The Unbounce Blog
2010 is the year of landing pages and conversion optimization. Join in as we discuss the evolution of conversion economics, conversion centered design and the art and science of landing pages.
I want to try something different for this post by making it more of an informal online brainstorm. I’ll pose a topic and a few primary questions, then open it up to comments.
The more people that interact with their opinions, the better the post will become and I’ll re-incorporate them into the post as we go.
Social media is no longer the next big thing, it’s just simply an interaction medium that proliferates all aspects of online life. As such, it will naturally begin to infiltrate the discipline of internet marketing. How this happens is yet to be determined. There seem to be a few toes being dipped in the water, but it’s a little early to get a clear picture of where it’s headed and what’s been successful thus far.
And so, I have some questions:
The Final Countdown by Europe is ringing in my ears as I write this post. It’s officially “down to the wire” time for the Unbounce team and as anyone from a start-up can attest, there just ain’t enough hours in the day.
We’ve opened the doors to a select few companies for a very private Alpha period right now, shortly to be followed by our Beta launch in a week or so.
In the spirit of failed New Year’s resolutions, I’m writing this post 11 days after the fact. We all do a miserable job of living up to our personal commitments, so I figured a few new business goals might be in order to get your marketing campaigns off the proverbial couch and into the gym.
It's time to whip that 2009 marketing stomach into fighting shape!
As an added incentive, I’ve decided to get you to sign a completely non-binding contract with yourself.
All tips are appreciated. Here's 544 ways to make you landing pages convert more effectively.
Optimizing your landing pages or website to perform better is a no-brainer, but if you’re short on time or resources then it helps to have a bag full of tricks to kick things off.
The collection of links below brings together over 500 tips on conversion rate optimization and landing page improvement.
Naturally, there will be some repetition of the core principles, but it’s a good idea to read the perspective of several experts when forming your own opinion.
You'd be happy too if you were a yellow cartoon ball with a smile to rival Julia Roberts. (Images from Ladybird Books)
Landing pages, conversion rate optimization, bounce rate, blah, blah, blah, blah, yada yada yada.
As important as all of those terms and concepts are, sometimes you need to step back a bit and look at things in a more playful manner.
I find metaphor can greatly aid the process of communication – although as you’ll infer from the title of this post – my examples can at times be a bit of a stretch. Hopefully, this bunch are clear enough to mean something.
And so, with no further posturing or technical jargon, I present to you – The MR. MEN Guide to Landing Pages, Conversion and Absurd Metaphor.
Click me, squeeze me! Go on, I dare you.
Inspired by a conversion tip from our friends at Wider Funnel, where they suggest that BOB – the Big Orange Button – is an overtly clickable button color, I thought I’d talk a bit about what the web is doing to help improve marketing’s most important element – the Call To Action (CTA).
Buttons on the web have always been a bit lame, forcing designers to find creative ways to improve the customers’ level of click desire.
Well listen up, cos it’s all about to change. Sorta. Kinda. Perhaps in a little while.
Or right away if you use the Safari web browser (sadly I don’t – I’m still a Firefox lover).
HiPPO's are big and powerful, and hard to argue with. Use the diplomacy of an A/B test to solve the corporate version of a family argument
The HiPPO I’m referring to is the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. Typically the voice of an uncreative senior management type that likes to ask if you can “make the logo bigger”.
Sitting around a boardroom table with a giant projection of your latest design or web page splashed across the wall. Conjecture and opinion fly – generally in the face of conventional wisdom or plain old common sense.
You argue back and forth using your most experienced and educated insights to nullify the stupidity – hopefully mixed in with some examples of previous campaigns where a certain idea didn’t work.
Uncovering the ever-elusive magic bullet.
I have been optimizing websites from a business/sales perspective for about 8 years, and about a month ago, I finally made that “Magic Bullet” change most people look for when optimizing their sites. Its rare to change a word and double your conversion rate.
I’ve done it on landing pages, emails, and micro-sites, as well as for site “micro conversions” (improving one piece of a larger process, such as a form) but to increase end conversions on a complex eCommerce site with a single word change, without spending a dime or increasing targeted (paid) traffic, this was rare and worth sharing.
A little bird told me you should have a safe and friendly nest for your Twitter visitors
Twitter landing pages have become a popular method of providing customized experiences for social media visitors.
But exactly what is a Twitter landing page, and how do they compare to the other types of landing page you might be using for your internet marketing? I’ll answer that question and provide some examples of Twitter landing pages that other people have created.
A Twitter landing page is a page on your website specifically designed to receive inbound traffic from your profile on Twitter. If you use Twitter to promote your personal or business brand, then just like any other form of campaign or advertising, the effectiveness of your traffic is directly related to the experience you create for your visitors.
In the second of our landing page makeovers, I’m going to look at a landing page designed to sell a book called “Matrix Reimprinting: Using EFT”.
In our first makeover (aimed at providing some advice to small businesses), I used the Conversion Marketing Scorecard to analyze a landing page for a Phoenix language school.
Here is the landing page for the Matrix Reimprinting Book.
October brought us Halloween. Again… But it also brought a plethora of new insight in the realm of conversion marketing and landing pages. Wieeeoouu!!! I thought you’d be excited!!! For Unbounce the company, October saw us move into a new office space, and take our landing page product to new heights (read: more features and more bugs).
In December we’ll be releasing a private beta version of the Unboune landing page service, and we can’t wait. We’re demo’ing like crazy right now and the feedback so far has been very positive. If you want to participate in this private beta, head to the Unbounce.com homepage and sign up. Then come on back here to check out the list of cool content we wrote over the last 4 weeks:
The A to Z of Landing Pages
So you want to get into landing pages hey? Great idea. They can help create more focused marketing campaigns, improve measurability and increase the return on your marketing spend.
If you’re new to the idea of using a landing page for your marketing campaigns, I’ve whipped up a quick A to Z to explain some of the terminology, jargon and theory surrounding their use.
Today I’m going to present the first in a series of free landing page critiques. Our first example comes from language school LeTutor. My hope is that the simple process described below will be of benefit to others in a similar situation.
I’d like to thank LeTutor for agreeing to the public scrutiny of their landing page, which can be seen below.
The live version of the page can be found here: www.PhoenixSpanish.com.
At first glance this is a decent landing page, well structured with a balanced design and directional cues pointing towards the necessary page flow and Call to Action.
Any online marketing campaign is a candidate for the use of a landing page. On Day 6 of our 7 Days to a Better Landing Page series, I’ll explain the benefits you can expect to see by incorporating a landing page into your marketing process.
Here are the 7 reasons why landing pages make your eMarketing more effective:
Note: For the purposes of this list we are talking about standalone landing pages, which are separate pages that aren’t part of the regular website architecture (i.e. they are only reached via external advertising (email, PPC etc.) – not internal site links or navigation.
I'd definitely give my email address for a free lolcat! (Image ref: icanhascheezburger.com)
You may have noticed the primary Unbounce giveaway that we’re using to generate leads for our upcoming product launch. It’s an eBook called “101 Landing Page Optimization Tips“.
If you didn’t know, we’re a new startup company that’s soon to unleash a new landing page service (WYSIWYG editor, A/B testing, reporting etc.), so right at the start we sat down to think of ways to gather some relevant and targeted sales leads.
Seriously. I wanted to use an illustration of 7 types of landing page, but 4 Smurfs in different colored shorts was all I could come up with at short notice.
Not all landing pages are the same; in design or intent. In today’s post I’ll walk you through the 7 different types of landing page.
Each type has it’s pros and cons and I’ll discuss some of the uses for each type and where they fall short. This should help you understand which kind is most appropriate for your own marketing campaigns.
This is day 3 in our 7 Days to a Better Landing Page series.
You can learn a lot by observing how marketing is implemented in the physical world.
Today, in our second post in the 7 Days to a Better Landing Page series, I escaped from the office to go on an impromptu marketing field trip.
My goal was to find real-world examples or metaphors that illustrate the 7 Elements of a Landing Page that I described in yesterdays post.
Armed with my car, iPhone (using the camera and voice recorder) and a hunger to buy some new marketing books, I set out to explore marketing as it appears off-screen.
Here’s what I found on my travels…
How awesome or lame is your landing page? There's no hiding from the Conversion Marketing Scorecard.
Let’s start with a simple statement: Most Landing Pages Suck More Than You Think!
Following the principles of denial, the first step in recovery is admitting that you have a problem. If you followed my last post about the 4 Truths of Conversion Marketing, you’ll know that there is a fair amount of psychology involved in delivering the best landing page experiences.
To make things easier, I’ve created an interactive scorecard that walks you through the “4 Truths” and allows you to apply them to your existing landing pages in a simple checklist format.
The fastest guide to landing page design ever. Hold on to your cursor, this will be Sonic the Hedgehog fast! (Image source: Top Gear - BBC)
It’s 4 days until the busiest week of the corporate calendar and your company is in the throws of a last-minute marketing campaign to attract new customers. Tension is high and management is prickly and nervous.
Your boss catches you in the elevator and asks you to prepare a landing page concept for the campaign meeting. The campaign goal is to gain 500 new customers by offering a 20% iPhone discount coupon during the upcoming week.
And the meeting starts in 10 minutes…
Your first responsibility is to spend 30 seconds panicking, 20 seconds doubting your ability and 10 seconds taking it out on the nearest intern.
If you can understand the 4 fundamental aspects of visitor behavior you can design for better conversions.
In an earlier post, I likened customer interaction with your landing page to a dance between 2 parties. The primary point of that article was to understand the questions and barriers facing your potential customers, and to unlock a strategy for dealing with these issues.
Key to this process was understanding what your customer is thinking during their visit. We learned that there are 4 primary questions to be considered:
Download our free white papers and reports for some bedtime conversion optimization reading.
Download our free opinionated guide to landing page conversion.
Using Twitter to enhance, promote and measure your landing page campaigns.
