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5 Bad Things About Landing Pages
Trying to cram as much of it as possible onto one
page puts the burden on the respondent to sift
through it. Unfortunately, most of the time, they’re
just not that into you yet. Scott Brinker reveals
the top five bad things about landing pages.
1. Sagging Page Syndrome (SPS), also known as “the
kitchen sink.” Some things in life really are so
simple that one short page sums it up clearly for
everyone. But for the far majority of products and
services in the world, there’s a little more to it.
Trying to cram as much of it as possible on to one
page, puts the burden on the respondent to sift
through it.
Unfortunately, most of the time, they’re just not
that into you yet. With a landing path, you can
jettison the page one clutter—referred to as the
5-seconds to 5-minutes disconnect—and help
respondents quickly get to what’s important to them.
2. Rushing for the close. Landing pages that
immediately present the respondent with a form to
fill out—to subscribe, get a download, request more
information, etc.—are just plain rude. A respondent
clicked on your ad by expressing a modicum of
interest, a willingness to consider what you have to
say. If you immediately demand a commitment with
their name and email address, or more, it’s like
walking into an electronics store and having a
salesperson instantly thrust a purchase order in
your hands.
Not surprisingly, this approach has a low conversion
rate. Good post-click marketing builds trust with a
step or two of a “conversation” before popping the
question, as any good salesperson would.
3. No segmentation—clicks are treated as a
commodity. Not all clicks are created equal. Ad
response traffic often contains a spectrum of
different audience segments. They clicked on the
same ad, yes, but not all for the same reason, not
all with the same needs. The one-page format of
landing pages makes the same pitch to all of them,
oblivious to their distinctions. If the page focuses
only on one segment, it disenfranchises the others;
if it tries to speak to all segments at once, its
passion and relevance to any one segment are watered
down.
The best practice of landing paths is to use that
first page to induce a one-click directed behavioral
segmentation choice — and then speak with conviction
and authority to a respondent’s specific interests.
4. Optimizing the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Landing page optimization is not unlike Henry Ford’s
original production line: you can do any
optimization you want, as long as it’s on this one
page. Hey, we’re fine with testing which combination
of headline, image, and offer button works best, but
you can waste a lot of time on minutia (”does this
work better with a comma or a semicolon?”), when you
should be testing much more important elements of
your campaign—such as your audience segmentation and
the sequence of your pitch.
With so many niche marketing opportunities competing
for your attention, you need the big hits far more
than the incremental tweaks.
5. Giving bad brand. Collectively, all of the
problems above contribute to making landing pages
bad branding experiences. Landing pages are quick
and cheap—which is good—but they often look quick
and cheap, which is not good. Not good at all.
Because it signals quick and cheap for your brand,
and unless you’re the Dollar Store, that’s not a
good image to put in people’s minds. A landing
experience should look, feel, and behave, so as to
signal two important things:
• you care about the impressions of that respondent
who just clicked and
• they can be assured that you take pride in
everything your organization does.
The good news is that fixing these problems in
post-click marketing really isn’t that hard. Stop
thinking at the page level and start thinking at the
path level.
Leverage audience segmentation. And remember that
your brand never gets a second chance to make a
first impression.
---Source:
Scott Brinker is president and CTO of ion
interactive (www.ioninteractive.com)
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