Improving my landing page

Hi, benanderson. Your website look awesome and your objectives are clearly stated indeed. In my opinion, I saw some values are missing on that page. It looks like you are telling your potential clients that they have to pay this price if they hire you. What happens if you consider to add-in your portfolio? It should convert well, I guess.

Hi Ben,

Could you share your ad(s) with us?

Personally I think your landing page is pretty good. However, as a potential buyer, here are some 'red flags' that could be raised.

1) How can you offer 'fixed prices' when you don't even know the magnitude of what I'm after? There's no note of any limitations in terms of number of pages, design revisions or anything else included in your packages...

2) 300 GBP seems ridiculously low for what you're offering and I believe people are starting to embrace a 'if it sounds too good, then it usually is' attitude. It's the sort of rate a student would charge working from their bedroom - people might wonder how an 'agency' can charge so little?

3) The 'request a quote' on the same page as fixed prices might make people feel that prices aren't 'what they see is what they get'.

Another thing I'd say is that IMO something like web design doesn't work that well with PPC traffic generally. In this day and age, everyone is a web designer so most people go with someone they know or a friend of a friend.

I've worked in several agencies and the amount of work generated from cold internet leads is minimal. Your prices are cheap and would appeal to one man bands who are looking to save every penny, so rather than doing PPC I honestly think you'd be a lot better off doing talks at your local chamber or attending breakfast meetings. Maybe even paying small businesses on Facebook to recommend you to their connections.

Just my 2 pennies...

Hi benanderson,

I am not surprised that you have not gotten conversions yet with this lander. It has a number of serious issues.

• Lacks a compelling headline. Your headline needs to make a bold statement (or, ask an intriguing question) to be effective.
  
• For your headline to look like a headline it needs to have a font size that is at least twice as large as the other text on the page. It looks to be only 1.5 times the size of surrounding text.
  
• Headline message disconnected from remaining sales copy. Your headline should at least hint at your primary value proposition, but sadly it hints at something that you do not discuss anywhere else on your landing page.
  
• Sales copy is dull and uninteresting, it is just a list of features that seem to be sprinkled randomly across you page layout. Try using a story format (beginning, middle, and ending) instead.
  
• No clear call to action. Yes, I do see the section with the horizontal form layout (resembling an email newsletter signup form), but it looks more like a separator bar than the primary call-to-action.
  
• There is a total disconnect in that your messages states the prices at the top of the page. Why would I "request a quote" after your page has already provided a quote? Doesn't make sense to me, I bet it is confusing the hell out of your target audience. It would just be easier to hit the back button and click on a different ad than to figure out what to do next on your landing page.

The other thing that concerns me and might be turning off your prospects is that your business model doesn't make sense. You are offering unlimited pages, bespoke design, and a low fixed price. That could be only be financial viable if it was super automated, like a random theme generator, or some crappy designs.

What about the sales copy, is that included? Can I get a 25 million page website with advanced search and marketplace functionality for $25 a month?

Now, let me ask you the key question here, does you pricing include the average cost to acquire a new client, and still make a profit? What if the average CPA is $250 per new client? Does you pricing reflect that? Sure it might be only $150 per new client, or it might be $350 per new client, but whatever it is, it seems that you haven't left enough margin in your pricing to do any serious marketing and still turn a nice profit. Consider making a few adjustments to your pricing model to allow for a real marketing budget.

HTH,

Don Burk

Thanks for all your replies, I have updated the URL in my original post with amendments.

Hi benanderson,

Very nice improvements on your landing page layout.

Your headline could still be improved.

Your headline is arguable the most import page element effecting conversions. If people do not get past the headline, it doesn't matter what else you say in your sales copy, they are not going to be reading it. Your headline is the virtual entrance way to your sales copy.

Try using a value-centric rather than an action-centric message by changing or removing the verb "Pay" from your headline. Or, reword it so that it cannot be construed as an action-centric message.

I think I get what you are trying to say, that customers can make monthly payments instead of paying everything up front. It just isn't that clear in your message and that may be off-putting to significant numbers of your audience. There is no clarification provided in a sub headline.

Perhaps something like "Easy Monthly Payments", or "Pay-As-You-Go", and be worked in as a value proposition?

Also there is still a conflicting message in that you provide a price, right there in your headline, and then prompt users to "Request A Quote". perhaps if you used "From 45 Per Month" or "Starting At 45 Per Month" to infer that the price is variable and to contact you for a quote.

I like the nice transition to a modal Quote request form, but the form itself is a valuable sales tool. The form is an excellent place to reinforce your value proposition. Try including a value-centric message directly on the form and improve the button text, "Submit" is probably not the best version of button text you could use there. You may also want to consider adding credibility badges below or next to the form in the Modal popup window. Consider adding a testimonial to the form's modal window.

Also consider replacing that plain text phone number in the header with a clickable phone (or contact) widget. The primary reason is that you can more easily track the click event to measure engagement levels for each audience segment you are targeting. This will provide you with very useful engagement information to make data-driven marketing decisions.

HTH,

Don Burk

I am trying to ensure my landing page loads fast. I have got tons of scripts which I removed such as the Analytics tag, to help. I have auto-tagging enabled in AdWords and have my Analytics connected in AdWords too. However without the Analytics tag (I surely don't need as I'm using auto-tagging) doesn't seem to be accounting the bounce rate or time spent on site?

Hi benanderson,

I think you may have misunderstood what the auto tagging feature actually does.

Auto tagging adds parameters to your ad's final URL that can be recognized by the Google Analytics tracking script, if you have that installed and linked to your AdWords account.

Auto tagging only works when you are using both AdWords, Google Analytics, and you have the 2 accounts linked together, and you have the "enable auto tagging" option checked.

Auto tagging does not tag your website, it merely adds utm tracking parameters to your ad's URLs that can be read by Google Analytics, if you have that implemented on your website. It does not add anything at all to your website.

If you are using the Universal Analytics tag on your website and it is properly implemented it will not noticabley slow down the loading of your website because it loads asynchronously, meaning it loads in the background while the rest of your page is being rendered by your browser.

You might want to consider implementing Google Tag Manager and letting it manage the loading of all of your marketing tags, as it is designed to optimize the entire process of loading scripts and can streamline the load process.

Also, try using the Google Tag Assistant extension for Chrome to verify that all of your Google tags are implemented properly and firing reliably.

HTH,

Don Burk

Did you try to send a pitch in bulk to new startups ? Maybe better than PPC, IMO.

I have been on the phone to Bing Ads. They recommended adding my navigation to my landing pages. A lot of people suggest not placing your navigation bar on your landing pages, as it distracts website visitors. I was maybe thinking of a 1-page style navigation, where you don't leave the page but there is a navigation bar to jump to different content on the page.

I was panicking over my bounce rate which was near enough 100% (exit rate was also near the same!). However, I realized that because it's a 1-page design, it doesn't count as it can only track once viewed another page! My average time spent on site for my landing page is 2 minutes and 8 seconds since December 1st. My CTR averages this month at 4.11%. I might be doing something right as I put my campaign through WordStream and they emailed back saying it's in the top 5% of campaigns they have seen, they also attached a badge to share with others. I think I'm just being a bit paranoid, I mean since I have properly started up again I have only spent about 50. I just don't like seeing that figure go up and no enquiries yet. I think I just need let my campaign settle down, I made a huge error as one of my campaigns I did before started doing really well; I panicked and stopped it as it stopped getting me conversions (I know that was crazy!). This time I'm, just going to stick with it!

Hi benanderson,

Yes, with a SPA (Single Page App) website you should have a very high bounce rate because most if not all uses leave from the same page as they arrived, unless you have other pages, like a dedicated thank you page.

Instead of pageviews, with SPAs you need to setup event tracking to track click events and scroll depth to determine user engagement levels.

If you are using Google tag manager you can use GTM to setup event tracking without modifying any of your website's code.