The Eight Second Imperative

Half of all the people clicking on your landing page bail out by the time 8 seconds elapse according to a new study from SilverPop. Optimizing landing pages is the fastest, easiest most cost effective thing you can do to improve sales, lead generation and customer engagement.

Each minor step you make will increase process flow and drive incremental conversion. The objective is to instantly orient visitors and make it as easy and as intuitive as possible for them to do what you want them to do. Everything starts with the understanding that a click onto your landing page is a gift from God with a half-life of a nuclear isotope. It begins degrading as soon as it granted (8 seconds) and it represents the BEGINNING of the conversation not the end.

As a site operator or marketer you must do everything possible to extend the 8 seconds into a registration, a download or a sale. Most of the moves are logical and require no extra technology. According to MarketingSherpa, the average e-mail landing page converts between 5.6 and 11.3 percent of those who click, depending on the offer. E-commerce landing pages produce conversions in the 5.6-7.6 range.

So here are the "rules" -- my distillation and commentary on the SilverPop findings.

LANDING PAGE OPTIMIZATION -- BEST PRACTICES

1. Use Readable URLs. Don't get fancy. The URL validates your credibility and reassures visitors that they are in the right place doing what they came to do.

2. Mirror the Offer Copy and Design. Where they land absolutely has to look, feel and read like where they came from. The e-mail, the mailer, the keyword all must be reflected in the landing page. If not, your prospect is confused and given an incentive to exit. It helps if all of this looks like the website too.

3. Repeat the Call- to-Action High on the Page. You hooked them with this in your communications. Remind them why the came and what you want them to do as soon as they get there.

4. Create Distinct Landing Pages. Too many marketers dump clicking visitors onto their home page. You might as well abandon them in Grand Central Station. For each marketing vehicle you need a separate corresponding landing page that mirrors the look, tone, copy and call-to-action of the ad message. These can be easily templated and cloned. Its about creating distinct and simple URLs and mapping marketing vehicles to landing pages. It's also about focusing on one task and one goal at a time.

5. Focus on Action Sequences. Site visitors expect a logical step-by-step flow. Give it to them. Anticipate how they think and what they want and build the landing page to deliver simple, easy-to-follow buying or registration sequences.

6. Use Short Copy Above the Fold. Never Scroll. Its a game of glimpses and nanoseconds. Say it short and in 250 words per page or less. If the copy is dense signal impact or call out key ideas by using subheads. The population is aging so 10 point type is the minimum readable size. Use images to reinforce and illuminate. You are not writing an epic, you are writing a postcard. If they have to scroll, they abandon. Fight for simplicity. Most successful pages are dark type on a white field.

Also relax the need to include every branding element and hero shots on the page. Clickers know who you are and where they are. They are anxious to do something other than romance your brand or fight your intramural battle. You have captured the attention of a prospect now capture the order. Most successful pages lose the hero shots and have minimal brand elements. A landing page is not the forum to work out all your branding gestalt. It's about facilitating action.

7. Limit Navigation. The purpose of a landing page is to close. Eliminate any choices that don't focus on the goal. Don't kid yourself about up sells and cross sells. Get the download, the registration or the sale first, then make your second move. If they want to see your whole site, they'll go there.

Right now they've granted you a click. Your job is to eliminate extra opportunities to go elsewhere and do other things., Reduce clickable elements.Eliminate as much navigation as possible. Its a magic focused moment. Keep it that way. Keep your eye and their's on the prize.

8. Collect Only Absolutely Necessary Data. Don't be too nosy. If you can get bye with just an e-mail address take it and follow up later.Forms scare a healthy number of site visitors who instinctively understand that if they give you data, you'll be hocking them till the end of time.

Obviously orders and payments require collecting more data. But streamline everything you can. Make it as easy to enter data as possible. Don't ask visitors to type the same stuff over and over. But do ask them to opt-in for newsletters or solicit permission to message them again. 

Comments

[Anna Talerico]

Hi Danny! Interesting summary of the Silverpop study. The thing is, as an industry-wide stat, conversion rates on landing pages pretty much stink. In my opinion, they are bad for users, bad for brands and bad for marketers. Some simple tweaks to the landing page concept can dramatically increase conversions though -- we use conversion paths with much better results. All the rules and all the best practices of landing pages are much easier to execute in a conversion path, and can yield much higher conversion quality and quantity.

Using a conversion path you can create a series of short pages that are able to segment users and give them exactly what they want. You mention focusing on one task and one goal at a time. That's the key to conversion paths! Instead of forcing a full page of information on visitors, conversion paths give users little bits of information at a time, while segmenting them and finding out their needs. I also agree that is important to focus on action sequences. That is exactly what conversion paths do - anticipate how users think by segmenting them with a series of choices, and deliver simple, easy-to-follow buying or registration sequences in a series of short pages.