Recently I read the book Landing Page Optimization by Tim Ash, great read if you are interested in creating a website that converts, but it got me thinking a bit deeper into my own ideas and examples for landing pages. For most people reading this article, you probably know what you want your website to do, and work non-stop to find new ways to get your visitors to convert (or take one specific action). Conversions can happen in so many different forms it’d be hard for me to even attempt to explain how they differ in the actions you should take on your Landing Page, or mission critical pages. I would; however, like to voice my opinion on some things that could help make your landing page a bit more user friendly (remember, this advice is worth what you pay for it, but in all reasonable ways I believe it makes sense).
When designing your landing page there are a few issues to keep in mind from “jump street”. Issues like; what the end action you want this user to take is, what information you want them to retain when they leave, should you be seeing multiple purchases from this person, would you rather them buy multiple low cost items or one high price item, how can you use this users information to create more revenue in the long term, just to name a few. I think one of the most important things to remember is that if a viewer doesn’t feel comfortable they will not be likely to purchase from you. To remedy the comfort issue you COULD create individual landing pages that will gain their trust based on marketing form (ie. women would feel more comfortable with certain language and images then men would). However when you drill down and need to get your main sites landing page I think it’s ok to assume you are marketing to everyone (within your targeted realm of the internet). So if you are marketing to every person who is in the “market” for your information/ product you might assume that certain issues affect everyone, such as: the economy, the weather, etc.
If looking at how the economy can effect peoples decision making it’s an open and closed case. Right now most of the people out there are going through rough times, either lost their job or are walking on egg shells not to. Comforting them into feeling as though you aren’t going to break their wallet, and that you understand their pains will make them feel like they aren’t the only ones and creating that sense of belonging is very essential to performance. My main message in this section is remind most of you of something you already know, to stress the issue of belonging. If you visited a website and felt out of place, you would be MUCH more likely to leave that webpage and go back to your google search (most likely where they came from) and go to the next advetiser in hopes that this website will see purchasing the way you see it.
My example of weather just fits into the psychology of people. We all realize that marketing isn’t easy and that there are thousands of different forms of media and designs you can use to create comfortable atmosphere for your clients. However, one thing that I’ve seen getting overlooked is seasonal changes. During certain times of the year people are looking for different items. For example, you might want to take that nice jacket off the featured items list come June (if you are marketing to the majority of the US population at least). We can even take that as far as saying that the emails you run, banners your create, and keywords you bid on SHOULD be different judging on the time of year.
In a nutshell I believe that when creating a landing page there needs to be a decent amount of time and effort spent on making the visitor feel like they belong, and when promoting your website try to update based on as many factors as you can as time changes (holidays, weather, economic issues, popular fads, etc.). I think just by using those forms of insight you might be able to add some success to your daily routine because I feel like those two issues sometimes get lost in advertisers trying to sell too much. In times like we are seeing now we have to be very aware of social issues and adapt to the end users, don’t make them adapt to you. Most of these points can be found in different vernacular in the pages of the book I mentioned above, this was simply my blabbing about some things I’ve noticed along side of that information.
