Collect More Clients with Complex Language

Agency forms convert 46.6% less often than those in other industries.

Don’t sweat readability. Just make the best pitch possible.

In most segments, we see a pretty obvious correlation between the readability of a landing page and its conversion rate. As the copy becomes shorter and more understandable, the performance goes up. Makes sense, right?

Things are a lil’ different with agency pages. For starters, while easy-to-read copy makes your visitors somewhat more likely to convert, you only really see the benefit at the very far end of the spectrum. (Like, an elementary school comprehension level.) That’s a tough mark to hit, and the payoff isn’t huge.

And then there’s word count. Write a short page (say, under 300 words) in almost any other industry and you can expect to get a decent bump in conversions. Write a short page as an agency? Mmm, maybe you get a half percent. There are better ways to optimize your landing pages.

 

The only emotion you should want more of is joy.

Whether you’re a one-person bootstrap or a digital advertising powerhouse, our research makes it pretty clear: nearly all types of emotional sentiment can have a detrimental effect on your page performance.

And it’s not just the positive or negative stuff either. As you can see from the graph, it’s actually both. (People are tough to please, right?)

There is one sentiment that correlates with higher conversion rates for agency pages, and that’s joy. When you speak to the benefits that your service delivers—using modifiers like “remarkable,” “delightful,” and “exciting”—your visitors can be more likely to become clients.