How to Create Electrifying Landing Pages That Will Even Engage a Fruit Fly
The fruit fly.
It’s got red eyes, a yellow-brown thorax and black rings around it’s abdomen.
Fruit flies are so small you could fit five in a drop of water.
It’s got a life span less than 30 days. And a spastic, ridiculously short attention span to match.
Believe it or not, but this, my friend, also describes your typical web visitor. [Just the attention span part, that is.]
This means on the web, you have about 8 seconds to lock-down that attention span and get it to do whatever you want it to do.
Here’s how to do that.
As I mentioned in the past, you are probably going to find yourself working with landing pages if you decide to run a special online prospecting campaign.
This means if you are offering a subscription to a weekly newsletter, market updates or blog subscriptions.
And great landing page design is about leading the eye on a journey that ends in conversion.
However, you can fit an almost infinite amount and type of content into your landing page through links, long copy, audio or streamed video.
For best results, however, you must obey two rules:
- Relevance: All of the content should be absolutely relevant and focused on conversion.
- Clarity: Content must be organized so it’s very easy for the visitor to figure out what to look at, in what order, and how to take the conversion step when they are ready.
Now, it may seem impossible to merge these two rules together…at the same time creating a flawless funnel that leads a visitor to conversion.
It’s not.
But to help you accomplish that seemingly complex task, keep these rules in mind:
1. All critical elements above the fold.
Make sure the critical elements in your creative are visible to almost all the visitors without scrolling. Keep them inside the upper 300 pixels of the page.
This way every single visitor can see and act on the critical elements of the page without scrolling.
Remember, your visitor has the attention span of a fruit fly. Your screen must convince them not to bail immediately. That means…
2. Put enough content above this fold.
Definitely your headline, subheadlines, no less than 100 words of copy should be above the fold.
Include critical images, your streaming video [if you are using any].
And DEFINITELY any type of call to action copy with the “Subscribe” button or feed icon visible.
3. Use a single column of copy.
According to Marketing Sherpa, two columns generally outperform 3 columns, and 1 column generally being the best design.
The problem is that more columns equal more confusion.
Over 30 years ago David Ogilvy conclusively proved that multiple columns confuses the eye. The eye is not sure where to look.
One column relentlessly draws the eye in one direction: to a conversion.
4. Eliminate your navigation bar.
The only time you need navigation on your landing page is if it is part of a micro site and navigation is critical to the conversion path and contains no distracting links.
Otherwise, nix navigation.
5. Write emotionally-charged copy.
So, maybe you’d like to spend more time on the world’s most exotic, sprawling golf courses, gazing out over a blue Pacific Ocean while your buddy digs his ball out of a sand pit.
Or maybe you’d just like to buy three pairs of Gucci pumps, a new Prada handbag to replace your old one and a bottle of Versace fragrance on a whim one afternoon and not worry if you have the money or not. Because you do.
Maybe you just want to pay off your mortgage. Or a car note. Or simply climb out of drowning, joy-killing debt.
Whatever your ambition, you need to use emotionally-charged copy if you want any ounce of your marketing to make substantial profits quickly.
Here’s what I know: even if you had all of the elements on your landing page perfect still wouldn’t t save it from bad copy.
On the other hand, great copy could save a clunky, second-rate landing page that looks like a child’s Thanksgiving turkey art project. [Not by much, but imagine if it had bad copy, too!]
So, if you don’t have time to learn the craft and write great copy yourself, then hire a great copywriter.
You will not regret the investment.
So, you’ve got five engaging elements to produce a landing page that will convert more visitors: what are you going to do now?
Go get started. And let me know what you think? Am I missing something? Overbearing about the copy thing? Maybe you got landing page test results that prove some of my points wrong. Please share.
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