Where To Turn When Your Landing Page Is Not Converting?

If you’ve been following my blog, you probably noticed that today I completely overhauled and redesigned my entire blog. I looked at my conversion rates and frankly I was a bit disappointed. It was right around 14%. I know, that’s respectable, but after reaching 33% conversion on my other website, I’ve set the standard high for myself.

Earlier today, I was visiting some forums and came across a couple people who were looking for feedback on their landing pages. I figured I would talk about what I saw, since they both lacked good copywriting skills. If you are serious about building a business online and you don’t want to hire a copywriter or you can’t afford one just yet (because you will eventually, right?), then I strongly suggest that you get your pretty little self to the bookstore and get some books on copywriting.

One thing to keep in mind is that these copywriters are marketers and their books focus solely on marketing principles and very little on writing style. So what I did was find a book that my English teacher gave me back when I was in College and actually read it (who would’ve thought that what you learn in college can actually be applied in real life)… anyways, the book is “The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr And E.B. White”. This will help anyone who is having trouble making their copy sound more to the point, specific, snappy, etc.

The next thing I noticed with both these individuals was that they were measuring the wrong metrics. One guy was testing his landing page, based on 200 hits he got from random traffic. Here’s where I really really love Google AdWords. A person that stumbles upon your website through SEO is a random guess of whether or not they are your specific target market. With a Google Adwords Campaign, you can buy laser targeted traffic and know within a matter of hours whether or not (I’ll be blunt)your landing page sucks!…

The problem with not driving targeted traffic to your landing page is that you will optimize your page based on feedback from non targeted traffic. When you do this, your conversion rates go down and a single percent can mean the difference between staying in the game or getting wiped out of the online marketing world

So here’s what I do when I put together a landing page. I open up the page and I turn around. I pick up a book and read for a minute or two. I then look back at pay attention to what draws my attention first. If the answer to this is anything other than the headline or a powerful picture with copy underneath it, I then redesign the webpage. Next, I make sure that my headline and my first paragraph say the absolute most important thing I have to tell my prospects, because I know I only have 3-4 seconds to get their attention. Last I put aside my copywriting knowledge and read to see how I feel about the copy.

If you do these three things in your landing pages over and over, you can get your conversion rates up higher than you think.

Do you do anything different?

Tags: copywriting tips, landing page conversion tips, landing page suggestions, why you want to use google adwords