Stop Driving People Away from Your Landing Pages

Visitors to your page should have a singular mission, with a clear, unobstructed view to your goal – the CTA (Call To Action). Everything else is a distraction to getting the conversion.

Pop Quiz: If your landing page was a hedge maze garden, which one of these would it most resemble?

A) Exciting, full of mystery and surprises! (image source)		B) Worst. Hedge Maze. Ever. (image source)

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If you chose Maze B, well done! Landing pages should obstacle-free, and you should easily see the finish line while standing at the starting gate. What I’m trying to say is, as far as mazes go, your landing pages should basically suck.

So what should you do if your landing page has unavoidable diversions – such as links to privacy policies, terms of use, and disclaimers?

How can you clip distractions like the “related videos” at the end of your YouTube presentation that send viewers off into the land of Nirvana Toddlers and Six-Headed Ukulele Players?

And what if you’re really living on the edge and want to have two CTAs and get two conversions – the first being your opt-in; the second, your offer – but you want to do it without disrupting the ataraxis of the user experience? (bonus points if you knew what ataraxis meant before clicking the link!)

Here are three ways to keep the viewer on your landing page, focus their attention, and improve your conversions.

No actual gardening required.

Technique 1: The Magic Landing Page Switch

How to create a landing page that magically reveals your CTA:

Resources needed

An Unbounce account (only mandatory, if you want to be really cool)

Cliff’s Nick’s Notes:

1. Duplicate your original landing page.
2. Name the original “campaign-name”, and the duplicate “(campaign-name)-action”
3. On the original page, show the opt-in box and instructions/expectation.
4. On the action page, replace only the area where the opt-in was with your “thank you” message and CTA.
5. In the original page redirect field, assign the action page as the target URL after the form is completed.

Voila – by using the two landing pages, you are able to track the conversions on each (first, your lead generation, and secondly the downloads) – do they correlate? If not, there’s some great insight to be learned there.

Technique 2: FancyBoxing Your Landing Page

How to use lightboxes to show other content without the visitor ever leaving your landing page:

Resources needed

You’ll need to copy this javascript:

<script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(function() { if (jQuery("a.fancybox.iframe").length) { jQuery("a.fancybox.iframe").fancybox({ 'width' : 800, 'height' : 1000, 'autoScale' : 'false', 'transitionIn' : 'elastic', 'transitionOut' : 'fade', 'type' : 'iframe' }); } }); </script>

Cliff’s Nick’s Notes:

1. Make sure the script is in the HEAD placement.
2. Use the Advanced tab on your links to enter iframe fancybox in the Stylesheet Classes.
3. Set link targets to Self (_self).

Don’t let your flock wander off (not to imply your customers are sheep, of course). Let them have all the info they need, but keep that CTA right in front of their eyes with this nifty trick.

Technique 3: Landing Page Video Optimization

How to tweak your YouTube embed code so that it doesn’t disrupt, but keeps that sweet SEO juice flowing:

Resources needed:

You’ll need an internet browser for this one. But since you’re reading this now, it’s probably a non-issue.

Cliff’s Nick’s Notes:

1. If you don’t want to bother with the developer tool, you can cut to the chase by adding this to your embed code (in both places!), immediately after your Video ID: ?modestbranding=1&rel=0
2. It should look like this, in two places in the embed code: value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yourWeirdVideoID?modestbranding=1&rel=0"

Watch how a simple free online developer tool can minimize your YouTube video branding and turn off the suggested related video offerings at the end of the presentation.

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And there you have the dirt on three amazing ways to keep your leads on the page and singularly focused on your goal.

So, get out those hedge clippers and start trimming your distractions – and stop watering down your call-to-action.

Then, sit back and watch your conversions grow!

Now, to avoid the risk of using too many gardening puns, such as digging in, taking root, and the ever popular “lowest hanging fruit”, I shall be… leaving.

Visit this landing page to see an example that successfully uses all three of these tips.

You’ll also get Revizzit’s bonus gift tutorial on how to create a Facebook fan gate that gets “likes” and “squeezes”, then delivers your free gift without ever leaving your fan page.

– Nick Night

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