Chakras for Landing Pages

If business is war, then landing page testing and development are pitched battles to win consumers over competitors. Just as in war, the first thing we do in developing landing pages is to create a strategy

This is the process we use in Engine Ready’s landing page development section. First we like to list out strengths and weaknesses of a clients offer, product, or service.

This is the process we use in Engine Ready’s landing page development section. First we like to list out strengths and weaknesses of a clients offer, product, or service.

For this example, let’s say our new client makes stand up desks (a hot topic in the office lately!)

These are the strong points of their product:

– Numerous Health benefits to using one over a traditional desk.

How is it healthier? Answer: Better for posture and back. Aids digestions and increases calorie consumption by burning an additional 60 calories per hour over a sit down desk. Breaking this out for someone uses a desk 8 hours a day 5 days a week leads to burning an additional 9,600 calories per month.

– Client reports receiving emails from customers who are very pleased by their new stand up desk.

If someone pays full price for a product or service and still writes a thank you note to the company they’re more than a satisfied customer. If it’s possible, we like to speak with them directly. A conversation with a customer evangelist can be very beneficial to the development of a strong landing page.

– Height Adjustment is very easy.

Since it’s easy to adjust, it’s especially well-suited for home offices where more than one person uses the same computer. And for companies where more than one person uses the same work station.

This is the weakness of the product

– It’s 9% more expensive than similar desks.

Why is it more expensive? The main reason is that because our client is smaller he does not get the same discounts larger manufacturers get when they buy materials in bulk.

There’s not much we can do with this.

Almost as a side note, the client mentions that the ball bearing system in the adjustment arm he uses is more expensive. Why? Because he uses Swiss made ball bearings and pulley system which are better quality. What does this mean to the consumer? It’s smoother to adjust than other standup desks.

After bouncing ideas around we decide on turning the weakness of the price comparison to competitors into the focus of the pitch.

We do this by building text around this theme:

“The only stand up desk with the Glide Adjustment System. It might be a bit more expensive but over the life of your desk it’s less than a penny a day.

Because all stand up desks provide the same health benefits, the secondary focus will be the calorie burning and health benefits.

From there, we fill out the rest of the page with applicable text and order a 15 second video clip showing an elderly woman adjusting the desk height.

For the first split test we reverse the benefits focus and make the health features the main focus and the glide adjustment the secondary point.

You can ask almost any kindergartner in the world what their favorite color is and they will respond with a very decisive answer. “Blue”, “red”, “green” or “the whole rainbow” are just a few of the answers that I remember hearing in grammar school. Colors appeal to the senses and emotions in a very powerful way. I recently read about how mental institutions and hospitals have been using color therapy since the 1930s. The exposure to certain calming hues has had powerful results in many patients. If color can have this much influence in the offline world, image the role it plays in the world of Internet Marketing.

This design below has been converting between 6 and 8 percent…

Most of us know the basic rules of landing page design, many of them discussed in a previous post. Landing pages should have a clear and concise call-to-action, effortless navigation, appealing images, readable text, and etc. I know for myself, it’s natural to rely on the accepted formula for a successful landing page, rather than really tuning into the wants and needs of the consumer. This realization came about when my colleague recently showed me a landing page that was converting between 10 and 13 percent. Appallingly, this winning page looked like a design straight from 1997. It was a mess of low resolution clipart, a bouncing image, some small grey text, and a generic contact form. After coming back from my state of shock, I tried to pinpoint what made this horrendous design so successful. The only element of the design that was even remotely appealing to me at least, was a small image of the beach. So, I ran with that.

This design below has been converting between 6 and 8 percent. Decent, but not nearly the results one should be complacent with inside the debt settlement industry.

We took the same structure of that design, but swapped out the background image to create this:

The A/B split test has been running for barely a week, but this new design has been converting at 12.50%! With roughly only 200 views, this design in not the clear winner but the results are promising.

Why is this design converting better than the previous thus far? I believe both of these tranquil images generate positive psychological and emotional responses, but which one does so more effectively? According to Chakra Therapy, the green tones in image #1 are believed to be a healing and balancing, the blue hues in image #2 are believed to be “soothers of the mind”. Although being balanced and soothed both sound appealing, someone in financial debt is most likely stressed and therefore would need mental tranquility. Obviously, this is just a theory and only a true A/B test can tell us who the real winner is but experiment itself really taught me a valuable lesson in thinking more deeply about consumers. Instead of simply criticizing a design based upon industry beliefs and practices, digging a little bit deeper into the needs and emotions of prospective customers is worth considering.

If you’re considering landing page development, why not give Engine Ready a call?  We’d love to speak with you!