When we’re creating sites, we think as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, our long detailed sales page, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click.
This is not empahising with the person coming into contact with our page.
Just ask yourself - how often do you read every page and click on all the links? We skim, hit the back button and basically react quote unplanned and spontaneously. We creating a landing page why are we not taking this into account? We are just not really thinking about it and concentrating too much on what the recipe should be rather then tasting it as we go along, and simplifying the ingredients and concentrating on the main flavor.
Long sales pages are a good example of what not to do most times, I say most times as there is a place for long sales pages as they do get results but on only the criteria that the person who takes action of them has reached that site at the specific right time - when they are really motivated.
How may times have you ended up purchasing a product of service when you were not specifically looking for thinking about buying a product that is explained on the long sales page? probably never. They look un- trustworth and not give you a sense of security in the product. Combine that online experience with a retail experience where you goign into a shopping mall and come out with products that you had no intention of buying in the first place, or a cloths shop where you went in for a pair of jeans and come out with jeans plus a new jacket, shoes and t-shirts.
This also happens online, thin how you stumble across webpages and spend hours clciking on links you foudn interesting. The fact is that humans are emotional creatures, our emotions drives us adn they need to be satisfied on a landing page before rational long sales type webpages or landingpage do.
When trying to build the perfect landing page think about hwo you use webpages, you don't look at ads right - then don't put them on your landing pages - less is more - focus on the emotional hook - that's how newspapers sell and why you clcik on all those wbe links for hours on end.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Right Brain vs Left Brain in Creating the Perfect Landing Page
“There are a lot of creative people who didn’t sign up for that kind of world.”
Creative or Analytical? Right Brain focused or Left-Brained? Process Orientated or Free and Unstructured? Goal Orientated or Journey Orientated? Natural and Predicable or Original, Spontaneous, and Surprising?
What the hell has this to do with creating the perfect landing page? Well you need both side of the coin to be able to sell. You need a balanced approach to create the perfect landing page. Most people are Left Brained so you will most be more goal orientated and process driven and less creative then someone who is Right Brained.
A lot of creatives types did not sign up for that world when they got into design or advertising, but now the worlds are getting closer then ever before, online you need to combine both well. Old advertising business models are becoming obsolete - which were not particularly results driven business, yes you needed to sell the product but it may have just been maintaining brand awareness.
Now you need to get very comfortable with results-based outcomes in marketing and also creative emotive elements for creating and building successful landing pages.
Creative or Analytical? Right Brain focused or Left-Brained? Process Orientated or Free and Unstructured? Goal Orientated or Journey Orientated? Natural and Predicable or Original, Spontaneous, and Surprising?
What the hell has this to do with creating the perfect landing page? Well you need both side of the coin to be able to sell. You need a balanced approach to create the perfect landing page. Most people are Left Brained so you will most be more goal orientated and process driven and less creative then someone who is Right Brained.
A lot of creatives types did not sign up for that world when they got into design or advertising, but now the worlds are getting closer then ever before, online you need to combine both well. Old advertising business models are becoming obsolete - which were not particularly results driven business, yes you needed to sell the product but it may have just been maintaining brand awareness.
Now you need to get very comfortable with results-based outcomes in marketing and also creative emotive elements for creating and building successful landing pages.
Landing Page - behavioral or contextual or demographic targeting
Find out about these three main areas of demographic targeting to create the perfect landing page.
If you don't really know what people you are trying to attract then how can you be expected to create the perfect landing page?
You need to have a really good handle on what the demographic you are trying to convert on your landing pages. How old are they likely to be, make ore female, social economic group and so on.
Contextual targeting for creating the perfect landing pages. How are you attracting your landing page traffic, are you aligning your ad's link bait etc to the most relevant context? Are the website you're on and inbound links as good as they could be? do they align well with your landing page?
Defining the Contextual, and demographic targeting for your landing page is going to then define some of the behavioral targets you want to capture. i.e. if they are mostly 13-15 year old boys you are trying to reach then you will know some of the behaviors they are likly to take. You can then plant your links on relevant sites and places. You can also design your landing page with these behavioral aspects in mind.
If you don't really know what people you are trying to attract then how can you be expected to create the perfect landing page?
You need to have a really good handle on what the demographic you are trying to convert on your landing pages. How old are they likely to be, make ore female, social economic group and so on.
Contextual targeting for creating the perfect landing pages. How are you attracting your landing page traffic, are you aligning your ad's link bait etc to the most relevant context? Are the website you're on and inbound links as good as they could be? do they align well with your landing page?
Defining the Contextual, and demographic targeting for your landing page is going to then define some of the behavioral targets you want to capture. i.e. if they are mostly 13-15 year old boys you are trying to reach then you will know some of the behaviors they are likly to take. You can then plant your links on relevant sites and places. You can also design your landing page with these behavioral aspects in mind.
Landing Page Pitfalls
If you create many differnt versions of landing pages - which you should try to do - to increase the likelyhood of better performace on your click-through rate or conversion rate then you need to ensure you don't compromise the brand itegtiy of what you are tryign to sell or motivate poeple for.
There needs to be a balance of diversity of messages and brand elements but also a clarity and focus of message.
The pitfalls of creating many landing pages is that you can easily dilute your brand buy trying too hard on different planign pages. You might be like meh.. if it sells then that's ok by me. Yes that's true to a certain extent, you might get some short term sales but you may suffer in the long term. Chipping away at wah teh brand stands for and how it's communicated in a focuses, consistant, disipline manner had big benefits and staying clear in teh the mind of the market you are tryign to reach.
You want to avoice going off mesage and off brand when creating yoru perfect landing page.
There needs to be a balance of diversity of messages and brand elements but also a clarity and focus of message.
The pitfalls of creating many landing pages is that you can easily dilute your brand buy trying too hard on different planign pages. You might be like meh.. if it sells then that's ok by me. Yes that's true to a certain extent, you might get some short term sales but you may suffer in the long term. Chipping away at wah teh brand stands for and how it's communicated in a focuses, consistant, disipline manner had big benefits and staying clear in teh the mind of the market you are tryign to reach.
You want to avoice going off mesage and off brand when creating yoru perfect landing page.
Combinations with the highest click-through rates
Having multiple combination of different landing pages and then testing each on for click through rates is a no brainier for landing pages.
But how many people really experiment with combination? It requires time, design skills, copy writing skills, Usability skills, and deep understanding or your customer, not to mention a good dose of both creativity and persistence.
Don't make early decisions on what works and does not based on limited combination and testing for the highest click through rates.
A landing page that is too slanted towards creating an emotional response with out displaying some rational points such as proof points, benefits and a clear promise on your product or service will not get the true potential click through that you could achieve.
Keep it simple is the best way forward, If you are trying to achieve too much then you want properly test coordination and versions of landing pages.
This requires dedication, persistence, and realistic expectations on what is to be achieved. Without really knowing your product and service then you are going to make some uninformed decisions based on unrealistic expectations. Nothign beats experience and you only get this through persistancd.
But how many people really experiment with combination? It requires time, design skills, copy writing skills, Usability skills, and deep understanding or your customer, not to mention a good dose of both creativity and persistence.
Don't make early decisions on what works and does not based on limited combination and testing for the highest click through rates.
A landing page that is too slanted towards creating an emotional response with out displaying some rational points such as proof points, benefits and a clear promise on your product or service will not get the true potential click through that you could achieve.
Keep it simple is the best way forward, If you are trying to achieve too much then you want properly test coordination and versions of landing pages.
This requires dedication, persistence, and realistic expectations on what is to be achieved. Without really knowing your product and service then you are going to make some uninformed decisions based on unrealistic expectations. Nothign beats experience and you only get this through persistancd.
Automated Intelligent Call to Actions
All ads are simply sophisticated call to actions, as with Landing pages.
There purpose in like is to get you to take action.
They want you to take a desired action and motivate your via your emotions and rational thoughts - these are based on what drives you as a person, what interest you and what motivates you, both consciously and unconsciously.
There are certain elements that create and advertisement or landing page, there are the visual elements that you take your your sense of sight - like colors, imagery, texture and form or composition. These are all important. Then there is the written content - like a catch headline, tagline or copy. There could also be sound on the landing page. These elements all add up to creating a tipping point for you to take action. The more aligned they are to the focus point of what appeals to you then the more motivated you are to taking action.
Evocing an emotional response is normally more powerful then a rational response so the focus is normally on trying to get a strong elmotional response out of ou without coming accross too contrived - it's a balance. The more creative the idea or message you convey the better but as with anythign there is a balance to strick and you need to find that balance, that requires not making something creative adn to hard to get for your intended landing page audience.
The lastes movement in marketing is creating automated intellignet advertisments. There work by matching up tthe content you are reading then then creaing a relevent advertisment that will appeal to you based on that contnet and how you go tto their website.
This is artifical intelligence that is a hybred of traditional advertising methods to evoke an emoation response but also the measureable data driven environment of computers that can measure the effectivness of an advertisemnt to a level never before made possible.
Will automated advertising work, these's no doubt it will and there will ba a massive market that will be appealed to this mehtod, where would you chose the alternative old method with the new is more measurable? You wouldn't.
You might be concerned that this automated method will remove teh creativity out of the advertisment but rhere are still an endless amount of creativity possible i nthe elements that make up the advertisment, like the headline, brand identity, image of the product, treament, call to action and so on.
Saying that these automated advertisements are not creative is missing the point, whihc is that this new automated method is all about seeding the right advertisiment in teh right place.
As the old marketing saying goes: right time, right product in the right palce for the right price and you get a sale. It's a formular that will always work. So the automated advertising method is about seedin tthat advertisment and not about the creativity of the advertisement itself.
No doubt there will be creative wyas and loactions to seeding that advertisement but that's another topic.
What's doe this mean for landing pages. My first thought is that landing pages will suffer in the face of this alternative. It might be more profitable to not create a landing page and simple have an automated ad appear on a relevent website to dervie the sale.
The automated advertisment could also lead to the landing page, this will more likely be the senario, but the sophistication of advertisments these days means you can create a sale directly from an adverisement, you could ha have the product chosen and have an automated payment method already hooked up - like Amazone - you could see an advertisemnt for a book you're interested in and then click buy on the ad, the ad has the knowlede that you are an Amazon customer and youre payment detailes are then inclued in the ad once you press buy button, it will show a confirmation option and then that's it! your book will be delivered - no know for a landing page, but you would want to presen tthat alternative if they are not totally motivated to buy the book right at that moment - they may wan to read a review etc. But I can see this being done in the ad - why move teh person off to a landin gpage when yo can derive teh sale witin the ad. It's goign to make for some very dynamic interactive ad's in the future.
There purpose in like is to get you to take action.
They want you to take a desired action and motivate your via your emotions and rational thoughts - these are based on what drives you as a person, what interest you and what motivates you, both consciously and unconsciously.
There are certain elements that create and advertisement or landing page, there are the visual elements that you take your your sense of sight - like colors, imagery, texture and form or composition. These are all important. Then there is the written content - like a catch headline, tagline or copy. There could also be sound on the landing page. These elements all add up to creating a tipping point for you to take action. The more aligned they are to the focus point of what appeals to you then the more motivated you are to taking action.
Evocing an emotional response is normally more powerful then a rational response so the focus is normally on trying to get a strong elmotional response out of ou without coming accross too contrived - it's a balance. The more creative the idea or message you convey the better but as with anythign there is a balance to strick and you need to find that balance, that requires not making something creative adn to hard to get for your intended landing page audience.
The lastes movement in marketing is creating automated intellignet advertisments. There work by matching up tthe content you are reading then then creaing a relevent advertisment that will appeal to you based on that contnet and how you go tto their website.
This is artifical intelligence that is a hybred of traditional advertising methods to evoke an emoation response but also the measureable data driven environment of computers that can measure the effectivness of an advertisemnt to a level never before made possible.
Will automated advertising work, these's no doubt it will and there will ba a massive market that will be appealed to this mehtod, where would you chose the alternative old method with the new is more measurable? You wouldn't.
You might be concerned that this automated method will remove teh creativity out of the advertisment but rhere are still an endless amount of creativity possible i nthe elements that make up the advertisment, like the headline, brand identity, image of the product, treament, call to action and so on.
Saying that these automated advertisements are not creative is missing the point, whihc is that this new automated method is all about seeding the right advertisiment in teh right place.
As the old marketing saying goes: right time, right product in the right palce for the right price and you get a sale. It's a formular that will always work. So the automated advertising method is about seedin tthat advertisment and not about the creativity of the advertisement itself.
No doubt there will be creative wyas and loactions to seeding that advertisement but that's another topic.
What's doe this mean for landing pages. My first thought is that landing pages will suffer in the face of this alternative. It might be more profitable to not create a landing page and simple have an automated ad appear on a relevent website to dervie the sale.
The automated advertisment could also lead to the landing page, this will more likely be the senario, but the sophistication of advertisments these days means you can create a sale directly from an adverisement, you could ha have the product chosen and have an automated payment method already hooked up - like Amazone - you could see an advertisemnt for a book you're interested in and then click buy on the ad, the ad has the knowlede that you are an Amazon customer and youre payment detailes are then inclued in the ad once you press buy button, it will show a confirmation option and then that's it! your book will be delivered - no know for a landing page, but you would want to presen tthat alternative if they are not totally motivated to buy the book right at that moment - they may wan to read a review etc. But I can see this being done in the ad - why move teh person off to a landin gpage when yo can derive teh sale witin the ad. It's goign to make for some very dynamic interactive ad's in the future.
Converting Traffic into Conversions
You may have heard this before: "how many people clicked on the ad or how many people actually bought something after clicking on it".
This is the key question and one that is the cornerstone of any perfect landing page. It's no good having a person click on the call to action if they don't convert into customers and actually purchase something, fill out of your form or take action on what you wan them to take action on.
Having a stepped approach helps define where the leak is. Think of your landing page traffic as water and your landing page is a pipe, you need to get that water from one point to the other, lets say you want collect rainwater from your roof and then divert it to three different areas. One for drinking water, One for the garden and the other for washing up. You want to get as much of that water to your desired location, so leaks aren't good.
You need to find out where the leaks are, if you have burred the pipe under grand then it's going to be a lot harder to find the leak, so having it above ground and completely vizabile is the way to go. Think of this when you create landing pages, you pipe needs to be vizabile at all times so when you spring a leak you know where to fix it.
You also need to have a few turns in the pipe as going directly from A to B might look quite ugly on your house when you have a big pipe going from your roof to your garden, so you will put some turns in the pipe and make it fit around your house and roof.
Think of the same way for your Landing pages - create some twists and turns. This will take the form of micro actions, Instead of having one button where the person lciks on it to buy the product put mroe stps in, you need to balance this, you dont what too many stpes as they could just become annoyed by you making the process too hard and leave your site - you've spring a leak! you need to plug that whole in your pipe or redesign it. But at least this way you know where they leave is located.
I created a landing page for a client today. Instrad of making a big button on the page saying "Click here and book in the view the product" I changed it to "click here to view the image gallery" I'll have the main call to action "Click here and book in the view the product" on this following page. Having a structured funnel to get the user on that path to taking the ultimate call to action is more desirable. First, you get to know where you are falling in the process if the people are not taking the ultimate call to action, and secondly, you are not going the hard sell your landing page visitors, it's a more subtile appraoch that enures they are really motivated beofre they commit to the sale or action you want them to take.
You also need to ensure that you offer alternatives on your landing page, If the person just wants to take the ultimate call to action then you don't want to force them through funnles that they are not interested in. So provide options at all times, you can de-emphasis the options to create focus on a particular choicex but with options you ensure you don't neglict differnt people.
This is the key question and one that is the cornerstone of any perfect landing page. It's no good having a person click on the call to action if they don't convert into customers and actually purchase something, fill out of your form or take action on what you wan them to take action on.
Having a stepped approach helps define where the leak is. Think of your landing page traffic as water and your landing page is a pipe, you need to get that water from one point to the other, lets say you want collect rainwater from your roof and then divert it to three different areas. One for drinking water, One for the garden and the other for washing up. You want to get as much of that water to your desired location, so leaks aren't good.
You need to find out where the leaks are, if you have burred the pipe under grand then it's going to be a lot harder to find the leak, so having it above ground and completely vizabile is the way to go. Think of this when you create landing pages, you pipe needs to be vizabile at all times so when you spring a leak you know where to fix it.
You also need to have a few turns in the pipe as going directly from A to B might look quite ugly on your house when you have a big pipe going from your roof to your garden, so you will put some turns in the pipe and make it fit around your house and roof.
Think of the same way for your Landing pages - create some twists and turns. This will take the form of micro actions, Instead of having one button where the person lciks on it to buy the product put mroe stps in, you need to balance this, you dont what too many stpes as they could just become annoyed by you making the process too hard and leave your site - you've spring a leak! you need to plug that whole in your pipe or redesign it. But at least this way you know where they leave is located.
I created a landing page for a client today. Instrad of making a big button on the page saying "Click here and book in the view the product" I changed it to "click here to view the image gallery" I'll have the main call to action "Click here and book in the view the product" on this following page. Having a structured funnel to get the user on that path to taking the ultimate call to action is more desirable. First, you get to know where you are falling in the process if the people are not taking the ultimate call to action, and secondly, you are not going the hard sell your landing page visitors, it's a more subtile appraoch that enures they are really motivated beofre they commit to the sale or action you want them to take.
You also need to ensure that you offer alternatives on your landing page, If the person just wants to take the ultimate call to action then you don't want to force them through funnles that they are not interested in. So provide options at all times, you can de-emphasis the options to create focus on a particular choicex but with options you ensure you don't neglict differnt people.
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