Archives for August 2017
Landing Pages That Convert: Tips for Making Your Landing Pages Clear and Concise
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In this installment of our Landing Pages That Convert series, we focus specifically on the quality of the content you create for your page. The best content for a landing page, the content that is most likely to lead to conversions, is clear, concise, and easy to follow.
Here are a few tips that will help you make your landing pages clearer and more concise.
Carefully consider the structure you use for your content
One of the first things people will notice when they arrive on your landing page is the layout of the text. How readable does it look? Does it look like I will quickly be able to absorb information? People will process the quality of the text after they have had some time to read through it, but if it looks like a massive wall of text, they will almost definitely navigate away almost immediately.
Therefore, it is important you break up your text into easy-to-read chunks using headers, bullet points, and/or numbers. People are able to absorb the information packed into the text much easier if it comes in smaller bites.
In sections in which you have multiple paragraphs, make sure those paragraphs are also short and to the point, and contain their own individual ideas. Again, walls of text are intimidating, but a series of short, easy-to-read paragraphs is not as likely to scare away visitors.
Eliminate as much fluff as possible
“Concise” does not have to mean “short,” it simply means you do not waste time getting to the point. There is no rule for how long your website copy must be, but if it is going to be long, you had better make sure it delivers enough useful information to make that length worthwhile.
You should be able to quickly and simply answer questions such as:
- What is the offer I am promoting?
- To whom am I making this offer?
- What makes me different from my competitors?
- What is the cost of the offer?
- Do I have enough credibility to make this offer tempting?
- How am I driving visitors to take action?
Your web copy does not have to be educational—that is a task better served for your blogs. You also don’t need to spend time going into the history of your company outside of your About Us page, unless it somehow adds credibility to your work.
Instead, focus your landing pages on what services you offer and why you are best suited to deliver them. Anything that falls outside of this narrow focus is fluff and can be eliminated. Don’t distract your readers from the sales conversion process.
Talk directly to your target audience
You can create much more coherent content for your landing page by focusing the message on a specific audience, rather than trying to reach anyone and everyone. If you have customers spread across a wide variety of niches, you can create different landing pages for those niches—that’s absolutely fine. But each individual landing page should be written with a clear audience in mind.
Once you have narrowed down your target audience, you must then make an effort to connect with their problems and position yourself as being able to solve them. Remember: you’re not talking about yourself—you’re talking to your audience and conveying how you are able to benefit them.
So, for example, rather than saying “We are a flower shop in Minneapolis known for our fast delivery,” say, “Get flowers delivered to you anywhere in Minneapolis in two hours or less.” This speaks directly to the need of your target audience and how you will fill it, rather than placing the focus on yourself, as the former statement does.
Ultimately, your readers on your landing page want to know “what’s in it for me?” rather than what your company’s greatest strengths are. Save that information for other parts of your website.
Focus on a single topic
Don’t try to tackle multiple topics with a single landing page. Otherwise, you run the risk of confusing your readers and flooding them with too much information.
Instead, every landing page should focus on a single subject, service, or offering. This prevents you from muddling your message and helps you avoid rambling on about topics that may or may not actually be of interest to your target audience.
By developing clear and concise landing page content, you will make it easier for your readers to get the information they need that will help them decide to take action, whether that action is a purchase, a subscription or a download.
For more tips and information, contact us today at Viral Solutions.
Landing Pages that Convert: Elements of a Successful Landing Page
Have you ever clicked a link to a sales or landing page, only to navigate away several seconds later? One would think that given the importance of these types of pages to converting sales, web developers would spend a significant amount of time on optimizing them to ensure they will produce the best results. In many cases, however, these pages are dry, uninteresting and simply do not provide the kind of conversion value they should.
Creating a landing page that succeeds at converting sales or driving other actions is a true art.
If lead generation is important to your business, you can’t ignore landing pages, or worse yet – throw them together without split testing relevant components, design elements, verbiage and different version for different targeted audiences. No matter how much time and money you spend on perfecting the sales funnel, if the landing page doesn’t connect with your audience, they will leave. With that being said, we understand that costs are a factor to an organization's ability to produce the ultimate landing page. However, we also understand that testing costs has a direct correlation to return-on-investment. The need for a structured, process-driven approach to conversion optimization (CRO) cannot be stressed enough. A structured CRO (conversion rate optimization) program is essential to deliver consistent and repeatable improvement in conversion rate and user experience (UX). Only a few organizations and agencies have adopted this approach to optimizing conversions; even fewer have been able to master it. Why? Because mastering conversions also requires a great strategy, a great business mind, a great coder and an excellent design team –  skills that are incredibly rare under one roof.
In this series, Landing Pages that Convert, it is our goal to not just talk about optimizing a landing page but to describe each element in detail.
Over the coming weeks, we are going to go into detail about the various elements that make up a successful landing page, as described by Digital Marketer’s Justin Rondeau and in “Digital Marketing For Dummies“ with Russ Henneberry. Here are some of the specific items we will focus on:
- Market callouts: The language on your page should help your visitors to immediately determine that they are in the right place and that the page contains information that will be useful and directly helpful to them.
- Clarity: All landing and sales pages should have a single, clear message and make just one clearly identifiable offer. A landing page should not be doing too much, otherwise it will confuse the visitor. You’d be surprised how much a simple design with more white space can lead to more conversions. After all, your obsession can lead to limiting results.
- Understandable: A visitor must be able to quickly figure out exactly what it is you are offering, otherwise you risk losing their attention. Knowing what is understandable should be proven through testing and not intuition and gut feel. Getting to understandable can mean accepting failure – and that is ok.
- Compelling headlines: A concise, benefit-laden headline that grabs the attention of your reader is a key ingredient in converting visits to sales. Really try to understand where your target market lives online and make your messaging line up with your landing page experience.
- Calls to action: Not just calls to action, but placement of calls to action. Having a call to action above the fold can ensure greater visibility.
- High-quality buttons: All buttons used on the site should have contrasting colors and custom text that fits within your business’s personality. This seems like a no brainer but often times designers will trip you up here. That subject alone reminds me of out article on what Infusionsoft cannot do – read it, you will see how it ties into the line.
- Social media: By now, most people understand the kinds of benefits that an effective social media marketing campaign can have for their company. They also have an understanding of the kinds of content that they should be sharing on their pages to reach out to their customers. Your landing pages should contain social media sharing buttons, testimonials and “as seen on” logos that help people know they are making smart decisions with their purchase while also giving them additional avenues through which they can follow your brand. Social proof is a powerful and persuasive concept. The concept being that you are more likely to convert if you see that others before you have, and were glad they did.
- Limited navigation: Your landing pages should have limited navigation options — they either opt in or exit. This will help you maximize conversions, because you are limiting the potential distractions available to your visitors while focusing their attention on the opt in fields. What makes up a good website is always evolving. In 2017, you can expect to see even more changes, as companies up their mobile game, add video content, and expand into apps. Old-fashioned websites that fail to consider the user’s needs will be less competitive.
- Visual cues: Arrows, boxes and other visual devices should be used to draw attention to the opt in field or call to action area. Directional cues are the things on your page that influence (unconsciously, again) where your traffic focuses its attention.
- Hero shot: A high-quality image or graphical representation of your lead magnet can help you to improve conversions. The idea here is to get your customers to empathize and place themselves in a scenario where they are using it. If you have poor-quality photos, you can’t expect to maximize your sales potential, as your photos give your customers an idea of what they can expect out of your product.
- Smart opt in fields: Your forms should ask for as little information as possible to encourage people to sign up. People are much less likely to opt in if they must provide a ton of information.
- Source congruency: The text and imagery on landing pages should ideally match the text and imagery that was in the advertisement that directed the visitor to the landing page. A lack of alignment of elements on a landing page with the campaign goal is likely to result in friction.
- Brand consistency: Your landing pages don’t all have to have your logo, but they should all have a consistent feel and look that matches your brand identity and other branding materials. Bad brand consultants are a dime a dozen in today’s business world, but fortunately there are plenty of success stories out there as well.
- Privacy policy and TOS: Privacy policies and terms of service are required by law to advertise on some sites, but they are also good for conversions because they show your customers you care about their privacy and have taken the time to create such a policy for them.
We will expound in greater detail on these aspects of outstanding landing pages over the next several weeks. For more information at any time, feel free to reach out to us at Viral Solutions, and our team of trusted digital marketers will be happy to answer any questions you have.
Direct Response Marketing Strategies That Can Help You Increase Sales
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One of the best ways to improve your sales is to increase engagement in as many ways as possible. And, believe it or not, the best way to increase engagement is to simply ask your audience for it. The strategies used to ask your targets for more engagement are called “direct response” strategies. Here are some specific examples of these strategies that could help you increase engagement and, ultimately, your sales:
Make frequent use of calls to action
Every page on your website should have a call to action, asking your readers to do something. It might not even be to purchase a product—it could simply be to ask them to sign up for your newsletter by putting their email address into a submission field. You should use calls to action on all your marketing materials, even beyond your website, including signs, commercials, videos, and more.
Make offers on the sidebar of your website/blog
Make an offer on your business card
If you regularly pass out business cards, include some information about a special offer people might be interested in. For example, include a web address at which a person can download a free copy of an eBook you wrote, right before or after you list all your contact information.
Always provide multiple methods of communication
One of the best ways to increase engagement is to provide your audience with multiple response methods. Don’t just give them a phone number—make sure they have your email address, physical address, fax number, website URL, and social media accounts. You still use one single call to action, but you just provide them with more ways to contact you.
These are just a few examples of ways you can use direct response strategies to increase engagement and get more responses out of your target audience.
For more information and tips, contact us today at Viral Solutions. We look forward to working with you.