So you have a landing page and you want to improve conversions. The challenge many marketers and web designers face is how do you enhance or optimize a landing page without really affecting the current conversion rate. Although there are a million and one ways to design an effective landing page, there are a few common techniques that are proven to draw attention and enhance your chances of converting at a higher rate. It all starts with the design and enhancement of the Form.

Looking at the fictitious form below, we will apply three simple changes to the form that in the end will grab your attention.

1. Arrows – Yes, it’s that simple. Add an arrow to your form if you don’t already have one. Chances are, you’ve probably seen it done on the web before. Adding an arrow to your landing page that points directly to the form will instantly capture the user’s attention. Without going into too much detail, an arrow acts as a visual attention grabber in addition to a “subconscious loud speaker” that shouts out – “Fill out this form now!”

   

2. Larger Input Fields – This is a fairly new technique often used or seen with consumer friendly Web 2.0 websites. I call it the Web 2.0 look-and-feel. More and more designers in the social media space are moving towards larger everything - headlines, text, buttons and so on. Essentially, the idea behind this concept is to make things bigger and larger on screen, which by nature makes the site feel simple, clean, less cluttered and easy-to-use. I’m not a rocket scientist, but if items on the website appear large, simple and easy-to-use – most likely users will be inclined to use it rather than not. Note – this technique of creating larger text fields can be controlled through CSS.

   

3. Larger, Brighter “Submit” Buttons, with Call-to-Action Text - This is an oldie but goodie that is proven to capture attention and entice visitors to “Click”. The standard “submit” button has been used since the beginning of time. But over the years, marketers and designers have found ways to call more action to submit buttons while enticing users to click-through. The reality is, everyone on the web understands how to fill out and complete a web form. By creating a larger, brighter and well written submit button, you only enhance the chances of someone wanting to move forward. The trick is to be creative with what your write within the button. You always want to explain in a few words what the user will get by actually filling out and clicking on this cool button.

   

There you have it, three simple conversion optimization techniques you can apply today to enhance your landing page form design to improve conversions. If you would like a free consultation and more expert advice on how to improve conversions, shoot me an email.

So you’ve spent tons of money and resources on a search engine marketing (sem) campaign, your site is ranking well, your pay-per-click campaign is in full swing driving tons of qualified visitors to your site each day and you’re noticing tremendous growth in traffic compared to previous months – now what?

Many people run into the issue of having conquered their search engine marketing goals, but continue to see low conversion rates. The issue I see is that many marketers and website owners neglect the design, layout and the effectiveness of their landing pages while focusing primarily on conquering Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Taking it a step further - the quality of design, information architecture and product content is the most crucial component in generating any type of lead or sale on your website. In fact, many businesses can simply increase sales by focusing on converting the visitors they already have rather than by adding more traffic.

For example, would you rather convert 500 of 30,000 visitors or convert 1000 of 10,000 visitors? The point is, with proper testing and design alterations; you can achieve these types of results.

While I won’t go into great detail in this article, below are a few things that will improve the sales and conversion rate of any website:

1. Put yourself in your customer shoes – Walk through your site, role-playing as a customer and ask yourself, would you buy into what you’re selling? Does your site give you (the customer) everything you need in order to make a decision on purchasing the product or inquiring on for more information? Are there things you could add to your site that a customer might be looking for?

2. Video – Video is exploding and there is HUGE opportunity within the business arena for the use of video demos and tutorials. For example, if you sell a product, having some sort of video or demo where users can see the product in action will dramatically improve conversions. How many times have you been sold on a product from watching an infomercial? Don’t tell me I’m the only one with a bowflex collecting dust in the garage.

3. Literature – This is more so relevant in the B2B market, but vital for any web presence. Having literature such as brochures, data sheets, white papers, articles and press releases readily available for download can sometimes be the difference from someone buying or walking.

In Conclusion
As I’ve mentioned many times before, there are numerous things that goes into achieving success on the web. It’s a constant challenge that every company faces. Yes, search engine marketing is important in driving visitors to your website, but the quality of design and content is what’s going to engage the user and close the deal.

If you have any questions or would like more insight on achieving higher sales and conversions, send me an email.

When optimizing a site for search engines, writing quality content using competitive keywords is crucial. Although keyword density on a web page is important for ranking well on search engines – key phrases can be even more valuable to your search engine optimization (SEO) campaign.

Keywords are important, but they are very competitive and expensive in regards to paid inclusion (Pay-Per-Click). Key Phrases (more detailed and specific search phrases) on the other hand has a laundry list of benefits. Not only are they less competitive, key phrases attract serious, more qualified visitors.

Think about this, when people aren’t sure what they want, they tend to search using generic keywords (cars, bags, shoes, picture frames, new homes, pc software, gardening tools, dogs etc.). This isn’t rocket science, it’s just common sense. People today are smart. The majority of people (consumers) searching the web understand that generic keywords will bring back a gazillion results that may or may not bring back what they want. It’s a crap shoot. But when people are serious, ready to buy, looking for a specific solution – you best believe they will be searching using longer, more specific key phrases.

For example:

When someone is ready to buy a used car, they don’t search on used cars - they search on “2006 range rover fully loaded”.

When someone is looking for a certain bag, they don’t search on bags - they search on “kenneth cole black leather messenger bag”.

When someone is looking to buy a pair of shoes at a discount price, they don’t search on shoes - they search on “discounted mens dress shoes”.

When someone is looking to purchase a dog, they don’t search on dogs - they search on “beagle puppies for sale in los angeles”

When someone is looking to buy a new home, they don’t search on new homes, they search on “new homes in porter ranch california”

When someone is looking for a specific lawn mower, they don’t search on lawn mowers, they search on “john deere riding lawn mowers”.

I’m sure you get the point.

In Conclusion
Single keywords are often very competitive, expensive and saturated within the search market. Focusing on more detailed specific key phrases will allow you to achieve faster and higher page rank. You will also attract more serious, qualified visitors. This long tail approach to search is a strategy that has been growing over the past few years. Basically, while there is a huge demand, very competitive market for generic keywords, there is a long tail of less competitive and more specific key phrases that exceeds the market share of the more popular keywords. So take a look at your title tags and make sure to focus on key phrases instead of generic keywords.

If have any questions or would like assistance with your search engine marketing (SEM) initiatives, please send us an email.

When optimizing a landing page, one of the challenges webmasters and marketers face is whether to go with a single-page landing page, conversion path or microsite (also known as a minisite). The question we often get asked here at VigorFish is - which one converts higher? Which is better? The short answer is – They all work well. Any landing page approach have the potential to convert at a high rate as there are many factors that goes into the success of any landing page or online marketing campaign.

Before we get into the benefits of each, let’s define each one.

What is a Landing Page? (Single Page) – From Wikipedia, In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. Ok, that’s pretty simple. Example of a basic landing page

What is a Conversion Path? – A conversion path is a sequence of pages that a user navigates through after reaching the page from a particular marketing ad or link, qualifying the user, narrowing their decision on a particular product or service before taking the final step in completing the web form. Simple Conversion Path Diagram

What is a Microsite or Minisite? - A microsite (also called a minisite) is a small website, normally containing a few pages and with a narrow focus. The microsite is often always a section of a larger site. For a good example of a microsite, you can look at almost any car dealership website and find one. Take Honda.com for instance, Honda.com isn’t a microsite as you’ll find information on their total product suite (all of their vehicles). But like many other car dealerships, Honda may build microsite’s to hightlight specific cars like with their new electric car, the Honda FCX Clarity.

Each of these different landing page experiences (single page, conversion path or microsite) can be linked to any online or offline marketing ad. They’re all used with the goal of getting the user to commit, sign-up, complete a web form, call and inquire on more information etc. Each of these experiences has been successful overtime and remains true today.

Let’s take a look at each landing page approach in more detail.

The Single Landing Page Approach
The standard single page approach has been used from the beginning of time (and it works). You can run a search on Google and find articles and blog posts saying otherwise, that single landing pages only convert in the single digits while other landing page approaches convert higher. But that is simply not true in all cases. It’s simply a matter of how well the landing page is designed and presented. I’ve personally managed many online and email marketing campaigns using single page landing pages and have had great results in many cases. One tactic is to add an incentive to your message, provide an incentive for the user to sign-up or complete a web form and watch your conversion rate jump. I’ll actually discuss the power of incentive in later article. But for now, my point is, don’t throw away your single landing pages just yet.

Single landing page experiences work well for items (PDF downloads, Reports, Brochures, White Papers etc.) that can be explained in a few words. For example, an ad that reads “FREE 40-Page Guide on Email Marketing” is fairly self explanatory. Meaning, as a user, there’s not much more you need to know to want to download the free guide. As the end user, knowing that it’s free, it’s 40 pages of information and it pertains to email marketing is really all you need to know. As the marketer, you only need to present a simple one-page well designed landing page, few bullet points, a cover shot of the PDF etc. All of this can be done using a single page.

The Conversion Path Experience
Conversion path experiences are great for segmenting and qualifying users. If you want to capture marketing intelligence, segment or qualify respondents before they complete a particular web form or inquire about your product/service, then using a conversion path experience is the best approach. For example, let’s say Microsoft runs an ad campaign for their Vista operating system. Upon clicking the ad and landing on the landing page, Microsoft may want to segment users between home base users and business users - leading each group down a path that better pertains to their needs. This is both helpful to Microsoft as well as the user.

The Microsite Experience
Microsites are great when there is an opportunity to present an abundance of information about a product or service in an engaging, user friendly manner. For example, Honda may run an ad campaign on a new electric car. In this case, Honda’s marketing team may want to direct users to a well designed microsite featuring the electric car. A microsite in this case could possibly have several pages featuring car specs and details, pricing options, photo gallery, consumer reviews, videos, brochures and wallpaper downloads etc.

In Conclusion
Each of the different landing pages has its benefit. My suggestion is to use the appropriate landing page experience based on what you want to accomplish with your campaign and the type of product/service you’re providing. Always remember that there is no right or wrong answer. There is no one secret – it’s all a process. Great success in any campaign is based on testing, measuring and evaluating. Also, gaining high conversions depends on many things such as landing page design, user incentive to follow through and target audience. Good luck with your next campaign. If you have any questions, shoot me an email.

Which approach you are using or have had success with?

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses of all types and sizes.  It is inexpensive and has been known to be 20 times more cost effective than direct mail. But delivering your message can be tricky. With all the different email clients on the market today (Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL etc.), you have to make sure you design your email so that it’s compatible across the board.

Without overwhelming you with all the requirements/details of each email client, below I list a few simple tips you can start using today that can assure you that your email has a chance of being read on any email client.

• Keep it simple

I would argue that this is probably the best approach to designing anything. Less is more. Whether you’re designing a website, promotional email or even an email newsletter - keep it simple. Keeping your design simple, using less code, being clear in your message will offer you the best chance of your email being read, regardless of the email client (either on PC or mobile device).

You can really say more with less. In addition, people really don’t have time to read through long emails. Your headline or subject line should give the end user everything they need to know. Follow your headline with clear, easy to read paragraphs (I would say no more than three) and use simple graphics (right aligned). Just keep it simple. Remember, simple is safe. And with all the various email restrictions out there, you’re better safe than sorry.

• Keep graphics to a minimum

Graphics are great, but keep them to a minimum. Many email clients today have images turned-off by default. It’s a great security measure for the user but a pain for marketers when they want to get their brand message across. The best approach is to keep it simple and stick to no more than three graphics in your email. One, for your logo/header, and possibly one to two graphics within the body.

A few other tips on using graphics - you shouldn’t use graphics for important information such as headlines or key messages. Also, test your email and make sure that the main point in your message can be read if images are turned off.

• Always provide a link to a web version of your email

You’ve probably seen this before where there’s a link at the top of an email that reads something like this: If you have trouble reading this email, please click here. This is a must have!

Sometimes your email design isn’t that simple, but quite informative and packed with tons of information (such as a monthly newsletter). And with the various email clients and restrictions, your email design for whatever reason may not display properly. So linking to a web version of your email allows every recipient on any email client (PC or mobile device) the chance to read and view a complete web version email in it’s entirety within their default web browser.

There’s a ton of information out there to learn on email marketing. Lot’s of valuable stuff to discuss another day. But for now, using these simple tips in designing your next email will assure you that your message has the best chance of being read.

If you are currently running an email marketing campaign or looking to start and are in need of assistance, simply send me an email. I would be glad to discuss your project in more detail.