Before I start I would like to point out that the phrase ‘landing page’ is quite generic and varies depending on context. For example a squeeze page that is designed purely to capture the email address of its visitors, is also known as a landing page. This is different to a long sales page that normally has around 4,000 words of sales copy designed to specifically to get a visitor to buy a product. Also you may have seen CPA (Cost Per Action) landing pages, which are typically a lot shorter than long sales letters. Furthermore landing pages designed for PPC (pay per click) marketing are generally different for landing pages designed for CPV (cost per view ) marketing.

Whatever context the phrase ‘landing page’ is used in, the way I see it, is that landing pages are specifically designed to get the visitor to take some kind of action. Increasing landing page conversions, in whatever context, is all about optimising the page to increase the numbers of actions that the visitor takes (whatever those actions are determined to be). The following guidelines on how to increase landing page conversions can be applied to all landing pages regardless of the context they are used in.

1. Write A Powerful Headline

In my opinion a powerful headline is the most important aspect of any landing page. It is typically the first part of the page that the visitor notices and needs to be strong enough to grab their attention. You must clearly communicate how your offer/product/service is going to be of MASSIVE benefit to the visitor. Remember that visitors are not interested in anyone but themselves. Do not spoil headlines by talking about how wonderful your company is. Use the headline to jump out of the page, grab the reader by the throat and force them to pay attention. Make sure you test your headlines and keep tweaking and improving them for maximum impact.

2. Create Scarcity and A Sense of Urgency

People are click happy on the web and can close your site down in a second. Use tried and tested tactics of creating scarcity to make sure they take action now! Because otherwise they may never come back to your site. There are many ways to create scarcity. For example you can warn visitors of a price increase, unless ‘they order before midnight tonight’. You can get a simple programming script written which will actually count down the time they have to purchase the item. I’m sure you have seen these tactics before and indeed maybe even felt they were a little naff. But marketers use them for a reason. Because they work! If you want to increase your landing page conversions then you are going to have to create scarcity and urgency.

3. Add Audio and Video

Extensive testing from a range of internet marketers has proven time and time again that audio and video help to dramatically improve landing page conversions. Firstly I think that people like to hear a real human (as opposed to a static web page) and secondly because it gives you the opportunity to tell people what to do. The great thing is that audio and video are extremely cheap to make and can have a massive impact.

4. Don’t we-we all over yourself

Whatever you do, make sure that you don’t talk about how wonderful you are, how great your company is, what awards you’ve won for customer service etc, etc. Realise right now, that customers have absolutely no interest in you or your business. They are only interested in one thing: Themselves. Think of your target customers as the most selfish people in the world. They have come to your site to find out how they can benefit. Use the word ‘You’ a lot because when visitors read this they automatically think ‘me’. Don’t mess your landing page up by we-weing all over yourself.

5. Use testimonials

You know this already but you absolutely have to use testimonials. I’m sure you’ve seen it many times before ‘ as seen on Oprah, CNN, ABC’, or people giving testimonials. You may be aware of the concept of social proof. I.E. If everyone else is doing it, it must be ok. Use testimonials to increase your social proof and watch your landing page conversions increase.

6. Use Bullet Points To List The Main Benefits

Whether you are writing a long sales letter or short squeeze page, make sure that you have a short bullet point list of the main benefits the reader will get by taking some kind of action. People tend to scan when they read web pages and a short bulleted list helps to reinforce the reason why they should be taking action.

7. Ensure security/protection/privacy

People are still paranoid about online fraud or having their email address traded with a group of malicious spammers. If you are asking them to purchase a product make sure you emphasise that the transaction will be processed over a secure server. If you are squeezing emails, make it very clear that you never rent or sell email addresses.

8. Offer A Guarantee

You need to do as much as possibly to mitigate the apparent risk for the buyer. Offering a guarantee is an excellent way to do this. One excellent example of this Eben Pagan’s Double Your Dating Product. I recall that he had a guarantee in it that you could try the product for free for something like 14 days and if after that you weren’t totally happy with it, you could keep the product and not be charged. I mean how powerful is that! That completely takes away all the risk and makes purchasing the product an apparent no brainer.

9. Have a Strong Call To Action

I cannot over emphasise the importance of having a strong call to action. If you want somebody to hand your their email address, then make it very clear, tell them in a video or via audio and have a powerful arrow showing them precisely what to do. Along with a powerful headline, having a strong call to action will massively increase landing pages conversions.

I hope that you have enjoyed this post on increasing landing pages conversions. As mentioned landing pages vary depending on context however, I feel that the information I have laid out can really help you. Use the nine points as a checklist next time you are designing a landing pages and make sure you try and get all of them in.

To your massive success

Guy

P.S. Please link to me if you enjoyed this post on how to increase landing page conversions.

‘Building a list of permission based subscribers is essential to your online success’.

In part 2 we are going the most important element of building a massive list;

The Squeeze Page

The squeeze page, otherwise known as ‘optin page’, ‘optin form’, ‘name squeeze’ or ‘email capture page’ is a simple 1 page site that’s sole intention is to capture the email address of the visitor. As mentioned squeeze pages have been used for years by internet marketers for one simple reason, they work! There you were thinking that in order to succeed in internet marketing you had build a site that rivalled Amazon, when in actual fact all you have to do is build one single page!

You may not be aware of it but squeeze pages are all over the internet. Big companies and newbie internet marketers are using them all the time. Remember when you were reading that story on CNN but in order to continue you had to enter your email address? Or remember that website you visited that made you hand over your email address before you got the free report? Well you were having your email address squeezed out of you.

The deal is very simple; you hand over your email address in return for something of perceived value (usually free). There nothing more to it, you set a page and squeeze the email address out of a visitor.

Eben Pagan is frequently referred to as the godfather of squeeze pages for his infamous squeeze page for Double Your Dating, which you can check out below.

Eben Pagan claims that it wasn’t his concept; however I can’t remember the name of the person he credits it too. Whoever takes claim one of thing is for sure, Eben Pagan certainly understood the power of a list building because apparently at one time he had a list of over million opt in subscribers and now has a multi million pound internet business, coincidence? I think not..

Anyway that’s another blog post. The important thing is that you understand that a squeeze is a simple 1 page site that sole intention is to capture the visitors email address. There are certain guidelines that you will want to follow when designing a squeeze page, however before we look at any of these guidelines; you need to understand one the most important tools in your internet marketing arsenal.

The Autoresponder

An autoresponder is your best friend in the internet marketing world. It is a simply service that allows you to automatically send out emails to your list at predetermined times. When you have your squeeze page, you are going to want to send the person who gives you their email address a free download/report. Now of course you don’t want to do this manually. So you need an autoresponder, this will send you subscribers a follow up email the moment they give you their email address.

Furthermore you can load your autoresponder with a series of follow up messages and you get to set when they go out. For example you may load your autoresponder with 10 follow up messages and set it to send the messages out every other day. If you include some kind of offer in your follow up messages then you can literally make money when you sleep. There are many different companies that who provide autoresponder services, Aweber and Get Response are probably the best known ones but there are other ones such as Mail Chimp and Infusionsoft. They’re all pretty much the same, you’ll find lots of varying opinions on each service. I’ve personally used Aweber with no real problem and recommend them quite strongly. If you are building a squeeze page then you must have a autoresponder.

Successful Squeeze Page Guidelines

There are no exact rules when it comes to designing a squeeze however there are certain guidelines you can follow to help you get a higher optin rate.

Of course you’re never going to get 100% optin rate, which is something called marketing utopia which just doesn’t happen. But I certainly know of some marketers that get around 60%- 70% and 20% is not uncommon. You want to be doing all that you can to ensure that as many people as possible hand over their email addresses to you.

Here’s a few tips to help get you started

1. Write A Powerful Headline.

The headline is your best chance of grabbing your visitor’s attention. All good copywriters know the importance of a powerful headline. Always start with your best foot forward, make it powerful and immediately show the visitor, what’s in it for them.

Remember a visitor to your website could care less about how pretty the site looks and how much work you have put into your site. They want to know right away how they are going benefit. Your headline is your chance the show the visitor how they are going to benefit, so don’t screw it up with colourful language, bizarre illegible fonts or by talking about wonderful you are. You want to write a headline that literally smacks your visitors in the face with a sledgehammer and then punches them in the gut for good measure.

2. Offer An Ethical Bribe

How many times have you seen, ‘To Receive this free report please enter your name and email address’? The reason that you have seen it so many times is because it works! People love receiving free stuff if they think it is going to benefit their lives and they are more than happy to trade their email addresses with you. You must offer a free report in exchange for people email addresses.

3. Make a bullet list of the benefits that they’ll get from the free report.

You need to clearly and succinctly add a list of bullet points showing the benefits people are going to get from reading your free report. As I said before, people want to know what’s in it for them. Make it sound incredibly enticing, as if their life is going to be massively different with the information that you are going to give them. Ultimately this comes down to your copywriting skills but it doesn’t take much effort to learn how to phrase things to make them seem attractive.This is your squeeze and you just need to make it attractive enough to pique peoples interest.

4. Add some audio or video.

Adding some audio or video to your website can really help increase the number of people that sign up. In the audio you have the opportunity to tell people to give you their email address. Believe it or not people like being told what to do. Tell them twice in a strong voice that ‘In order to receive their free report they need to enter their name and email address and press submit’. Explain to them exactly what they need to do. Don’t give them an option, they either give you their email address or they don’t. There is no other option.

5. Keep it above the fold.

Studies have proven time and time again that people in general, don’t like scrolling. You need to make sure that all the copy is kept above the fold as well as the optin box. It’s only a small point but it can make a big difference.

6. Keep graphics to a minimum or have none at all.

It always amazes me how much time and energy people put into creating amazing graphics. The reality is that copy sells, not pictures. If you don’t believe try creating a squeeze page with no copy but only graphics. See how many people sign up then…

You don’t want to do anything that is going to distract your reader’s attention away from the copy and the audio. So my advice is to keep them to a minimum or don’t have any at all. Remember I mentioned the infamous Double Your Dating Squeeze page? That had no graphics and it managed to capture the email addresses of over a million people. Why fix things if it’s not broken? Plus you’ll save money on graphic designers fees.

I hope you enjoyed this and now have an understanding about what you need to do to create a good squeeze page. I also highly recommend you check out Ewen Chia’s post about designing a successful squeeze page.

To your massive success.

Guy.

P.S. If you enjoyed this post then please link to me.

Step 1 – Decide What Product You Are Selling

I think the most important step for anybody starting out on the internet is deciding what product to sell. If you are going to make money on the internet, then a customer is going to have exchange money with you (or a business you are affiliated with) for either a product or service. Therefore the starting point must be a decision on exactly what you are going to sell. The way I see it, there are 4 core types of products.

1. Physical products –

Many people use the internet or have websites that sell physical products. These are tangible goods such bicycles or t-shirts. Physical products are packaged and shipped to a customer, either by the website owner or a fulfilment company. The margins and potential for profit are dependent on a variety of different factors (far too large to examine in this post). The factors may include the price at which you can secure the product for, the admin costs of fulfilling the product, the exchange rate and seasonal demand. It is perfectly possible to make a lot of money online selling physical products and Amazon.com is an excellent example of this. You should be mindful that if you are planning to sell a physical product on the internet the start up costs can be quite high.

2. Digital/Information Products –

The opposite of physical products, digital products can be transferred to the customer electronically via the internet. As the files are transferred electronically there is no need for any packaging or fulfilment. The customer pays you the money and then downloads the product instantly. ITUNES is a good example of a digital product seller. Ebooks are also very popular digital/information products to sell. The attraction of digital/information products is that once the product is made the margins are extremely high. It also costs you nothing to deliver them. Selling information on the internet is potentially a very lucrative business to get into. One of my personal hero’s is a guy called Eben Pagan. He is one of the world’s top internet marketers and has built a business empire out of selling information on the internet. I believe that his first information product was an ebook that taught men how to meet and attract women. It was phenomenally successful and apparently now his business does more than $20 million per year in sales. So please don’t listen to anybody if they tell you that there is no money in selling information on the internet to people.

If you are starting out online I strongly recommend that you start selling information!

I am releasing a product which will show you how to sell information effectively on the internet. The main attraction about selling information on the internet is that the start-up-costs are extremely low. It is quite easy to get set up for under $100 dollars and the potential for profit is massive. Human beings are always going to be searching for solutions for problems. If you can present a solution to a particular problem in the form of an ebook and deliver it to a customer then you can make a lot of money.

3. Other people’s products –

This is more commonly known as affiliate marketing. If you are an affiliate, you don’t have your own product (either physical or digital) but rather you sell other peoples products. You earn money by taking a percentage of the revenue generated from the sale. Affiliate marketing is extremely popular on the internet. One of the main advantages of affiliate marketing is that as an affiliate you don’t have to concern yourself with any of the backend (i.e. customer services, fulfilment, insurance, staff etc). All you do is promote other peoples products and get rewarded financially. In many cases you don’t even have to make a sale to get paid. Some companies will pay affiliates money, if the affiliate gets a prospect to sign up to a newsletter. Affiliate marketing is attractive because like information/digital products the starts up costs are extremely low. All you need is some means of driving traffic to another person’s offer or product. Many people are full time affiliate marketers and make an excellent living out of it.

4. Professional/Consulting Services –

The final type of product is what I would call professional or consulting services. For example if you an expert in SEO (search engine optimisation) you can charge people money to listen to you. It can be a good way to make money online but I think you really need to have the credibility behind you in order to do this. I don’t believe that you necessarily need accreditations or specific degrees to do this but it certainly helps if you are want to charge other people money. The good news is that virtually anybody can become an expert in any field in a reasonably short period of time nowadays. There are many courses available if you are truly committed to becoming an expert in a certain niche or industry. If you can establish yourself as an authority on a subject then you can charge a lot of people for your expertise.

Summary

That concludes part 1 of my blueprint for online success. I believe that before you do anything online, you must decide exactly what product you are selling. It is very tempting when you are starting out on the internet to jump from one idea or method to the next. You must avoid this. If you are just starting out, start by deciding what you are going to sell. If you are going to sell physical products then fine do that. If you are going to sell information products, do that. As mentioned I personally favour selling information products as the start up costs are so low and the potential for profit is so high. So once again, please before you do so much as register a domain name, decide what you are going to sell online.

In part 2 we will look at what you need to do in order to start selling your product online.

To your massive success,

Guy

P.S. If you liked this post, please link to me.