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Dedicated Landing Page Design Best Practices (Part 2)

how do you design fans and welcome back picking up directly where we left off in the previous lecture, we have this example from dish networks. So I did a search for, you know, best cable tv packages. And I saw this ad for dish the dish skinny bundle packages start at 39 99 a month. Dish dot com. Right? So click the add. And this is the landing page that I go to. First of all. The first thing I see is that there's something which is 54 99. Right? So that's already frustration is this is bait and switch. I was promised to plan for 39 99 that was the headline of their ad. That's obviously what got me to click and I'm also not seeing the skinny bundle. Right? I clicked on the skinny bundle with packages starting at 39 a month. And I just, I don't see it. Right. This is the America's top 1 20 plus 54 99. It must be must be either on the wrong page. They didn't send me to the right place. This is a bait and switch. Right, inconsistent messaging. You're giving the users too many question ma...

rks. This is something which you should really really be careful about because it clearly frustrates users. Here's another example from dishes competitor optimum and they did a great job. He was the ad optimum triple play, 200 megabits per second internet tv phone, right? And then I click on the ad and that's exactly the messaging that I get right Connect with 200 megabits per second On the Internet, 95. That was the same price they quoted me in the ad right two years, guaranteed the same, you know, the same subject line in the ad. So this is a very, very good consistent experience is very congruence and it creates a sense of comfort, trust and just a sense of being in the right place for the user. On a side note, if you're running an Adwords campaign, this this type of messaging, this type of relationship between the content on the landing page and the content in the actual ad text helps with your relevancy score, part of quality score, which ultimately increases your ad rank and decreases your cost per click. Right? So not only is it good for the user, it's also good for your ad campaigns with PPC. One of the most common questions I get is what should I test first? Right. I have these dedicated landing pages I'm using on bounce. I'm using visual website optimizer. I have my testing capabilities. I don't know what the test. So based on many different tests that we've done a lot of different industry research and reports. These are the best things to test in descending order of importance headlines, test your headlines, they're easy to test and it takes a relatively short amount of time to get good results form fields, test having longer forms, shorter forms, asking your questions in a different way, asking less information and see if the actual conversion path making it easier for the user. Making it more simple or more intuitive, increases your conversion rate, your offers and promotions right? You could offer 50% off or $30 off or any many different permutations. Right. A sale has a lot of different ways you can kind of play out. So test different types of offers different types of promotions and test wording them differently. That's another great test your actual call to action text. Right? So the headline or the sub headline in that action block right around your call to action and the actual text of the button. That's another great idea to test. And obviously images and video are also really good. So background image tests, color scheme tests having a dedicated landing pages with a video without a video moving the video from the foot into the header or vice versa. All the different types of tests with images and video. If you kind of start playing around with these elements and start running some tests, you'll you'll really get the hang of testing of analyzing results, Modifying, making new variations and then potentially testing multiple different elements at once. Do multi area tests and also testing more subtle, more sophisticated elements on the page. But in 99% of cases these are the areas that you want to be testing around. So let's take a look at an actual homepage for a client of ours that we ended up redesigning and this was the first screenshot I showed you in the previous lecture. So once again, right, we have new york inspect a pretty big new york state home inspection company. This was their homepage that they were sending PPC traffic to Now. You could definitely pause this now and I think it would be great test and we're gonna have a similar exercise at the end of this lecture and try to point out some of the things that are wrong with this landing page based on all the different concepts that we've spoken about so far. Um, so definitely feel free to do that. That would be a good exercise. But okay, let's just take a look here one. There's no headline, right? There's no headline. That's the biggest infraction. That's the, it's like the cardinal sin of landing pages basically next to no call to action. No headline. Right? There's no call to action above the fold. In fact, you'll be hard pressed to really find the call to action on this page, but it's down here in this little green box that yellow, that yellow banner that looks like an ad is actually a clickable link, click here to schedule your inspection. Right? So it's to me it's as if there's no call to action, right? Um no call to action above the fold. There's nothing that captures my intention, right? Besides we're having no headline. There's nothing really here that stands out in a visual hierarchy that says, ah, this is what I should focus on first. This is what the company wants me to read first. This is their main value proposition, right? That's not being conveyed in any way over here, there's yelling, there's clutter, there's noise. Look at all this big text with shadows, there's lots of different colors, there's paragraphs of text right there. It's just clutter, just noise. It's not a I don't come to this page and I don't feel like I want to like either dig through all this copy to figure out how to get in touch with these people or who they, who they are. Um, it just seems like a lot of noise. Right? And that's the type of thing that turns visitors off on a dedicated landing page, you have a distracting primary nav. Right? One of the things that we've spoken about on dedicated landing pages is removing that primary nav because it gives people lots of links to information that they don't really need that don't support the main conversion action that most people will convert with without having read first. So this is something which will also decrease conversion rates if you have the attention ratio being further away from 1 to distracting stock photography. Right aside for there being no call to action or headline or subhead line in the, in the hero section, you have this big image of a it's clearly stock photography, right? So it doesn't really do much for the company. It also doesn't really help in any way. There's no emotional appeal. It doesn't evoke any emotions like people who are buying a home and need a home inspection. They're going through. It's a it's a specific time in their life that could be exciting, right? It can be nerve wracking. So you want to find some sort of imagery even if it's not original photography, that is more in the context from an emotional perspective from from from an emotional framework with what these people are experiencing. All right. And too much above the fold space is being wasted with this oversized logo, Right? That's another big thing. Don't waste so much space with your your huge logo, you don't you the real estate above the fold is precious real estate. You have to use that real estate wisely and you need enough space for whitespace and padding and margins. Right? So a massive logo that takes up a third of the above the full continents. A big mistake. So, these are a lot of the things that are wrong with this landing page. It's not everything that's wrong. But it's enough right now. This is the page that we've redesigned for the client. And I would also say if you want, you can pause the video now and write down or point out or single out a number of things that have been improved with this landing page, But let's just go through them one x 1. Obviously a clear headline that also increases the sense of trust. Right? Trusted and certified home inspections. It's big, it's bold. It's the first thing that I focuses on this is what we do, but we're also trusted and were certified. Right? So that keeps that, that creates a sense of trust. It helps to allay some of the anxieties. There's a supportive sub header will spoil any surprises your new house has in store. Right? So it's a little cheeky, it's a little cute but it supports the fact that we are home inspectors, subtle trust and safety elements right? Industry partnerships and industry certifications right above the main call to action block in close proximity to the headline, in close proximity to the actual form and we have a 100% money back guarantee badge. Once again, very closely put to the trust and you're gonna see on this page there's a lot of different trust elements, additional trust elements. Right, another Again in close proximity to the call to action why trust new york inspector. Right, so we've been in business since 1990 for thousands of happy clients, free ongoing phone and email consultations. Three key benefits of what we offer, no paragraphs, three simple bullet points in close proximity to the action block. Let's keep going. Clearly defined action block. Right? Remember the previous page, there was no action block, right? This is a clearly defined area where the user gets an immediate impression. If I were to convert this is where I would do it right. There's a form, there's a button, there's a green arrow pointing down, right. It's not overstated, it's not in your face, but it's there, it's nicely designed and it's immediately recognizable. We finish the sentence of the button text. I want to write, I want to schedule your inspection or do you want to is another way good to start the sentence. Do you want to schedule your inspection? Right? So the button is not just submit form its schedule my inspection, right? Clearly what's gonna happen. And then below it, it's hard to see 100% privacy privacy guaranteed someone's gonna call you within, within, you know, three hours setting those expectations, right? Prominent design. It's the only really red red element on the page. So the button, once again, it's not in your face, it has a gradient it looks and feels and functions like a button. These are all kind of like intuitive things, but you'd be surprised once again how many people forget it. Like we saw on the previous landing page of a company that's been in business for many, many years. Let's keep coming comparable customer reviews. Right? Again, additional trust elements in close proximity to the call to action, where these reviews were handpicked to help give prospective customers a sense of the types of people who have used the service and who have left who have left their feedback. I didn't have this on the slide specifically, but also the background graphic since we mentioned it in the previous version of the homepage, this is what it's listen, it's not original photography, right? We use it. We didn't have it available. We use stock photography, but you have a couple, right? They're they're they're happy. It's light. It's out of the way. You could barely see it, but it evokes a sense of joy. It evokes a sense of happiness, right? It evokes a sense of new beginning. So these are all the types of feelings you want to you want to give to a person when they come to your landing page. These are the things you have to think about when you choose your imagery. All this stuff matters. It might sound like it's overkill, right? It might sound like I'm just being neurotic, but all these little things add up to create better conversion rates. Again, these are all things that you should test. But ultimately, what hundreds and thousands of studies have shown is that this is this is the direction that you want to be moving in. Right? These are the things that have worked for all the different types of people before you quick exercise to end off this section on dedicated landing page. Best practices here is a landing page from none other than oracle. I did a search on google for best small business crm, right customer relationship management tools like a place where I could house all my contacts, a place that I could have everybody's phone numbers, a record of who have emailed different salespeople could be assigned to different types of people in the company to create a sales pipeline. Right? You guys all know what A C. R. M. S. I clicked on an ad. They had an ad for that search best small business crm. And this is the landing page they sent me to, I want you guys, you could print out this page, You can save it. You're gonna have the slide right in the, in the slide deck. Come up with seven things that are wrong with this page. It should be very, very easy. Right? Just based on the content that we spoke about in this lecture and the one previous and even throughout the rest of the course, seven things that are terrible, deadly direct response. Landing page sins and how you would improve them. If you're feeling really ambitious, you could redesign this page on your own. Send it to me. I'd love to see it. Upload it to google drive or dropbox and leave it, leave a link to it in the comments here. I would love to take a look and see what you guys have done. Um, perhaps will feature some of you, yours, your designs and in future videos, c and kind of, you know, compare and contrast. That'll be really fun, but take a stab at it. Seven things that are wrong. And I I strongly encourage you to try to redesign the page W fun exercise and send me a a link to the, to the your redesign and we'll have a good time with it. So with that, you guys are definitely equipped to build killer, high converting direct direct response, dedicated landing pages. And I look forward to see you guys very soon in the next lecture.