We have been getting a lot of requests to take a deeper look and map out the way to create high converting B2B landing pages. Though a landing page is a landing page, when it comes to B2B landing pages there are many different emotional triggers and nuances to take into account which is why in this post we’ll dive into those differences and try to construct a guide and checklist for you to follow when creating one.

To clarify, ‘B2B’ stands for ‘Business to Business’ and refers to businesses who’s target audience is other businesses, well-known examples would be Mailchimp, Hubspot, Kissmetrics and Conversioner of course.

B2B landing pages have a huge impact on revenues and leads. Since many B2B companies do not have a lot of traffic (as opposed to B2C companies for example), their landing pages can have a direct impact on revenues and conversions. In fact, HubSpot conducted a research and found that businesses that increased the number of landing pages from 10 to 15 (by adding just 5 more specialized landing pages), saw an increase of 55% in leads, which is why it is so important to focus on your creating high converting landing pages.

Let’s take a look at the main differences between B2B and B2C businesses and how you should consider this when optimizing your B2B landing pages.

In B2B, you are selling to a person who is buying as a product or service for company use. Your customer want to make sure that what they are buying is suitable for their professional needs and personal needs within the company. Similar to B2C customers, B2B customers do extensive market research to find the best possible solution but in this case it’s not just for them, it’s also for their company. Many times, after performing this research they will be required to present their choice to different people in the company – whether their teammates or manager which makes it a longer purchase cycle than most B2C sale cycles.

In addition to all this, once a decision is made B2B sales usually involve more complicated funnels which include invoices, contracts and accounting, which makes the whole process more complex.

Below is a table that shows these differences:

In order to reach and convert the target audience you are looking for you can use landing pages to target the different users, different companies, with different products or services you may have, and you can (and should) create dedicated landing pages for different ads as well.

B2B landing page optimization tips

1. AIDA (like the Opera)

AIDA is a term I learned from the CopyHackers’ course I’ve been taking and I loved the way Joanna explains it:

1. Attention – Your headline should relate to the referral that brought your user in and because whatever referred them grabbed their attention, don’t lose it!

2. Interest – Explain why this is interesting to the user – facts and figures

3. Desire – Explain why this is personally good for the user (you’ll never have to worry again, you can A/B test easily with the platform, you’ll gain a better understanding of how your users interact with your site and therefore market to them better).

4. Action – Tell them what’s next – whether it’s downloading the white paper,  a free ebook,  buying your product or signing up for a consultation – tell your user what action to take next. Now for a B2B company, with a longer sales cycle that includes reading a lot of info, researching the market, and debating with your team/convincing the CEO that this is the right purchase, you need to consider what you are offering and what action you want your user to take.

http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/landing-page-cta-placement/

2. Stay Consistent with the Source

You should know where your users are coming from – which ad, referral or link brought the user in – and each of those different sources should lead to different landing pages or cater to your different ad messages. In order for your landing page to have the strongest impact, it should match, in terms of copy and imagery, to the ad/link/context your user are coming from.

Why? Imagine this scenario for a moment…

Your company offers Project Management Tools along with an analysis tool and an email marketing service, but someone saw your Google Ad after searching for Project Management Tools – “The #1 Project Management Tool For Online Enterprises”. They clicked it! You want them to land on a page for your Project Management Tool specifically – to suit what they were looking for. If they land on your homepage and it says “ALL YOUR CRM AND EMAIL MARKETING NEEDS MET!”, this user, looking for a project management solution, will say – I’ve reached the wrong place! And then they will leave.

Therefore, you want them to land on a page that says “Now you’re free to focus on the important details – Project Management Tool” and they’re thinking – yes! I do need more time to focus on the important things instead of wasting my time trying to organize project data! Thank god I found this great company with such an awesome solution.

3. You Have 3 Seconds – Use Them Wisely…

You have 3 seconds to grab the attention of your user and make them stay. That means a strong headline and powerful imagery.I mentioned the headline earlier and I’ll say it again. It’s important! Your user needs to know that this is relevant to them and what they are looking for and the user needs to feel that this is also trustworthy and will solve the problems they are looking to solve. Use that emotional targeting strategy for both the imagery and the headline (short, sweet and to-the-point) to get the employee of this other company to think – “Yes. This is the right product for my company.”

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You have 3 seconds to grab the attention of your user and make them stay
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4. Develop A Strategy

True or False: If you’re selling a product/service to another business, you don’t need emotional targeting.

This is… false! But I get where you’re coming from. I mean…it’s a business. It’s professional. What emotions are there?

There are many.

In B2B, your user is an individual who is responsible for finding a solution for the business you are trying to convert. They may be an Online Marketing Manager, a Project Manager, a CEO, etc. Just like you, they are a person who is sitting and searching how to improve and keep their business growing, effective, and successful. And just like you and me, they are affected by their emotions.

This person has their business’ needs – a tool, a solution, something for project management, increasing conversions, improving their email marketing, etc.

But other than the technical elements of your service, they are also affected by their own personal priorities and emotions – They might be worried about how the service is accepted and liked by their team, if it will impress their boss, or will they finally the recognition they deserve and maybe that promotion.

So before you set to designing, do some research, write up that marketing persona, and get your emotional targeting strategy down.

5. Create Landing Pages To Fit The Stages of Your Sales Cycle

• After you make them stay with these emotions, you should provide relevant information that your user is looking to hear. Keep in mind that, according to Douglas Burdett at ArtilleryMarketing, research has found that 75-98% of B2B site users are looking for information on solutions for a problem or to fulfill a need.
• Offer a livechat on your page for users to ask questions during their experience on your site! This can help you get in touch with your user and not only help them convert but also learn about their experience on your site and, based on their questions, know how to improve it. Make sure you have someone enthusiastic that knows/is passionate about your product answering the questions.

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75-98% of B2B site users are looking for information on solutions for a problem
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6. Pay Attention to Your Registration Form

Your registration form should fit your landing page. Depending on where your user is in the sales cycle, you want to get that lead!

• If they are early researchers, you may want to consider a simple form to receive your blog posts on relevant issues, or perhaps to get a free ebook, sign up for a webinar, or a free consultation. Offer value that isn’t straight away buying your product. Your user should have an incentive to complete this form.
• If they are more advanced in the purchase process, you may want to offer your free trial.
• It should be simple and have only the most important fields to fill in. Make this process as easy and simple as you can.
• If you’re considering using Social Logins -consider that this person is logging in as a representative of their company and not as an individual. Perhaps choose to use a LinkedIn sign in option – and test it!
• We tried it out in a case study. We didn’t even write “Login with Facebook” on the button (clicking the button brought it about). We made the page simple and changed the copy to make it more personal (check out the case study for the original) and this landing page increased signups by 35% and increased the final conversion rate by 78%.

7. Choose Your Links and Buttons With Care

Every link and button on your landing page serves as a distraction and an exit point. The main point here is to reduce distraction. You want your user to take one action on your landing page. You can help make that happen by reducing links and buttons – focus all the attention on the most important aspect.

On your homepage you have a  Navigation Bar, filled with many different options and many different pages. Your landing page should either not have a navigation bar at all, or have a limited navigation bar that provides the information your user will need in order to reach their decision, but not too many that will distract them from the goal.

Reducing distraction in order to focus on your form is crucial. Take, for example, this case study we had. This business offers a heatmap and in-depth analytics service for businesses.

This was their homepage:

(It’s a running video in the background).

What we did is we took the main aspects, and we made the background solid, took away the share buttons, and reduced the focus to one main button.

We also added social proof as you can see (which I’m about to talk about in the next step). These help increase users’ trust upon reaching this page! This landing page increased sign ups by 25%.

 8. The One Time Bragging Comes In Handy

You want your user to trust that you are amazing, wonderful, and great and that everyone loves you so they will love you too. You want to prove that you work, and you work well. So BRAG!

• If you’ve been mentioned or featured in a fantastic article praising your growth, your success – or just mentioning you – let them know!
• If you have been given great testimonials – let them know!
• If your product is being used by big names – let them know!
• Example: “We are a trusted partner of Optimizely”, “We’ve Been Featured in: Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, MIT News, Forbes, and The Economist”, “BestCompanyEver has helped me manage my project team splendidly! We can communicate clearly, keep all tasks organized, and track user behavior like never before!”

CrazyEgg used a nice array of social proof on their landing page to show who else uses their heatmap analytics so you would feel comfortable to.

9. The Only Actual Way To Optimize is to Measure

When creating your landing page, although it is separate from your site in most cases, make sure you are tracking it. You want to know how many people clicked, where, why, and whether they watched that video you included. You do all of this in order to learn more about your users and see what works and what doesn’t, and learn more about how to target your users better. You can also see where they may be leaving along the way and work on optimizing those steps too.

10. The Sales Cycle is a Journey

The landing page itself is critical and we gave tips here but it is important to note that when we discuss the landing page, there is a whole process around it that needs to flow well!

1. The Attention Grabber – whatever ad, email link, blog post link, or other referral brought them to your landing page

2. The Landing Page – the page itself is important, obviously, in order to continue the process

3. The Form – discussed above- is that clincher in the landing page where you actually get the user to take the action you want them to!

4. The Thank You Page – once they’ve filled out the form, you want to show your appreciation and that the form has been successfully completed and that they’re getting what they wanted. But a blank page with “Thank you. You have successfully registered.” is not going to leave a good impact. The thank you form is still part of this pathway – so leave a good impression and a positive feeling.

5. The Confirmation Email – This is your chance to truly, directly communicate with your user! You can make a great impact with your wording and content of this email. You can show your company’s personality, professionalism, and make that personal connection that can take the cycle to the next level!

B2B Landing Pages are crucial for the sales cycle, but a lot of it depends on your users, their needs, and how well you know your usersl. So while you work on building the optimal landing page, keep these in mind.

As we briefly mentioned last week, we worked with a B2B company on their landing page and asked you who you thought was the winner.

Here, again, is the original landing page:

Here is Variation 1:

And here is Variation 2:

And here are the final results!

Variation 1 increased leads collection by 98%.

Variation 2 increased leads collection by 33%

So whoever guessed variation 1 was correct!

Our hypothesis was that variation 1 won due to mainly emphasizing the end result for the customer: “Lead your team to success” rather than – “We are the number #1″ – emphasizing personal value rather than the company’s. In addition the “continue” button was a more direct call to action button. Though more people clicked on the “learn more” CTA, less people completed that funnel. However, people who clicked on the “continue” CTA were more committed and ready to scheduling a demo and taking the next step. Later we optimized variation 2 according to our insights from this test and it won.

If you are working on a landing page for your B2B site and want some advice, feel free to reach out! And if there’s a specific topic that has been nagging you, coming up a lot, or has you curious – let us know! We love writing posts about what interests you.

 

10 Instructive Landing Page Examples – What to do and What not to do

After positive feedback from our prior critiques, we took submissions from our readers on Inbound, Reddit, and Growthackers to be featured here.

There were a lot of submissions, but we went with the posts that cover the broadest spectrum of landing page learning. You’ll find that some of the pages critiqued below are really excellent, and we want to show that! On the other hand, we’ve had to put on our Simon Cowell hat for some other pages, as a few really need our help.

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1. Orobind

Orobind helps Indian clients discover and engage with personal trainers in their area.

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Show them their best selves

People want to know “what’s in it for me” when they arrive at your site. Orobind does a great job here. It doesn’t simply offer a list of the features of the product, but it shows the users how the product will impact his life.

Looking at the image, the user is impacted. She sees what could happen to her in a few days or weeks if she decides to sign up. The target audience is comprised of affluent Indians and this message really lets them see themselves as their best selves with this product.

There’s no better way to reach a customer than allowing him to see who he wants to be, and then showing him the path to get there.

Eliminate friction, don’t create it

Things naturally flow in the path of least resistance. If you make your funnel easy to navigate through, more people will flow. If there’s excess friction, fewer people will flow through.

The call to action here is to input a fitness goal. However, this might be a lot of excess friction without a good enough reason. A lot of people might not even know their goals. People often respond better when they have more direction. It’s worth testing taking this part of the call to action out the landing page to see if they’ll be more likely to continue. Another test possibility would be for this part to be a simple drop-down menu that they need to choose from.

Don’t make your users make hard decisions before they become customers. Show them how easy your product is to use.

Social and trust icons

People like to know that they’re getting a trustworthy product. The place they’ve addressed this concern in the page is below the call to action where it says the number of sessions completed, etc.

One often-successful alternative or addition is social icons. Having social icons and shares means other people really like the product. People can visit Orobind’s facebook page and hear from people in their area that it’s a good service.

Another great alternative worth testing is trust icons. Oftentimes people think these are reserved for securing financial information, but that’s not true! Are the personal trainers certified in anything? Probably. Then why not slap the logos of their certifications on the homepage. It will give a lot of legitimacy to the product.

2. TweetDis

TweetDis is a plugin that makes in-line text easily tweetable by a website’s readers.

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So what do you want them to really do?

When making a landing page, you have to make it crystal clear to the user what you want her to do. Even if all of the words were suddenly blurred out on the page, it should still be obvious that he needs to click here or there. (Here’s a cool app that lets you see pages as if you are under the influence…)

This page does an incredible job at that. If the words were blurred out, I’d know that this page had something to do with a Twitter service and that I should watch the video. Notice how the colors aren’t too crowded, the video is huge and right in the center of the screen, and there are literally arrows pointing right at it.

However, the goal of this landing page (as told to us by the owner) is not to watch the video, but to install the plugin. The user has to scroll down to be able to see the real call to action, which is something we rarely advise. The only reason you should do this is you have rigorously tested this hypothesis and it is successful.

If that’s the case, this is fine. Maybe people are more likely to download the plugin after they’ve watched the video. Then this setup definitely makes sense.

I don’t know which way is better, and the only way to find out is to test. It’s easy to set up event tracking to know if downloads usually follow video views, or if they are more unrelated. If this were our page, we’d run this test with the Google Tag Manager.

Length – they’re looking for a product, not you

Text on a landing page is different from text elsewhere. It needs to be easily digestible – that means short, to the point, organized, and visually pleasing.

Depending on the page, people have arrived from a variety of different types of marketing campaigns, and aren’t necessarily looking for YOUR website. They’re looking for a product or service.

It’s important that you recognize what they’re here for, and show them quickly that you can provide just that. Otherwise, they might go off to one of the other tabs they’ve opened.

It’s difficult to see below the fold, but this page has a lot of text. A lot of text isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s probably worth A/B testing this page vs. a shorter version with only the key points.

3. WPD

WPD helps WordPress users find the right plugin for their sites.

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Be Clear

As someone who uses a host of WordPress plugins, I’ve been sold on this website by doing this landing page critique. For me, it was just so obvious from the start that this product is one that I want to personally use.

Oftentimes I have to find solutions to problems on my clients’ WordPress sites. I find myself scouring different websites, reviews, and the WordPress plugin search for what I need. And three quarters of the time I don’t even find what I’m looking for.

Enter WPD. This is a company that understands its target audience and speaks its language. It tells me exactly what it does (helps users find plugins). Read the headline – maybe the strongest part is how it hints at what they’ve been doing wrong without being too explicit. Notice how it encourages them to be “smarter” instead of saying they’ve have been dumb all along.

The call to action is also very clear. Not only that, but it is right in the center of the screen and the color contrasts well with the rest of the page to make it stand out more than anything else on the screen.

Forget your opinions

Even though I like it personally, it’s important to realize that all of our ideas about our websites are just opinions until proven true. As optimizers we want to be sure that the option we use is the best one. One option for improvement is to put a search bar here to see if users prefer to search right off the bat as opposed to clicking the button. This would save the users a click by letting them start the process immediately, and it’s the first thing I would test if this was my site.

Another thing I would test is changing the structure of the buttons on the left. For me, it goes against the grain of simplicity on the rest of the page. One idea for testing is to make these buttons only show when the user’s mouse scrolls to that area.

The final item I would test is the size and fit of background. Now it doesn’t cover the whole screen, making room for the “categories” header below. On one hand, it’s nice to show that users can browse by categories – this is along the same lines as my suggestion to test a search bar. But on the other hand, the page would have a smoother field if the green reached all the way to the bottom of the screen. Which would get more conversions? There’s only one way to find out.

4. Natura Petz

Natura Petz makes organic pet supplements.

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Every Page has a purpose

This is a unique landing page in that it is targeting a very specific group – wholesalers who have visited the company’s booth at Super Zoo. As a result, the page needs to be extra targeted in its messaging, but still true to the principles of conversion optimization.

“Thank you for visiting our booth…” is a powerful title. It immediately establishes the connection to the user and brings him back to the day at Super Zoo when he was at peak interest in the product. Thinking about in what setting the user might have been most interested in your product, and then playing towards that setting can be an important tool.

That said, the overall messaging might want to be geared more towards wholesalers. Look at the testimonial – it appears like it’s for pet owners. The wholesalers might have different goals and concerns from the pet owners.

The first test I would run here would be to gear the text much more in this direction. Many of them might just want to make money, and not really care about the pets themselves. Maybe a quote like “becoming a wholesaler of Natura Petz is the best thing that happened to my business in years” would sell better than the current one, but maybe not. I’d be interested in finding out via an AB test.

A little design goes a long way

Clearly the site owners used a professional designer to make this landing page. The animals, bottles, and colors all look great.

However, the calls to action are merely text with a hyperlink. One that would really capture the eye would be a true button. A testing idea for button placement is right below the animals heads, since the cat is already looking in that direction, drawing attention there.

Don’t let your designers off easy. Have them design everything in a visually appealing way. If it looks like you could have typed out the words yourself, that’s not enough!

Related to this, there’s a lot of text in that white box and most users probably don’t have the time or attention span to read it all. There are a few ways to remedy this. Here are two to test out and see if they work:

1. First, the box could be better organized with titles and design like I mention above. A professional look implies a professional product.

2. Second, the testimonial could be moved out of that box to below the fold. It would open up a lot of space and make the rest of the words more clear.

5. AdSpike

Odoo has an algorithm that helps the user optimize her AdWords budget.

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Imaging

This is a fantastic image. There’s plenty to highlight here, so listen up!

The most powerful part here is the woman looking directly at the call to action. All the attention is focused right on that button. Oftentimes when we have an image of one person, it’s good to have her focused on the call to action. Otherwise, it can be distracting. Here it’s so obvious what the user is supposed to do. Check out our post on landing pages for more details on imagery and placement.

Besides the woman, the rest of the background has a very clean look. There’s only one call to action, and even though there’s a lot of white space the page doesn’t appear to be empty. The first item I would test is getting rid of the orange line. Without reading the fine print, it’s tough for me to tell which line corresponds to what.

The next thing I would test is the size of the button. While we already established that it’s great, that doesn’t mean it can’t be optimized. With all that white space, I’d be curious to see what would happen if that button were doubled in size. This would be a really easy item to test with one of various tools online.

Highlighting statistics through color

I’m trying to be like Simon Cowell here, so it’s not easy for me to give all these compliments. That said, what nice use of coloring!

We’ve already covered topics such as the color of the button, and the use of fewer colors on the page rather than too many. So, by now you should be able to tell us how they’ve done a good job with these attributes here. Now I want to talk about the color of statistics.

It’s always a good idea to highlight positive statistics, mainly when you’re displaying one or two at a time, in stand-out bold colors. This creates a sense of anticipation in the user and, if done properly, lets him have a taste of the results to come.

This product is strictly an ROI oriented one; It is aimed to maximize the results from AdWords spending. As a result, the target audience is very money oriented. Adspike recognizes this and makes the statistic green, the color of money. Good work.

6. Odoo

Odoo also lets the user build a website from their online platform without the use of developers.

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Continuing on color

This product is by the same company, Odoo. Clearly they have their color down. Purple signals creativity and that’s kept consistent throughout the page.

A website to fit the product

If you’re going to hire a content marketing company to help you with your content, wouldn’t you expect them to have stellar content marketing themselves? Of course you would. If you’re going to hire graphic designers to do some freelance work for you, wouldn’t you expect the designs on their page to be spectacular? Of course!

This is no different than buying website building software; you would expect the company you bought it from to have a really good website. To us, this website seems hastily put together, void of stand-out, convincing reasons to use the product.

First, the image is more of a placeholder than a reason to buy the product. Technically speaking it could better focus attention to the call to action. As illustrated in the AdSpike example above, there could be someone looking at the call to action, or as in the TweetDis example there could be arrows pointing to the call to action. There are lots of way to change the focus.

Also, this image needs to be inspiring. It’s a big project and commitment to build a website. It takes a lot of energy and inspiration. The image needs to fit this mold – it has to instill a sense of confidence and wonder in the user. Take a look at competitors Wix and Squarespace which have dramatic images.

Keywords

When choosing the copy for your title and subtitle, be very specific in your approach. One word can make or break your conversion. Oftentimes, there’s no way to know which copy works best until you test several different options.

On one hand, the title is powerful. It says what the user will do with this product – build websites in minutes. “Minutes” takes the users headaches and sets them at ease. Even if it’s a hassle to make your site, it will only be for a few minutes! Still, it couldn’t hurt to test different messaging. How about something that differentiates the product from competitors’? What’s the unique selling proposition?

Moving on, the subtitles can use some work. Does “mobile” mean that the user can only use this on mobile? Does “open source” mean he needs to be a developer to use this? One of the worst things one can do on a page like this is use developer keywords in a page meant for non-developers. How about testing subtitles like “No developers needed,” “drag and drop,” or “24/7 Support.”

While many keywords could describe a product, it’s important that you choose the ones that resonate with your target audience.

7. UP

UP is a crowdfunding platform that lets the user access different parts of the vast crowdfunding world.

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Click here

The landing page has one of the of the most powerful copies for a button that I’ve seen in a while. “Be founding member #1491” is personalized and lets people know that they’re not only signing up, but they’re a part of something. By nature, investors want to be “founding members” and this button reflects a deep understanding of the target audience. Think about what motivates your users and throw it on your button.

Cookie bar

Usually, we really like cookies. But in this case, the “cookie bar” is a killer. We see this all over the internet. Sometimes the cookie bar is on the bottom, sometimes on the top, sometimes in the corner. Some of our clients tell us that they like it there for business reasons and others are required to have it depending on their line of work. If you’re going to keep it there because you think it increases conversion, you better AB Test it!

Calls to action

There are three calls to actions above the fold; this causes analysis paralysis. One idea would be to test changing the floating form at the bottom so that it will only show after users scroll down. Another idea would be testing removing the “sign up for free” and the “got it” calls to action on the top right corner. Since these are the same color as the main call to action, they cannibalize some of the emphasis on the main call to action and degrade the overall strength of the page. Look at some of the examples above where the call to action has its own color – that is oftentimes the most powerful way to do it.

USP

The unique selling proposition is a little weak here. If you scroll down, you can see that there are all kinds of benefits that make this site better than other crowdfunding sites. However, the copy here doesn’t convey this message. Maybe run a few tests offering specifics of how this site is different from all other sites.

8. CM First

CM First transforms legacy business applications into modern mobile applications.

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Where to begin

When I land on this page, there’s a lot going on! There’s a slider with three images, theres a nav bar at the top, there are 5 videos with an opportunity to watch more, and there are three categories of information I can look into.

Why give the user so much choice as where to start? You know your product better than anyone and you know the steps they need to take to convert into customers. The best funnels are intentional funnels.

What I would suggest is to install proper analytics and heatmap tracking within the site and check out two things.

1. Where do people click first? Where do they hover their mouse and focus their attention?

2. Which secondary pages result in the most conversions?

You can track if people wind up purchasing your product or service after viewing specific videos, links, images, etc. Learn which ones are the most convincing and place them most prominently in the page where people are focusing their attention. If there are two videos that people watch and often convert afterwards, you can test those videos against each other in the front and center of the page.

Slider – To be or not to be?

A slider is a complicated question. Oftentimes we recommend avoiding using a slider since it is distracting and known as a “conversion killer.” That said, sliders can be very successful in certain cases so it may be worth A/B Testing if you’re going to use one.

Are your customers new or returning?

You must understand who is landing on your page. Are they people who already know your product well or are there people meeting you for the first time?

If they’re some of the latter type of user, “Rethink Modernization” doesn’t really capture what they do on a basic level. Someone who wants mobile app development solutions (which is what the company does) might see this slide and not even recognize that he landed on the right page. Sometimes we are so immersed in our pages that we get lost in the details. It is important to take a step back and look at your page as if you knew nothing about the product beforehand.

This can be harder than it looks, so we usually recommend sharing it with people who actually know nothing about the product or page. When one of us at the Conversioner office is working on a new page, we’ll often show it to a colleague without saying a thing about it and see if he can figure out exactly what it’s about. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.

Our friends over at convertiFIRE decided to take our advice here. They went ahead and made the changes we suggested with their online tool. Here’s what they did, which is proof that there’s no excuse you can’t get testing right away.

9. Bottle Scout

Bottle Scout helps the good people of Colorado discover cocktail bars in their area.

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First off, we must say we love this concept and wish there were a Bottle Scout for our hometown, Tel Aviv. We’re still finding our watering holes the old fashioned way, and could use a little tech injection to this market.

But back to Conversion Optimization:

The Fold

This page is designed with very good intentions. It’s giving people two options of how to find bars in their area. It is a good thought to play to different users’ searching preferences. However, it also kind of looks like the site owners couldn’t decide which part they should put above the fold so they settled for both. Since these two parts are so visually distinct from each other, the page looks a bit awkward. I would test picking one for above the fold and the other below (of course, after testing the two options).

Word Overload

The user’s eyes are immediately drawn to the big blob of orange words in the center of the screen. It’s a great idea to list out the different areas that are served, as patrons of those areas will immediately know that this site is for them. However, there are a number of ways to better display these words. For example, they could test removing the boxes and making the font smaller, or they could test organizing them further below in a less intrusive color, or they could test only displaying them when hovering over some other text. Currently the yellow letters do such a good job at standing out. Why drown out this success?

Image to match the brand

The image here is not consistent with the messaging. Yes, it is Colorado and they’re outdoorsy people over there. And yes, these people do look like they are scouting out something. However, this is a service to find cocktails. Going with something sexier, such as good looking people enjoying a fancy drink, might be more consistent with the product. At the least, this would be a very easy test to run – just changing the background image.

10. ClipperSoft

mySimpleAds lets the user sell ad space on her website.

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Consistency

It’s always very important to be consistent in your messaging by telling people exactly what your product is about and what you want them to do. Here are some ways that I think they could clarify their message a bit:

• Simple vs. Complicated

At first, I see the word “simple” in the name of the product, and then the words, “simple interface, fast and light, & ready to download” in the subtitle which is awesome. All of those things sound good. However, as my gaze continues down the site, I see the requirements: PHP5.3.3+, MySQL5.1+ etc. If you want to portray the message of simplicity, don’t bring technical jargon into the mix.

• Purchase vs. Download

It’s not clear what the user is supposed to do. It asks people to “purchase and download” but only has a download button above the fold. Also, there’s a “Buy and Download” button just below the fold. What’s the difference and how can I start using the product?

Color and Blank Space

There’s very good use of color here. The purple is simple, easy on the eyes, and consistent. For some reason we’ve covered a lot of purple for this post. As we’ve said, purple indicates creativity so maybe the more creative people seek out our help!

Lastly, it is not necessary to have information in every corner of your page, but this much white space is too much. See the AdSpike landing page above for an example of efficient use of it.

Conclusion

Well that does it for this round of landing page critiques. I tried to highlight areas of interest across the whole spectrum of landing page optimization and not to repeat the same items. If you think I missed something in this post, feel free to write in the comments. We would love to hear your take on these pages as well as suggestions for items to test.

Stay tuned for the next round.

This is round 3 of landing pages overviews. In my previous landing page overview posts I discussed Adobe’s and Shutterstock’s landing pages. I discussed the important elements of landing pages and how to use them correctly. Landing pages have the potential to convert many users as they are the first page your visitors see and therefore they give the first impression of your product. You can read more on landing page optimization in our blog.

In this post, I decided to focus on Vertical response’s Landing Page. Known and used by several marketers, they allow you to create free email newsletter templates. So it will be interesting to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the page and discover 5 quick landing page tips.

1. Above the fold

Marketers always talk about “above the fold” but what does it actually mean? The fold is approximately the top 400 pixels of your landing page (this changes across devices). The majority of visitors see only this part of the page without needing to scroll, a minimum of people actually make it to the bottom parts of pages. Therefore you should keep all your crucial elements above this section.
In the case of Vertical Response, the fold is marked below.

What do you think? Are all important elements of the page placed above the fold? Would you add anything else? Remove anything? I’ll get to what I would do in the end of the post.

2. Call to Action

A recent study by Marketing Sherpa showed that 48% of landing pages contain multiple offers. This statistic is amazing. One of the basic rules in landing page optimization is to focus on one call to action; Decide what is the most important step you want your users to do, and just ask them to do that. Too many options cause confusion and lead to Analysis Paralysis -a psychological state of over-analyzing a situation to the point where a decision is not made. This is the result of being presented with too many options. Therefore sometimes less is more.
In the case of Vertical response’s landing page, it contains multiple call to actions. You are asked to get started, log in, use the designs, start with the designs and create an account. In particular, showing users multiple buttons might be confusing. Vertical response uses their “get started” button 3 times on the page, which is great and recommendable, only when it comes to the “above the fold” section, you want to make sure your visitor focus on one part of the page only and drives into action. Another idea would be to turn the log in button into a text link. That would make the “get started” button stand out more. Another good point for Vertical response it the color contrast they chose for their button.

If we look at their competitor’s landing page iContact, we’ll see they place their button in a prominent area, with a strong contrasted color from the background, while the sign up and login options are placed at the header as text links which grab much less attention.

3. Title

“Headline writing is an art form” (Jennifer Lee, screenwriter at Disney).

Vertical response chose “free email newsletter templates” as their title. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, you should watch out from multiple call to actions, but there is one place where it is important to use a “call to action” which is the title. Usually, the title is the first thing your visitors see, therefore it should be focused on the benefit your users will get from using your product not the actual product. Free email newsletter templates are offered by many websites, Vertical response should find the emotional response they want to trigger in their users add that to their messaging.

Let’s take a look at their competitor’s landing page from MailChimp: Their title is simply “Send better email”. This title is fantastic for 3 reasons: It’s short, contains a call to action and gives a benefit to the user.

4. Mobile & browser compatibility

This is how the landing page looks in my mobile phone.

As I mentioned about above the fold, the same rules apply in mobile. So the only thing I see when entering this landing page from my mobile is text, and I’m required to scroll down to get to a button. I would consider adding a button somewhere in there, to guide my users to the right place.

Another major element in landing page optimization is browser compatibility. You want to make sure all your users are able to access your page. For example, this landing page is not functional in Internet Explorer 8. I don’t know how many of their users are using this browser version but it may be worth checking and making it compatible.

5. Messaging – follow the KISS

Keep it simple stupid or KISS is a very good principle to take under account when building your page. It is always a temptation to write about everything you have to offer to your customers and all the wonderful features of your product. But similar to analysis paralysis – you don’t want to overwhelm your users with too much information. What might be considered a useful feature to one user, is completely useless to another. Therefore, create different landing pages, and minimize the number of benefits you choose to describe by showing different benefits in different pages. (Don’t see the point in creating multiple landing pages? businesses with over 40 landing pages generate 12 times more leads than those with 1-5 landing pages – according to hubspot).

I love the way Vertical response shows their features. They kept it simple by adding an icon to each section, and only give 1-2 bullets for each feature. Also the language they use is about the benefit or “what’s in it for me” and not just the feature or “see how good our product is”. Talking to the users in their language is always a good way to increase conversions.

So we are approaching the end of the post and I will finish the overview with my tip about above the fold. If you have read our posts in the past you know how important it is to keep your Call to Action button the first natural place a visitors looks at. Right now what the users see is a beginning of a form to create an account and some users might be discouraged because they think they are about to go through a long and exhausting form. To avoid this, I would bring the entire form higher and make sure the button is visible.
Do you have any other tips about landing page optimization? Share with us.

Would you like us to review your landing page? let us know in your comments.

Decisions, decisions, decisions!  Every day we are faced with a constant series of decisions.  Whether it is deciding to eat that piece of cake, or make a career change, the decisions we make shape our lives and who we are. We like to think that all of our decisions are rational and that we are in control, however our unconscious mind, drives how we respond to advertising, brands, products, and in the end determines all of our buying decision. As a result, our landing page design plays an integral role in how our brains make a decision to buy a product or not.   The reasons unconscious triggers determine our decisions can be found in the structure of our brain. We can break our mind into three separate parts:

• The outermost, or newest part of the brain – this is the most evolved part of the brain, known as the cortex.  It is responsible for logic, learning, language, conscious thought and our personalities.
• The middle brain – this is also known as the limbic system that deals with our moods, memory, and hormones.
• The old brain – this is also known as the R Complex that controls our basic survival functions like flight-or-fight, hunger, breathing, and staying out of danger.

Our decision process can be broken into 4 different stages, and our landing page design can have an impact on all 4:

Step 1: Recognizing a Problem or Unmet Need

Most decisions start with some sort of a problem where an individual develops a want or need that must be satisfied.  Our old brain is driven heavily by emotions that drive our needs identification.  The consumer feels that something is missing and they need to have it fulfilled.  Marketers address potential customers with a landing page at the time they’re developing these needs and need to trigger specific emotions to influence buying behavior. At times, our minds haven’t yet fully decided on what we need or how we need it and so the landing page design can have a great impact on the end result.

Step 2: Seeking Out A Solution

In the searching phase, we are looking for products or services that can satisfy our needs and wants. Search engines have become the primary tool we use for answers, as it provides an instant set of options to fulfill our needs, but you may also reach out to friends, families, or colleagues for their perspective. This is why testimonials and other trust elements are important on landing pages. Be showing our potential customers that we’re trusted by many others and loved by others we’re fulfilling the important element of security, trust and needs. Memories and past experiences also play a critical role in the search process.  You may have had a life experience in the past that helps you make the correct purchase decision, or you could just know what decision to make just by picking things up over the years and knowing how to solve them.  The middle part of the brain plays a critical role in this phase, as it is associated with memory and mood. Our old brains are also highly influenced by beginnings and endings.  Our initial impression becomes the filter for how we perceive what is to follow.  As marketers, it is critical to leave a strong first impression, like a compelling story or a big smile. We’ve already established that the first 3 seconds a visitor sees a landing page has the biggest impact on the funnel and conversion rate: What impressions are you leaving with your prospects in the first few seconds?

Step 3: Evaluating Alternatives

After searching to determine what will satisfy our want or needs we begin to seek out the best deal.  We may think we base this on price, quality, or other factors that are important to ultimately choose the one that satisfies all of our parameters but in fact our decisions are motivated by our experiences and emotions and so the experience we create on our landing pages is important.   Essentially, there are two separate networks within our brain, one that determines risk versus reward, and another that determines how we will ultimately behave.   Ralph Adolphs, a professor of psychology at Caltech, explains the distinction by way of a grocery shopping example: “Your valuation network is always providing you with information about what’s rewarding around you — the things you want to buy — but also lots of distracting things like junk food and other items popping into your vision off the shelves.”  This is a great example by Adolphs on the important of clean and clutter free landing pages – the more precise you are the less confusion you cause. Less options = Easier decision-making.   In evaluating alternatives, our old brain is loos to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  In previous posts we discussed loss aversion, the bias that subconsciously makes us focus more on getting hurt (loss) over the need to feel great or fulfill a need (wins).  There are many great ways to utilize loss aversion to your advantage on your landing page design from free trials to last minute sales. More detailed examples here.

Step 4: Making A Selection

Our brains appear wired, often subconsciously, to make the best decision with the information we are given.  Sensory information is entered and registered in our brains, and like a cerebral courtroom our brain cells are the jury, weighing each piece of evidence to make a judgment.   As we narrow down our selection process our cognitive control kicks in from our outermost, or newest, part of the brain.  A study at Caltech found that two distinct brain networks undertake our decision-making and behaviors.  “Cognitive control and value based decision tasks appear to depend on different brain regions within the prefrontal cortex.”  Cognitive control holds the network together.  Adolphs goes on to say, “to be able to get to the checkout counter with what you planned, you need to maintain a goal in mind, such as perhaps only buying the salad you needed for dinner.  That’s your cognitive control network maintaining an overall goal despite lots of distractions.” This stage of the decision process enhances the importance to remove distractions from our landing pages to make it easier for customers to make their ultimate selection. A landing page with too much information makes it harder on the brain to make a decision:

Little-short cuts, big biases

With all of the decisions we are faced with each day, our brain is forced to sometimes take small shortcuts.  Sometimes these shortcuts lead to irrational decisions caused by cognitive biases.   Let’s take a look at three types of cognitive biases:

• The Sobering-Up Effect: What do you feel at the start of a new project?  Enthusiasm? Energy? Optimism?  As the deadline approaches the shine starts to come off a bit.  That initial enthusiasm begins to give way to pessimism, cynicism, and even despair.  If this has happened to you then you are not alone.  What’s worse is the more important an outcome is the stronger the sobering effect.  As marketers, our customers can be faced with a sobering effect right at the time of purchase.  This is why it is so critical to help our customers over the final hurdle by making the checkout process as easy and intuitive as possible, and highlighting the benefits gained by completing the process. Check out these 30 best practices and tips for checkout optimization.

• The Anchoring Effect: We’ve all heard about the importance of making a great first impression, but this too is a cognitive bias known as the anchoring effect.  To highlight how the anchoring effect works, psychologists asked one group if Mahatma Gandhi was older or younger than 9 years old when he died.  The other group was asked if he was younger or older than 140.  Now obviously he was older than 9 and the oldest know person ever only lived to 122, but the point of the study was to see how the question would impact the participants’ perception of Ghandi’s age.  When asked how old Ghandi was when he died the first group guessed 50 and the second group guessed 67.   This shows how we tend to use anchors, or reference points in decision making.   The anchoring effect has huge implications for pricing and also for negotiations. Steve Jobs knew this very well and used anchoring to sell the iPads.

• The Availability Bias: “It Could Be You” are the words used to promote the UK lottery.  What they leave out is “it could be you, but it almost certainly won’t be.”  Even though most of us know that the odds are stacked against, lottery tickets are bought so frequently they are virtually a license to print money.  All lotteries utilize something called the availability bias.   Since lotteries heavily promote the few people who win the jackpots we never hear about the millions who have never won a cent.  This leads people to assume they are much more likely to win than they actually are and is known as the availability bias.  When information is more obvious, vivid, or easier to recall, it biases the way we assess the probability of that event.

There are many different variables that effect our decisions in life, especially our purchasing habits. It’s hard to take most of them into account while designing your landing page but by simply understanding that our landing page design has an effect on our customers decisions we are sure to create a better and more easier journey for our customers.

The call to action button is one of the most important elements of your conversion optimization funnel. Designing high converting call to action buttons requires planning; In this post we’ll cover important information about CTA buttons, check out different landing pages and their call to action buttons & learn how to optimize them for better conversion on websites, emails and blogs.

The CTA Button

The call-to-action (CTA button) is an element that most commonly appears as a button or a link prompting visitors into taking a certain action. A CTA button can be anything from a ‘subscribe’ button trying to get people to sign up to a service or blog to a ‘purchase’ button getting people to complete their purchase or pay for a service. There are 3 key elements you should follow regarding your call to action buttons:

1. Attention
2. Messaging
3. Strategy

These 3 key elements have a large impact on a  CTA’s conversion rate and can make a world of difference by simply optimizing them:

Attention

Creating effective call to action buttons leads to higher conversions, the first part you want to address will be the attention the call to action buttons grab. A call to action button has to stand out and be the first natural place a visitor turns to. By making sure your call to action button is attention grabbing you’re making sure more people click on it. That being said, you do not want to exaggerate or overwhelm your visitors with a huge button, there are additional ways other than size that can grab your visitors attention:

Size

Size does matter. Compared to other elements on the page you want to make sure your CTA button stands out. The size of an element on your landing page will indicate it’s importance so make sure it is larger than any other buttons or links. This tip applies not only for landing pages but checkout processes too, the call to action has to be more dominant than other links or buttons and if possible, all others should be removed.

Color

The color of a button has a huge effect on its conversion. Other than the psychological effect colors have on purchasing habits, colors are a great way to make your call to action button stand out and be more prominent. Use highly contrasting colors for your CTA relevant to the elements on your landing page. Place your call to action on a background that helps bring out the CTA and doesn’t swallow it. Charity:Water has a great landing page that uses both a highly contrasted button color – blue on a green background and uses the image of the girl to direct attention to it. The use of this specific image is very interesting, it would be interesting to test different emotional triggers on this type of landing page.

Image

The image of your landing page takes the biggest part in your CTA’s attention. Other than making sure that your image isn’t grabbing all the attention from your button, the image can be a huge help and indicator for your users. Our brains process images 60,000 times quicker than text, meaning the image you have on your page will have a crucial roll in pointing people in he right direction. Make sure all your elements and images are complementing the call to action button and in some case even pointing at it. This landing page has 3 important elements emphasising its CTA:

• The size of the button – making sure the CTA is the most dominant on the page
• The Image clearly points to the CTA
• The color is dominant and noticeable

An image doesn’t necessarily have to point to an image but it should be connected to it in different ways – the image will determine where visitors look and move to use it as an indicator. Have an image of a person staring in the direction of a button or have the other landing page elements gather around the button. This example by Incredimail shows how to have different elements surround the button and draw attention to it: Another great example by Cheezburger.

Whitespace

Framing the CTA button with whitespace is a great way to detach the button from other elements on the page. Whitespace gives call to action buttons a more dominant presence. Basically by allowing enough whitespace (nothingness) around your buttons you’re giving it a more dominant place on your page. Remember: You don’t want the space to be too big as it can create an illusion of disconnection from the page entirely.

Positioning

The oldest rule in the book: place your CTA above the fold. The ‘above the fold’ area is the part of the landing page visitors see without needing to scroll. This area is where you place all your important elements – the CTA for example. The majority of visitors do not scroll and since you only have a limited amount of time to convert visitors into customers you have to position the CTA where it can be seen immediately.

Microsoft places their call to action buttons at the bottom of their page, making visitors scroll all the way down to convert (if they did actually go looking for the CTA). Not the best idea.  

Messaging

When designing your call to action the text and messaging has a huge impact on its conversion rate. Having a call to action button that just says “submit” or continue” isn’t enough to drive conevrsions and add value to your visitors. There are 3 rules to follow regarding your button messaging and text:

• Short and to the point

• Action oriented

• Clear and easy to understand

Convey a sense of urgency and value in your call to action buttons. Make sure the text stands out, offers true value to the visitor and tells them what to do. ‘Roon’ has a great call to action button in both contrasted color (giving it the full attention it requires) and action oriented text. The button provides exactly what a visitor is looking for: to begin writing a post. Another bonus is the supportive text they’ve added below the CTA, giving the conversion requested extra value.

CTA Best Practices

Before we move on to the third and last element of the CTA (strategy), check out these different types of call to action buttons we can learn a lot from: Avocode’s call to action button collects emails and leads for their beta launch in a great way. A few good points to look out for:

1. There’s only one field to fill in
2. The high contrast of the button color against the background
3. Great amount of whitespace around the CTA.
4. The use of the color blue projects calmness and trust

Gengo’s call to action is a great example for:

• Highly action oriented allowing visitors to start the funnel in seconds.
• The button is large enough to call attention to itself
• Its color is the same color as the footer which projects trust and empowerment.

Another cool example by Whistle -

• The dog pointing towards the CTA
• The call to action button in full contrast to the landing page
• One thing I’d change: The video button takes a lot of attention from the main CTA, one way to solve this is to move below the actual call to action button and not have it as a button, but more as a link.

Strategy

The call to action button is not enough. The CTA button is part of a larger element – the landing page. The call to action button needs to compliment the landing page by adding value to your visitors and more importantly making the next step obvious. The entire landing page should convey a certain strategy and emotional trigger. Having a good call to action on a landing page with no strategy is not enough. Remember you only have 2.8 seconds to convert visitors into your funnel, after that 40% will be gone. Make sure your landing page and call to action offer actual value to your visitors, and help them navigate through your site with ease. Call to action buttons are the gateway to your funnel. Build and design them in a way that opens that door and invites people to convert.