 Reprinted from Appendix 2 of this completely revised and rewritten book. |
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Reprinted from Appendix 2 of this completely revised and rewritten book. |
The landing page checklist below is unique in its scope and detail. There is nothing quite like it anywhere. The checklist is designed to help you assess what you have already done and what is left to do on any given landing page. For each item you'll find the page number where the subject is discussed in Dr. Ralph Wilson's newly-revised How to Develop a Landing Page (3rd edition, 2008).
This free checklist may make landing page development seem deceptively easy. Yes, it is an extremely helpful and comprehensive list. But success is found not in knowing what to do, but why and how to do it. Landing page development is an art, supplemented and refined by scientific testing. My hope for you is that you learn from some source just how to execute what is outlined here -- whether from articles or in seminars, from the excellent MarketingSherpa Landing Page Handbook (2nd edition, 2007, $497, 273 pages), or in the pages of How to Develop a Landing Page (3rd Edition, 89 pages, at a tiny fraction of the MarketingSherpa price). Because if you can put this knowledge to work on your landing pages, you'll reap many, many times the profit you are currently experiencing.
Note: No single landing page can or should incorporate all these elements. Use only the ones which seem to fit your industry, site, and product or service.
_____ Clarify a single objective for your landing page, avoiding multiple goals. (p. 10)
_____ Budget time and money adequate to producing an excellent landing page. (p. 13)
_____ Prepare a landing page list for your site. (pp. 13-14)
_____ Research current or potential customer base. (p. 15)
_____ Write persona profiles on basis of customer research. (p. 16)
_____ Define your value proposition or Unique Selling Proposition (USP). (p. 20)
_____ Develop a strong landing page headline. (pp. 21-25)
_____ Ensure strong congruence between the ad (or ad group) and the landing page in wording and graphics. (p. 23)
_____ Employ Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) on your landing page to lower the landing page bounce rate. (p. 24)
_____ Focus on customer benefits. (pp. 25-26)
_____ Enhance the customer's desire. (pp. 26-27)
_____ Create a rationale for the purchase. (p. 27)
_____ Use a problem-solution model. (pp. 27-28)
_____ Highlight features of the product or service. (p. 28)
_____ Anticipate each common objection to the purchase. (p. 28)
_____ Avoid unsupported or unsupportable claims. (p. 26)
_____ Determine appropriate landing page length for your product or service. (pp. 29-31)
_____ Address fears of identity theft and credit card security. (p. 31)
_____ Provide full contact information. (pp. 31-32)
_____ Develop a guarantee in order to add "risk reversal" to your motivators. (pp. 32-33)
_____ Offer a free trial. (pp. 33-34)
_____ Outline your returns policy. (p. 34)
_____ Add trust logos to inspire customer confidence. (p. 34)
_____ Tell your "story" to build trust. (p. 35)
_____ Edit effective testimonials. (pp. 35-36)
_____ Add product reviews to your site. (pp. 36-37)
_____ State your offer clearly. (p. 38)
_____ Offer free shipping. (pp. 38-39)
_____ Include add-on incentives to sweeten the deal. (p. 39)
_____ Employ the principle of scarcity. (pp. 39-40)
_____ Write a strong caption for your call to action or order button. (pp. 40-41)
_____ Survey industry norms for landing page look and feel. (pp. 42-43)
_____ Avoid elements that lower your Quality Score. (pp. 42-33)
_____ Include your "critical elements" above the fold. (pp. 44-46)
_____ Convey feature(s), benefit(s), and/or value(s) through your graphics. (p. 47)
_____ Place the "hero shot" to the left of your text. (p. 47)
_____ Use a caption under your hero shot. (p. 48)
_____ Make your hero shot clickable. (p. 48)
_____ Study click patterns with CrazyEgg. (p. 48)
_____ Use enough photos to answer questions and show functions. (p. 48)
_____ Avoid distracting photos and graphics. (pp. 48-49)
_____ Supply excellent quality product photos. (p. 48)
_____ Place graphic with the shopper's eyepath in mind. (p. 49)
_____ Use typefaces that are 10 point size or larger. (pp. 49-50)
_____ Avoid the use of italics, underlining (except hyperlinks), centering body face, and unrestrained colored type. (p. 50)
_____ Use a white or very light background. (pp. 50-51)
_____ Limit column width to 50 to 60 characters. (p. 51)
_____ Utilize scanable features such as headlines, subheads, lists, and boldface. (pp. 51-52)
_____ Use a single column format. (p. 52)
_____ Avoid unnecessary outbound links from the landing page. (p. 52)
_____ Avoid clutter, use white space and clean design principles. (pp. 52-53, 59)
_____ Use small windows or dynamically expanding text to answer customer questions. (pp. 53-58)
_____ Don't require registration before the sale. (p. 58)
_____ Design your order button for appropriate size, color, wording, and placement. (pp. 58-59)
_____ Use audio to engage the customer. (pp. 60-61)
_____ Employ video to enhance the sales process (pp. 61-63)
_____ Acquire avatars or spokespersons to engage the customer. (p. 63)
_____ Ask on lead generation forms only what is needed, omit reset buttons, and include a link to your privacy policy and "About Us" information. (pp. 63-64)
_____ Provide instant contact tools. (p. 64)
_____ Employ coupons to motivate slow shoppers. (p. 64)
_____ Extend a new offer on your thank you page or e-mail. (p. 64)
_____ Select and sign up for a testing tool such as Vertster or Google Website Optimizer. (p. 71)
_____ Test the most important landing page elements from the top 10. (pp. 70-71)
_____ Set up an ad tracking system. (p. 72)
_____ Optimize your Google AdWords title and text. (p. 72)
_____ Avoid errors from simultaneously optimizing both ads and landing pages. (p. 73)
_____ Test usability on your landing page and through to the sales confirmation page. (p. 73-74)
_____ Study scrolling behavior using ClickTale. (p. 74)
_____ Analyze and optimize sales paths. (p. 75)
_____ Maintain a journal of test results. (p. 75)
_____ Segment your visitors. (pp. 77-79)
_____ Develop a sales path for each persona. (p. 79)
Copyright © 2008, Ralph F. Wilson. All rights reserved. This checklist may distributed to individuals electronically so long as there is no change whatsoever to the content, links and graphic, and so long as the copyright statement and permission is left intact. All rights are reserved except as granted in the previous sentence. For any other use contact the author at Web Marketing Today.