Loading ...Marketers and advertisers often make many mistakes with their landing pages, which is dangerous considering that they drive a lot of traffic to these pages. Tim Ash of SiteTuners, who speaks frequently about this topic, told WebProNews what these “deadly sins” are and why they are dangerous.
First of all, he points out that visual clutter is a problem. Flash and animations draw people’s attention but not to the point of conversion. Ash calls the graphic designers behind these creations “frustrated art school drop-outs.” Animations also present a problem since they often take a long time to load.
Another “deadly sin” that marketers make is giving their visitors too many choices. When there are links to a business’s partners, affiliates, and more, it does nothing but confuse the visitor. Instead of overwhelming people with these choices, Ash suggests putting just 2-4 options on a landing page.
Thirdly, one size doesn’t fit all with landing pages. Unfortunately, some businesses market through different channels but send all the traffic to the same landing page. This methodology doesn’t work because people are coming from different traffic sources and need landing pages that match their original intent or keywords.
“The best practice is really to have as many landing pages as you need with specific themes or background thought processes that the visitor might have,” Ash said.
A fourth “deadly sin” is when marketers put too much text on the landing page. In this age of technology, people have an even smaller attention span than they had before. For this reason, marketers need to keep it short, simple, and to the point. If they do need to add more information, they should put it in other links.
The last problem that Ash discusses is the sin of asking for too much information. As he explains, marketers often get greedy and try to get names, email addresses, and more for future use. However, he believes that marketers should only ask for the information that is necessary to complete the current transaction. According to him, users are more likely to spread word-of-mouth and influence by their own free will. He also said that if they are pleased with what they received, the chances are greater for them to visit again and even possibly give more information willingly.
For more on landing pages and how they can lead to conversions, check out Tim Ash’s Conversion Conference.
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I agree with everything that Tim says although for seo purposes the website needs to be updated regularly too. My site is simple and uncomplicated but has a blog on a seperate page wiich is regularly updated.
Good advice , and the best thing to do is just get to the point on your landing page. If the goal of the landing page is to get a signup for example then just explain briefly what they are going to get and let them sign up and make sure they get whatever you said they were going to get before signup !
The attention span of new visitors is wafer thin. About 6 secs to get your message through on a consumer facing website.
There are people out there who, when they find an article on a topic that interests them, will read the whole article, even if it encompasses several pages. Others like myself, read part of it and skim for the important points.
The trick is to make your article interesting enough in the title and the first few sentences to make a reader with an attention span of a lit match want to continue reading, bookmark your site, or ask for more information.
there is some helpful points.I am always following WPN and i have tuned my website from 0 to Rank 2 and a notable Alexa.http://languagering.com is my first project for SEO optimization.I applied all i learned.
Great info and very timely for me. Planning on my first email project soon and it will be important to have a good landing page for my efforts.
I guess the simpler the better.
If there are not much outgoing links on the landing page, and other links that may be of interest to the visitor, there should not be much of problems. The other alternative is to conduct online surveys, and select a few pages based on visitor interests, and promote such specific pages to such interest groups. Blindly driving traffic to any page(s) without caring for the visitor’s interests can only increase the bounce rate, and lose the visitor loyalty.
Less is more..get to the point and get to the sale.
nice article.
sandy
Yap…
the siplicity is often the best…
yor arguments come to the point
so we better start practice it
Ask if Site tuners will guarantee their work. For a company that brags about how good they are, it is ironic they will not even guarantee their work. This bothers me. How would you like to drop thousands of dollars only to find out their recommendations failed. I would hear what they are saying but do not hire them to actually do any work at the fees they charge. NO GUARANTEE!
The last problem that Ash discusses is the sin of asking for too much information. As he explains, marketers often get greedy and try to get names, email addresses, and more for future use. However, he believes that marketers should only ask for the information that is necessary to complete the current transaction. According to him, users are more likely to spread word-of-mouth and influence by their own free will. He also said that if they are pleased with what they received, the chances are greater for them to visit again and even possibly give more information willingly.