Increasing Landing Page Conversion: Converting the Prospect Into A Customer
by Kris Kiler
You have put some sweat into creating a product that you want to sell over the Internet. There are people telling you to create a landing page and start selling. But is it that easy? Driving traffic to your web page is hard enough. What are things you need to consider for making the sale? You will want to build in the necessary continuity and congruency to allow people to move forward and lower their resistance to the sale. Your job is to compel the individual to take action by entering their email address for a subscription or free product or taking their credit card out and purchasing the product. You will need to take them by the hand and guide them through your process.
Create Your Conversion Process
Envision your web page as a high-end retail store and your landing page is the five-star sales person you’ve hired to convert your elite visitors into loyal customers. This is, by no means, a task anyone could perform. You would take great care in hiring this individual to care for the livelihood of your business and the same should be true for your landing page. Take time and sketch out a process for your visitors. What do you want them to see first? How will you guide them down the page? What and where do you need to compel the visitor to take action? This doesn’t mean writing the copy or designing the web page. This will function as an instructional guide for your copyrighter and web designer in order to fulfill your vision of success.
Continuity*
It is critical that you design your process in such a way that each step builds upon the other and fit together like puzzle pieces. If you are conducting search marketing ad campaigns and using the keyword “enlightenment” or ad phrase “find enlightenment” and when people get to your landing page the word and phrase is no where to be found, the prospect will likely be automatically be disconnected to the process. You have disrupted the flow and progress of the prospect and created immediate anxiety. Similarly, if you have a product called “The Super Sports Energy Drink” and when people purchase, the checkout process takes the prospect to a PayPal checkout page that has your personal email address in the header and the product name says “sports drink,” the perception is that you have not taken the time to prepare the process for the prospect. This creates anxiety and can cause problems with the conversion rate.
Take the time to prepare a coherent process for your prospect—ensuring that each element supports the value proposition to reduce anxiety.
Congruence**
According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, congruence is “the quality or state of agreeing or corresponding.” This aspect of the process refers to whether or not the elements on the landing page are in agreement with each other. Among these elements include; page design; choice of colors, fonts, photo’s, and illustrations; and anxiety reducing elements such as testimonials and third-party credibility indicators.
If you are marketing a sports energy drink you would want to include testimonials or graphic imagery that supports the benefits of drinking an energy drink before, during, or after exercise. When creating the page for the sports energy drink, you would want to choose colors and page design that support the sports and exercise theme. If you decided to use a purple background with yellow text because you happen to be a fan of the L.A. Lakers, you may be keeping prospects from responding positively to your offer.
Generate Compelling Sales Copy
It is a wonderful thing that you’ve created this newsletter, product, or service to offer to the world but writing copy that focuses on selling just for the sake of selling won’t do the trick. Writing copy that will motivate the prospect to purchase or subscribe will take time and will likely not be written by you—unless you are an experienced marketer and know how to generate good copy. As an Internet entrepreneur, knowing who you are and what you can do is essential to your success. Will you try to focus your time on writing compelling marketing copy that converts your prospect or will you hire someone else to write it for you? Good copywriting will include both compelling sales points along with powerful psychological triggers.
Use Psychological Triggers
Remember that your website is not your typical retail store with friendly sales people. You cannot control the lighting or physical environment to enhance the experience of your prospect. You have a flat surface that may be surrounded by post-it notes or pictures of friends or children. You might be the accidental click through Google and one of eight websites open at the time. You definitely don’t have time to take the writing of your online sales copy lightly.
You will need to use the science of persuasion to influence your prospect toward the purchase or subscription. Psychological triggers are not just guarantees of satisfaction that try to show people you are trustworthy. They are the elements that tap into the prospect’s desire to have, need, or want your product or service.
Robert Cialdini (1993), defined six "weapons of influence.” They are:
- Reciprocation – The concept that individuals have a strong desire to repay a favor. If you are an author, you can use this by providing free chapters of your book or a free email training course to potential buyers of their book. The prospect will likely feel obligated to return the favor and purchase your book.
- Commitment and Consistency – The concept that if someone commits to something they will generally follow through. You can use this by offering an additional purchase at the endpoint of your sales process. Since the person has committed to buying your product, they may be more likely to purchase additional products.
- Social Proof – The concept that people decide if something is worthwhile by observing what others are doing. You can use this by presenting testimonials to imply current demand and show the prospect that others are using the product or service.
- Authority – The concept that people tend to respect and follow people of authority. You can use this by having experts in your particular area provide a testimonial for the product or service. It goes beyond the social proof and elevates it to a person they automatically know and respect.
- Liking – The concept that people are easily persuaded by people they like. You can use this by including information such as your bio, picture, or if you are part of a company, an about us.
- Scarcity – The concept that we want what is difficult to get. You can use this by advertising limited quantities available or if you are offering a training program you can limit the number of people that are able to attend your program. You can also build in a sense of urgency so the prospect will feel the need to act in the moment because they perceive the offer to have a limited amount of time.
There are many perspectives on what influences people to take action on a certain offer. In his book, Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples describes appealing emotional reasons such as; make more money, better health now, security in old age, career advancement, fear of loss, fear of failure, and competitiveness. Whatever triggers you employ, make sure they are consistent and match your defined target prospect.
Never Lose Focus
Remember that by creating a landing page, you are not a sneaky salesperson that wants to bleed people dry of their money. By building a coherent and focused landing page system that is designed to convert prospects to customers you are only continuing down the road toward the realization of your success. If you have taken the step to create something, whether it is a product, newsletter, or other offering, you have take a bold step that others only dream of taking. You are likely someone with passion for this new offering and that passion needs to be conveyed in the entire sales process of your landing page.
Action Item
- Map out your entire conversion process—from the keywords to the Thank You page. Ensure that the entire process has continuity and congruence and you are presenting a coherent whole for the prospect.
Notes
*, ** Marketing Experiments Journal: Landing Page Optimization Monday, 05 November 2007
 Thank you for taking the time to browse my website. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
I look forward to working with you,
Kris Kiler
kris@kriskiler.com
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