Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Hey all. I'm amazed at how many knowledgable folks are here on Warrior Forum, and I'm hoping to get some feedback on my landing page. I'm a writer, giving away two free books in exchange for sign-ups to my mailing list, but so far I'm not having much luck. Here's the landing page:

two-free-novels | David Haskell

Any and all feedback on how to better this landing page would be GREATLY appreciated (and please do sign up to get your free novels for your trouble!).

Thoughts and advice?

Thanks in advance!

Dave

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

First the "in general" kind of thoughts:

What kind of traffic are you getting to the page?

Is it targeted?

What sources?

What volume?

It doesn't matter how great your page is...if you get no visitors or untargeted visitors, nothing will happen.

Do the people arriving on your page WANT free novels?

Second, the thoughts about your specific page:

Your page has almost no copy on it, creating zero enticement. A free download is still a sale. You still have to do your job as a writer and make them want to buy.

Otherwise we just have a couple titles with review sentences.

I'd reorganize this page, add copy, and look at the traffic source(s).

Look at this. It's the page for a NY Times Bestseller I pulled at random from a Google search just now.

See Me

Look at all the selling they're doing...and you can't even buy it there!

(Crap...very, VERY weirdly, this story is based in the town I currently live. Out of all the novels I could have randomly chosen from the search. That's, um, weird.)

You must give the visitor a big reason to act.

Imagine you are at a huge buffet.

The variety of meal after potential meal, all different, is spread out before you.

You can have whatever you wish.

Thing is, you ate just a few hours ago and aren't really that hungry.

Meh.

Even the buffet has to work hard to get customers.

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Aside from what Jason replied, which I totally agree with, the page looks nice. It's nit, user friendly, and I love the chromatic :)

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Excellent advice Jason. I've made some changes based on your suggestions. Do you think I could use more still? The link you provided is great, your advice is extremely valuable, and I thank you very much for it! Primeone, thank you for the feedback as well!

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

MUCH better.

Now to the traffic source.

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Yes indeed. I'm working on that as well. Traffic is mostly coming in via a set of Facebook ads. I'm still working on narrowing the focus, at the moment I'm targeting people interested in free ebooks who own reading devices such as kindles. Any alternative suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Looks pretty and simple, that scrolling to the bottom when you click (start reading) is a nice touch.

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

- Fans of fellow genre authors

- Fans of magazines & anthologies that print similar stories

- Fans of the genre itself.

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Jason, the magazines idea is a new one to me. Thank you! I'll give it a try.

MANY thanks for the landing page advice - today I converted leads to subscribers at a rate of 53%! That's much, much better than I've managed prior to speaking with you.

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Nice page as simple. Design clean but font can be more nice.

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

What fonts would you suggest?

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Very good work.
But use some charming colors that attracts the people easily.

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

I think you’re missing the obvious here.

You are leading with the price. This will attract the cheap crowd which will rarely convert into sellers. This is mistake #1.

Now, answer me a simple question. Why do people buy books? Well, to educate and entertain themselves. When I want to buy a book, I won’t look at the price, I’ll look at a summary to see how appealing is to me.

Are there people out there who can’t or don’t want to afford books? Yes, that’s true but the people who read usually put money aside for books (and let’s be honest, you can buy used books for $1/piece) and the others, don’t read so much.

It is a chicken and the egg dilemma. Those who you want don’t buy into your offer because it is free and those who buy in are not those who you want.

So right up from the headline, you should give me a hook on why I should download this book, no matter if it is $50 or $0.00. I get Kindle ads daily and I don’t care if it is discounted from $25 to $0.01, it must appeal to me.

Your first testimonial sucks. Can it get more confusing than this?

Put yourself into my shoes. I see these two books. I think to myself “oh, great, maybe it is something I like”. The covers don’t tell me anything and the first paragraph is too general. You finally reveal this into the copy but I feel it is a bit too late.

And you do need to work on that copy - apart from the fact that you are giving away the entire plot (isn’t it like a general rule to give away only act 1 in a book description?), it’s not really enticing. Look into a description from Clancy and break it down into separate parts.

When it comes to the second testimonial, you are making the same mistake as the first one. The review is general at best and you don’t even name the reviewer. The purpose of a testimonial is to increase trust, this actually decreases it.

The copy is a bit better (at least there is some emotion in it) but you still need to work on it.

Look … the truth here is that you’re going to appeal to a fraction of the people who visit your page. Some people are in dirty romance books. Others are in political thrillers and Tom Clancy type of stories. Others are into Tess by Hardy.

You can take two approaches. You can either try to be a jack of all trades and try to appeal to everyone, like a decent but not great B type of movie or you can write copy that appeals to that demographic. The first book appeals to the spy, action, techno-thriller crowd. The second to the folks who dream about changing something into their life and want some inspiration for it (which I estimate to be 32 - 40yr old).

I suggest you create a new message to appeal to them. Targeting is infinitely more important than how you write the copy. Poor copy that talks straight to the prospect is far better than good copy that is off the mark.

Razvan

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Hey Dave, a few suggestions here:

Layout: Consider boxing up the website layout instead of using full width. So your desktop visitors won't have to move their eyes back and forth too much to read the few lines of copy.

Headline: Try testing with a few headlines, both for your landing page and your FB ads. You are using "Twice the excitement" now, perhaps explain what will bring the excitement with a subhead.

Ad and Page Match: Haven't seen your ads, but do make sure your ad design and copy match your landing page (for your visitors to make a better and quicker connection).

Font and Color: Try using black font instead of dark grey for your 2nd (white) section. For the 3rd section (The Gold Club), need more contrast between background and copy font.

CTA: I find the CTA button color a bit dull (you are promising excitement). I would remove the final CTA below the device logos (not necessary), as well as the spam statement (you are actually reminding your visitors of spam with that statement).

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Excellent suggestions gmort - thank you so much!

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

You're welcome, Dave. All the best!

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

If it were me, I would do something like this...

http://s18.postimg.org/ltanvgbft/Untitled_1.jpg

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

Thanks ABN, that's an excellent layout and I will do something along those lines soon. For now, the bulk of my leads are coming in via mobile, so I've been focused on making that perfect first, but that's no excuse for neglecting my desktop visitors so I'll get on it soon.

Thanks for the great suggestion!

Re: Feedback on my Landing Page
 

You're welcome :) Good luck with your efforts!