The Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design – webinar with Tim Ash
Posted by christinadulitz on January 3, 2010
Recently, I attended a webinar on “The 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design” with Tim Ash. I have had Ash’s book, Landing Page Optimization in my queue almost since it came out, so I jumped at the chance to attend a webinar led by him on the topic.
If you’re not familiar with landing page optimization, let’s take an easy example of paid search. Say your company gives Google a lot of money to display paid advertisements directing users to your site for certain keywords. A user searches on that keyword, sees your ad, and clicks into your site. But what happens next? That first page he sees on your site (the landing page) is critical to whether he decides to stay on the site (perhaps leading to a conversion/lead/etc.) or whether he immediately presses the ‘back’ button and clicks into another search result to find what he was looking for. Landing page optimization has the goal of improving conversion/leads/etc. by optimizing that landing page. (And, yes, LPO can apply to scenarios other than PPC, but it’s the easiest to understand if you’re new to LPO, I think).
Ash’s webinar focused on 7 common sins on that initial landing page. I have divided them into two categories:
Make it Easy on the User – Don’t distract him from whatever you want him to do. Your site likely has an ultimate purpose – be it taking orders, getting leads or whatever. Especially if a user has chanced upon you for the first time, they have no investment in their relationship with your site – if you make it difficult for them, they will hit the back button and find another site to interact with.
- Unclear Call to Action You know (or should know) what you want the user to do. Do you want him to provide his contact info so someone can call him? Do you want him to buy something? Whatever that is, make sure the user knows that’s what you want him to do.
- Too Many Choices Don’t display a link to every single product you sell on t hat landing page – group them by categories or brand. Offer a search box.
- Too Much Text Especially on the web, people have short attention spans.
- Visual Distractions If your page is all blinking lights and flash and bright colors, how do you expect the user to focus on what you want him to do?
- Asking for Too Much Information Especially if the goal of your landing page is to get leads, you’re asking the user for information. Make it as painless as possible for the user – yes, your marketing department might like to know the zip code, sex, race, and age of everyone you contact, but it’s not absolutely essential at this stage. From the user’s point of view, it can be daunting to provide all that information, and an investment of their time to some site that they may or may not know that much about.
Be trustworthy, be credible, be honest – The web, especially PPC has a low barrier to entry, both for sites and for users. There are hundreds, if not thousands of sites out there doing pretty much what your site does – show the user that you have what he wants and that you’re trustworthy.
- Lack of credibility and trust If your site is not a known brand, customers may be wary of you. As they should be – anyone can start up a website and promise just about anything. Prove to them that you are a trustworthy brand/site. Ash recommended ‘borrowing and solidifying trust’. If you’re asking for online payment, use a well-known third-party to handle the money or demonstrate that you are secured by a well-known brand. If you sell a certified brand-name, prominently display that information. If your company has been in any trusted publications, publicize that fact. GIve the user a reason to trust you.
- Not Keeping Your Promises Users click into your site because they have been promised something. The example Ash gave was tremendous – a site had a PPC ad that said something like ‘best digital camera. find the best digital camera using our reviews’. If you wanted digital camera reviews, that link sounds very promising! But, upon clicking it, you are asked to pay to join the site to read the reviews. The site did not give the user what it had promised (actual reviews) and didn’t even attempt to demonstrate that it would be worthwhile to pay for the reviews.
If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend the recording of the “Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design” webinar. He presented examples that really drove home each of the points.
