There’s an old saying, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” When it comes to websites and online sales that saying is pretty spot on. Just think about it, if you had a great website that has all the proper elements that a potential customer will need, then it’s safe to assume that the site has quite a bit of “Honey.” However, if your site was either too complicated or lacking information, then that would be a “Vinegar” site.
Could creating your own website where you are offering a product or service be your ticket to self-employment? Some people have realized that “you’ll never get rick working for someone else.” With that mentality, they set out to create an online business that they hope to thrive. It’s entirely possible, but you have to know what you’re doing.
With the Perry Belcher 16 Point Landing Page Checklist, you’ll get some great insider knowledge on what works. Basically it’s a blue print on how you should construct your landing pages the right way to maximize your return. With the checklist, I feel pretty confident anyone can create a sustainable online business that can yield some profits.
In this article we’ll be breaking down the 16 points into 4 sections at a time. The first 4 will include: Market Callout, Clear and Concise, Easily Understood, Compelling Headline.
Market Callout: When creating this page, you want to make sure your visitor is in the right place. If you’re selling plumbing parts to plumbing professionals, you want to place on your page that you’re addressing “Plumbers” and not painters. The vocabulary also needs to match the images. Again, if you’re selling to Plumbers, but you have an image of cupcakes, you’ll end up confusing your visitor and they’ll end up leaving your site.
Clear and Concise: Making your landing page as simple as possible will help deliver your message better. Take for example if your landing page has too many offers for a variety of products and services, this could ultimately work against you. There are many people, including myself where when we see clutter on a page, we cringe and close that window out.
Easily Understood: Has your visitor figured out what you’re offering? Your landing page needs to make sure that your offer is seen and understood within the first 5 seconds. Internet Marketers call this the 5 Second rule. Basically it means your friends or colleagues can tell what your offer is within 5 seconds when they look at your landing page. Try it, show your current page to people and see how long it takes for them to figure out the offer.
Compelling Headline: Spend some time on this section. You have to make sure your headline is something that will truly get your visitor’s attention. With this headline, it is also important to let the visitor know that they’ve come to the right place by reinforcing why they came there with added benefits. If your online business is selling a product to teach people to play the nose flute in a short amount of time. Then make sure you talk about how quickly they’ll learn it and by week 2, they’ll be able to play up to 3 songs!
The next four sections we will go over CTA Above the Fold, Contrast Button Color, Custom Button Text and Social Proof.
What is CTA and what does Fold mean. CTA is an acronym for Call To Action. Placement for a CTA is critical in converting visitors into customers. The Fold would be the area of your page before your visitor has to scroll down to see more of the page. Above that fine line is where you want your CTA to be placed. Remember, this all ties into the clear and concise as well as the 5 second rule.
Contrasting Button Color: Your landing page offer button should definitely be a different color from the background or surrounding design. This is important because if your visitor can’t see where to click to order, then you run the risk of losing them as a customer.
Custom Button Text: Rather than a button that says, Buy Now or Order Here, customize it exciting, eye grabbing vocabulary. Words like “Free” and “Instant Access” can be very compelling and trigger your visitor to purchase your offer.
Social Proof: Providing your visitors testimonials, subscriber /download numbers and “As Seen On” logos will help reinforce your visitors that they are making the right decision. It also helps humanize your brand to show that other people are using the products or services you offer.
Ok, we’re half way through this article! I knew it would be long because of the 16 points, but there’s so much to learn from. Just keep in mind there’s a payoff at the very end, knowledge. So let’s get back in to it! In this the following section, we’ll be discussing Limited Navigation, Uses Visual Cues, Hero Shot and Limited Forms Field.
Limited Navigation: Now that you’ve got your visitor in your page, make sure you keep them there and their only way out of it is to click on your Custom Text Button. In this stage in your landing page, you want to make sure the visitor isn’t distracted by clicking on other things that will take them away from your offer page.
Uses Visual Cues: Believe it or not, a simple arrow pointing to your CTA can help your visitor convert over to a customer. It doesn’t have to be large or animated, but visual cues help draw eyes to your Call-To-Action.
Hero Shot: By having an image of your product or a graphical representation of your offer, it can spur on conversions. It’s probably good idea to test this. Create 2 landing pages, one for your Hero Shot and another without it, as a control. Monitor your analytics and see if the Hero Shot helps.
Limited Form Fields: Don’t overly ask for too much information. If you don’t plan on calling the customer, then there’s no need to ask for a phone number. Sometimes you don’t even need their name, especially if you’re not personalizing the follow up messages you are planning to send out.
We’ve come to the last four sections of the 16 Point Check List. I’m sure you’re learning a few things here that you never even considered before. Well let’s get strapped in and finish this strong! The last section we’ll be discussing Source Congruency, Brand Consistency, Enable Sharing and Visible Privacy Policy and TOS.
Source Congruency: The text and images you used to get people to your landing page should match with the actual landing page as close as possible. If your ad showed a purple background and some gold nose flutes, then your landing page better have the same theme. If not, it could turn your visitor off because they may feel that there was a “bait and switch” from the creative they clicked on and to the landing page they’re on. As an example, you don’t expect to click on an ad for a Pizza place, but their landing page has nothing but hamburgers on it, make sense right?
Brand Consistency: Your landing page doesn’t have to be like a race car that you’d see at NASCAR. Rather than plastering your logo all over your landing page, keep it simple and classy. When a visitor lands on your page, it should fee consistent with your core brand.
Enable Sharing: Your landing pages should be connected to your social media channels. For example, you’ll want to make sure that you have share buttons to Facebook, Twitter and etc on the header and near the CTA of your offer page. By enabling sharing, you’ve just opened up another great opportunity to get a potential lead and the best part about it, it was free!
Visible Privacy and Terms of Service (TOS): Your landing page should include a link to your Privacy Policy and TOS. In some cases, having these are required by various search engines, including Google. This also helps your visitor feel more at ease since you have set policies in place, which can help with conversions.
Now that we’ve gone over all 16 Points, do you feel like you’ve learned anything? I’m pretty confident that you have and with this new found knowledge, you can execute a business plan in which you are utilizing an optimized landing page. If you were to use each of these 16 points on your landing page, you’ll certainly be using “Honey” and it even puts your closer to creating a sustainable source of income. Who knows, with this blueprint of sorts, you may be able to fire your boss and become a full time Internet Marketer.
People Files 