Archive for January, 2011
To help you create the most effective landing page possible, here is a quick overview of the most important elements that you need to include in your own landing page:
Compelling, Attention-Grabbing Headlines
Your landing page’s headline should be the very first thing that your visitor sees and therefore it needs to attract attention, draw them in and keep them focused long enough for them to become a confirmed subscriber of your mailing list.
Your headlines text size should be larger than the rest of the text on your page, and for increased exposure, consider adding color to your headline (red and blue works well). You could also consider highlighting your headline and any sub headline that you use. You can use the h1 and h2 tags to enlarge your text, which will not only help with capturing attention from your visitors but will also alert search engine crawlers that the enlarged text is important.
Center your headline within your template and try to work in your opt-in box so that it is close to the headline itself. If you are using a CSS based landing page, your opt-in box could be placed in a right column, with a bullet list of benefits featured in the main body of your page.
Content/Body
You should keep your content trimmed down so that it focuses only on the most important information that you have to share. Avoid wordy landing pages that offer endless paragraphs of information. Your landing page has ONLY one task, to convert visitors into subscribers and so you need to keep it clear, concise and of course, exciting!
You will want to split test your copy (including lengths) to determine what will increase conversion rates, but in the meantime, here is a quick overview of how to better structure your landing page content so that it is easy to read, understand and encourages subscriptions:
Use Bullet Points To Highlight Benefits
Bullet points emphasize important features and draw attention to the special aspects of becoming a subscriber of your list. This is a great way to showcase the benefits of becoming a subscriber, and what they will receive, in return, for their subscription.
For example, if you were offering a report on the ‘How to Start Your Own Business’, your benefit list could include:
- Find out how to start your own business even if you have absolutely no experience online!
- Discover the #1 business website where 99.9% of all small business owners are able to find new customers.
- Create a compelling website that guarantees you stand out from the crowd and get found in search engines!
Keep the Page Focused At ALL Times
Eliminate any external links and keep your landing page focused. You want to avoid distractions or in directing potential subscribers to external websites (or even internal pages on your site). Their ONLY option should be to subscribe to your mailing list. You don’t want to confuse them or deter them from your one objective; getting that lead.
Avoid navigation menus, widgets, plugins, or links to articles. Your landing page should be one-page long, feature your bullet list, headline, opt-in box and private policy. Eliminate clutter and any information or content that is not necessary to securing the subscriber.
Strong & Clear Call To Action
If you want your landing page to successfully recruit new subscribers, you NEED to clearly direct visitors to fill out your opt-in form and confirm their request. Do NOT assume that people know what to do. Remember, not everyone is likely to have experience with mailing lists, and so you need to directly instruct them as to how they are able to gain access to your free, high quality offer.
Just the same, you also want to direct them to confirm their request to you’re your list once they have entered in their name and email address. If you are using a double opt-in format, you will NOT be able to communicate with subscribers who have not verified their request, so make absolutely certain that you are following up and instructing everyone to confirm.
(You can do this by automatically directing subscribers to a secondary page on your site that thanks them for subscribing and tells them that the final step is to check their email and confirm their request to join your list by clicking on the verification link sent out by your auto-responder system).
Just like your landing page, keep your confirmation page clean and crisp. Avoid ANY external links at this point because you need your subscriber to follow your instructions instantly, eliminating any chance of them forgetting to confirm.
The new year is certainly off to a positive start best we can tell. People are clearly back to investing in growing their businesses. We have seen a healthy uptick in inbound calls, leads, RFP’s, etc. Very exciting for a small business like ours.
If you’re a small business owner, you’ve got to be thinking about ways to expand your reach and grow your business without adding costs. In 2011, the right way to go is partnerships and collaborations. Let me give you an example.
At Berkshire Direct, We’re super excited about our continued partnership with Miller Print & Litho and our new partnership with Zip’n Sort. Together we are able to provide the fully integrated services many customers want and we’re able to use mutual referrals among our three customer lists to grow our businesses – yet we haven’t had to take on any additional overhead or invest in any new equipment. That’s a powerful combination.
Do you have any opportunities to partner with companies that are adjacent to your business whose offerings woud complement yours? 2011 is a time to explore those potentials. Leave no stone unturned.
Serious Blogger Site in WordPress
Nava Atlas is a talented writer and artist from New Paltz, NY. Her many vegan cookbooks are in broad circulation. We are fortunate enough to have helped her move her site www.vegkitchen.com onto the WordPress platform about 2 years ago now, and she’s never looked back. Nava broke the 100,000 visitors barrier in November 2011 for the first time and now the sky is the limit.
