How to Optimize a Landing Page

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

A landing page serves as a bridge between the marketing message that brings visitors to your website and the site functionality that enables those visitors to take action, such as filling out a lead form or making a purchase. In essence, it’s your organization’s first impression to the online community. In today’s market, first impressions are tough to overcome, especially when the competition is just one click away. The old saying holds true, you only get one chance to make a good first impression – so don’t blow it. Here are quick and easy steps to ensure your landing page meets customer expectations.

Steps

1. Determine if there are any obstacles to scanning the page. Today’s rule of thumb is that a Pentium I-586 user connecting via dial-up should to be able to quickly see your landing page and complete its call to action. Can they? Double-check the page appearance in different browsers, paying special attention to video and flash, as they not only create distraction, but also build additional barriers for the user to overcome.
   
2. Consider how hard it is to leave the page or get sidetracked. Check your headline. There’s not always a perfect headline, but there are a lot of bad ones. Most users will make the decision to stay or go within seconds of visiting your landing page. Your headline must catch the user’s attention immediately and compel them to keep reading. Unlike traditional website navigation, landing page navigation should make it difficult for a user to easily leave the page. Allowing website navigation on the landing page offers more exit options and may hurt the conversion rate. Another reason to remove the standard website navigation is to gain better control over what the visitor sees and interacts with on the page.
   
3. Determine if the page has a fold. It’s recommended that any folds on your landing page be eliminated. However, if a fold is unavoidable, make sure it does not take away from the call to action – keep all important components above the fold. In addition, it’s okay to have multiple CTAs (calls-to-action) on one page, as long as the primary CTA is in the top position above the fold.
   
4. Consider if you are gathering unnecessary data. Poorly constructed and unreasonably lengthy forms are still surprisingly common in today’s landing pages. Remember to keep the user in mind and optimize your forms to provide the best experience. Evaluate each form field to determine if the information requested is really necessary. To make the form better, allow:
   
   • The input cursor to hop to the next field after the current field is completed;
     
   • the user to tab around fields,
     
   • fields to be auto-populated where possible.
     
   
   
5. Decide the amount of white space needed on the page. Studies show that white space improves the user experience and allows key messages to stand out. Your landing page should do the same. Evaluate every element on the page for its contribution to user conversion rate. If you don’t need it to get your message across, remove it. It may seem like more is always better. But if you take a step back and really give it some thought, is more really better? Don’t overload your users.
   
6. Consider adding testimonials and a link to Privacy Policy on the page. Testimonials and privacy policies help create the necessary levels of trust required for today’s online businesses. Would you purchase an item from a site that did not have this information? In addition, if you have any awards or other forms of recognition, a landing page is a great place to highlight them and boost your corporate validation.
   
7. Make it easy for the user. All buttons on the page need to be big, use full color, and be located above the page fold. Test to learn what colors and sizes work best but take baby steps and test one thing at a time, or you risk not understanding what exactly worked the magic.
   
8. Analyze the time required to load the page. Pages that take too long to load produce “barely there” conversion rates, a poor user experience, and Google quality score issues. Use tools to check your page load times and make sure it takes less than 7.5 seconds to load.
   
9. Examine the impact of using photography on the page. Images are probably the most controversial element of any page, but even more so for landing pages. Try testing stock imagery versus amateur photography. An image should compliment your messages, making the entire page look more professional.
   
10. Ensure your landing page is avoided by search engine spiders. If you are creating multiple landing pages with only slight variations in text, it’s wise to ensure that these pages are kept away from search engine spiders. To prevent duplicate content penalties from search engines, make your general purpose landing page available for indexing, but use robots.txt or a robots meta tag to exclude other pages.
    

Tips

• Employing these techniques can greatly improve the success of your company’s landing page and in return, increase sales conversion. Taking simple steps to increase the usability and appeal of your page can give your company the edge over competitors – and in these tough economic times, can make the difference for your business and its future.
  
• Invest some time in testing and optimizing your company’s landing page. If done properly, it can offer a gateway to your business, giving customers the information they need to make purchasing decisions and delivering the essential sales information you need internally to run a successful business.
  

Warnings

• If you make an obstacle to users getting to your information, they will leave. A good rule of thumb is that if more than 90% of users will click a single link, you should send all users there without forcing them to click on it. (The other 10% can click on a link from that page to go where they want).
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Make a Website
  
• How to Increase Website Traffic
  
• How to Get Your Website Indexed by Google
  

Sources and Citations

• http://www.semwisdom.com/blog/featured-article - Original source, shared with permission.
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Optimize a Landing Page. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

7 Essential Twitter Tips

I received these Twitter tips from my Facebook friend Kevin Thomas. You can also follow him at the end of this article.
**********************************************************************************
Twitter Tips:

Tip #1: People buy from those they know, trust, and like. Salesmen chase people away. So don’t sell on Twitter, just make friends. Talk about anything funny, interesting, fun, what you like and don’t like, send out cool quotes. Then 1 out of 10 posts, invite them to your blog or website and ask their opinion on it, ask them to comment, or just share an informative site. You are gradually building relationships and becoming popular.

Tip #2: Use Twollo to follow people who tweet about topics within your target market.

Tip #3: Find someone in your area of business and follow his or her subscribers one at a time. About half will follow you back.

Tip #4: Use Tweet Later to send auto replies to people who follow you back. Say something friendly. Don’t just put a link in to your site. That will chase people away. Ask something about them.

Tip #5: Use Tweet later to schedule 5 tweets a day, or more, for the next month, and use the distribute feature to spread them out evenly throughout the month (only let one out of 5 or 10 be a link to a site of yours, the rest should be friendly info).

Tip #6: After you reach 2000 friends, Twitter only lets you follow 10% more than those who follow you back. Use Huitter to unfollow those who do not follow you back so that you can continue to follow new people in your target market.

Tip #7: Twitter is like a billboard that can create interest in you and your brand identity, and direct traffic to your Facebook site, or your blog, where they can get to know you better. Now that there is a relationship being established, you can direct them to your lead capture page, to sign up for your newsletter, or to an affiliate product that you sell.

I see a lot of people offering their business opportunity from the start. This will not work very well for two reasons: 1) They prospects don’t know and trust you yet; 2) You are not getting their info to follow up with. You won’t even know if anyone went to the site or not. You will need a lead capture page for your online marketing efforts to be effective, because the business is usually in the follow up.


Kevin Thomas
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ktmarketing

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic Starting Yesterday

Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you’ll need another word...Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you’ve your company’s internal organization well taken care of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site, and you don't think that you’re getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you’re contending in these very competitive businesses, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with Search Engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it’s imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture are the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this SE advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of sites feature these advertising systems and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Don’t be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you’ll benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you’re working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product with no costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they’ll pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content
SEs look for certain keywords that they’d show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and forum online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you find a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site, and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you’re about and your existence is shared with many others, you’ll find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.


If you can’t share your money, you can share your knowledges…
please visit my site: www.interpedia.co.cc

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/7-surefire-ways-to-increase-your-traffic-starting-yesterday-1061355.html

You Don't Really Pay for Things with Money

You don't really pay for things with money.

You pay for them with time.

"In five years, I'll have put enough away
to buy that vacation house we want.

Then I'll slow down."

That means the house will cost you five years ---
one-twelfth of your adult life.

Translate the dollar value of the house,
car, or anything else into time,
and then see if it's still worth it. ...

The phrase spending your time is not a metaphor.

It's how life works.


=========================
View this update online and/or leave a comment ---
http://traffichoopla.com/notables/you-dont-really-pay-for-things-with-money/
=========================

Bill Carr
TrafficHoopla.com

Entrepreneurs Can Change the World

How to Profit (big time) during a Recession

I have been busy doing some research and I have come across something that is creating quite a stir. And it is going to create some really Huge incomes very quickly.

If there is one thing that I have learned in all the years I have been marketing, it is this.....

"timing" is everything.

An opportunity like this just doesn't come along very often.

This guy spent 14 Months & $92,000 developing a unique & exclusive software that is a lethal yet 'ethical' Lead Generation Software, which automatically extracts leads & traffic from other targeted websites, and then...

Systematically Does The Selling For YOU!

This is not like anything you have ever seen, and once you see it, you'll understand why it will be so easy to create $1000's in income. Not to mention ongoing residual earnings...month after month!

This system is so revolutionary that it will change the face of internet marketing forever.

Get all the details here:
http://itshrunk.com/801f85