Landing Pages – How To Win
Note: Please understand that this information is for Google AdWords Landing Pages – not Landing Pages in general.
Affiliate marketers know that Landing Pages are the best weapon they have. Those who do not use it either do not understand the concept or are just plain lazy. More often than not, it is the latter. Affiliate Marketers see that others do not use it and so, they dont bother with it too. You see, laziness is contagious.
To have an effective Landing Page, we need to understand what the Landing Page is for. A Landing Page is not just a duplicate of your sales page. It is not a page renamed to run a PPC campaign. It is, on the other hand, a page that focuses on selling the product or service. This is why all the elements of effective design are usually stripped out on this page.
When visitors come to your site, your Landing Page should give them only two options: To Buy or To Leave. There shouldnt be any other option aside from that. Do not distract them and make the mistake of giving more options to choose from. If you want them to subscribe for more information, create a name squeeze page. Keep your focus and remember that Landing Pages exists for only one reason to make a sale.
Below is a list of what I do when I create a Landing Page:
Webserver/Configuration – You do have a good host, right? The domain has its down IP address? A clean domain, clean IP address, with no ties with link farms, spamming, etc. is vital to your success.
Headline – This aspect is often greatly misused. The thought of, I must cram as many keywords as possible into my Headline for maximum performance is a thought process hooked on failure. Here is a tip that makes absolute sense, but so many people do not do it. The headline on the page should match (somewhat) to the keyword phrase being targeted.
Example: The keyword discount widgets could have a headline of: This is the Place for Discount Widgets. That alerts the visitor that they are indeed in the right place. Just by changing the headline to one that is relevant to the search causes a drop in CPC and can cause an increase in CTR. Or worse, you can get Google Slapped.
Font Face, Color & Size - Avoid having a distracting and cluttered look on your Landing Page. Having four to five different fonts on your page create a messy look that people would love to hate. While having different fonts for your headlines are fine, having different fonts in your body text is distracting. Do not even think about doing this. Use only one font for your body text.
Test results show that Times New Roman is the best offline print font and because of this, it has become the default font on the internet. This, unfortunately, is a big mistake. It turns out that Times New Roman causes rapid eye fatigue which makes it one of the worst fonts online.
The best fonts for online use are Verdana and Arial. Of the two, I would recommend that you use Verdana as it consistently outperforms every font. It reduces eye strain and increases readability. Remember to use a standard font at all times. Also keep in mind that not all computers may have the font that you use. If you want a standard headline font, it is best to create it as a graphic so it will look constant on every computer. You definitely want your message to have the look that you intend it to have.
You should always aim to make your text readable. The standard size for text is 2 and it is advisable to put dark text on white background. In fact, black text on a white background is preferred. Landing pages arent supposed to show off how cute you can be. Landing pages are supposed to sell. This is serious stuff and requires you to put on your best face.
There is a reason that the top companies choose dark text on a light background. It isnt by accident, it is by design. Follow their lead.
Dont Let Search Engines Crawl Your Landing Pages – Many marketers want as many pages in the search engine indexes as possible. Dont do this as I mentioned above.
