says “Grow Your Brand Socially” with a smaller supporting “x-day free trial” directly beneath the button.

9. Manpacks

What I like

• It’s sexy: Predictable response? Yes, absolutely. That’s the whole point.
• Validation: They jump right into showing off the famous publications that have featured their company. From a design perspective, the grey monotone prevents a mishmash of colour creating any visual distraction from the call to action (CTA).
• Value propositions: The main content on the page answers two simple questions: “What is it?” and “Why should I care?”
• Testimonials: The second is one of the funniest I’ve read. Socks as a Service – genius.
• Removal of doubt: The subtext below the CTA lowers the perceived risk, which can improve the click-through-rate (CTR).

Things I’d change or test

• Tagline: To make it more immediately clear what the purpose of the page is, I’d add a succinct tagline beside the logo.
• Main title (core value proposition): There are a couple of ways to use a headline: A) use a very clear statement of what you are offering to enable an understanding of the purpose of your page, or B) entice your visitor to want to keep reading by using a seductive headline. They’ve gone with B here, presumably in an attempt to catch your attention and increase curiosity (or to push a particular button). For a test, I’d try approach A and make it really clear from the get go – what Manpacks is (this would work really well with the tagline to help pass a five second test).

The example below shows an alternate page they created, presumably to speak to a different segment or create a different emotional trigger.

10. That reset button is what I’d click

Notice the big red button on the bottom left? Reset what? Your business idea? Your design skills? I just hope something magical happens when you click it.

Tips

Unlock the potential for what? Living in a cul-de-sac in a Florida gated community? Be a little more specific about what the purpose of the page and offering is.

CCD principles don’t apply here. It’d be too painful.

11. Sugar hermaphrodites?

Okay, if rich men are your thing, go for it. Who am I to stop you – maybe I’ll be one some day. But unless I’m mistaken, shouldn’t they at least be men? Three of these look distinctly female to me :) Btw, I searched “get rich quick” while searching for examples, and this is what I got – I guess marriage/dating is one method.

Tips

I get that the hot women are there to help sell the idea (to the men) of using money to “get what you want”. But still, throw in a few statements of what the “service” provides. You’ll get more conversions if people know what to expect. And maybe add a little class. #JustSayin.

12. Zen Web Solutions

What I like

• Good message match on form: It’s important in form design to ensure that your form header matches the copy on the button. This really focuses the purpose of the page. Remember never to use the word “Submit” as this breaks the rule and you lose the supporting information. So great job here.

Things I’d change or test

• Client results are hard to decipher: The client results image is an important part of the page header, yet it doesn’t really make much sense. I’m not sure what membership services are, so this could use a more descriptive image and supporting statement.
• Form purpose could be simplified: Currently, the form has two purposes. A phone number to contact the company to discuss business, or to download a marketing guide. As the form action is to get the guide, I wouldn’t muddy the waters by having the phone number in there. I’d suggest placing it beneath the form area as a secondary action. Hit them with the free content first and then the request for them to call. You could also test flipping them into the opposite order.

13. Certify

What I like

• Expectations are communicated next to the form: Beneath the form header, you are told that someone will contact you within 24 hours

Things I’d change or test

• The video poster frame should be more enticing: A poster frame is the image that is visible on your video before the play button is clicked. In many cases this is left to be a screenshot of the start of the video. It can be more effective to have a descriptive and enticing benefit statement as the starting point – to make people want to watch.
• Asking for contact too early: One thing I would test is the placement of the form. It’s good to be above the fold for the most part, but when you are asking someone to engage in communication with you, you might want to expose them to more information about your product offering first. It could be as simple as putting a few bullet points in place of the form and nudging it down a bit. This could mean that you need to move the 3rd feature block somewhere else, and switch it to 2 or 4. Or you could extend the header area to be longer, and balance the design by putting a relevant statement beneath the video, talking about a benefit of the service. Or you could switch the testimonial into this spot.
• Never submit: Change the button copy to say something like “Please contact me for further information”. Polite and to the point.

14. FluidSurveys

What I like

• Clear value proposition: The headline is very simple and leaves no doubt about the purpose of the page and the product. And it’s nicely backed up by a well written explanation of some of the core benefits directly below.
• Highlighted testimonial: The brushed highlight of the testimonial gives it a bit of extra design zing and prevents the page from feeling too text heavy.
• Contrast: They chose two nicely contrasting colors to highlight important elements. The free label, and the form CTA.
• Context of use: Their choice of imagery lets you know that the product can produce mobile-ready polls.
• Validation: Like the example above, they provide a strong sense of trust by including a set of logos.
• They’re Canadian! Woot!

Things I’d change or test

• Remove the footer navigation: Any extraneous navigation on a landing page can lead your visitors down the wrong path. I’d recommend removing the footer nav to simplify the available choices.
• Explain the logos: Add a small label (like example #1) to explain that they are client logos (or sites that have featured/written about them).

15. Golden Sands

What I like

• Experience: It immediately makes me want to go on holiday and stay in a pimp hotel. The pillows are literally selling me softly.
• Price: Travel is very much about price, and they get that out of the way right off the bat, so you can move on to the finder details after unerstanding if you can afford it or not. #smrt

Things I’d change or test

• The form header: Apply now? For what? It’s unclear what you’re applying for – I thought it was a booking site, but apparently I have to apply for something. Make it clear why people are filling out your form.
• Primary value proposition: There’s no clear statement of what the page is for or what you’ll get. I’d try moving the hotel logos from the top and adding in a strong statement that
• Exclusive: There is a mention of an exclusive preview invitation, but it doesn’t explain what you’re being invited to. I’d also make this stand out more if it’s an important selling point – perhaps using some visual cues to draw the viewers eye.

16. Echodemic

What I like

• Opening statement: The opening sentence describes their offering perfectly and succinctly.
• Honesty: It tells you the cost, so you can weigh up the potential value associated with extending your brand reach.
• Clear contact method: The big phone number increases the trust factors by letting you know there are real people to deal with.

Things I’d change or test

• Move the form: Stick the form above the brand logos.

17. Demandforce

What I like

• Market share: they already seem to have a 30% market share – invest.

Things I’d change or test

• Big Form: There are only two required fields, don’t make a visitor feel like they are taking on a long labor to get information. Scale back to just name and phone number. And don’t start the conversation with “Fill in this form. That’s the equivalent of walking into a clothes store and being told to buy these clothes before you even try them on. Seduce, or even coerce, but don’t instruct.
• Call to action: The visitor isn’t really looking to sign up, they probably will respond more to “Request Tour” or “Get Started”.
• Footer: The links in the footer, other than Privacy, are just distractions. Get rid of as many leaks as possible to keep conversion high.

18. Boost Your Search – Free Audit

What I like

• ROBOTS: We like robots.

Things I’d change or test

• Stick to your guns: Choose one action and stick with it. In cases like this the e-mail lead is not nearly as valuable as the customer.
• Make Two Pages: Differentiate the actions “Free audit” and “Paid Plan” into separate landing pages so you can segment the traffic from channels like PPC.

19. Eureka Report

What I like

• Red, White & Black: The color scheme is classic and trustworthy; this is clearly business oriented.

Things I’d change or test

• Wait What: The product, Eureka Report, is overpowered by the incentive. Am I getting the Eureka Report or Time Magazine. Fix the hierarchy so it’s clear what the purpose of the page is. Try switching the positioning of the 10 reasons block and the form block.
• Top X: As popular as Top 10s, are smaller lists are punchier and more memorable. Try 5 or 7 that will give you a littler more space to play with too.

20. Monsoon – The Value of Association

What I like

• Modern tech: Speaks to a very specific modern technology sector (catches the HTML5 nerds is what I’m saying).
• Why?: Strong section on the importance of the company’s technology.

Things I’d change or test

• Mobile Apps: The purpose *appears* to be to build mobile apps but it’s very buried in small text beneath the main imagery – much better to use large test to convey the message and *then* follow it up with “context of use” images where you see apps used on mobile devices.
• Talk to us: Why? What is the benefit of talking to you about your project? Try adding a direct benefit beside the CTA that says “Talk to us about your next project, so that we can a,b,c the hell out of it…!”

21. Dev Auditions

What I like

• Clear value proposition: It’s clearly about hiring better people – focused on dev. But the headline could be clearer (see below).
• Walkthough: The 3-step process paints a simple picture of how the company operates.
• Close with the benefits: I like the start, middle and end of this page. Like a good story it leads you through what you need to know, ending with what you’ll get and a closing CTA. +1.

Things I’d change or test

• Clearer headline: Hire Smarter is generic – if you’re looking at dev hires then make the dev logo bigger or change the main headline into something with greater clarity such as “Hire Smarter Dev Talent”.
• Types of position: As it’s recruiting, I’d include some scope of the types of talent covered as development can be wide ranging. What are your areas of expertise, and geographical boundaries?

22. Right Signature

What I like

• Clear info about what you’ll get, including freebies for extra incentive: The text beneath the button helps put the visitor at ease by describing what will happen next – and the addition of some free usage is a good incentive to sign up.
• A headline that describes exactly what the product does: I love this headline. It’s so clear and to the point that you couldn’t fail to understand what the service does instantly.
• Demonstration of simplicity: The 3-step design below the main area makes it really quick to understand how the service would be used, which will limit the number of bad leads you’ll get as they know what they’re signing up for.

Things I’d change or test

• Nothing!: I could go on all day about why I like this page, but I have too many more to write so I’ll stop now. Great job RightSignature.

23. Monetate eBook

What I like

• Design of eBook image shows professionalism: By having a nicely designed cover you show that time and effort went into it’s creation (as opposed to a boring plain white cover).
• Simple bullets break down why you would want the eBook: The headline for the bullets “You’ll learn” really sets the tone that it’s useful and listing what you will get out of reading it (as opposed to what’s in it) is a much stronger benefits driven approach.
• Clear definition in headline of what you’ll get: Sometimes it’s nice with an eBook to know it’s not War and Peace. By limiting this to 10 tips, they stand a good chance of increased conversions by providing an easy to consume resource. While long eBooks can be authoritative, they often go unread.

Things I’d change or test

• Social sharing location: People are more inclined to share something right after they actually get it. So I’d suggest placing the social sharing buttons on the form confirmation page. This also has the benefit of removing distractions from the main page.

24. Go Fun

What I like

• Not much I’m afraid.

Things I’d change or test

• Change the informational hierarchy: the first thing you see is “SIGN UP NOW” which is very aggressive as there’s no real supporting reason to go with it. Message match is critical for conversion, so make this first statement match the ads/link text people are arriving from.
• What is this?: There is no description of what Go Fun is. Most people’s reaction to confusion is to hit the back button. On further exploration, there is a tiny portion of small text that explains what it is. This should be big and prominent. They are asking for 20 emails of your friends, you need some serious trust factors on the page to give out your friends emails.

25. Fast Track Sales

What I like

• Strong headline explains value prop in seconds: They sell homes fast, and they explain it fast. Great headline.
• Form headline and CTA explain clearly what you’ll get:

Nuff said.

26. OCD – Clinical Trials

What I like

• CTA asks a question: Questions are very powerful persuasion devices and placing one on the CTA (button) can help people convert as they want to know the answer.
• Photos help relieve the pressure: By showing pictures of regular everyday happy people, they put you at ease by de-stigmatizing a common issue that can affect anyone.

Things I’d change or test

• Move the social buttons: As I keep saying, put these on your confirmation page. If people have just converted they are more likely to share.

27. Learn French

What I like

• Use of video: the page is kept simple because the video removes the burden of extra copy, a good technique for enhancing page clarity. It’s also quite an emotional video about the founders reason for starting the company after marrying someone from a foreign country. Very authentic.
• Differentiation: The way they leverage the concept of a conversation rather than just learning words, seems likely to be more appealing to potential customers.
• Clear CTA: Learn French. Yup.

Things I’d change or test

• CTA copy: I’d try changing the button text to “Learn Conversational French” to maintain the concept of the page.

28. Kingsley Judd Wine Investments

What I like

• Wine!: Gotta like that.
• Two word headline: You don’t get much simple than that. In just two words they’ve told you exactly what the page is about.
• Beautifully simple and compact design: The blurred image is clear enough to convey the vineyard feeling, while pumping the form box right out at you. Great use of contrast for the form container and button.
• Incentive: Having an opt-in for a free prize draw is a good way to entice conversions.

Things I’d change or test

• Terms & conditions: If you are going to have a prize draw, you should have a link to terms & conditions.

29. Box

Box is a file-sharing service based out of Los Altos, California. Over the last seven years they’ve raised $248 million of venture capital funding.

Like

• Does what it says on the box (see what I did there?) – the headline copy says it all: no jargon involved. Simplicity appeals, especially when it’s solving a very real business problem. This kind of language also helps with SEO, as it mirrors the kind of query someone might use when searching for a file sharing solution. This is backed up with good clear sub-headings which aid the eye when skimming content.

Don’t like

• Weak integration of video – Box have decided to make the video fade into the background of the header image. I didn’t even see it when I first arrived. This is one of those times where it pays not to try and be clever. I’ve run tests that made it clear that showing the video on the page converts beter, vs. expecting people to find your link to pop it up.

30. GoToMyPC

GoToMyPC is an online service for remote-access to your home and work computers.

Like

• Clear copy – features aren’t the strong point here, the main point is that you can access your computer remotely. GoToMyPC focus on a headline and copy that sells the benefits in simple language. Jargon is a real killer for landing pages, unless you have a very niche audience, don’t fall into its clutches.
• Layout – the layout of a page should read as we would read a book. This page does that, creating a logical journey: headline, image and description, sign-up, post sign-up actions.

What I’d test

• The form position– Switching the form to appear on the right vs. left (and vice versa) is a common test that can show surprising results. Different cultures read in different directions, so give that a try. Switched around, it would also let you read the “Works on” before you deal with the form.

31. CarFax

What I Like

• Straight to the point: The main headline asks a question that immediately weeds out anyone that’s arrived here mistakenly. “Buying a used car?” Why yes! I’m in the right place.
• Online vs. offline: The page asks for the car’s VIN – but you’ll most likely only get that by looking for it on the car in person – luckily they have a mobile page too so you can do it on a smartphone. Winning points!

What I’d change or Test

• Nothing. I love this page! They clearly had some smart people architect and design the page.
• Button copy: Okay, I’d change one minor thing. The CTA should say “View Report” instead of “Go”.

32. Oprah Sweepstakes

What I Like

• Media brand match: This is what I talked about at the start. There is a clear correlation between the landing page and the magazine cover. Oprah consistently appears happy, using a strong personal connection (direct eye contact) to make you feel comfortable.

What I’d change or Test

• Submit: Apparently Oprah’s designers didn’t read my last landing page examples post. The word “Submit” says nothing about what will happen when clicked. I’d change it to a double line CTA that says:
   

  First line: Subscribe to O magazine
  Second line (smaller text): To be entered in the $25k sweepstakes

• Headline and sub-header could be better: It’s a double purpose page – subscribe to the magazine and get entered into the sweepstakes. But the headline only says subscribe (not to the magazine) so it could be read as “subscribe to the sweepstakes”. Minor point, but clarity is important. You don’t want have to read all that fine print.

33. Intuit

Yet more proof that the big guys are doing it right. This is an excellent landing page. Here’s why:

What I Like

• Benefit based headline: Indicates that there are other options out there, but this is a better way to do it. Instead of describing what it does it uses a benefit to enhance the headline.
• Use of directional cue: Conversion centered design standards (step 11) include using directional cues to aid the persuasive nature of a page – here an arrow is used to point you in the right direction.
• Descriptive CTA: Obvious that you are going to start a free trial.
• Social proof: The page is littered with social proof indicators: impressive list of customer logos, security symbols, and an Editor’s Choice award.

What I’d change or Test

• How much is it? There’s no mention of how much it will cost after the 30-day free trial. A good way to include this is to say: “Free for 30-days then pick a plan starting at $xx”.
• No credit card required: This is very important information to know, yet it’s buried as small text. I’d recommend making it subtext in the button to reinforce the lack of a signup barrier.

34. Adobe Test & Target

What I Like

• Accidental genius: When the page loads, the form takes about 2 seconds to appear. Clearly being pulled dynamically from a server somewhere. However, what it does is draw your attention to the form as soon as it loads. Personally I love it as a persuasion device.
• Pixel perfect headline: The use of whitespace around the headline couple with it’s clarity of communication make for a great headline.
• Hierarchy of content: Adobe break the content nicely into nicely flowing chunks:
  • Page purpose
  • Benefit statement
  • Target market based benefit bullet points
  • Action statement

  Copy this flow of content – it’s really good.

What I’d change or Test

• The submit button – Jeez: Make it say “Get our Whitepaper”.
• Required? Make it clear which fields are required, this will make the form appear shorter than it is.

The blandness of this page works to it’s advantage to make the CTA stand out. Honestly though, the page is so simple that it would be hard to squeeze much conversion lift out of it, without attacking the number of form fields – which would be my first plan of action.

35. Is this for kids making money?

Here’s another shocker.

Looks like you can play with toys while making wads of cash at the same time. Sounds like my kinda gig.

Tips

I hit the back button the moment I saw this site. Then I came back to look at it for this post. It’s beyond confusing. First off, I’d extract the content from the banner looking thing at the top of the page as it looks like an advert which will make people gloss over it. And it has the most important info in it! What the site is actually about.

36. Who eats electronics to lose weight?

What’s more scary than a big fake movie guy with a giant knife? Knocking on a door that says come in, we have comfy sofas and free beer, and then falling 300ft out of a building (the door led to the outside on the 20th floor) cos they lied and what you wanted wasn’t behind the door. Where is this going? Good question. This page isn’t bad – the landing “experience” is bad. Why? I searched for “weight loss”. I know there are tablets for that, but not usually the 9-inch electronic variety. And the bunny ain’t gonna save you this time TELUS.

Tips

Stop bidding on irrelevant keywords…..

Well there you have it. 36 landing page designs analyzed, critiqued, enjoyed and ready for copying and perfecting. I hope you were able to take away a lot of juicy ideas for your next design. Tell you what? Why don’t you jump into the comments and let me know? I’ll see you there.

– Oli Gardner

This is day 2 of our Conversion Centered Design week. And we’re going to keep the ball rolling with some case studies that will teach you how you should and shouldn’t be using design on your landing pages.

• Monday: A free ebook “The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Centered Design” – (68 page PDF)
• Tuesday (today): 5 Tested Conversion Design Tactics You Should Put to Work. Right Now.
• Wednesday: Don’t Design Another Landing Page Until You Read This [Plus 36 Examples]
• Thursday: How to Design Call-to-Action Buttons That Convert
• Friday: 10 Killer Posts on Conversion & Design

Optimizations you make on your main website are far more valuable than those you do on any individual marketing campaign.

Why?

For a stupidly simple reason: all of your marketing campaigns eventually lead back there! As Jason Cohen would beautifully put it:

So a 10% improvement in bounce-rate off your pricing page means 10% more revenue across all campaigns: paid, organic, and word-of-mouth.

Hopefully that allows you to see why I’m so obsessed with flushing out and eliminating conversion killers on homepages and landing pages—those little design tweaks and conversion tests aren’t for your health, they are for improving your bottom line!

That’s why today we’re going to take a look at even more ways to get your design right for high conversions, and all of it is going to be backed with research so you know you’re following sound advice, not just fly-by-night anecdotal evidence.

Shall we get started?

Let’s do this!

1. Image Sliders / Carousels Suck, Don’t Use Them

Image sliders suck, they will kill your conversion rates and I don’t ever recommend using them.

It’s a bold claim to make, but my stance is the result of numerous studies showing that they are a complete waste of time. Worst of all, they’ll hurt your customer acquisition efforts because they fail at performing a very important task on your homepage—letting people know what your site is about.

As an example, when Notre Dame University tested a slider on their homepage, only the first image received any action, and even that heavily favored image had hilariously low use rates among everyone who hit the page:

Approximately 1% of visitors clicked on a feature.

Right… so 1% of visitors were interacting with something that generally takes up the top half of the page?

I’ll pass.

Things only get worse, however, as summed up by this StackExchange thread and discussed on Peep Laja’s notorious post on the subject:

Almost all of the testing I’ve managed has proven content delivered via carousels to be missed by users. Few interact with them and many comment that they look like adverts and so we’ve witnessed the banner blindness concept in full effect.

While this is merely a well summed up opinion, there’s more data to make this case—in a test conducted by the Nielson Group appropriately titled Auto-Forwarding Carousels and Accordions Annoy Users and Reduce Visibility, the results showed that users were not getting the main message from sliders, were susceptible to thinking they were ads, and just found them plain annoying and confusing.

The bottom line: Just say ‘NO’ to rotating banners and carousels, and if your boss/client needs to see the data to justify it, show them this post! :)

2. The Importance of ‘Closure’ in Online Sales

One sneaky way to improve your onboarding process, and with it your customer retention rates, is to alter your post-sales process to focus on maximum consumer satisfaction.

An easy way to do this: recognize that human beings have a natural inclination to seek closure.

This even applies to when we are shopping online. According to a recent study from the Journal of Consumer Research, you can increase customer satisfaction with each purchase if you create a clear sense of closure after the sale is made.

Sounds a bit muddy, right? The authors of the study emphasize that for online sales, visual cues should be in place to indicate that the deal is done and other options are no longer a concern.

One of the best ways to describe this phenomenon is to show you a horrible example of closure during the sales process:

Terrible UX and copywriting implementation here, as you can see from the image, this ‘closing’ screen of an online sale does just about everything wrong—it’s ambiguous, impersonal and just downright confusing.

To avoid this problem, make sure all sections of your site that can be ‘finished’ or completed (e.g., purchases, contact forms, etc.) have a follow-up screen that creates a sense of closure.

3. Summaries Matter on Your Company Blog

Your startup is utilizing the power of content marketing to spur growth on a bootstrapped budget, right?

On your company blog, you should know that this study revealed having summaries instead of full blog posts will actually get people to read more of your content:

Full article vs. article summaries

Summaries allow people to find what they like and get to reading, whereas a full blog post on the homepage will force people to scroll too far.

You’ll increase your chances that someone will find a piece of content that resonates with them, whereas featuring your latest post on the page (fully visible, with no ‘read more’ link) counts on that specific article to keep people around… a bad bet in most circumstances.

So, how can you write summaries that will keep people from bouncing off your blog homepage?

First, remember the #1 rule of thumb when writing introductions:

Rule of thumb: Short paragraphs get read, long paragraphs get skimmed, really long paragraphs get skipped.

— Jason Fried (@jasonfried) July 9, 2012

Next, implement these proven copywriting techniques to keep readers hooked:

1. Make sure your summary answers your reader’s most important question: “What’s in it for me?”
2. Spark an ‘itch’ to read on by creating a gap of information. What will they learn? Tell them, early.
3. Get people excited! It’s better to trigger strong emotions early on, and then get into the detailed content once you have people hooked.
4. Use a captivating image — images draw eyes and when they are aligned correctly, they will break up your introduction paragraphs and create short line lengths.

Just as it pays to spend some extra time on your headlines, you should always go back and check your post intros to ensure that they have a good flow, are brief, intriguing, and will get people to the next paragraph (which is literally their only purpose).

4. Get Smart with Fitt’s Law

In the world of usability, Fitt’s law is quite important, but it seems intimidating at first glance:

Fitts’s law is a model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics that predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target.

Yikes! Things only get scarier for those not familiar with the law when you take a look at the math behind it…

(No, the ‘b log’ is not a blogging reference ;))

You shouldn’t be intimated though—you can utilize some fundamental lessons of Fitt’s law to improve usability without mastering the model behind it.

In essence, Fitt’s law is all about understanding the visual hierarchy in human-computer interaction. For instance, you know that it’s common for good interfaces to group items together when they are related, as it makes them easier to use.

It would also make sense to give more ‘weight’ (via size or color differences) to REALLY important buttons that get used a lot.

Check out this screenshot from Freshbooks, and notice how the most important button on the page is made larger and more accessible from the rest, and how the buttons that relate together are grouped together to make them easier to browse.

You might be thinking, ‘Yeah yeah, but I’m not a UX guy, what’s this mean for me?’

Fact is, some designs can give the wrong impression by accidentally giving too much ‘weight’ to items that don’t really matter.

Consider this case study conducted by Techwyse that first examined the homepage of a truck service with a heatmap:

As you can see, Fitt’s law is in action here: the biggest and most accessible item (the non-clickable ‘NO FEES’ badge) was hogging up a lot of screentime.

Here’s what happened when they redesigned the site to give more weight to an item that was actually important for increasing sales: the contact number for the company!

Now that’s more like it!

When the CTA was given a more important place on the visual hierarchy—by being in a more prominent location on screen, by having more visual weight, and by having a different color—more viewers focused on the area and conversions increased.

It may seem like a small change, but given that design problems, terrible navigation and confusing websites are the leading source of lost sales and customer complaints in the online world, you’d be smart to test out how Fitt’s law applies to your site as well.

5. The Use of ‘Useless’ Prices

If you’ve followed my work you’ve definitely seen me mention this video by Dan Ariely on useless price points:

Many have asked me though, what’s the practical application of this?

One answer is found in the ‘classic’ tactic of showing previous prices before the sales drop—while seemingly useless (customers won’t be paying those prices), it helps consumers make decisions when evaluating the product.

Consider this recent eye-tracking test conducted by Robert Stevens, where he examined viewing patterns of customers for a smoothie product.

The first test, without listing the previous price (before the sale drop) looked like this:

As one might expect, the sale price and the product itself commanded most of the attention. Given this, if we did add the previous price, most people would ignore it, right?

Wrong. Here’s the results from the test after the previous price was added back in (circled):

What this shows us is that people do pay attention to pre-sale prices when evaluating whether a sale price is a good deal; they don’t just make the evaluation on sale price alone.

That’s interesting to know, but what was the impact? How did this affect conversions?

According to Stevens:

After selecting the smoothie of their choice I asked the consumers if their purchase was good value for money on a 7 point ‘like’ scale, 1 being very good value for money and 7 being not very good value for money.

Consumers who saw the promotional item only items gave a mean score of 2.4. Consumers who saw the promotional items next to a full priced premium offer gave 1.7 even though they purchased the same item!

Basically, humans are pretty bad at evaluating price without contextual cues (as argued by Ariely in this TED talk), and we find it much easier to make decisions when we have something to base them off of.

Not surprisingly, people view sale prices as a better ‘bang for the buck’ if they can view the former price and calculate whether or not it was a respectable drop. In a nutshell, displaying the discounted price next to the original one will increase overall purchase satisfaction, and is definitely worth testing.

Your Turn

Two questions for you…

1. Did any of these studies surprise you?
2. Are you interested in more scientific studies on CRO? Download my free guide on 10 Ways to Convert More Customers (with Psychology), no charge.

Thank you for reading, I’ll see you down in the comments! And don’t forget to come back to read the remaining 3 posts from Conversion Centered Design week.

– Gregory Ciotti

Today marks the start of Conversion Centered Design (CCD) week, which includes today’s “Ultimate Guide”, plus 4 more great posts. Together they’ll show you how to apply design and psychology principles to increase the conversion rates of your landing pages.

To give you an overview of what we’ll be covering, check out this list of CCD goodness:

1. Monday (today): A free ebook “The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Centered Design” – (68 page PDF)
2. Tuesday: 5 Tested Conversion Design Tactics You Should Put to Work. Right Now.
3. Wednesday: Don’t Design Another Landing Page Until You Read This [Plus 36 Examples]
4. Thursday: How to Design Call-to-Action Buttons That Convert
5. Friday: 10 Killer Posts on Conversion & Design

To give you a taste of what’s in the ebook, I’ll introduce the concept and share some of the enlightening case studies and experiments that are included. Enjoy.

What is Conversion Centered Design?

CCD is a discipline targeted at designing experiences that achieve a single business goal. It seeks to guide the visitor toward completing that one specific action, using persuasive design and psychological triggers as devices to increase conversions.

As you’ll see from one of the studies below (the jam experiment), landing pages are the perfect medium to facilitate CCD due to their ‘less is more’ approach. Landing pages use congruent design – having a single collective purpose – to usher your visitors toward the finish line.

The 7 Principles of Conversion Centered Design

The 7 core elements of CCD can be broken down into two groups; design and psychology.

Each of these is demonstrated through classic design principles, real-world experiments and their practical application using landing pages.

Now let’s talk about some of the psychological experiments in the guide!

Social Proof – The Man Looking Skyward Experiment

In 1969, a study by S. Milgram, L. Bickman and L. Berkowitz, was performed on the streets of New York City in which a man was standing looking up in the air. The goal of the experiment was to see if social proof played a part in the reactions of passersby.

For the single man standing in the street, the study showed most people would walk past him and not pay any attention to what he was looking at. Next up, the experimenters positioned a small crowd of five people, doing the same thing – staring skyward.

When the group of staring people increased to five, people started reacting by joining in and looking up to see what was going on. Finally, increasing the participants to 18 people resulted in a 400 per cent lift of people stopping to join the crowd. Clearly, the bigger the crowd, the bigger the crowd gets.

Less is More – The Supermarket Jam Experiment

Fewer options are much easier for the brain to process. (Source)

A real world example of the psychology of ‘less is more’ comes from an experiment conducted in a supermarket in 2000 by S. S. Inyengar and M. R. Leper. A jam tasting stall was erected to allow shoppers to sample the different flavors of jam available for purchase. The test compared the impact of varying the number of choices between 24 and 6.

You’re probably familiar with analysis paralysis, from spending too long in the toothpaste aisle trying to make a buying decision. (Source)

In the case of the 24 flavors, only 3% of those who tasted the samples went on to purchase the jam, compared to a whopping 30% purchase rate when only 6 flavors were available. This demonstrates a phenomenon known as analysis paralysis, where too many options actually results in no decision being made.

This is why landing pages sit at the heart of CCD. They are grounded in a fundamental design pattern that strives to remove distraction and focus visitors on a single targeted conversion goal.

Less is more.

That’s a little teaser of what’s inside the 68-page Ultimate Guide to Conversion Centered Design. Download the full PDF now to learn how to apply the 7 principles of CCD to your landing pages today.

– Oli Gardner

Content is King, but who’s the King of Content? Image Source.

If you work in content marketing, you already know how much is out there about best practices, SEO tactics, and generating great content.

There are so many articles, ebooks, and self-proclaimed experts that it’s hard to tell what’s legitimate. Trust me, I know it’s tough to wade through the muck, so I’ve compiled the ten best content marketing resources on the web, and I’ll also tell you why they’re worth your time.

For Those Getting Started

1. The Business Case for Agile Content Marketing by CopyBlogger

Wondering what content marketing actually means and how it can help your business grow? CopyBlogger’s free ebooks series is exceptional; they’ll guide you through the entire content process by helping you develop a thorough content strategy, create content that converts, and then effectively promote.

2. The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging and Content Marketing Strategy (ebook) by Contently

For those who are concerned with blogging and writing well, Contently’s ebook is an awesome resource. The Beginner’s Guide includes advice on how to start building content from zero, how to outsource writing, and how to distribute content so it gets the eyeballs that you want.

3. Beginner’s Guide to SEO by SEOmoz

You can’t be a good content writer if you don’t take SEO seriously, so sit down with this beginner’s guide that will get you from square one to a decent, working knowledge of SEO. SEOmoz explains how search engines work, teaches you how to do keyword research, and guides you through the building of links. If you want to be a valuable content marketer, you should know these basics inside and out.

4. How To Write Cool Copy For Unsexy Stuff by Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg has tons of articles about great copywriting, which will help you put some pizazz in the content you create. Most of us don’t work for Vogue or Coca Cola, so sometimes it helps to see how other companies are using words to market what they’ve got. “How To Write Cool Copy For Unsexy Stuff” proves you don’t need the world’s most fashionable and stylish products and services to write charming copy.

For The Experienced

5. The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing by Quick Sprout

If you already know something about content marketing, this 40,000 word guide will be your new best friend. Not only does the guide explain current trends and give advice on building a strategy, it also provides advice on whether or not a blog should have a separate domain name. Every nook and cranny of content marketing is explored in this allstar guide.

6. How To Rise Above Lackluster Content by SEOmoz

Sure, you can write content, but how do you take it to the next level? How do you make it rise above the sea of content that’s already out there? Thankfully, SEOmoz craftily put together a post on how you and your blog can win the internet. If you make it “surprising, interesting, intense, positive, and actionable,” you’re off to a great start.

7. How To Measure The ROI of a Content Strategy by Mashable

So how do you convince your boss, your partners or even yourself that content is a good investment? Check out Mashable’s post on how to measure ROI. The post suggests using retweets, shares, comments, time spent on page, and other metrics to quantify success. Warning: Be patient, ROI success doesn’t come overnight.

For Ongoing Learning

8. CMI Webinars by Content Marketing Institute

’10 Tips to Build an Audience with Content Marketing – Lessons from the Nightclub Dance Floor’ was one of CMI’s most recent webinars. If that dosen’t captivate you, I don’t know what will! CMI’s free webinars tackle some of the biggest issues in content marketing, featuring a variety of experts, and covering a vast array of topics. Their multimedia webinars focus on multi-cultural marketing, social media alignment, and “brandscaping.” CMI also hosts and attends a ton of live conferences and events.

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9. Educational Webinars by The Content Wrangler

The Content Wrangler hosts webinars with industry leaders such as Mark Lewis and Marcia Riefer Johnston. The site’s most recent webinar focused on how to write powerful paragraphs and sentences. The Content Wrangler’s webinars are specific and cover a wide range of marketing topics.

10. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL)

Your college professor or high school English teacher may have directed you to Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, and that’s because it’s one of the best sources and has over 200 free resources for information regarding grammar, sentence structure, citations, and more. In order to create great content, your writing needs to be perfect. Consult OWL with questions.

There are more resources out there, and as time goes on, new ones might usurp the ones on my list. In order to be the world’s best content marketer, stay in the know, and educate yourself using these resources. They’ve been saviors to me!

–Emma Siemasko

Get your ejector seat ready. You’ll be using it sooner than you start clicking on banner ads. (Source)

Best. Statistic. Ever. Makes me feel better about flying, but sorry for those designing banner ads.

They say that a kitten dies every time someone uses a bullet point in a presentation, so I shudder to think what’s going to happen the next time someone clicks on a banner.

Banner ads. The ugly stepchild of online marketing. Just trying to hang out in the top-right corner, minding their own business. They never asked to be overused. They never asked to be animated GIFs. But they certainly didn’t want to be ignored.

Yet, here we are, about to discuss how little action they get, and how they’re being usurped by another form of advertising. Poor little rectangular bastards. 75,000 wasted pixels in an otherwise useful area of your page. Destined to be thrown on the marketing scrap heap, never to be seen again…

Scratch that. Banners aren’t going anywhere. Yes they’re annoying. Yes they are essentially useless. But they’re here to stay, in all their 300x250px glory. They just have to compete with what’re known as ‘Native Ads’, which, as we’ll learn, have some significant advantages.

What’s a native ad? In 197 characters or less.

Native ads are contextual paid ads that appear in your content stream, designed to augment the user experience by providing semantically relevant supporting content, without breaking the flow of information.

But placing ads in content is bad, right?

It certainly is. The typical method for injecting ads is to use interruption marketing tactics to plant banners and text ads directly into the middle of a piece of content, forcing you to look at them in order to experience the whole article. People – me included – despise these ads. They provide no contextual benefit and diminish the value of the content they appear in. You can probably blame Google for this, as most of the bad behavior seems to have been built around the mass adoption of AdSense as an advertising platform.

There’s a reason for the epidemic known as banner blindness. People never liked banners and decided unconsciously to tune them out, focusing instead on the real content on the page. If you infer the same reaction to ads placed inside your content, you can imagine how unpleasant and interrupted the content consumption experience would be.

However, done correctly, ads inside content can be effective. This is where native ads come in.

So how are native ads different?

To extend the definition of native ads a bit. You can think of them as sponsored content designed to “blur the distinction between editorial and advertising in the eyes of the consumer”, according to Pilgrim Advertising. What this means, is that despite the ads being paid for, they are placed more carefully, with a heightened level of knowledge about where and how they are being used. The result is that they appear more like ‘useful supporting content that just happens to be paid for’. Read more about native ads.

The benefits of native ads

The infographic below was created based on a study to compare differences in behavior and perception between native ads and banner ads. Using eye tracking tools and surveys, the following insights were uncovered:

• Native ads are more visually engaging: Native ads in the study were looked at 52% more frequently than banner ads.
• Native ads drive higher brand lift: They registered a 9% lift for brand affinity and an 18% lift for purchase intent, compared to banner ads.
• Native ads are more likely to be shared: 32% of respondents said they would share the ad content with a friend, compared to 19% for banner ads.
• Native ads are consumed in the same way as the content they appear in: Consumers actually registered that they looked at the native ads slightly more than the content itself.

Enjoy the rest of the data in the infographic, and be sure to tweet the facts at the end of the post.

Tweetables

Share these rad stats with your followers to show how ad-savvy you are. And don’t worry, you can change the final tweet text before it goes out. Just leave the stats intact.

• Consumers looked at native ads 52% more frequently than banner ads
  » Tweet This «
• 32% would share native ad content with a friend, compared to 19% for banner ads
  » Tweet This «
• Native ads registered 9% higher lift for brand affinity & 18% higher for purchase intent than banner ads
  » Tweet This «
• People are more likely to survive a plane crash than click a banner ad
  » Tweet This «
• Native ads are consumed the same way people view editorial content
  » Tweet This «

And in case you’re wondering. The stat about the plane crash came from here.

– Oli Gardner

(Image source)

Perfect? Wouldn’t it be subjective to say what’s perfect? Nah.

From the point of view of a marketing writer of 25 years (yeah, that’d be me), a headline has one objective: inspire the reader to read the next line.

This applies to your email’s subject line or your blog post title in the biggest way. It applies to social media because it’s your headline that will most likely be shared and clicked—or not.

So Which Headline Writing Technique Works Best?

Marketing geniuses always yack on about how important it is to get right to the point. Old school ad guys Ogilvy, Bernbach and Burnett seem to have cemented a rule stating a user benefit goes in the headline.

They’d tell you the headline is often the only line people read. Get right to the point, they’d insist. Don’t bury the lead… and blahbiddy blah.

As much as I admire these pioneers, I think this advice is crap.

Verbal Foreplay Is More My Style.

Perhaps you’ve noticed. I didn’t subscribe to the benefits-first formula in this article and I seldom do with the many things I write.

I believe when the goal is to get people to tune in, the tact to take is to turn on their curiosity. But it’s not like I’ve tapped into some breakthrough new discovery in psychology and human behavior. I’m simply saying a little dose of suspense or even an anxiety inducer makes for the ultimate attention-getter.

You Have To Choose Your Words Carefully.

And if you buy into this technique, which I’ve labeled “perfect,” you’ll understand the perfect headline is a teaser. A hint. You hold out on the big idea. You work up to it.

You pose a question. Why? Good question.

It drives you crazy not to know the answer, doesn’t it? You may even get more worked up when you don’t entirely understand the question. Or the question is the answer. Or the answer is a question.

I’m messing with you a little. It’s working like a charm too. I keep stringing you along and you’re hanging in there.

I love that about you. You’re curious. Your customers are curious. I’m curious. Everyone is. So choosing your words is also about choosing which ones to leave out.

Bring On Some Psychology

This Guy.

Wouldn’t my premise be even more perfect if it was verified by a little science? I thought so and decided to tap the mind of online marketer and blogger extraordinaire, Gregory Ciotti. You know his work from contributions he makes here at the Unbounce blog.

Gregory is an expert on behavioral psychology and seems to always have a study on the science of persuasion in his back pocket. So it wasn’t surprising when Gregory recognized the approach and cited “The Information Gap Theory,” made famous by George Loewenstein, a leader in the fields of behavioral economics and neuroeconomics.

“This is one of the better research papers in my opinion that relate to marketing,” said Ciotti. “The theory claims when you spark an interest or desire that is already there—which means topicality is important— you tickle that interest and the reader attempts to close the gap by finding out the answer.”

Another explanation I found comes from a Wired.com article, “The Itch of Curiosity,” by Johan Lehrer, who writes, “According to Loewenstein, curiosity is rather simple: It comes when we feel a gap between what we know and what we want to know. This gap has emotional consequences: it feels like a mental itch, a mosquito bite on the brain. We seek out new knowledge because we that’s how we scratch the itch.”

The Nagging Effect of Dissonance

In my interview with Ciotti, he also cited the “Zeigarnik Effect,” which essentially speaks to a human desire to finish what we start. When a task is unfinished, we experience dissonance. (More on this here.)

Gregory explained, “When you give people brain buster puzzles and stuff like that and then interrupt them and tell them they must stop now, experiments have proved up 90% of the people go back to finish the test. We really do feel discomfort when we don’t know the answer to something we want to know.”

But Nothing’s Perfectly Perfect

“The problem with headlines that aim to pique curiosity is they can go wrong if the desire isn’t already there,” Gregory said. “If you do happen to ask the right question and spark an interest on a topic readers are already passionate about and ask a question they really, really want to know the answer to, then you can use that mystique to get people to pay attention.”

Did it work here?

Your curiosity got you here. So it worked on you. Those not interested in closing an information gap on writing the perfect headline are probably off scratching some other itch.

What if I wrote this?

The Perfect Headline Arouses Your Curiosity

Not bad, I guess, but you’d have gathered the gist of the article before you read it.

How about this?

Use The Information Gap Theory to Write The Perfect Headline

Risky, right? You may not be curious enough to read on if you never heard of the theory.

I’m good with the headline I wrote. It sucked you in. It itched your brain. I hope I was able to scratch it.

– Barry Feldman

The number one question we get over here at Unbounce is “How can I improve my PPC Quality Score?” Marketers constantly want to know how they can improve their Quality Score so their landing pages rank higher. If you have spent any time in paid search, you’ll know that Quality Score is a BIG deal and if you opened this post, you probably already realize how important it is. A higher Quality Score means better ad auction eligibility, a higher ad position and it gives you a better chance to play with the big fish who have deeper pockets. So here are 10 quality posts surrounding the ever-so popular PPC topic: Quality Score.

1. Better Quality Score = Better Results?

Post by Michael Wiegand on Portent

Does getting a higher Quality Score lead to a better conversion rate? Does it lead to better cost per acquisition? 1 study. 27 Adwords accounts. The answers to these questions may shock you.

2. Quality Score for 2013 – What Really Matters to Google

Post by Chris Gombeski on Trada

This year, the Google Adwords team has offered up some key, updated information that takes some of the mystery out of the Quality Score metric – which is why you should pay attention to this post. Because what matters to Google should matter to you. This short post will brief on the key Quality Score elements you should pay attention to.

3. How Account Quality Score Can Guide AdWords Optimization

Post by Frederick Vallaeys on Search Engine Land

Warning: this post is a bit technical for those of you who want to nerd out. It covers what account-level Quality Score is, why you should track account-level Quality Score, and gives you step-by-step instructions and the code needed to track your own account-level Quality Score. Basically, it covers the who, the why and the how.

4. How is AdWords Quality Score Calculated?

Post by PPC Heroes UK

If you are lost in the sea of technical posts geared toward marketers who are PPC experts and want an introductory explanation of Quality Score, this post is for you. It goes over how a quality score is calculated and gives you a beginner definition of each component.

5. Revisiting the Economics of Google Quality Score: Why QS Is Up to 200% More Valuable in 2013

Post by Larry Kim on Wordstream

Question: What’s the value of Google Quality Score in 2013? Answer: A lot. Today, a quality score of 7 is rare. In fact, this post proves that today’s 5 is yesterday’s 7. As the average Quality Score decreases, the value of an above-average score is more valuable. The law of economics in action. This is a great post that should motivate you to understand and improve your Quality Score.

6. 9 Myths of Landing Page Quality Score

Post by Brad Geddes on Certified Knowledge

Welcome to this edition of Myth Busters featuring not only 1 but 9 myths! “It’s important to separate the fact from the fiction about what affects landing page quality score, and to understand what you can do to improve your landing page.” Amen Brad. Bust those landing Page quality score myths.

7. The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords Quality Score

Post by PPC Hero

Leave it up to the folks over at PPC Hero to produce the Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords Quality Score. This post is broken up into four chapters and covers all the granular details you would ever want to know about Quality Score. The one section that caught my eye was Landing Page Quality Score (surprise surprise).

8. 5 Surprising Facts On Quality Score Change

Post by Kohki Yamaguchi on Marketing Land

Did you know that Quality Scores can rise or fall rapidly from day to day? Or that a significant shift in CTR can trigger a rapid change in Quality Score? Before I spoil all the fun, I’ll let you uncover more of these surprising facts.

9. Quality Score Insights From Microsoft’s Ping Jen

Post by John Gagnon on Search Engine Watch

Bing Ads vs. Google AdWords. Go! Quality Score is similar on both platforms, but not the same, so dive into this post to uncover the subtle differences. PS – did anyone pick up that Ping talked about Bing? #rhymetime.

10. A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Quality Score & Tactics for Improvement

Post by John Lynch on Search Engine Watch

Quality Score is one of the most misunderstood concepts in paid search. And we can attest to that as we always hear it being brought up when talking about payed performance. This post talkes about how to you can quickly diagnose Quality Score issues with a list of quick-fixes and some not-as-quick fixes and it also goes over 7 ways you can implement to optimize your quality score.

Do you have any more awesome resources that will help our readers improve their Quality Score? Feel free to share them in the comments!

– Stefanie Grieser

Too often, when marketers think of attracting new leads to their product or service, they forget one of their most powerful tools: happy customers. There is nothing more attractive to leads than seeing happy customers who already use your service or product.

76% of consumers regularly or occasionally use online reviews to determine which businesses to use according to data from Search Engine Land. Even if positive testimonials never make it to the website, they can be invaluable internally to your sales, product marketing and public relations teams. Here’s exactly how to solicit and gather even more testimonials.

1. Identify Happy Customers

Before you send a blanket request to your customer base for reviews on your website, make sure they’re happy first. The last thing you want to do is pass the microphone to customers who aren’t currently delighted with your product or service so they can broadcast their displeasure on your website. That doesn’t mean you want to ignore unhappy customers’ concerns (more on them in a bit), but the goal here is to solicit positive testimonials from people who are genuinely happy with your product or service.

But how can you segment the cheerleaders from the naysayers in your email database? Easy—just follow these steps.

Use a NPS Survey to Segment Customer Satisfaction

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) index measures customer satisfaction on a scale from 0-10 by asking how likely they are to recommend a product or service. That’s it. These scores segment customers into Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8) and Detractors (0-6). Here’s a snippet from an infographic by referral software company Ambassador to visualize NPS.

There are countless uses for NPS data, but the goal here is to identify your happiest customers or Promoters.

Ask Around Internally

Another great place to find Promoters outside of an NPS survey is to talk to customer-facing employees within your company (think sales or customer service team members). See if they have any particularly delighted customers who have recently or consistently expressed their pleasure—most tend to have a few bookmarked. Those customers are ripe for testimonials and might be more willing to contribute one if someone they already know from within the company asks them. Make it especially easy for those employees to reach out by writing out an email template to use when they encounter happy customers.

Look to Social Media

Do you have customers who are always engaging online with your content? Retweeting your blog posts and sending you love on Facebook? Or just someone who gave you a one-time shout-out for your product or service? These are the perfect people to solicit for testimonials. After all, they’re already comfortable expressing their delight online. Add these customers to your list of potential Promoters and confirm your instinct with a NPS.

2. Solicit Reviews

Now that you’ve found out who your delighted customers are, it’s time to ask them for testimonials. Here are the best practices for the solicitation phase:

Stagger Your Timing

Know what looks super suspicious? A website with a block of happy customer reviews that are all posted in the same week. From a user-perspective, it just looks fishy to have too many reviews within the same time window. Avoid this bumper crop of positive reviews and stagger the timing of your solicitation emails. Not only does this system look more organic to your users, but it encourages customer delight to be a continued part of your marketing strategy instead of a one-off effort.

Focus Your Campaign

It’s awesome when you have a customer organically tell you how happy they are in general on an online review platform. Thank them immediately! But the most effective testimonials are usually used in tandem with a specific business goal. This goal can be anything from recommending a specific product functionality, hearing from a certain marketing persona, or promoting long-time customer relationships.

That’s why it’s so important in testimonial campaigns to get specific about what you want from the customer. For example, you may have a product review page, a Google+ page and Yahoo! Review page (in fact, we’ve come up with 12 places you should be soliciting reviews). So, where should the customer focus their attention? Recommend one platform per campaign and clarify what that platform is in your email. Decide which on products or services you’re specifically requesting feedback on and single them out in your questions. If you’re looking for a specific type of testimonial, for example statistics, guide the customer with questions that would have those answers. In this case, you might ask what measurable results they have seen with your product or service.

Make It Easy

The last thing you want to do is tap into a delighted customer base, get them excited to leave reviews, then leave them frustrated about not knowing how you want them to do it. Make the review process as easy as possible for your customers by including explicit instructions on exactly how to submit the review. If you want to be extra loveable, see if you can embed the review process within the email itself with Google Forms so they don’t even have to leave the screen.

3. Follow Up

At this point, you’ve spent some blood sweat and tears getting those customer testimonials. But you’ve got them now! All done, right? Before you jet off to your next marketing project, make sure to follow up with all the people you reached out to.

Thank Reviewers

Here are some customers that are already delighted with your product or service and took the extra time out of their busy schedule to write to you about why they are so darn happy. Don’t they deserve a little love? At the very minimum, you should send a thank you email with the appropriate customizations. But don’t stop there! Use this as an opportunity to make marketing people love. Why not thank them by name or handle or feature their stories on your social media channels? Or send them a little company swag? Or offer free tickets to your next event? Remember, the companies that put the customers first are the ones people actually want to be customers of. Remind these customers exactly why they were so delighted with you in the first place and give them a reason to brag about you to all their friends.

Woo Passives

When people ask your customers what they think of your company, do you want them to say “meh”? Didn’t think so. Passives, or people who answered 7-8 on the NPS aren’t actively hating on your company, but they aren’t exactly singing your praises either. Since Passives are on the fence, it’s not too late to convert them to delighted customers. Enlist your customer services team for help in creating a nurturing campaign for Passives to bring them to the light. This campaign can start with a simple question: what could my company do to raise your NPS? You could use tactics you might use for lead nurturing, or the process of wooing qualified leads when they aren’t ready to buy yet. Since Passives are customers who aren’t ready to promote your services yet, the principles are pretty similar. For example, one lead nurturing tactic that translates is sending targeted content about the areas the customer might be having the most trouble in.

Win Over Detractors

Remember how I said not to ignore those people who answered 0-6 on the NPS survey? I meant it! These are customers who would not recommend your product or service if they were asked. Ouch. Good thing you segmented them—these guys are obviously in need of some TLC. Enlist your customer service team to strategize the best way to reach these people. If you don’t have a customer service team, strategize with some of your customer-facing employees–winning over detractors will probably involve direct outreach. If the customer complains publically, here are some tips to de-escalate social media complaints.

Sharing great customer stories should be just as important to your marketing strategy as generating new content. If you’re still hungry for more information on testimonials, here’s a post on accumulating positive online reviews for inspiration.

– Lindsey Kirchoff

We are living in an age where capturing attention has become a rare – and powerful – commodity. Information left on its own tends to lack organization, which is why designing a landing page that efficiently and calmly directs attention to important content is crucial. Think of it as being lost in a jungle: in order to clear a path to safety, you need to pull out a machete and start hacking.

Instead of a webpage that confuses users by displaying everything at once, an attention-driven landing page design carves an instant visual path, directing them to 3 essential pieces of information.

At EyeQuant, we call these the 3W’s:

1. What the page is about (your offer)
2. Why it is important (your value proposition)
3. Where a user should go next (your Call-to-Action)

Considerable scientific research has been conducted in recent years in order to precisely identify how visual attention is deployed and directed, and what designers can do to best direct a user through the conversion process on a website. EyeQuant built an artificial intelligence based on this research that predicts what changes need to be made to guide a user’s gaze to the 3W’s, and also brings a common language to design meetings, where everyone has an opinion.

In this blog post, we’ll draw on recent scientific research to introduce attention-driven design as an essential strategy for maintaining a balance between branding and content, with a good dose of helpful hints along the way.

The Office Analogy

Imagine this situation: A co-worker has asked you to find a document in their office while they’re out of town. You open the door to her office, fumble around for a lightswitch (which is hidden behind a coat-rack), and sigh in frustration: There are piles of paper everywhere, photographs and posters hang all over the brightly coloured walls, and knick-knacks cover any remaining surfaces.

There’s so much visual information to deal with that you have to find a place to sit for a moment to figure out where to start looking. Finally, after combing over the same spot for a few minutes, you spot the document – right in front of your eyes the entire time.

What is Visual Clutter?

Would it have been easier to find that important document if the office had been less chaotic?

‘Visual noise’ is a another way of describing ‘clutter’. Just like in a messy office, clutter/visual noise is toxic to a landing page’s usability.

Visual noise tends to come in two forms:

1. Decoration: In an office, brightly-painted walls, plants, pictures, and mementos function as decoration, while on a landing page, decoration tends to come by way of branding, with logos, mascots, trust seals, and images.
2. ‘Stuff’: Handwritten notes, stacks of magazines, and empty coffee cups make up the endless array of ‘stuff’ we tend to amass, but on a landing page, ‘stuff’ is akin to secondary offers, parallel ad campaigns, unrelated images, and design gimmicks.

A high-converting, user-friendly website doesn’t need to be uber minimal, though; branding is essential to a landing page’s performance. This includes putting users at ease, communicating to target audiences, and building a bridge between a brand’s offline and online personality. All the same, branding should never take center stage and crowd out the 3W’s.

How can you make sure that your brand identity isn’t distracting from your value proposition and call to action?

By implementing sound data on the science of attention into your workflow, that’s how.

Recent research at MIT suggests that a cluttered environment not only wreaks havoc on a landing page’s navigability but also on the user’s ability to recognize the 3W’s. According to the research, “Excess and/or disorganized display items can cause crowding, masking, decreased object recognition performance due to occlusion, and impaired visual search performance”.

Unsurprisingly, the study found that too much ‘variability’ in color, size, and texture creates a particularly cluttered environment: Constantly fluctuating colors and sizes create an atmosphere of unpredictability, confusing a user’s attention and ultimately driving them away.

Researchers at Caltech (and EyeQuant scientific board members) came to a similar conclusion with a study about brand awareness and consumer choices: In situations where a consumer is multi-tasking or under time constraints, researchers found that consumers are more likely to choose a brand that visually ‘pops out’ over one they would otherwise choose in terms of personal preference. Essentially, what you see is what you buy.

To better illustrate what this research suggests, let’s take a look at a few creative agency landing pages, with EyeQuant heat maps that illustrate their distribution of user attention:

• Goodby Silverstein’s client work is crammed onto their page in no particular order, creating an objectiveless visual path for the user as seen in the attention heatmap. The navigation bar at the top of the page is the only way out of this visual maelstrom, but the type is too small to read, and garners little notice.

• MCC’s page seems less chaotic than Goodby Silverstein’s, but its color-coded organizational model is in fact arbitrary, and its varying type sizes are confusing. Take a look at the attention map: With no clear Call-to-Action or value proposition, the user flits all over the page with no real path guiding them to what they need to know.

Tips:

• Keep your landing page like you keep your office space: Organize content in terms of relevance with precise, intuitive categories – while making sure that the most important content (the 3W’s) stays close-at-hand at all times.
• Avoid variation in size, color, and texture. Think about predictability and consistency when organizing the information on your site; too much variability in your design is confusing for the user. Vibrant and bold color, size, and texture should be reserved for your 3W’s – everything else should be muted and uniform.
• Make sure that your 3W’s steal the spotlight by keeping branding to a minimum. Users aren’t coming to you to watch your latest ad, they just want to figure out what you do.

How to Turn a Design Meeting into a Picnic in the Park

Even with scientific data on your side, convincing your clients, your boss, and your team that attention-driven design is the right direction can be difficult: everyone has their own ideas.

In a study from 2006, researchers at the University of Copenhagen demonstrated that even a seasoned designer’s instincts can be fallible: During an eye-tracking study, designers could only predict about 46% of the elements users had seen on a webpage, while users themselves could only remember 70% of what they actually saw.

During a website’s redesign, making educated guesses is commonplace but often masks subjective bias – branding, creative, and analytics professionals all want to see their individual goals realized, sometimes at the expense of their colleagues’ own interests. As a result, many companies only begin testing a design once it has gone live. This strategy isn’t only counter-productive, it also wastes time and money, which is why objective, predictive insight is essential.

A study by MIT researchers suggests that a data-driven predictive tool is essential to creating an atmosphere of collaboration because it creates a common language across different fields. Simply put, when design intuition melds with data, intuition remains with the user, not in the design meeting.

Tips:

• Introduce a new member to your team: Her name is objective, scientific data.
• Pre-test, pre-test, pre-test: Before changes to your website go live, pre-test how well your 3W’s will stand out against the more decorative aspects of your landing page using EyeQuant.

You know yourself (and your clients’ needs): You’ve spent hours pouring over a landing page, you know everything there is to know about what it does and how it works. Unfortunately, 99% of the rest of the world don’t. This is why it’s important to keep the most important elements on your page unfettered by clutter and easy to see, so that when a user arrives at your page, they know (almost) as much as you do, why they should care, and how they can join in on what you have to offer.

So, how can you get started down the path to attention-driven landing page design? Not to worry, we’ve mapped out these steps for you:

• Start with a free EyeQuant test.
• Check for the 3W’s on your page – is this what your visitor sees first?
• Move stuff around, try things out, and conduct experiments using Unbounce to re-arrange and play with color and contrast!
• Compare your design tweaks using EyeQuant. Looking good? Implement with Unbounce, A/B test, rinse, repeat – and profit!
• Take your proposed changes and ideas to your next design meeting with a big smile on your face; you have neuroscience and artificial intelligence on your side.

– Bitsy Knox

• I have no idea what to test, so now I don’t bother
• Our visitors are leaving our website without doing anything
• We blew through our AdWords budget in a day!
• Our market has dried up…

I’ll pause there before early onset MFD (Marketing Fail Disorder) sets in. But if these resonate with you, your marketing is failing, and you’re wasting money that could be working for you instead of against you.

Read on for 10 marketing problems, each with a solution about how to fix them by leveraging the principles of conversion rate optimization, testing, and of course, landing pages.

1. The HiPPOs Are Running the Asylum

I’m not talking about the kind you’d see on an African safari. Rather, the suits in your company, who could be stakeholders, your boss, or senior management. The term HiPPO refers to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion, where decisions are based on conjecture or “experience” and are handed down to you to implement without any evidence of their true value.

Back when testing wasn’t an easy process, you’d have to suck it up and run with these ideas, but now (thanks to the advent of many inexpensive A/B testing tools) you can diplomatically reply to such a request with, “I have an idea too – why don’t we test them?”

If you win the test, you’ll be afforded more leeway in the future while educating the HiPPO’s about the value of scientific experimentation & testing vs. random ideas. You’ll also start making more money for the company, which any smart HiPPO would be a fool to argue with.

Just remember though, if you dare to engage a HiPPO without testing, you run the risk of becoming yet another PWTMSMEBNE in the room (Person With The Most Subject Matter Expertise But No Evidence, obviously).

Stop listening to HiPPO’s, stop the assumptions, and start testing.

2. Our Visitors Are Leaking

Sounds like a strange statement to make. Actually, here the term “leak” refers to a “link” that moves your visitors away from a page and your intended conversion goal.

But really, who’s fault is it? My guess is that you’re sending your marketing traffic right to your homepage. Thought so. This is a classic rookie mistake that even seasoned marketing vets still make. Consider the fact that your homepage probably has between 30-60 links, and who knows how many products.

Are you really surprised that your visitors are wandering around like lost sheep? We all know that sheep need a herder. Someone to guide them to their final destination. That’s your job.

One visitor, one goal, no wandering around. That means no leaks.

So how do you plug the holes and stop the leaks? Congrats if you replied “with a landing page” in your head.

Fixing the leaks with landing pages

How do landing pages solve your leakage problems? By sending your marketing traffic to a targeted landing page you’ll reap many benefits including:

• A page designed specifically with one objective in mind, to attract clicks on the CTA that represents your conversion goal
• A message tightly matched to the ad clicked to get there
• A controlled environment that allows for optimization and accurate analytical measurement

3. AdWords Broke my Credit Card

AdWords (or any other pay-per-click platform) is probably the easiest way to blow your paycheck if you don’t know what you’re doing.

There are so many moving parts to a paid ad campaign that you may as well be playing Roulette in Vegas. The ad copy, CTA, destination page, keywords you are bidding on, competing companies bidding on the same keywords etc. – means it’s easy to get it wrong when starting out.

If you want to gain an advantage you need to follow a few key principles:

• Message match for Quality Score: One of the biggest factors in how much your ads cost is the quality score attributed to each ad. This is dependent on several things, one of which being the destination page, and how closely the content matches that of your ads. The easiest way to get a low quality score for a variety of ads is to send them all to your homepage. Not only can there be multiple messages on your homepage, but if you’re targeting different keywords, there’s no way they will all correlate to the content of your homepage. By using a landing page for each ad group, you can match the message of your ad more easily and as a result get a higher Quality Score.
• Message match for higher conversions: There’s also a human factor to consider when it comes to message match. If you read an ad that said “We sell blue apples” and arrived at a page with a headline that said “Welcome to the red apple store”, you’d think you were in the wrong place and leave. A landing page designed specifically for your ad will prevent the high bounce rate associated with this message mismatch.
• Privacy policies for lead gen: If you are doing lead gen and have a form on your landing page, you need to add a privacy policy link to tell Google (and your visitors) that you are trustworthy. Not having a privacy policy can seriously impact your Quality Score and drive up the cost of your ads – never mind the fact that they probably won’t get shown as better quality ads/pages will trump you in the search results. Finally, place the privacy policy link right next to the email form field to give it an extra trust factor.

Again landing pages are the secret weapon that will help you keep both the ad bots and humans happy, and your ad costs and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) lower.

4. Nobody Clicks Our Email Links

Are you telling a big long story in your emails? Paragraph after paragraph about how awesome you are? If people aren’t clicking on your email CTAs it’s probably because they sit at the end of an experience that’s perceived as too much work. People then give up reading and delete your email instead.

There’s a better way to do email marketing, by shortening your emails into succinct and concise messages with a strong call to action.

How to Shorten Your Emails Without Losing the Details

Your email should be a teaser and nothing more. It’s singular goal is to intrigue your recipients enough to get them to click through to your landing page, which is where you place the full details of your marketing campaign. Your landing page is a much more effective place to do the selling after you’ve captured people’s attention. The reason for this is that you’ve got as much space as you need to tell your story.

If you need to showcase your product/service using video, a landing page is the perfect place to do this – again removing the need for a lot of written content in your email.

Shorten your next email and see how your click-through rate improves.

5. I Don’t Know What to Test, So My Tests Don’t Work. Now I Don’t Test.

This is one of the most common problems in conversion optimization, knowing that you should be testing, but not knowing where, what, why and how you should be doing it. I’ll answer each of these questions in the order you should be doing it as part of your testing and optimization process:

Where

You want to start with the most high profile pages on your site. These will depend on your business, but will typically include your:

• Homepage
• Pricing page
• Landing pages that you are using for inbound advertising traffic
• And other high traffic pages (check your analytics)

What

There are some fundamental anatomical elements that are common to most pages, and these are most often what you’ll be testing.

• The core value proposition of the page, usually presented in the form of the page headline and sub-header
• Your call-to-action design (contrast, use of whitespace, size, location) and copy
• Form length, design and position
• Amount of and readability of the page copy (chunk it and use bullets for improved scanning)

Why

A big mistake is when people just try to test something without a real purpose, or a clear understanding of why they are testing. This is where your test hypothesis comes in. A hypothesis is a statement of what you are going to test and your theory behind why it will be a success (and any success criteria you can include). An example hypothesis would read something like this:

“The page does not have a clear call-to-action, and prospects spend too long trying to understand what to do next. Adding a large orange button right under the main benefits will help prospects identify the CTA and get more of them to perform the desired action.”

Once you have a hypothesis you are in a better position to make changes to a test page to compete against your original page in a conversion experiment.

How

Now that you’re ready to run a test, you need to follow a few basic rules to ensure that your experiment is a clean and uncontaminated one.

• Each page in your test – most commonly the original page and one “challenger” used in the A/B test, should receive at least 100 unique visitors and often as much as 500 or more depending on how drastic the changes increase (or decrease) conversions.
• Your test should run for at least a week to account for variances in time of day and different daily behaviors (weekends are often very different to weekdays).
• The statistical significance of the experiment should be over 95%. This is a number that is calculated by the testing software you are using to determine when the results you are seeing are for reasons other than chance alone.

That was a brief intro to A/B testing, but is enough of a framework to stop you complaining that you don’t know what or how to test.

6. My landing Pages Don’t Convert and I Don’t Know Why

The best way to find out why your landing pages aren’t working is to ask. Ask your visitors and customers. Ask whoever is viewing your landing page and ignoring your wishes. The best way to do this is to add a live chat or survey widget to your page.

The information you get from your visitors at the point of conversion can be invaluable in figuring out why they didn’t convert and what to test to improve your landing pages – think of it as if they’re shopping at the Apple store and aren’t quite sure of the benefits of an iMac over a PC. Having someone right there to answer your questions (like live chat) can be the tipping point that encourages a sale.

Once you get feedback from talking to your visitors or asking them survey questions, you are in a much stronger position to create a hypothesis for a successful page. Which comes full circle back to my last point about what to test.

If you want to read more about how to gather and put user feedback into action, read part 4 (or the whole thing) from this case study.

7. Our Blog Doesn’t Drive Many Signups

There are three main points to consider here:

• Your blog is a great source of inbound marketing, and should be considered a powerful tool in establishing your subject matter expertise and thought leadership. This is a critical platform on which to build the trust required to make people believe in you. If they respect your stance on a subject they will also believe that that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to building your product/service.
• Asking your blog readers to register for your blog update emails enables you to leverage the email list by sending more excellent content to them in the future – such as ebooks, whitepapers and case studies. These documents can have subtle calls-to-action in them to turn a reader into a customer – providing an extra acquisition path.
• You can also add a CTA to your blog (in the sidebar or at the end of each post) which will provide a small trickle of new customers. A good strategy for CTA design is to make them relevant to the category of the blog the reader is in. An example being, if they are in an A/B testing category, you would design your banner with a CTA like “Learn more about A/B testing”. This should lead to a landing page with content related to the subject and how your product provides the solution.

So yes, you should keep your blog, and set it up so that it is monetized using these three approaches. And don’t forget – the bigger and better your blog becomes, the wider the reach it will have and the simpler the next point will be.

8. Our Market Has Dried Up

This is a prime time to begin co-marketing with companies that have customers with similar needs as your own. By getting your name in front of a new set of eyes, you can rapidly grow the size your target market. To run a successful co-marketing strategy you need to start by laying the foundation for a smart relationship, and then establish contact with a clear set of possibilities laid out for each partner to do in order to get your/their name in front of each others customers.

Some examples of co-marketing tactics are:

• Sending an email to each others customer list to recommend the other company’s product, and explaining how they work together to provide extra benefit and value.
• Writing guest posts for each other’s blog that shares your subject matter expertise with their readership, while staying on topic with the content of each blog.
• Adding a logo and possibly partner description to each other’s website.
• Exposure to social networks.
• Co-promotion in contests and with special offers.
• Joint webinars.

Once you have an established authority in your market, you can set up a landing page for people interested in creating a partnership. A good strategy is then to have an email autoresponder set up, so that when the prospective partner completes your partnership request form, they will receive the email outlining that a reciprocal use of the prior examples would be how you’d like to move forward (if they are deemed to be a suitable partner).

9. Our Visitors Are Coming for Dinner But Not Eating

In other words, people are visiting your website, but not converting into customers. This could be a messaging problem which you can use an A/B testing tool to optimize, or it could be that your site is designed in such a way that visitors are getting lost or not finding the important information on your pages and as a result, bouncing from the site.

To see what they are doing on your pages, you can use heat map software like CrazyEgg to discover the most often clicked areas of your core pages, and adjust the layout to place the most important elements in the areas with the highest focus.

In the example below, you can see that visitor is jumping all around the page, and ignoring the call-to-action. It’s fairly easy to theorize that the reason for this is that the CTA doesn’t stand out from other page elements (especially contrast and color wise).

A lot of people say that button color is irrelevant, but this a complete falsehood when color contrast is the problem. Yes red might not perform better than green under ideal circumstances, but if the page is dominantly green, then a red button will stand out a lot more than a green one.

If you see something like this, you can improve the placement, contrast, size and whitespace use of your CTAs. If you see people spending a lot of time looking at the navigation or other “leaks” then you know they are confused and are seeking information elsewhere than the current page. Again, if you use a focused and targeted landing page, you can remove the potential for a lot of eye wandering and homepage A.D.D.

10. Nobody Downloads Our Content

You’ve spent the time to write an authoritative ebook or whitepaper, you’ve designed a great landing page to give it away in exchange for personal and business data. You’ve sent your entire email list to the page and shared it on your social networks. And yet, you are getting virtually no new leads from the page as nobody is completing your form to get the ebook.

It’s actually fairly easy to fix this problem. Here are three approaches to building a more effective ebook landing page.

Have a preview

Amazon pretty much invented this concept with their “Take a look inside” feature that lets you read part of the book and check out the contents. Most people are psychologically hard-wired with a sceptical “Try before you buy” mentality (think about how many people steal a grape before buying them! Yes I’m talking about you… and me). If your content is worth providing personal info for, then you should make it fair by showing off how good it is in advance.

To do this, take a portion of your ebook (a chapter for example), and make it available without barrier in one of the following formats:

1. A short PDF document that people can download and read to gauge the quality of your work.
2. An embedded SlideShare presentation that walks through a series of slides constructed using ebook content.

Can I say #guaranteedconversionlift?

Reduce friction

Friction is the perceived barrier to achieving a given task – in this case filling out your form. The trick here is to balance the level of friction with the “size of the prize” so that you’re offering a fair exchange. Essentially the better your ebook is, the more you ask in return. Just make sure it’s relevant data you’re collecting. Most people won’t part with their phone number to download a PDF, nor should they.

Add a viral traffic feedback mechanism

If you read the case study in part 6, you’ll be familiar with the viral feedback loop that you can use to fuel a continuous stream of traffic to your ebook download landing page. Essentially, you let people get your ebook in exchange for a tweet instead of an email. The tweet contains a link back to your ebook landing page, perpetuating the lifespan of your campaign. For best results, offer both options (PayWithATweet and exchange for an email).

If you have any thoughts or suggestions about how to fix these problems, please share in the comments. I’ll see you there.

– Oli Gardner