What's your Landing Page's Call to action?

Just made a new post on my blog about Call to Action on your landing page ...

Would love to hear other people's input and opinion and the topic ...

This is Day 4 in a 10 day series on Landing pages

 

Hi PPC,

Great advice.

I have been a victim of the free report ad, only to land on a sales page with the free report buried in the middle of the sales page text.

It's frustrating and if memory serves me correctly... I did hit the back button.

Dandy Don

 

Yes ... it's all too easy to have our own agenda

put yourself in the searcher's shoes and everyone will be happy

 

I'll certainly not claim to do better than other webmasters but, for what it's worth, I like to think that the following comments support my belief that I don't do too badly:
1. My landing page explains what I do (act solely for potential buyers of real estate) and how (well) it relates to my AdWord text (House Hunting Made Easy).
2. It provides my contact information (name, address, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail address) above the fold.
3. It includes a link to "e-mail me" with any questions or wish for further clarification.
4. It includes (admittedly below the fold) an invitation (and opt-in box) to join my monthly newsletter mailing list.

I can't prove it, but I suspect that I enjoy a higher number of clicks and certainly conversions than most real estate sites manage to do, if only because a great many of them raise barriers to obtaining more information (e.g. "Register here for details on this listing").

Duncan

 

Man you got some real nice tips on landing page.. have bookmarked your page and will read them thoroughly...

 

Actually making a high converting landing page is simple way. Just get into your visitors’ shoes and think what they want, simply give them exactly what they’re looking for just the way you’d like to have it given to you. Treat your visitors like persons, not like numbers. And must understand their problem and give them a solution.

 

Some decent tips - good luck with the blog!

 

Thanks ... nice to share with you guys feel free to post your own thoughts, as I m by no way the expert

 

I'll chime in since I do this for a living. The post was pretty good. What you refer to as "lead the viewer by the hand" is what I refer to as the feng shui of the design. Every element within the landing page has to "flow" with every other element. It's like organizing furniture in your home, if there is a good flow of energy within your home then things feel more natural and uninhibited. Having a bad flowing design is like putting a couch in front of a door....you're gonna have a hard time opening that door. A good flowing design will lead the viewer's eye right to the CTA without any obstructions.

In terms of the actual CTA buttons/arrows...etc, I find something that stands out but is also elegant and not spammy looking works best. You don't want to make your CTA look like a circus freakshow with a bunch of crap pointing to it, it will turn your viewers off and make you look less professional. A CTA that is confident and stands on it's own without too much "dress up" is best, and looks most professional.

 

nice information. yes i also lack this technique call to action is more important than your site theme.

 

I think it depends what a conversion means to you.

Would you want just anybody filling in their details, or would you want qualified people to fill out their details and submit them to you?

Let's look at example of a website which shows how the searcher can run their own business.

- Would you want the landing page to be so inviting that they fill out their details anyway, and a conversion appears on your google account?
- Or would you want to pre-qualify them on your website and only the more serious people complete the conversion?

I'd go for the 2nd one in this instance. So quite often quality over quantity.

IMO it's not straight forward as thinking 'ok I have them here now I want them to fill out their details for me to contact them'... some people like myself would rather have 1 quality person request further information, than 10 who will just fill it out anyway and at a later date turn around and say "I'm not actually that interested".

As I say it depends what your site is about and what you want their details for.

 

You make a valid point, I try to prequalify the user as much as possible in the ad itself, before they get to my page. So when they land they know what to expect and without thinking signup/buy/etc...

I would think in some businesses where you would send them material or give them a phone call you would definitely want more prescreening done, usually that means more details to fill-in on the contact form. But for lots of folks just building a list and sending out outresponders I would think the more the merrier...

Just made another post a on landing pages - Outbound links - let me know what you think

 

You make a valid point, I try to prequalify the user as much as possible in the ad itself, before they get to my page. So when they land they know what to expect and without thinking signup/buy/etc...


Whether to pre qualify in the ad is the best option, is all down to testing testing testing. I have some ads that pre qualify and their CTR is lower, the CPC is higher (due to lower QS) yet the conversion rate and cost per conversion is better.

You can then take it a step further and test the conversions .. are some better than others? Are conversions that came through a certain keyword, better than conversions that came from another keyword? Are some conversions that entered on landing page 1, better than those that entered on landing page 2?

Obviously it depends what the business is. I offer a business opportunity so a lead to me, is a potential signup. Some request information for the hell of it and others are very serious.

It can get very in depth when you look at it like that. There's many things to test. I usually only start testing landing pages when I'm happy with my Ad. I don't see any point testing landing pages if you have 2 Ads exactly the same that's not bringing in visitors. So I split test my ads until I'm happy with 1 .. then use 2 copies of that ad, with a different landing page for each.
Then the next step would be to see which are the better conversions ... the ones that go through landing page 1 and leave their details or the ones that go through landing page 2 and leave their details? Landing page 1 might get more conversions for a cheaper price! Yet if these conversions are poor quality over the more expensive conversions through landing page 2, which wins?


I would think in some businesses where you would send them material or give them a phone call you would definitely want more prescreening done, usually that means more details to fill-in on the contact form. But for lots of folks just building a list and sending out outresponders I would think the more the merrier...

I try to pre qualify them and I do this by explaining quite a bit about the business on the website. This produces fewer leads (conversions) than if I just had a 1 page website up with a bit of preselling and a form at the bottom, BUT, they are better quality leads. I'd rather be ringing up 10 people a day and they know pretty much what I'm going on about, as opposed to speaking to 50 people and they only have a very vague idea of what I'm ringing about.

I guess if the purpose of the site is to just get their email address, then yeah like you say ... as they have cost you the price per click to see your site, you might as well do what you can to get their email address. It is different when actually having to ring people and maybe send them info through the post ... email is virtually free where as envelopes and stamps could add up quite a lot.

 

Yeah ... it's kind of like getting high CTR on your ads ...

who cares if you are getting 20% CTR's, the question is are they converting and what is your ROI? so like you said every business needs to find that 'sweet spot'