As I said in yesterday’s video, I’ve been thinking about Landing Pages most of this week. The kind of page that encourages you to book an appointment, purchase a product, elicit leads for follow up or requests for more information about your services.
My concern comes from the many small businesses, in particular, that I talk to who just don’t get how important this kind of page is.
Is your funnel smoking?
Case Study
A friend worked hard to increase their overall traffic to their site. They’ve done well in a relatively short period of time, increasing unique visitors to the site by 60 percent since the autumn. They’ve achieve this primarily through content marketing: three blog posts per week, a daily presence on Twitter and the launch of a weekly podcast.
In spite of the significant increase of traffic only just under 4 percent of overall visitors are making it to the landing page – a page where the business is selling a worthwhile and extremely professionally put together product.
Although I don’t know the exact figure, I do know that conversion on the landing page itself is also poor and the business owner is beginning to wonder whether the whole venture is worth it.
Shoot the Designer
My instinctive response to this having seen the site, even though I’m not a designer myself (the other guys handle that!) is that although it’s very nice to look at with some great branding it so doesn’t work hard enough to make a sale.
The key problems are as follows:
- There’s no clear channel for visitors to homepage to get to the landing page. Sure, it’s there. But you need eagle eyes to spot it.
- The call-to-action on the homepage, despite being above the fold and smack in the middle of the screen, doesn’t have a link to the landing page! The link is one a button “hidden” underneath the call out image (Buscall exits to bash himself over the head in astonishment!)
- When / If you get to the landing page itself, the page doesn’t work hard enough to convince you to make the purchase. The call-out for the sale comes as a jolt immediately after you arrive on the page, without building any trust or persuading you why you need the product. You don’t even get to “see” or “demo” the product.
Every Small Business Owner Needs to Take a Class in Web Design
Points 1 & 2 here are quite easy to fix if you understand what your designer is doing wrong. And point 3 wouldn’t take much work if you’re good with a video camera, a slide-deck or some killer copy.
I personally think video works best on a landing page because it gives the prospect the chance to check out your product visually but also allows you to show who you are and build trust in your product. Either that or you should work really hard to give your prospect a real taste of what they’ll get if they purchase.
Takeaways
There are massive risks involved if you go out and hire a talented designer who doesn’t understand the sales process of online marketing. Yes, you might have invested in an attractive site that works hard to strengthen your overall brand, a logo to be proud of; however, if there isn’t sufficient understanding of how to funnel visitors to effective landing pages you’re not going to make many sales. And might just go out of business!
Your Turn
What do you think makes a great landing page? And, more importantly, what kind of questions should you be asking of a potential designer?
About Jon
