Whats Wrong With My Landing Pages

[hummy]

Hi All,

I've been doing some Adwords advertising and testing various landing pages.
I'm wanting some advice from some experience people to tell me whats wrong as both the designs & testing i have tried have not really got me the desired results.

Here is one design: Sell Your House Quickly | Quick House Sales
Here is the 2nd Design: Sell Your House Quickly | Quick House Sales

I don't point all the traffic to the home page. I have specific pages for specific keywords but they are all designed in this way.

I initially had some good results from the pages in GO and then i tried HOME and got some good results. But now that' i'm wanting to see which converts better i'm using a mix of them for different ad groups but hardly getting any conversion. Getting about 10 clicks a day yet in a week i only have abut 3/4 leads.

I'm wanting to achieve a conversion rate of about 15% - 20%.

The HOME style landing pages were done having read a book by Tim Ash on Landing Page optimisation and now i don't really know where to go now and what to try.

I'm slighlty confused now as to what to test and what changes to make to test conversions. Does any one have any examples of good converting websites. Or can anyone recommend me where i'm going wrong and what i can do to improve conversions.

Thanks

[mike305]

First one I would have to say "Wordy" its just to much going on for a landing page.

Put the sign up form in the middle.
lose 80% of those words
Pick a color scheme and stick to it. - kuler
Make the form text and input values larger.

You might want to try this service - Landing Pages: Create, Publish & A/B Test Without I.T. | Unbounce

15-20% is very high.

Second one is better but still needs work.

[yukon]

Have you looked at your competition to see what type of landing pages they are running?

If you go to spyfu.com you can look for Ads that keep running, but never get changed by the competition. If they are running the same exact ads month after month without changes either they are converting good or the competition has to much money.

On spyfu when an Ad block color changes then the Advertiser has made changes to the Ad. So, If the Ad keeps running every month without color changes to the Ad block then chances are it's a winner.

Notice in the screenshot how the keyword "sell my house now" changes to a lighter shade of green for Dec. & Jan. (The Ad was tweaked/changed)

"sell my home fast" didn't change, must be converting.

Grab the url for that landing page & have a look...

[dburk]

Hi hummy,

Your landing pages have much room for improvement.

The first thing I would suggest you change is to reduce the number of elements competing for your users attention. With so may elements competing for the user's attention it will lead to unsupervised thinking which dilutes the effectiveness of your design in leading your user to the primary objective of your page.

Start by changing to a single column layout. Move or remove the navigation so that it doesn't compete with the primary objective of the page. Use graphics sparingly and use them in a way that they draw the user's eyes to the most important page element, your lead capture form.

Ensure that your page headline refers to the unique value of your offer. Include a paragraph that explains specifically why your offer is uniquely valuable.

Craft a clear and strong call to action.

Add at least one testimonial near the lead capture form, perhaps directly below it.

Add credibility symbols in the form of emblems, logos or badges from any industry organizations you belong to, awards or memberships that add to your credibility.

My experience has taught me that for the goal of lead capture you need a very simple page layout and direct to the point sales copy for best results.

Create multiple versions and split test to see which generate the highest conversions.

The process I follow when optimizing is to first remove all but the bare essential elements. Split test a number of variations of headlines, calls to actions and sales copy to find the best converting combination. Use that as a control. Then I add elements in one at a time and only keep the ones that improve conversion rates.

[wolfmmiii]

I tend to agree with the others. I think there's way too much going on.

The sites I promote with AdWords contain just enough content and interactivity to avoid the "bridge page" and "site policy" violations. Going overboard with too much content just distracts visitors.

I try to ensure that my main monetization hits them right in the face (above the fold) when they hit my site.

[D111]

On the first one my eye was on the content in the center right away, the opt in form gets lost in all the words and colors.

So just make it much more simple and focus on the opt in box.

On the second one the text for your button just sounds odd to me. "Go" What about "submit" instead?

[hummy]

thank you everyone for all these comments.
These are great and very much appreciated.

I will now get onto actioning.

@Dburk & @Yukon, would you guy mind providing me your contact details via PM. Unfortunately i don't have enough posts to be allowed to PM to you directly.

[Lucid]

I disagree with Mike that your first page is "wordy" and to lose 80% of it. My opinion is that you are not using the right words. You need some strong heading to grab the reader's attention and keep on reading. My understanding of what you do, I would try "Cash In Your Hands for Your Home In 7 Days". That would make me pick up the phone rather quickly.

Mike's right about the colour scheme (first page again). Pick one.

Speaking of phone, it's got to be more prominent. I'd put it next to my grabbing headline. I'm also confused. Do you want them to call or fill out the form so you call later? A lot of people don't like filling these forms.

Agree with Don that there's a lot of elements that seem to compete for attention. He provides a lot of good info.

A 20% conversion rate is very high, especially in the market you're in. Good to have lofty goals but they also have to be realistic. You're not going to reach that with this page. You might get 1 to 2%. With a better sales page, you could reach 5% and hopefully more which would be very good.

Looking at competitors' ads won't reveal much. It might give you ideas for your own ads but most I see are not that good. If they've been running for a while, my experience is that people set up a campaign and forget it. It doesn't mean that it's effective or even converting. Those spying tools are of limited value in my opinion. They don't tell the whole story.

Looking at the second page, I think it needs to be a little more wordy. Maybe move those bullet points up. What's a "broken chain" by the way?

[hummy]

Hi Lucid, thanks for your comments. The main action from the landing page is for prospect to fill out their details on line, basically submit the form.

I'd actually prefer if people didn't ring, but i put the phone number there to be seen as more trusting, in that people can speak to someone should they wish. I personally find it more reassuring whenever i'm on a website to know that i can speak to some one should i so wish.

The broken chain image was meant to stir an emotional reaction in that it has 2 purposes.

1) in the uk, many house sale falls through becuase of what is known as Broken Chains. These are where the seller of one property is waiting for the buyer of their property to sell their property and so they are in a chain.
2) to show that the prospect can break away from a chain purchase and still sell their home.

I'm thinking of making the following changes to this site www.home-rescue.co.uk/home:

1. Horizontal navigaton bar. Much smaller than the vertical bar that is already there with possibly less links.
2. Change the form to be smaller where the post code is only require and put a testimonial below this.
3. In the top corner remove the broken chain and text and put in a logo of some newspapers where we have been featured.
4. In the space that used to be the vertical navigational bar spread the main content over here.

Does that sound ok for now?

[Lucid]

Got it about the broken chain. My sister and her husband bought a house only when their current house was sold. Turned out not to be a problem as it sold almost right away.

New page is better in my opinion but can always be improved. I think you got to try to make the time shorter. Five weeks is long when you need the money ASAP. I'd get rid of the ... and how about below it something like:

No Fees
No Estate Agent
No Delays
No Hassles

Staggered like I wrote it here. Just an idea. You'll need something strong and convincing if you want to approach that 20% conversion rate. Proper keywords and ads too.

[hummy]

Sorry. I think i pasted the wrong link.

The linnk should be: Sell Your House Quickly | Quick House Sales

This is the sort of thing i am thinking now in terms of design. Some credibility with newspaper logos (i have one newspaper article i can distribute should any one ask).
One testimonial will be entered below the form.
I've taken less information on the form.
I will change the content also. But how does the format look?

[wolfmmiii]

Looks good to me

[paulgl]

The problem may be what Yukon unknowingly brought up. His example site
is a US based site, yours is a UK based site. They would not be
in competition. Unless....you are not only targeting UK visitors.
If you are not only targeting UK, then your conversion would be lousy.

But, let's assume you are. If I was an interested visitor, A lot of things
would scare me off. The "guarantee," "quick," "free," and a "free vacation."

Just me, but it looks like way too much promised. I'd think it was too
good to be true and worry about some catch.

The sellmyhomefast.com site, even though US based, has none of that
come-on salesmanship:

"We can still help even if you think you might be upside down!

Yes, that's right. We're still able to help most home sellers whom think they don't have equity in their house. Enter your Zip Code above to get started now so we can help you."

Paul

[hummy]

i wasn't planning on offering a free vacation, i must admit.
I'm working on the main content and can most definitely tone down some of those words and references to free.

The customer base is only UK.