I was almost about to post this little tidbit in my slice of life blog, but I think I'm best off posting to you friendly neighborhood marketists. You see, while casually checking the stats on this slice-of-life blog of mine, I noticed the following internal queries: location of the scar solution book in the philippines 3 the scar solution book in the philippines 3 how can i order the scar solution book 2 That's a total of 8 queries from at least one ready-to-buy customer, who might not have been able to finalize the purchase because he was confused with my landing post: http://slices-of-life.com/2009/10/02/scar-solution-review-scar-solution-scam/ Apparently at least one customer didn't quite know where to click to order the product, even though I THOUGHT all elements on the landing post had been arranged efficiently as to attend that very purpose. Well, to make a long story short, I'm right just about now going to slap a big red "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" notice on that graphic on the begining of the post. Well. That's a little slice of life for your enjoyment. Surely, I think there's a good lesson to be learned, here: a landing page is never quite as sufficiently dumbed down as one might suppose. There are always ways to direct the attention of the customer towards the act of purchasing. One should NEVER assume that customers are technically savyy (not on the skin care niche, anyway). In fact, I have a hunch that best customers are the kind of people who is really bad with computers. The kind who just wants to check out their ebook and print it out and get the hell away from the computer. All kinds of people in this world, eh? ^_^ Hope you enjoy this! Cheers, P.
I don't think your landing page is as "dumbed down" as you think. There's basically nothing on that page that is inviting a click. You've got underlined text right at the start which isn't clickable and that sets a dangerous precedent - users expect underlined text to be links, and when your first part isn't a link, they might ignore any other underlined text assuming it's NOT a link. Your actual links barely stand out at all from the normal text (or underlined text). I struggled to find them! Even the large link at the bottom doesn't contain any text which indicates it is in fact a link and is worth clicking. People like to click things that look like buttons. Or links that say "Click Here To XYZ...". Or anything with a graphic of a mouse pointer over it. Or anything that says "Learn More...", "More Details...", "Order Now" and so on. Try "dumbing down" your page to include more of these elements and I bet you'll get way more clicks (Oh, and maybe get rid of the hop ads at the top and the AdSense at the bottom. They're just ways for your visitor to get distracted from their mission of clicking one of your invisible links!)
Awesome piece of advice! I'll be very mindful in underlining text from now on. I was going overboard with that, and I hadn't thought how it might confuse readers. It's true that people expect underlined text to be a link, out there on the internets.
links should always be blue and underlined.. If it looks weird on your green background you should change the background color.
I usually have a graphic at the top, then end every paragraph now and again with a big, bold/underlined "CLICK HERE TO ORDER XXX". The page in my sig is an example (it's a CPA offer though). But yeah, simplicity is key. And did you recently change your entire blog? Your headings are off and the feed subscription is appearing below posts. Just a heads up.
As the publisher of this product you would not believe how many emails I get saying, "i just ordered your book, when will I receive it? you didn't ask for my address..." I don't understand how you could be that confused and still pull out your card and purchase... but I'm not complaining