Archive for the "Landing Page Inspiration" Category
Online Checkout Forms – Get Inspired Now!
Normally we focus on landing pages, but today we’re opening it up to online checkout forms. Too many companies are killing their completion rates. We can stand by no longer.
These sites are prime candidates for cart abandonment. If visitors scurry when they hit the checkout page, consider a solution that will capture visitors emails as they leave and allow you to remarket to them with a targeted campaign.
To see our comments, just rollover the images and our notes and suggestions will popup.
Holiday Themed Landing Page Design Inspiration from Top Online Retailers
Holiday season is one of the most important times for retailers online and offline, so we wanted to look around their sites to see how they are doing things differently for the holiday season. We expect lots of sites to start including ample holiday themed elements, and elements like a shipping table so you know you will get your items shipped by Christmas time. We’ll post more holiday themed landing pages as we find them. Have a rockin’ Holiday Season!!
Backcountry.com
- Completely different background image/color for holidays season
- Lots of winter related items on this page
- Nice headline “The holiday gift guide”
Cyber Monday awesome landing pages you can use for inspiration
We analyze some of the largest online retailers landing pages for one of the biggest online shopping days Cyber Monday.
Best Buy
- Good looking headline with nice background design
- A great way to lay out the different categories of the site with icons/text links
- Large red callout with “hottest cyber week deals” and “show now” button
jcpenney
- Keeps it extremely simple with a large headline text reading “shop cyber monday deals today!”
- With the simple theme has links for all categories on the site
- Good red blurb on top left showing ‘free shipping’
Macy’s
Obama beats Romney?!? (His PPC lead gen page does)
Election Day 2012 is here! Moderators have grilled the candidates on “important issues,” but they will dodge the most important topic of all: landing page optimization.
We’re not afraid to ask the tough questions. Following our analysis of the 2012 presidential candidates’ homepages, today we look at their strategies for PPC landing pages.
Barack Obama’s Landing Page Optimization
Let’s start with Obama’s PPC ad:
Although faintly reminiscent of a religious cult, the ad makes a good emotional connection with the text, “Barack is counting on you. Join us.” Once clicked, the ad brings visitors to an email opt-in page: Read the rest of this entry »
Great Landing Page Optimization Tips from the 2012 Presidential Election
Presidential campaigns are tornadoes of cash. This year’s is the biggest yet. Floods of money have poured into campaign marketing. The money supports a mountain of tactics, and this year we’re seeing a lot of landing page optimization.
We looked over the campaign websites of President Barak Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. Doing our best to ignore the politics, we drooled over their landing pages and saw a ton of conversion tactics.
Here’s what we found:
Landing page optimization — déjà vu
When you search for each candidate in Google, the campaign website is the first result. Both sites display an email capture form before the homepage, and we’re going to comment on these forms together. Take a look and you’ll see why:
Am I having déjà vu? In terms of landing page optimization, the pages are almost identical! Only a few details are changed.
Here’s what we see:
3 Reasons Why It’s Insane to Copy Competitors’ Landing Page Designs
You have a competitor with a large budget. Or maybe a competitor that does more optimization testing than you. Have you ever been tempted to play ‘Follow the Leader?’ After all, you know the company does tests. Why not let them do the work and steal their landing page designs?
Here’s why: because that is insane.
There are principles of landing page optimization, but they manifest differently on every page. For example, the conversion process must be simple and easy. But what is simple for one audience can be a huge burden to others.
Only Lost Puppies Copy Landing Page Designs
Have you ever been annoyed by a “helpful” video that automatically played when you hit the page? I know I have. But some people do find such videos helpful, and they are proven to increase conversion rates on many sites. But it doesn’t work on every site!
So you must test your pages. Ignore the competition. Your job is to beat them, not follow them like a lost puppy!
Here are three more reasons it is insane to copy competitors’ pages:
Difference #1. Value proposition
Customers choose you over competitors for a reason. There are unique and compelling aspects of your company that appeal to them. Those aspects are your value proposition – the reason your best customers purchase from you.
Your value proposition differentiates you. It says, “We have the best prices,” or “We provide the only full-service solution.” Notice those superlatives: “best” and “only.” They are exclusive. You are the only company that has these things. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Hacks to Optimize Mobile Landing Pages for Conversion
The mobile web is about to kick down your door. Some say mobile users will outnumber PC users on the web in three years. You should be thrilled. Why? Because when you optimize mobile landing pages, you become a better marketer.
You are about to go from a karate student to a Samurai Warrior of Optimization. Mobile landing pages will demand it. You will follow the same principles of optimization, but you will need a mastery of the art, and this blog post will help you.
5 Landing Page Optimization Strategies for Mobile
First, you must understand why people visit your site from smartphone or tablet. One thing you can be sure of: they have a goal. They are not pointlessly browsing. They do that on PCs at work.
Behaviors vary on the mobile web, even within industries and across devices. So track mobile visitors. See where they go. Review the keywords they use.
Ask yourself:
- Are they looking for coupons?
- Downloading PDFs?
- Checking product information?
- Filling out a lead form?
- Buying a product?
- What do they want?
This will point to pages to optimize for mobile visitors. Other ideas to try: Read the rest of this entry »
5 Totally Awesome Sites That Don’t Just Sit There – Landing Page Inspiration for 2012
Disclaimer: This post is being written by one of CV’s designers so hang on to your seats and take it all with a grain of salt.
5 Cool Sites – Landing Page Inspiration for 2012
So you’ve got a website with a high bounce rate and your visitors aren’t hanging around too long to be sold on the information you’re giving them? Well I’ve got a solution for you! Trick them into staying longer with the use of shiny objects! I’ve found some great “sticky” website design inspirations for 2012.
I know that when I come across a site with neat little do-dads I spend way too much time playing with them and then I end up being hooked into the site and I have to read everything that is on it. It’s science.
It’s amazing how far web languages have come in the past few years, especially considering what can be done using JavaScript and Jquery to give your websites a little spice. In fact, I almost can’t believe how great websites have become and I am building them on a daily basis!
With the use of modern HTML and CSS with some JS sprinkled in, you can change your boring, Netscape 4.0-optimized site into shiny object that all your competition is jealous of and your clientele is awed by!
But there’s one thing you need to watch out for… load times! There were a couple of sites I was going to add to this blog post but they took so long to load I fell asleep, took a nap, woke up and ended up closing the site before it even finished.
Here’s five sites I have collected that I’ve wasted too much time playing with:
http://www.creativepundits.com/
College Information Landing Page Inspiration – Part Two
A landing page is a like a conversation with all the subtlety thrown out. This is not a conversation you have on a first date when you are extremely polite and trying to pick up hints (“does he really like me?” “Did that anecdote from my time in jail scare her?”).
A landing page is where you, savvy marketer, are extremely upfront. You tell people who you are, what you have, and why they want it. People glance at you. They either run screaming for the door (the ‘x’ button) or settle in for a few seconds longer.
There is nothing subtle about this, which is why you need to beat your message into visitors when they arrive. Continuing with our series on college information landing pages, we’re taking a look at a landing page from SearchSchools. The page has a lot going for it, but it needs to lose the subtle hints and start slapping us in the face.
Is there anything I can’t do?
Read the rest of this entry »
College Information Landing Page Inspiration – Part One
Looking for a college is like looking for new cereal at the mega-grocery store. You have a rough idea of what you want, but your choices are endless. You find yourself just staring at the boxes, dumbfounded.
Plenty of websites have popped up to help students move from “dumbfounded” to “college-bound.” We’re going to tear down some of their landing pages to help build your expertise, starting with DegreeLeap’s College Finder Tool.
Whitespace is not blank-space
I commend the designers of this page for their minimalist approach. It’s always good to have plenty of whitespace so it’s easy to look at the page and so you don’t find yourself squinting and wondering what the heck it’s trying to say.
But this page goes a little too far. Almost one-third of the main section is completely blank, and it makes the bullet points look like they’re crammed under the headline. The whitespace appears to be encroaching on the other elements, rather than letting them relax and spread out, which completely defeats the reason for having whitespace in the first place. These guys should test spacing out the bullet points and adding some content below them. Perhaps an image of a smiling student next to a quote about why they love DegreeLeap?
There is also a good-sized piece of unused real estate under the form. Right now, that space is showing off the page’s nifty background, which isn’t doing much for conversions. I would test adding a trust logo, testimonial, or some other call-out to make this section start achieving some goals instead of wasting space (like a lazy college student).
I know what to do — why should I care?
Read the rest of this entry »