Tut-tut.
Conversion rate optimization. A/B testing. Heatmaps. Writing copy that converts.
Do we really need to?
As a business owner, you have a lot of other things to do.
Yep, of course you’d like more email subscribers. More sales. More business.
But keeping up with the advice is overwhelming. Let alone trying to implement it.
So can we keep it simple?
Let’s have a look …
What’s a landing page?
A landing page entices web visitors to take a specific action – to subscribe to a newsletter, to download a report, or to buy a product.
Would you like to see an example?
Check out my landing page to sign up guest post readers to my email list, or the sales page for my Enchanting Blog Writing course.
The lazy girl’s most important landing page tip
You know people get easily distracted, don’t you?
And you know that when you present choices, people put off decisions because they can’t make up their minds?
That’s why you need to remove all distractions.
Your landing page should have no navigation menu and no side-bar with tempting links to other places.
When you give people the option to browse your site, they start wandering around. They start hesitating whether to buy your orange or purple-dotted scarf. They forget to sign up to receive your juicy bonus.
To tempt people to take your preferred action, you need to hold their gaze. You need to remove distractions and tell them exactly what to do.
Start at the end
Starting at the end means you define the required action first.
Subtleties and politeness are great. But not for calls-to-action. Be bossy. Start with a verb. For instance:
- Order now
- Sign up for a free trial
- Download your ebook
You might think a lazy girl is after instant gratification and that’s why she starts at the end.
But starting at the end keeps you on track when writing your copy. You discount all ideas that don’t contribute to taking that action. You write your copy faster. And you avoid vague actions like submit or next.
Persuade people to take action
Even when you give an ebook away, you still need to “sell” it.
An abundance of free information is available online. Inboxes are overflowing. Why would people give up their email address and spend their precious time reading your ebook?
Tell people exactly why they should give up their time or money:
- Step into the shoes of your reader
- Write down how your product or ebook will help him
- Consider what’s stopping him from taking action and how you can overcome these obstacles
As business owners, we tend to focus on what we offer (a free 20-page report!) rather than how a reader will benefit from reading that report (21 tips to save money when shopping online). This is the biggest mistake you can make when writing landing pages copy.
The legendary copywriter John Caples said in his book Tested Advertising Methods:
The most frequent reason for unsuccessful advertising is advertisers who are so full of their own accomplishments (the world’s best seed!) that they forget to tell us why we should buy (the world’s best lawn!).
Your readers aren’t interested in your report, your product, or your free trial. They want to know what’s in it for them.
So how do you get your readers to take action? How do you avoid this most common mistake?
Follow these 3 simple steps to planning landing page copy:
- Create a list of benefits. If you struggle with defining benefits, list features first, and then ask yourself So what? Why does my reader care?
- Create a list of objections to taking the required action. What might stop people to download your report, sign up for your free trial, or buy your product?
- List the benefits and objections in order of importance; mention the most important information first.
Don’t make life too difficult. If you’re “selling” a free report, you don’t list as much information as when you sell an expensive product or e-course. My email subscription page is far shorter than my e-course landing page.
A lazy girl knows better than anyone else that the more you write, the sooner you bore your web visitors to death. And bored people click away (or fall asleep!) rather than download your report or buy your course.
This is usability expert Steve Krug’s advice on editing (from his book Don’t Make Me Think):
“Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”
Measure your success and improve results
A lazy girl is less lazy when she knows her efforts are paying off.
When you make an effort to create a landing page, you want to know your time is well spent. In Google Analytics, set up a goal to measure how many conversions you get:
- Go to Admin at the top of your Google Analytics dashboard
- Under the section View, select Goals
- Click the red New goal button
- Select Custom, click Next step, and give your goal a name, e.g. download report, and select your type of goal – in most cases this is a destination
- Click Next step and enter the URL that people will reach once they’ve completed the conversion – usually you have a Thank you page that people will reach after they’ve signed-up for your newsletter or free trial, or after they’ve purchased your product.
- Click Create goal.
Conversion experts will tell you to create a separate landing page for each source of traffic. But that’s a lot of work. The lazy girl’s method is to have just one page and learn which traffic converts worst. She simply creates a new landing page for the worst-converting traffic.
I noticed, for instance, that my traffic from KISSmetrics converted much better than traffic from Copyblogger. That’s given me an incentive to set up a new landing page targeted at Copyblogger readers. This doubled conversions from Copyblogger already.
When you start, keep things simple. Write as few words as possible. Create one landing page. And then build on the work you’ve done.
Treat web visitors like people
Sales gurus may tell you to use exclamation marks and yellow highlighters on your landing page.
Conversion experts may tell you to have bigger buttons and to make them green, and to use huuuuge pop-up forms to obscure your content.
But don’t forget your web visitors are people. They’re not numbers.
Be human and interact with people almost like you would in real life.
Be firm, but don’t hide your own unique voice. Be yourself.
Recommended reading on writing sales content:
How to write heroic bullet points
5 lovable sales techniques (how to sell without feeling pushy)
How to write seductive sales emails
Thank you so much for this post. I’ve been focusing on learning what I can about landing pages because I realise how important it is. I have affiliate products I want to promote and I’m creating my first information product at the moment. I want to really understand this aspect of marketing – understanding benefits and strong calls to action.
Did you check out my recent post about features and benefits, too? You may find it helpful: https://www.enchantingmarketing.com/features-and-benefits/
Thank you for stopping by, Sonia 🙂
Henneke, nice article.
Re: the John Caples quote, Jack Trout would advise saying something like “The worlds most popular seed, because it makes the world’s most beautiful lawns,” never wanting to let people forget that you can’t go wrong by choosing the leader. Those old guys know all the tricks.
Unfortunately, most of us can’t use this strategy. Unless we create our own category, where we’re the leader. Thus, you could say “Learn how to be the world’s second-most enchanting blogger.” 😉
Haha, yes, we can’t have someone become more enchanting than me 😀 😉
And yep, you’re absolutely right, we can still learn a lot from those old guys.
Thank you for stopping by, Jon.
It’s a pleasure. You’ve got a great group of followers here.
Yep, I’m grateful for the lovely support I get from my readers. 🙂
Had this one bookmarked to read and finally did. Perfect timing. Have a couple landing page projects coming up and this is the perfect quick-guide for success to keep me on track. Thanks Henneke!
You’re welcome, Jonas. Hope it helps you stay on track! 🙂
Henneke – thanks for giving us a ‘quick & dirty’ How To in setting up goals in G Analytics. I’ve been meaning to do this for ages but the documentation from GA is not easy…
Also there’s a lot to monitor – Youtube actions, Facebook Ads , GA traffic and so on. that’s a full time job in itself…sigh
Yes, I know. It can feel overwhelming and, if you prefer creating things like me, then it’s easy to put these things off.
I try to find ways to improve step-by-step rather than do everything at the same time. And it’s really good to know which traffic converts rather than just look at raw traffic numbers.
Thank you for stopping by, Caroline
I try never to miss your updates, and now there is even more reason not to – LOVE the pictures you are doing! Thank you for sharing such GREAT info with everyone – next course I take (when I finish what I’m doing now) will absolutely be yours! You are fast becoming my BOB (Best Online Buddy) – no wait, I take that back! You ARE my BOB :o)
That’s quite funny … In the Netherlands, the BOB is the designated driver who doesn’t drink any alcohol on a night out. Happy to be your Best Online Buddy, but rather not your designated driver throughout the whole year 😉
Thank you for stopping by again, Marie
Great post, as usual Henneke 🙂
I’m grateful for having read your take on this. When it comes to ‘sign up for our newsletter’ pages there seem to be two opinions: promote your free e-book/gift and add the newsletter as an extra, or promote the newsletter and add the free gift as a bonus. You have opted for the latter.
Somehow that does indeed sound like a better plan to me. I mean, the real value is in your newsletter, right? Or it should be anyway.
Will have to swap that around on my site then.
Thanks for providing the confirmation I needed 😉
To be honest, I’m not sure what the best way is to do this, but I want to be up front and let people know that they will receive a weekly email. (BTW despite being so up front I still get unsubscribers complaining that they never signed up! *sigh*).
If you’re swapping from one to the other, I’d be interested to hear whether you notice a difference in sign-ups.
Good to see you again, Bart 🙂
Just heard radio show “the billionaire girls club” & they admitted they were not b girls yet. Then the least “lazy girl” takes this title. Well, I notice these titles do get me to read/listen. So I am making up my own Billionaire Lazy girl club and blog.
lol thanks for the info. Carol
Great! Can I join your club? 🙂
Great stuff, Henneke! I loved when you brought up business owners’ tendency to overlook the benefits of what we’re selling and get wrapped up in the features. I’ve never been able to figure out exactly why this happens to much (who knows, maybe we’re so immersed in our industries we just subconsciously assume people will see “what’s in it for them”), but all I know is it can and WILL happen if we aren’t mindful of it.
For my client work, I like to create a chart with two columns in it. One column is for features. Once I write all the features down, then I “translate” them into benefits and write them in the other column. Then I can check them off as I cover them in the sales letter, landing page, or whatever else it is I’m working on. I’ve found it’s a good way to keep myself honest. Thanks for the great post!
-Corey
Yes, I’m with you. Creating a chart is a good way to do it.
Have you thought about adding a third column with problems to avoid? I find it useful as it reminds me that benefits can also be re-phrased as glitches, hassle, and problems that are avoided.
Thank you for stopping by, Corey. I appreciate it. 🙂
Good idea, Henneke. I haven’t tried it with a third column before, but I can see how it would be helpful. I’ll try it out and let you know how it goes. Thanks, Corey
Henneke, that’s brilliant. Only setting up one landing page and tracking the worst conversions?
I’m suddenly FAR less worried about my landing page I’m writing now. 🙂 However, would you say that’s still true for guest blogging purposes, or should you still have a separate landing page for each of those sites you post on?
That’s the idea. I get overwhelmed having to do so many things. My advice is to start simple and build things step-by-step. You might even find that you don’t need separate landing pages for each site you guest post on. Or you might want to develop them for different topics rather than for different websites.
For instance, I want to create a separate landing page (and opt-in bonus) for guest posts about blogging as I’ve noticed that traffic from guest posts about copywriting converts much better than traffic (ouch, I hate that word) from websites about blogging.
It’s a fine balance to improving conversions and not getting swamped by too-much-to-do.
Awesome, thanks!
Henneke,
I love your landing page; it’s clean and simple. Are you using some sort of template? Did you create the subscription box in Aweber? I know my landing page for my freebie needs work, so I added your 3 tips to a sticky and I’m going to leave it on my desktop. Wish I could afford your course, but may be next time around.
Thanks
I’m using a theme based on Genesis and it allows me to choose a landing page format – without side bar and menu. I had some help with getting the e-course website set up so someone styled the AWeber form for me. An easy way to do this, however, is to use Elevatr (http://www.getelevatr.com/ – it costs $37). I use Elevatr to create all forms on the Enchanting Marketing site and it doesn’t require any coding or design skills.
Thanks for the resource, I’ll check it out.
Just read your blog on CopyBlogger, thinking, wow now your talking, then further down, they are steeling Henneke’s style can’t believe this, looking at the writer further down, deep sigh of relieve oh it is Henneke, thank you smart girl, great,
L&B
Annamarie
You know me too well! 😉
You are just so smart, I wish I had my website up and could join your course, but maybe next time. The site is definitely happening this year.
I wish you lots of success, you are super duper cleaver
L &B
Annamarie
Yes, based on current interest, I’d say there’ll definitely will be another time!
Thank you for stopping by 🙂
Hi Henneke,
Yet another excellent article, and so timely for me too!
Just wanted to thank you again for all your insights. I’ve been implementing your strategies and have been definitely seeing the difference in email opening rates and click throughs!
I’m off to landing page setting up now… 😉
Hey Ash, That’s great to hear! Thank you so much for stopping by to let me know 🙂
Great advice, thanks! I think landing pages are difficult. There is way too mych I need to say and I alwas wonder where do I put in the “buy now” in all that info though? At the beginning, middle, end – or all 3? 🙂
If it’s a long page, I’d go for all three. Some people might have made up their mind after the first section of information. My e-course landing page has three “join now” / “order now” buttons.
Thank you for stopping by 🙂
Nice post, Henneke – – definitely honing in on getting some of the conversion optimization benefits with a minimum amount of the conversion optimization work.
But you know me (ha) and I’m going to say that traffic & conversion are equal partners. They are Yin + Yang.
Everyone works their tail off to get more traffic but being ‘lazy’ with converting that traffic renders that work wasteful at best and useless at worst.
Putting in the work for both traffic & conversion = magic
Yes, of course. You’re absolutely right. Converting traffic is important. We’re on the same wave length.
I’m not advocating that we don’t do conversion optimization. Just want to do it step-by-step. 🙂
Wow! Thanks Henneke. You have just given me great ideas for how to improve my sales, and give aways. Simple, Clear and Straight forward. I am definitely a lazy girl, so I will follow your advice.
Welcome to our club of lazy girls, Laraine. 😉
Great timing Henneke. I’m working on a new sales page today and will follow your 3-step formula. And, I’m definitely more into creating the course content than I am selling it. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m lazy, but let’s just say I’ve got a stupid, ingrained resistance to selling in general. Thanks for making this a little easier.
Perhaps you shouldn’t see it as a sales page. You only want people who will benefit from your course, to buy it, right? Your “sales” page is therefore a page on which you qualify your leads – you set the scene, explain what people can learn from your course, what’s included in the program, and who should (and shouldn’t) buy it. And then you nudge the people who it’s right for to click the Order Now button. 🙂
Let me know if I can help?
Yes exactly! Thanks for the extra tips. And, this particular course is for a very niche buyer, so I don’t want the wrong people buying. That ends up being too much work. (Been there!) If I’m really stuck, I’ll know where to turn. And that is something I have definitely considered.
Great advice, Henneke. Greetings from Ecuador 🙂
Thank you, Santiago. Greetings from rainy England 🙁
A good article and advice Henneke. I also like your new sales page for my Enchanting Business Blogging e-course (that’s certainly not lazy stuff).
Cheers
Mark
Thank you, Mark. And you’re right – that sales page was a ton of work, but making the illustrations was fun, so I didn’t consider that work 😉
I like your style, Henneke.
PS. It’s not the lazy girl’s guide. It’s the busy girl’s guide.
See — I’m learning from you already. 🙂
Yep, you’re so right. We’re just too busy with other things to optimize our landing pages 🙂
I love how you write for the “lazy girl”, which is me. 🙂 Although I prefer to think of myself as someone who finds the easiest and most efficient ways to do things, especially things I don’t enjoy lol. These are great tips, I particularly like listing and prioritizing the benefits and objections.
Yep, all those don’t-want-to-do-things are simply distractions. We, lazy girls, are just trying to be more productive 😉
Don’t seem so lazy to me 😉
I guess it depends on what the standard for laziness is. 😉
I do like to keep things as simple as possible.