A few months ago we wrote a post about whether or not to trap a visitor on a landing page.  This continues to be a dilemma for many of our clients.  However (I’m not afraid to admit it) I’m pretty sure I missed the boat on the most optimal approach for landing pages.  Thank you to Yahoo’s recent designs for the enlightenment!

With landing pages, we typically weigh the pros and cons of having a landing page that prohibits navigation, so we keep the visitor focused on conversion.  Or, having a landing page that is part of the regular website with all the links active, allowing the visitor to wander to gather the information they need in hopes they will get to a conversion point before exiting the site.  The biggest challenge with the trapping technique is that these pages often lack in data to keep visitors around.  While they may have improved conversion rates, their associated bounce rates are also much higher.

Yahoo’s recent designs seem to have the best approach here.  The goal is simple.  To make sure the visitor doesn’t need to search beyond the page by providing them with an engaging, multi-media experience where they can browse to find everything they need on that single page.

Yahoo is saying that user engagement on their pages is nearly twice the amount with their latest designs.  And since dwell time directly correlates to conversion rates, let’s see what we can glean from Yahoo’s designs that can be directly incorporated into landing pages.

One prominent concept is search by clicking.  For many, over half of the visitors who come to their site are using the search function to try to find out what they need.   But why not change the game by providing users with lots of different types of browse options and suggest related search terms for them to use for browsing.  This can prevent them from ending up on a search results page that is less than satisfactory to their information needs.

Utilize multiple media formats.  In order to provide an engaging experience and meet the needs of a variety of visitors, employ multiple media types on your landing pages – text, images, videos, slide shows, interactive widgets, news and social streams come to mind.   Multiple formats make your page more engaging and help meet the demand of all different types of learning preferences.

Make it Current.  Highlight for the visitor what’s trending now.  Try related news streams, blog posts, and social feeds and call out trending related search topics on your landing pages.  Become the source for all the latest and greatest information that visitors will come to.

Make it locally relevant.  This can be particularly helpful for national or global advertisers.  Are there dynamic snippets of locally relevant, related information that you can include?

Make it Infinite.  Incorporate infinite browse boxes onto your website.  For your products or services you can include infinite browse boxes for images, videos, news streams, whitepapers, blog posts, forum posts, slide shows, ebooks, awards, comparisons, analyst studies, upcoming events, you name it! The possibilities are endless.

The bottom line is to think about all the data points of research a potential customer needs to do before converting, and presenting that data on a single browsable page in a multimedia format.

Take a peek at your landing pages and start to brainstorm how you can start to keep an keep an ongoing dialogue with your visitors on the single page.

Let’s face it: it’s typically not recommended! Though it may happen once in awhile, for most people it just doesn’t — usually for good reason.  And yet many businesses treat first visits to their websites as if they’re expecting to go all the way on a first date.

Since we all need that little thing called revenue in order to stay in business and be profitable, many businesses just focus on tracking their one main revenue-generating action as a conversion event for online activity.  Whether it’s a product purchase or generation of a lead, all online campaigns and keywords are judged by their ability to immediately result in this one conversion.

However, in this day and age of information abundance, reviews, referral sources, and the like, many searchers do lots of poking around before they are ready to take that conversion step.  There are four generally-accepted steps in the sales cycle you should keep in mind:

Ignorance — This is the phase when a person is unaware of their need of a particular product or service that might make their lives or their own business somehow better or more efficient or less expensive.

Awareness — When a customer has become aware of a need and the means of addressing it, but is still learning, investigating and preparing.

Engagement — A customer-prospect has selected your company as one that might address their need.

Investment — Success! A prospective customer becomes a paying customer.

Most people these days go through these four stages of the sales cycle.  So rather than throwing all of your eggs in one basket, hoping to convince your visitor to “go all the way” on that very first visit, we encourage you to offer different avenues to make a connection on that first visit.  This will enable you to foster the relationship and be the one the searcher comes back to when they are ready to convert.

For prospects in the “ignorance” phase, it’s important to speak to a particular pain point.  Call out that pain and the clear cure for it.  For instance, say you sell solar panels.  You may want to run PPC ads like this one:

Energy Bills High?

Solar is more affordable

than ever – learn how.

solarxyz.com/lowermybills

(Hopefully, this is a fake company… we intended it to be!)  In this instance, the ad is addressing a common customer pain point: high household energy bills.  They point out why an alternative could be viable for the searcher.  And they entice the searcher with an answer to their pain (”lower my bills”).

Next, during the “awareness” phase, think about why your searcher is likely to be hunting around gathering more information:

Are they looking for the best price?

Do they need reviews / ratings / referrals before selecting?

Are they researching a gift for someone else?

Are they sure about the exact product accessory they need?

Did they simply get interrupted in the middle of their search?

Are they not currently using the right device or computer that they intend on converting from?

Do they need to run it by someone else?

We could go on and on — there are so many different reasons why people aren’t ready to commit on the first click.  After you figure out the likely scenarios for your particular offering, you can start to think about the types of valuable information for a connection that will enable you to stick in the mind of the visitor and leave a lasting presence they will return to.

The content that you offer to make the connection will need to be unique, valuable, helpful and just plain irresistible.  Following are some additional “connection” ideas that you can try out:

Newsletter sign-up.  You’ll need to say more than just “sign up” though – for instance, does the newsletter contain offers?  What type of content is in it that will entice them or be useful to them?

Facebook / Twitter following.  Again –why would they want to do this?  Is there some enticing content from your community that you can use as a teaser?  Are there special offers you have for your social following?

Webinar sign-up.  Do you have any relevant upcoming webinars that might be of interest that you can encourage them to sign up for?

Conference sign-up.  Any upcoming conferences that you will be attending?  Perhaps you are going to have some form of a giveaway that they can sign up for.

Notification sign-up.  Can you entice them to sign-up for an email notification if there is a price changes in the future?  Or would they like to be notified of future reviews that are posted, or stock level notifications?

Third-party data.  Do you have valuable industry or market data that you can share with them – any analyst or third party reports, or review aggregations that would help guide them?

Personalized information.  Can you provide them with any information that is personalized to them?  The ROI on a purchase, help finding the right solution through a series of questions, previewing how something will look for them, analysis of something that is theirs, any form of a calculator, etc.  Make sure to capture the results so you can also email them to them.

Personal response to questions, or personal review of something.  If an expert can help guide them in a personalized, non-salesy way, this is often attractive.

Contests.  Everyone loves to win things!

Polls.  Ask them for their input on something about what you offer.  This will usually require a strong incentive – but even showing the results of an ongoing poll that you have, that they can participate in can often times be enough.

A product brochure, white paper, recent use-case video, etc.  Any content that can help them learn more about you after they go away from your website.

After you are able to make the connection, you’ll want to spend some time nurturing it.  This gets you to the “engagement” level.  Continue to reach out to the visitor on a regular basis with more unique, valuable content along the lines of the connection they made with you.  Whether it’s an updated analysis, a new notification, some interesting community content from Twitter, or some new poll results, keep the conversation going and stay fresh in their mind.

Once you’ve gotten your additional connection points in place on your landing pages and throughout your website, you’ll want to make sure you are tracking their success.  Track all the meaningful events for your online campaigns, realizing that any connection made carries value – so if you have keywords that are bringing in lots of new connections, but no immediate revenue you’ll want to keep them alive to see if your nurture-rate to revenue is high.  For each of these connection points, you’ll want to monitor how often they bring about return visits and eventually generate revenue.  This will help you know where to focus your efforts as you go forward.

All of which gets you to that “all-the-way goal”: investment.

Spring is here, and the pools are open. Time for some bikini boot camp for your landing pages to make sure they’re in tip-top shape as your business dives into summer.

Here are some questions to ask to find the trouble zones you’ll need to focus on in order to get lean, mean performance from your landing pages.

• Do you go below the fold? Try to keep your content concise so that your page fits above the fold and doesn’t require scrolling. If it’s just not possible, make sure that your best assets appear first including what you do, your unique value and a call to action.

• Do you have meaningless words? There have been polls and studies done about the most abused gobbledygook words and phrases. These are the filler that you use to describe your solution that are completely meaningless to your visitors, which include “innovative,” “next-generation,” “cutting-edge,” “marketing-leading,” “easy-to-use”, etc. (I’m sure you’ve heard from blowhards around the pool who use language like this.)  It’s time to shed the meaningless words and just stick with meaningful communication. Fluff is yesterday – clear articulation is today. Don’t use a single word that has an express marketing intent. Cross them all out and just say what you do and why you are the best, using only your customers words (i.e., “this widget cut my operating costs by 10 percent!”)

• Do you have too much information? Landing pages are not the place to ramble on about every little detail about your company and products.  It’s important to stick to just enough information to help users understand in a matter of seconds that (1) they are in the right place; (2) you are better than everyone else; and (3) what the next step to take is.  Save detailed comparisons, extensive product information and anything that would require several minutes of reading for other places on your website.

• Do you expect too much time? How much time does it take someone completely unfamiliar with what you do to read your page and digest what you are trying to tell them and take the next step action? Get some friends to help you out with this exercise. If this is more than 1.5 minutes, you’ll need to do some streamlining in order to have the digestion process occur more quickly.

Now that we’ve given you some ideas about how to cut the fat, let’s talk about the key assets that you want to have shine on your new and improved page:

1. Headline: What do you do – in your customers own words.
2. Benefits: What makes you the best – again, in your customers own words; keep the list short – just three-to-five will do.
3. Call to Action / Offer: What should your visitor do next? Make this accessible right on your landing page to take the mystery out of how much effort is required to take it to the next step.
4. Testimonials / Awards: Give yourself some credibility – just some teasers here will do.

It’s also important to use some lower calorie ways of communicating so that you can maintain your lean, mean page and not just gain the weight back again over time:

1. Images: Use pictures to portray whatever you can – they are interesting to view and can convey at least 1000 words. A picture can help a visitor confirm they are in the right place and understand what you do in the matter of an instant.
2. Videos: If you offer something complex or a concept that is not widely understood, a video can be a great way to provide more detailed information rather than lengthy bouts of text.
3. Bold, Bullets, Formatting: Make sure it’s easy to “cruise through” your page and digest the information as quickly as possible.

Using these simple and easy tips to get your key landing pages into shape will ensure you’re not only attracting great traffic, but turning that traffic into real business (but don’t apply the bikini analogy here… because that’s just creepy.)

The most recent stat I saw for how long a searcher spends on a website before deciding whether or not to click the back button was 13 seconds. I think that might be generous, but I like generosity, so we’ll work with that number.

Let’s think through what happens. A searcher clicks to go to your website:

• Second 1 – Is your site attractive enough? If yes, stay.
• Second 2-5 – Is your site relevant? Does the text or image that stands out the most resonate as what the searcher was looking for? If yes, stay.
• Seconds 6-13 – Do you have something to offer that is relevant and valuable? If yes, stay.

We frequently provide tips on landing page content and how to portray it in order to pass the above 13 second test. But even with the best content, this is a tough battle to win for the diverse set of searchers who come to your site. It’s not that your website is irrelevant, but that you can’t always say or show the exact right message for all the potential leads.

When you think about a typical performance, whether gymnastics or a flight, the landing comes last. You are able to demonstrate some talent before that critical landing moment. Even in the case of a rough landing, you will get some credit and maybe even a second chance. But with search, the landing comes first. So if your landing isn’t a 10, then nothing else matters.

Since the landing is critical and the 13-second challenge is difficult, why not focus on breaking the typical visitor’s review cycle? Throw that 13-second content challenge right out the window. Increase the percentage of landings that stick so you have the opportunity to strut your stuff with a higher percentage of searchers.

How do you break the cycle? By immediately getting your searcher involved and interacting with your website.

Following are ten interactive website techniques to increase your number of perfect landings:

1) Calculate Value.
Is there some form of quick calculation that searchers can run to see how much something would go up or down if they use your product or service? Maybe it’s how much they would save on their heating bill with new windows, how much their operating costs would go down with your IT solution, how much their home is worth, or how your investment performs better than their current ones. Start off with a quick little attractive form. Make sure it only has a maximum of 5 data entry points and the numbers are well-known.

2) Create your Own.
We all love stuff that we can personalize and many of us also love being able to share our perfect design with others. Maybe it’s putting together complete outfits on a shopping site, or putting together the activities that the perfect vacation package should include, designing the perfect stationary, or the best list of baby shower gifts to register for. Engage your searchers with just a handful of options (which can be expanded if they desire.) Include designs that others have created to help get them motivated. Being able to vote on other’s designs or have something named after them if you use their idea can also be great motivators.

3) Polling or Voting.
Engage visitors with a vote or polling question. Show them, even before they become a customer, that their opinion matters. Perhaps it’s a response to how they feel about a current, relevant hot topic. Or share a company favorite of a relevant book and ask them to vote on it or share their own. Or have them vote on some current projects that your company is working on – which menu item is better, which logo is more appealing, which of an option of upcoming features should you build into your app, or which pain point is more pressing? It’s important to convey the current vote tally results after someone submits their answer.

4) Real-Time Activity.
Then there’s good old peer pressure. If a lot of other people are trying something or visiting a site or doing something, I think it must be worthwhile to give it a shot. Maybe it’s a list of websites that are currently trying out a free tool, or a real-time map of your trucks or shipments in action, or a real-time counter of phone calls, new customer sign-ups, real-time value of money you’ve helped people save, or number of items sold or left. Showing real-time activity can give you credibility, and adds an action component that triggers more of a sense of urgency to get people involved.

5) Interactive Images.
Attractive images that a visitor can engage with can be just like picking up a product off the shelf or trying out a trial. You can allow visitors to try something on a virtual 3d model, open up appliances and see how the controls work, take a car for a test drive, or click around a sample page of an application and see how it works. If a picture says 1000 words, then interactive images say at least 1,000,000.

6) Reality TV.
Let your visitors take a peak under the covers to get to know you. Maybe it’s a webcam of your office in action, a webcam of a flower store preparing bouquets, a webcam of pets playing at your boarding facility,, a webcam of the weather on your golf course, or a webcam in a factory watching something being made. Make it a reality for them – give them a view into how it’s made, or how it’s done.

7) Take a Challenge.
We all like to think we know it all, or like to find out where we stand on the scale of understanding something. Challenges can be based on how well you know about any related subject matter or related person or related current event. It’s always good to classify their knowledge in a fun way, let them know where they stand relative to others that have taken the challenge.

8 ) Unbiased Reviews.
Not the marketing influenced testimonials, but real, un-touched reviews. We all value other people’s experiences, but we only trust reviews when there are some negative ones in there – otherwise we smell a rat. How do you make reviews interactive? Allow people to quickly identify reviews related to them – perhaps based on business type or the geography of a visitor. Also, allow them to vote on what reviews are helpful or not, so you can show the most relevant content first and begin to glean out what matters most to your searchers.

9) Games.
Games can be a great way to engage visitors for businesses of all types. Perhaps it’s a game of crush your competition and you provide the pieces from your solution which will enable their business to do that, they just provide the competitors names and do the interaction of using your toolset for the defeat. Or, maybe it’s a game that helps them build a shopping list – like decorating for a party, or caring for a newborn.

10) Personal Shopper.
Rather than making them hunt for their answers, go find it for them. Engage them with some key questions to help them classify themselves and what they are looking for and then bring them the most relevant solution or information. For example, finding the right type of assisted living for a parent, or finding the best treatment options for an illness, or finding the best solution set for their business needs. You can even try to do this in the form of a mad libs to add a humorous to entertainment value to it if appropriate for your image.

But wait, there’s more!

With all of the above, you’ll find that they do more than just engage your visitors. Here’s how to milk the most from them:

• Enable visitors to share the interactive piece, or their results of their interaction with others via email or social networks.
• Allow visitors to opt-in for you to send them their customized results via email, and updates on other relevant comments, or vote or contest updates.
• Make sure you are actively capturing all visitor input – most of these provide you with great insight into what matters and what your visitors are looking for.

One word of caution – design your interactions carefully as to not sacrifice on speed, or you’re landing will never even hit the ground, let alone stick.
So, get your website interacting today and stick more landings.

Many landing page best practices dictate that you trap your visitors inside your landing page and not allow navigation to other pages within your website. The logic here is that you are after a conversion, so keep the visitor focused on converting rather than letting them wander around and forget to provide you with their info before they leave your site.

While the trapping technique can be quite effective for some advertisers, we’ve seen it result in complete failure for others. How to know what to do? Here are some simple criteria you can use to determine whether or not trapping your visitor will bring you the highest conversion results.

When trapping is not likely to work:

Your product offering or market space is not well-known. Do you have a new type of product or service that you are trying to sell? In this case visitors need to learn more about your offering before they will be ready to fork over their contact details or make a purchase. Your website should serve as an educational vehicle to help them understand what you do and how it will help them. Guide them through this educational process through your site with a strong emphasis on conversion along the way.

Your brand is not a known. Are you the new kid on the block? Are you the smaller, local guy trying to compete with bigger well-known national brands? In this case your website needs to be a credibility building vehicle. People are not likely to give you any information until they know they can trust you. Help them get to know you and why you are reputable throughout your website pages. Comparisons, testimonials, awards, as seen ins can all be helpful here.

Multiple offerings or conversions are available. Sometimes it’s good for you to have your visitors wander around. The more they wander, the more they are likely to buy or the more conversion opportunities that exist. Also, if you have multiple standard offerings for them to sign up for, it’s good to let them gather this information and choose the package that’s right for them. So use your website as an up-selling vehicle and let them wander and spend.

Your website facilitates the full conversion process. If you have an e-commerce site, or your website is built to facilitate the purchase of what you are offering, let the user wander around to gather all the information they need, select what they would like and complete their transaction. Some examples here include e-commerce sites and hotels.

When trapping is effective:

You have a commonly known product. If people know what they want and are familiar with your product or service, they are likely just looking for the best provider for them. In this case they don’t need to comb through your website to figure out what you have to offer. It’s more important to focus on the conversion when they first land.

You are a known, trusted brand. If visitors already know who you are, they don’t need the rest of your site to find out if they like you or you are trustworthy. In this case too it’s worthwhile to keep the visitor focused on converting right there on the landing page.

Your best sales are done via phone. If your website isn’t your best sales vehicle, but is rather focused on lead generation, it’s best to focus on capturing your visitors contact information so you can follow-up with your more successful sales tactic of direct contact.

Your conversion doesn’t capture sensitive information. If you aren’t asking for any sensitive information, but are just seeking an email or phone number maybe with some form of free information provided in return, you can be very successful trapping your visitors and keeping them focused on providing this info before they move on.

What Makes a Successful Page Trap?

You’ve got one page to engage, convince and capture. Your visitor can’t be longing for more or unsure after viewing the page, so what do you need to include here to be successful?

Engage visitors and highlight your most prominent value in large font. Show them that you understand them and have the answer for them.
Short / Concise Info Capture. Only ask for the pieces of data that you absolutely need. The shorter the form, the more likely visitors are to complete it.

Testimonials and Awards. Provide as much credibility as possible in this small space – testimonials and awards can go a long way on the trust factor.

High-Level Comparisons. Providing quick info around why you are the best can go along way to help solve the question of what provider the visitor should use. It will also help you to frame how the visitor examines your competitors.Samples of your work, or results they are likely to expect, or what they will experience can go a long way in providing the visitor with some comfort and some excitement about working with you. The more visual, the better here.

Always offer an out from a page trap through your company logo. Even on a technically trapped page, there should always be a way to get to your website if the visitor really feels the need to. The most common way to handle this is for your company logo to be a link to your website.

One last piece of advice: always test. Test, test, test. If you think one strategy might be good, test it against a control and carefully track the results.  Subscribers to the Yield Web Marketing Suite can easily use our Landing Page Optimizer to do A/B split tests as well as multivariate tests of landing pages that are fast and easy to implement.  Use this tool liberally to your advantage.  Only through consistent, rigorous testing can you be assured that you’ve got the right landing page strategy at work for your business.

Finding a mate can be a laborious process when you think about how many single people exist.  So speed dating was developed to eliminate some of the time out of this process.

If you think about it, every time you search for something you go through a sort of speed dating process.  You know what you want, but then millions of potential matches appear.  So, you speed date the landing pages on the first one-to-two pages of the search results to see if you can quickly find a website you’re are willing to give your personal information to in hopes that there might be a future there that satisfies your needs.

We’ve compiled ten tips to make sure your landing page can pass the speed dating test and get you those digits:

1)     Be Hotter Than Everyone Else.

Before you have a searcher visit your site, survey the room and check out your speed dating competition.  Take snapshots of all the competitive landing pages on the first page of the search results for your top keywords.  View these snapshots in a line along with yours.  If you wouldn’t pick your landing page as the hotty in the group, redesign your page elements until it becomes the clear winner.

2)     Be Visually Engaging.

Searching is even more shallow than dating because we don’t feel bad about not giving a website the time of day if it doesn’t look perfect.  If you want the searcher to even bother reading your spiel you had better look your absolute best.  Use engaging colors, rather than being drab.  Use images and video to immediately visually engage the searcher.  But don’t go overboard here.  If you have too much eye candy on a single page, you’ll just appear like the used car salesman with one too many gold chains.

3)     Be Trendy.

If your dress is out of date you are not desirable.  If you haven’t updated your website style in the last two years or are using design techniques that were popular years ago it’s time for a redesign.  Just do a search for “great websites” and there are plenty examples of very cool sites to re-use concepts from.  If you don’t have time to get with the times, hire a personal shopper – aka, a web designer.  The money you spend will be well worth it to boost your image.  With a trendy site, you may even find yourself getting phone numbers when you aren’t even trying.

4)     Speak Clearly & Memorably.

Once you are the hottest website in the room, you’ll get a chance to explain who you are and why you are awesome.  Clearly articulate what it is you do and why you are the best in large font using plain simple words.  Don’t use words that you would use to think about what your business does, but rather words your searcher would use to describe you.  With speed dating, no one has room to absorb fluff like “long walks on the beach” – so review your page and remove all of your fluff terms such as innovate, synergy, unique, focused on, leverage, leading provider, cost effective, next generation, etc.  Stating who you are in plain terms allows a searcher to “get you” right away and will also give the searcher a much better chance of remembering who you are at the end of their speed dating session.

5)     Exude Confidence.

Insecurity leads to loneliness.  Show the searcher your confidence in what you have to offer.  Do you offer a guarantee?  Do you have testimonials?    Don’t use unsure words such as “could be considered”, “on average”, or “for some.”  Write with strength and confidence that you are simply the best and you stand behind it.

6)     Don’t Ramble.

Who doesn’t love to talk about themselves?  However, a speed dating session is not the time to ramble on about your 100 different great attributes in excruciating detail.  Keep your landing pages short and concise and above the fold if possible.  You can discuss more on your first real date.  Remember your searcher is interviewing many other potential candidates and you don’t want to dilute yourself here – better to get one message across effectively than become the whiny website that just went on and on until the searcher tuned out and their eyes start to wonder the room.

7)     Drop Some Names.

Everyone is intrigued by a popular person or business that has some well-known associations.  Don’t be shy here; you only have a few seconds so feel free to tout names of customers, awards, or “as seen in”.   Dropping a few names is much more effective than paragraphs of text stating how awesome you are.

8)     Show Off Your Best… er… Assets.

It’s cool to give your searcher a little teaser here.  What can they expect if they work with you?  Tell or show them just enough about results to make them want to learn more.

9)     Hone Your Pickup Lines.

As with dating there are two sets of pickup lines you’ll need to master.  The first is your pickup line to get the searcher to stay and read on.  Try out taglines from your PPC ads that seem to get you the most attention.  After you’ve got their attention, you’ll need a second great line to get their contact information.  It’s not only the pickup line you need to think about, but the delivery as well — the font, colors, button presentation etc. will all have an impact.

10)  Get Their Number!

The goal of this speed dating scenario is to get the searcher’s information so you can court them.  Make sure that this is prominent on the page.  If you allow the searcher to wander from your landing page through your site, make sure your form is accessible everywhere so they don’t have to find their way back to the original meeting spot to provide you with their phone number.  Let them know what to expect after they provide you with that information – do they get a free consultation or access to something valuable?   Speed daters are more inclined to fork over that number if they know a five-star meal awaits.

Remember the Yield Web Marketing Suite includes our Landing Page Optimizer — a proprietary multivariate test engine that enables you to set up quick landing page experiments to determine which version of a landing page converts best over time.  If you’re not using it already, I urge you to give it a try.  Too often, search marketing ends at the moment someone clicks on a paid or natural search results, without any regard to what happens “post-click”.  It’s a shame when search marketers go to a great deal of trouble to optimize their paid and natural search rankings only to see clicks failing to materialize into real business.  Don’t fall in to this trap!

Start optimizing your landing pages today.

Okay, so we’ve talked about developing a landing page that keeps people on the page (versus letting them wander around your Website) and writing punchy headlines that draw people in to your page.

Now we’ll talk about calls-to-action.

When people think of a call-to-action, they hear a big beefy loud-mouth infomercial guy pitching cleaning products to consumers:

AND WHEN YOU ORDER THE PRODUCT RIGHT NOW, WE’LL SEND YOU NOT ONE, BUT TWO PRODUCTS – ALL FOR $24.95 PLUS SHIPPING AND HANDLING.

THAT’S TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE WHEN YOU PLACE YOUR ORDER RIGHT NOW THROUGH THIS SPECIAL TV OFFER!

In fact, I hear from companies that have actually removed calls-to-action from marketing collateral and Web pages because it’s “too salesy.”

In truth, a call-to-action is simply verbiage that tells people what to do next:
•    Sign up for a trial offer or demo
•    Place an order
•    Call a toll-free number
•    Download a white paper or guide
•    Subscribe to an e-newsletter
•    Register for a Webinar

Don’t confuse a call-to-action with a premium or offer. A call to action tells the prospect what to do next. A premium is a bonus, offer, or gift that gives the prospect even more reason to take the desired action.

Because they increase conversions, premiums and calls-to-action are often joined at the hip, like this:

Sign up today for a 30-day no-risk free trial of Yield’s Web Marketing Suite!

In order to get people to take a desired action, the call-to-action must state exactly what you want people to do, it must not include other types of actions, and it must be clearly visible on the page.

In addition, if your call to action includes a registration or purchase form, you should ensure the form is easy to complete in order to reduce abandoned forms. (Test your forms at home and via the various browsers – Mozilla’s Firefox, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome, and Apple’s Safari – to ensure all users can complete the form without a hitch.)

As with all aspects of the landing page, you can definitely test calls-to-action. Elements to test include:

Placement on the page – If you have a long-copy sales page, test the placement of the “submit order” or “purchase now” button to see which pulls the best response. Try placing it mid-page, multiple times on the page, within an “info” box at the bottom of the page, and as a simple text link.

Color – If you have a “register now” box or “purchase now” button, test colors to see which one works best.

Copy – Does a question such as, “Are you ready to see increased response on your landing pages?” draw more response than a statement such as, “Let Yield Software show you how to increase landing page conversions”? Test both.

Offer – Adding an offer to your call-to-action may increase conversions, but it pays to test various offers to learn which one your prospects and customers prefer.

Links – Which words in the call-to-action should you hyperlink?  The actual desired action such as “register now,” “sign up today,” or “download your free [item]” or is it better to link the name of the white paper, Webinar, product, or demo? Test and find out!

So here’s our pitch and call to action: Don’t forget that Yield’s Web Marketing Suite makes it very easy to test these and other elements – in real time – while our system automatically delivers the best performing page to your visitors over time.

To learn more, try our FREE no-risk 30-day trial of our Standard Package that supports up to $2,500 in ad spend, 1,000 keywords, and five landing pages.

This is a $129 value that comes with no obligation – meaning, try it for 30 days for free and if you don’t like it, walk away. Register for your free 30-day trial today! (Now how’s that for a good call-to-action?)

In my last blog post, I covered how to develop a landing page that increases conversions by limiting people’s options to explore other areas of your Website.  As I discussed in the post, you have many elements on the landing page that can make or break conversion rates, and one of those elements is the headline.

In his book, Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples explains why headlines are so important:

“In most advertisements, no matter how striking the illustration, the headlines are critically important. The majority of the public reads little else when deciding whether or not they are interested.”

The same holds true for landing pages – which are basically direct response ads designed to get people to take some sort of action.

So how do you add some muscle to your flabby headlines? Whole books have been written on this topic – so there’s no way I can cover everything. What follows are five basic strategies for more muscular headlines any company can quickly implement:

First: Spend more time writing them. Tom Ahern, expert fundraising consultant, speaker and author, says people will spend hours writing copy and only two minutes writing the headline – if that.  Usually written at the last minute, headlines, he says, are given very little thought – and it shows in the weak anemic headlines that populate fundraising materials. His advice? Spend more time on the headline and less time on the body copy.

Second: Write multiple headlines. Instead of writing one headline, brainstorm multiple headlines. The more you write, the more ideas you’ll come up with – and the punchier your headlines will become. If you have only one offer, consider writing multiple headlines that “pitch” the offer in different ways. For example, if you have a white paper offer, write headlines that present the offer as a “white paper,” “guide,” or “e-book,” and test to see which draws the best response.

Once you decide on a headline, don’t throw your discarded headlines away. You can use these to test against your main headline. Who knows – one of your “trashed” ideas could draw stellar response rates!

Third: Get input from others. Don’t rely on your own imagination only for a great headline. Solicit the opinions of others. One small change can turn a good headline into a response-busting headline.

Fourth: Include a time-based call-to-action. “Conference Registration Now Open” is a so-so headline. “Early Bird Special: $200 off Registration!” is better. Changing it to “Save $200 When You Register by June 15!” gives people an incentive to take action now.

Another incentive is the word “free,” which has been proven time and again to increase response rates. So use it if you have a free offer – i.e.: “Free Webinar,” “Free White Paper,” “Free Demo.”

Finally: Test your headlines. Components to test include color, size, and copy.

Test colors – What happens when you put the word “FREE” in red? How about the entire headline in red? Or blue?

Test font size – Increase the font size so that you have only one or two words per line. Does this increase response or lower it?

Test copy – And of course, test different headlines to determine which one delivers the best response.

In the old days, you used to have to test these things manually. Now with our Yield Web Marketing Suite, which includes a Landing Page Optimization Module, you can quickly test headlines, including color, size and copy – and see results in real time. (The module includes an easy-to-use wizard that guides you through the creation of multiple versions of your standard landing page.)  Our multivariate testing engine automatically serves up the best performing page to your visitors over time – improving your conversion rates while saving you considerable time and money.

If you’re testing headlines, let us know how you do. We’d love to feature your success story. You can send me an email at press[at]yieldsoftware[dot]com.

Transactional landing pages have one purpose only: to get people to take one specific action, whether it’s filling out a form for a white paper, purchasing a product, or even subscribing to an e-newsletter.

Yet many companies lower landing page conversion rates by providing opportunities to browse for related goods and services or offering all kinds of back-up information to support their offer.

In other words, if you’re trying to get people to sign up for your Webinar and on your landing page you have links to your Website, YouTube video, and white papers, you’re encouraging people to click away from your landing page – perhaps never to return.

I call this “Distraction Interaction.” Think about what happens when you go online to do something:

Initially… you open your email client to send someone an important email, but first you read your new messages and find an interesting newsletter, which you click open to read.

Then… within the newsletter are a few links to blogs and articles, which you read. An industry guru wrote one of the blog posts and you see her Twitter handle, so you open TweetDeck in order to follow her and then get sucked into Twitter . . . .

An hour later… you come up for air, completely forgetting you were supposed to send your customer that important email.

This exact process is what happens when you include links to additional information on your landing page!

To significantly decrease Distraction Interaction and increase conversions for various types of landing pages, consider the following tips:

Eliminate ALL links to your Website, blog, etc. – Eliminating links discourages people from clicking off your landing page and falling into a rabbit hole on your Website. If you want people to visit your site, give them a link on the “thank you” page once the transaction is complete.

Keep forms simple – A MarketingSherpa report on white papers revealed that people do not want to fill out long, complicated forms. On another note, have people outside your company test your forms before they’re live; you want to ensure they work smoothly and that your spam filter isn’t gobbling up the response emails.

Focus on one objective – The objective of the landing page is to get people to do one thing. Whatever your objective, ensure all landing page components support that objective, from the headline and body copy to the design and graphics.

Don’t “bait and switch” – If you’re using PPC, SEO, or other “inbound” methods to get people to the landing page, make sure the headline and the offer match what people are expecting to get. Nothing is worse than getting to a landing page that’s offering something completely different then what the ad copy proclaimed.

Include a “hero shot” – If you’re offering a product, white paper or other tangible item, include a graphic of the cover, a headshot of the Webinar presenter, or a photo of the item.

Once you have these elements in place, you can then begin testing headlines, images, form and copy to see what increases or decreases conversions, some of which we’ll cover in subsequent posts to this one.  And remember that our Yield Web Marketing Suite includes a landing page optimization module that enables real-time multivariate tests of landing pages. Our wizard takes you step-by-step through a process of creating test pages from your original; serves different versions as people click on links to your landing page; and automatically begins to favors the page that converts best overtime, improving your conversion rates in real time.

Do you have other suggestions for improving landing page conversions? Send us a tweet via Twitter at @YieldSW.

Building a sustainable program of communications with your customers and your prospects is an important strategy for continually driving traffic, leads and / or sales. But I often hear from small business owners they just don’t have the time to do the necessary legwork to foster a multidimensional program.

The good news is technology and web-based services are changing so rapidly, there are lots of great ways to create multiple outbound communications that get the results you’re looking for without a huge investment of time or money.

What follows are ten tips, tricks and strategies for effectively communicating with your prospects and customers.

#1: Produce Once, Reuse Many. Many small business owners fall into the trap of believing every form of outbound communication must be wholly unique. While it may be important to adapt headlines and content length depending upon the medium, it is perfectly acceptable to, say, take a blog post you’ve recently written and use it in an upcoming email newsletter you’re preparing. While there will be some audience overlap, most people are forgiving on this front and you shouldn’t encounter much in the way of objection for re-purposing content across multiple communications channels.

#2: Start an Email Newsletter. Using low cost or free newsletter services such as Constant Contact is a great way for you to stay in touch with both prospects and existing customers (I use Constant Contact for the Yield Newsletter). Be sure to give visitors to your site a visible and easy way to sign up for your newsletter – newsletters are most successful when folks voluntarily opt-in to receive them (for instance, if you look on Yield Software’s Community Pages, you’ll see sign-up boxes on the top and bottom of the page). Sending newsletters to folks who don’t ask for them not only irritates them, it could be breaking the Federal Can-Spam Act. Take a look at newsletters others put out so you can get a sense of what works and what doesn’t from your own point of view. Using Constant Contact, you can set up a simple and attractive template for your newsletter. Try sending a newsletter out every two weeks or so. They don’t require a lot of writing, and you can certainly re-purpose content from your blog, or point to other sources of content you find interesting or useful. And, of course, you should also highlight any special promotions or special offers you have — and link to those pages. (Small pitch: be sure to use the Yield Web Marketing Suite to optimize all your landing pages to ensure you’re getting the best possible conversion-to-sale you can.)

#3: Sign Up for HARO – Help a Reporter Out. This terrific service, founded and run by the highly energetic Peter Shankman, helps to connect reporters and writers working on stories with sources or subject matter experts. Typically, Peter distributes two-to-four emails per day showing the most recent reporter entreaties. Peter also hosts periodic conference calls where he goes over best practices for responding to reporter queries and how best to incorporate PR strategies for your own business. It can be hard to get, but landing a mention – or better yet, a full feature – about your business in a story can drive great awareness about you and traffic to your website.

#4: Set Up a Blog. I’ve encouraged you to do this in other posts and so I’ll say it again: start and maintain a blog. Ideally your blog will be integrated into your main website and URL structure (and not hosted on separate blog hosting platform with a unique URL.) There are enormous SEO benefits to maintaining a blog and it’s a great way to continually reconnect with your customers. Blog posts don’t have to be long and involved – a paragraph each day or two with updates, or links to relevant news or information, or highlighting one of your customers or employees is all it takes. Throw in a few photos from your company’s Flickr stream and before you know it, you’ll be a bona fide blogger!

#5: Set up Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. If you haven’t already, bite the bullet and do this. I guarantee you that your competition either is or very soon will be using these platforms for their business communications. (Take a look at ours as an example – the links are in the right-hand column of our Community Pages.) Some people choose to keep their professional and personal lives separate for each of these services, which is totally fine. Doing this adds a level of management complexity, which is why I don’t distinguish between the two, but I understand why people prefer to keep things separate. Each of these platforms provides excellent networking opportunities for individuals and businesses, and standing on the sidelines looking in just isn’t an option any longer.

#6: Connect Twitter with Social Network Updates. Be sure your Twitter account is linked with the social networking platforms on which you’ve established a presence (i.e. Facebook). A great way to do this is using FriendFeed, which asks you to put in user information for each service. Then, when you post updates to your Twitter stream those same updates will then automatically appear in your Facebook and other update streams. This way, no matter how your customers, friends and family may follow you, they’re getting the same update. And because Twitter enables you to post your updates via your mobile phone, you can be highly efficient with this activity. (Just remember: this is a form of mass communication. Once you’ve hit the “enter” button, you can’t take what you say back!)

#7: Install a Twitter Monitoring Application. While Twitter on its on own is a terrific service, a number of other companies have sprouted up to make using and getting the most out of Twitter a breeze. The two leading desktop apps, TweetDeck and Twhirl, do this using a dashboard feature that enables you to not only do your updates but also to keep track of all those you follow; save searches for your own or your competitor’s business; and monitor tweets pertaining to a specific set of keywords (for instance, if you’re baker, you may want to follow all tweets using the word “bakery”.) I personally use TweetDeck but Twhirl is also hugely popular, too. Both are free and both get better and better each passing month. HootSuite is a Web application that enables you to manage multiple Twitter accounts (for instance, if you keep your personal Twitter account separate from your business and other accounts). HootSuite also allows you to schedule tweets for later broadcast and a bunch of other cool things. If you have an iPhone, check out a cool little app called Tweetie; like HootSuite, it allows you monitor and update multiple accounts via a single interface on your iPhone. Check out each of these and pick the one that feels right for you.

#8. Sign-up for a Press Release Distribution Service. Though most small and growing businesses very rarely issue press releases, when this makes sense for you, a distribution service like BusinessWire or PRWeb is a great way to distribute your release. While not free, the most basic service for each is pretty low cost for local distribution (i.e. San Francisco Bay Area) and hits the major online news sites – which, frankly, is almost all most small businesses really need to do. Distributing the occasional release (which should have real news in them) can be great for SEO and building link-love to your company’s website. Additionally, well-written, relevant and timely releases can capture the attention of reporters and bloggers. Releases can also generate new traffic to your site, so be sure the release includes links to relevant pages on your website that pertain to the news you’re announcing. Ideally there will be a special promotional offer for these visitors.

#9. Use Screencasting. Screencasts are digital recordings of a computer screen. They enable you to capture the interactions you undertake on a website or a Web application as a way of providing a demonstration. Screencasts can also be promotional in nature, highlighting the best places on your website that folks should be sure to check out during their next visit. Most screencasting software not only captures your interactions as they unfold, but also capture your narration – the audio – as you take folks through your online tour. One of my favorite blogs, Mashable, did a great job of listing the leading screencasting tools, most of which are very, very affordable.  Because I use a Mac, I use IShowU, which is a great piece of software for Mac users. Creating screencasts can be fast and easy, and you can create new ones whenever you’d like. Then, feature these on your website, via your blog posts and in your newsletter. You can also send out tweets via Twitter when a new screencast becomes available.

#10: Set Up a YouTube Channel. Anyone can make videos. Even you. Small business owners, in fact, often do so with the help of their kids or close friends. Tape an interview with one of your customers, for instance; or a trip to source new products to sell on your site; or the manufacturing process for your cool, totally unique little doodad. If you’ve created screencasts, you can feature them on your YouTube channel, too. You can then feature the videos in your channel, as well as those from others, on your blog and throughout your website. With quality video recording equipment getting less and less expensive by the day, and with the availability of high-quality, low cost editing software, video production is now a DIY (do it yourself) endeavor. (Buy a Macintosh computer, for instance, and it comes bundled with iMovie, which is a nearly professional, yet easy-to-use video editing software included in the price of the purchase.)

Your time is precious and limited – I understand that. But by choosing the right collection of outbound communications tools for you, it’s very likely you’ll be able to efficiently and effectively stay in touch with customers and prospects. Try starting small and adding new elements to your strategy over time – I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

For more blog posts in our small business marketing strategies series, go here.