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By Brian Lewis
Acting Director of Optimization, SiteTuners
Despite their well-meaning intentions, a lot of online marketers are burning precious marketing dollars every day. And the number one reason they’re wasting money is their ineffective landing pages. Why do so many marketers continually fail to design web pages that improve conversion?
It’s because of what I call the biggest myth to landing page effectiveness. This myth is based on the notion that an effective landing page is brought about by simply improving the aesthetic appeal or graphic design of an existing landing page by, for example, moving stuff around on the page, adding images of happy, attractive people or changing color schemes.
Some may think that by designing a “cooler-looking” or “more dynamic” or “different-from-my-competitors” looking page that they’ll entice more visitors to convert. The problem is that, fundamentally, these changes still don’t satisfy the various needs of the different types of visitors that land on that page.
In actuality, aesthetic design is just one factor, and in fact, should be guided by other behavioral factors such as:
- Psychological – Despite what we’d like to believe, humans, by nature, approach the purchasing process in a most-irrational manner. It doesn’t matter if you sell B2C or B2B, humans buy based on emotion and later justify the purchase based on facts.
- Sociological – Human decision-making is also governed by social norms, beliefs and peer pressures which all vary based on the make-up and demographics of your potential buyers.
- Economics – Landing page design needs to also be based on:
- Knowing how you stack up against your competitors in price, service and value;
- Understanding alternatives available to your prospects.
- Marketing Design – The marketing essentials include readability, offer clarity, articulating your competitive advantage and the visual cues used to ultimately guide the visitor to the conversion.
These behavioral factors create the foundation to the overall persona of your visitors. Understanding these personas is critical to designing a landing page that will improve conversion. You’ll want to think of this as, “who are my visitors and what roles will they play on my site”. ? The goal is to get inside their psyche to understand:
- Why they’ve arrived on your site;
- What’s the specific problem they’re trying to solve, and;
- What will motivate their decisions
By identifying and understanding prospect personas, you’ll be creating a landing page that speaks to their wants, needs, fears and motivations, ultimately enticing more to convert to customers.
About the Author
Noted author and speaker, Brian Lewis brings over 20 years of both hands-on and strategic online marketing experience spanning a diverse range of industries. In addition to co-hosting the Internet radio show “Best Search Strategies” on WebMasterRadio, Brian has led panels at Search Engine Strategies Conferences, Search Marketing Expo, SMX Advanced, PPC Summit, Conversion Conference, Affiliate Conference, AdWords Advantage, Online Marketing Summit, and Online Marketing Institute. Brian’s articles have been referenced in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Target Marketing, eMarketer, Search Engine Watch, Website Magazine, SEM Journal, and DM News. He continues to be in demand for speaking engagements on PPC, SEO and conversion optimization around the world. He earned his B.A. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego and his M.B.A. from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, graduating both schools with honors.
See Brian Live!
Brian will be presenting a session with Howard Kaplan, of Future Now, on “Persona-Driven Conversions – Walk A Mile In Your Visitors’ Shoes” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.
Want to save $700 on Conversion Conference? Contact Brian to request a discount code!
I’m glad to see yet another reiteration that Psychology is a major factor in building successful landing pages.
Creating a profile of the Ideal Customer and then building the entire page to anticipate and answer their questions, while matching the tone of voice to the communication style of this Ideal Customer is extremely important.
I’ve read somewhere that using explicit salesman language isn’t the best way to try to get the conversion rate up. The text said it’s better to actually us indirect, suggestive language, so that people “convince themselves” that it’s good to buy this, or sign up.
Perhaps this is because we’ve grown to be skeptical to the obvious sales pitch approach. Perhaps this is why the Thought Leader and Content Marketing approach works better these days.