The most important part of the search-driven sales process is the top of the landing page.

You've got about 7 seconds to prove to your prospect – who may have just cost you $5 if they clicked your ad – that they should stick around and consider doing business with you.

Most landing pages kind of suck at this.

Here are the most common mistakes:

1. No Headline or Irrelevant Headline

Approach: "Prospects have all day, so I'll take my time in revealing why they should do business with me. If I get around to it."

Result: Prospect spends 5 seconds trying to find the "scent trail" to their goal, fail, and go back to Google for another try.

Example: 

2. Overwhelming the visitor with features and jargon

Approach: "I don't know exactly who you are or what's important to you, so I'll hit you hard with everything I've got."

Result: Prospect is overwhelmed, confused, and bored. Leaves so fact you can see skid marks on their monitor.

Example:

3. Rejecting every known principle of user-centered design

Approach: "The more color and bold fonts I use, the more you'll want to read it."

Result: Prospect reaches for Advil and throws away their reading glasses.

Example: 

4. Wasting space on big logos, irrelevant stock photos of happy multi-racial teams and young women wearing headsets, and meaningless marketing pablum

Approach: "I'll impress you with the graphical professionalism of my site."

Result: Prospect can't find anything interesting or unique, yawns, and possibly drools once or twice as they struggle to stay awake long enough to hit the Back button.

Example:

5. Trying to make the sale before establishing the know-like-trust factor

Approach: "If I just get right down to business, your rational mind will obviously see the benefits of choosing me.

Result: Prospect sees the benefits, but doesn't have a good "gut feeling" and so continues searching.

Example: 

How to Create an Effective Landing Page

You must start with the question, "What does my prospect believe I've promised them on this page?" 

The landing page must instantly demonstrate that you didn't "Bait and Switch" them with your ad. 

But beyond that, you need to develop the Know-Like-Trust factor very quickly.

And you have to understand what's most important to your prospect – their current "Point of Pain." And explain quickly and powerfully how your solution can eliminate that pain.

Video is one tool that can quickly build a relationship, hold interest, and highlight the big promise. But most online video is either overproduced and "salesy," or grossly amateurish and visually boring (I plead guilty to the latter).

Video Done Right

Recently I came across a company, Epipheo Studios, that produces some of the smartest, most entertaining, and most effective videos I've seen online. You can check out their video portfolio here.

Yesterday I spoke to Managing Director Ben Crawford about their approach. We spoke for 40 minutes, during which he revealed his formula for distilling a company's entire story into an easy-to-grasp three minute video. The key, Ben says, is to aim to create an epiphany – a moment where someone's beliefs change dramatically.

Once that happens, the prospect knows, likes and trusts you, understands why they should do business with you, and may spread your video virally with others.

The full interview is available for download for members of the Ring of Fire, the AdWords and Online Marketing Coaching Club available at http://askhowie.com/ring. (Try it for as little as $20/month.)

Click the play arrow below to listen to the first 20 minutes, plus a short Ring of Fire promo at the end :)

Hope to see you in the Ring of Fire soon!

A reader wonders:

What’s the relationship between AdWords and the landing page? How should keywords  be used on the web site to achieve consistant quality rankings? Google gives me low quality scores because it says my landing page quality is “Poor.” What can I do?

My reply:

Your landing page has two customers: Google, and the visitor. If you don’t please Google (as represented by a “No Problems” designation), then the visitor doesn’t matter. They won’t ever see your landing page.

So let’s start with Google. Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Telegraph of London reports on the results of a psychology study: “The longer a man’s gaze rests on a woman when they meet for the first time, the more interested he is. If it lasts just four seconds, he may not be all that impressed. But if it breaks the 8.2 second barrier, he could already be in love.”

Apparently, the hidden cameras tracking eye movements found a “lock-on” duration of slightly over 8 seconds on a woman the man later described as attractive. (What about women? Read the PS below for the punch line on that one.)

In my experience (which is, of course, limited to online marketing), websites have to do the job in a lot fewer than 8.2 seconds.

Specifically, the landing page has to start to fulfill the promise of the Google ad within about 2 seconds, or the searcher is gone with a screech and skid marks, looking to fall in love with somebody else’s site.

Me Fall into Love with Translate Site on Web

I fell in love with a site recently. I do a lot of corresponding with readers from all over the world, and I like to pretend that I am competent in languages other than English. So when I sign off on an email to someone in Brazil, I’ll Google “Best wishes in Portuguese” and add that to the end of the email. But most translation sites are ugly, confusing, and I don’t trust them all that much. I always worry, what if the site is pulling my leg and instead of “Best wishes” I just said, “I would like to buy your grandmother’s wooden leg.”

Enter www.nicetranslator.com. Gorgeous interface, simple instructions, instant gratification. The thing actually translates as I type – I don’t even have to hit “submit” when I’m done.

Your Web Site is a Rental Car

Think of your landing page as a vehicle that a searcher uses to get to their goal. This metaphor makes it easy to create a hierarchy of function:

The vehicle’s door must open = The landing page must load properly

The vehicle seat must accommodate a driver comfortably = The page must look appropriate for the target market (professionals, parents, kids, heavy metal fans, yuppies on vacation, etc.)

The vehicle controls must be intutive to operate = navigation must be intuitive

The vehicle must be able to traverse the terrain to attain the desired location = the website must lead to the right offer

I could extend the metaphor much further (I’m in Namibia on holiday with my family at the moment, and we’re driving around Southern Africa in a big Toyota Quantum that my wife and kids WILL NOT let me drive (left side of the road, stick shift, etc.)), but I’ll leave that to you. What else is important in a vehicle if someone is going to commit to taking it to their desired destination? Post your metaphorical musings to comments.

PS Women maintained the same amount of eye contact with men, regardless of attractiveness.

PPS But another article in the same issue of the Telegraph reports, “Women more attracted to men in expensive cars.” So don’t feel so superior, ladies ;)

PPPS Here’s a photo of the Quantum, resting by the side of the road between Upington, South Africa and the Namibian border:

I’m really hoping they let me drive next week…

PPPPS This is a sneaky announcement of the pre-release of the AdWords Checkmate Method. Click that link and get a giant head start in writing “Game Over” AdWords ads. Details here (stay tuned for the official announcement when I find a hotel with a decent Internet connetion).

I just took my 2002 Prius to the local Toyota dealer for the 100,000 mile service call. Since the kids and I are driving from North Carolina to New Jersey tomorrow (yes, hockey fans, we will rub people’s noses in the ‘Canes’ upset over the Devils ;), it seemed like a good idea to make sure the old girl wasn’t going to conk out somewhere around the 495 Beltway around DC.

Now, I’m used to service stations and dealers in New Jersey, where the standard operating procedure is to make customers guess where to park, what line to wait on, and what those strange stains are on the back of the computer monitor, walls, floor, and eventually, your credit card. So it was an amazing shock to see how the system works at Mark Jacobson Toyota of Durham (sadly, I don’t get the family discount).

Landing page lesson #1: Show visitors exactly where to start on your landing page

First thing is, there’s a sign that tells you exactly where to go for service (see below). It points to a row of four clearly defined, large parking spaces.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last month I did a minor overhaul of my office.

I moved the piles of illegible notes, dead AA batteries, dirty bowls, USB cables that I have way too many of and can’t bring myself to toss, and last year’s taxes out of the office and into the trash, recycling, kitchen sink, trash, and attic crawl space, respectively. I removed all the non-essentials from my desk. And I brought in a monster bookcase to hold all the stuff that almost has a home.

The question was, where should the bookcase go? Facing west or north? Both had advantages and disadvantages, but the main thing was going to be the feel of the room. The Feng of the Shui, you might say.

Read the rest of this entry »

Save the dates: February 23 and March 2, 2009, from 10-11am EST, for a two-part telecourse on AdWords Checkmate. Learn an advanced technique for doubling CTR and conversion rate – even (heck, especially) in highly competitive markets. Check it out before your competitors do…

Whenever you encounter twins in a movie or novel, you know there’s trouble brewing. From the Biblical account of Esau and Jacob to the Shakepearean mishaps in "A Comedy of Errors" (where there are two sets of twins with identical names, Antipholis and Dromio, which is why so many people get stoned before watching the Bard), to the wily conniving of Hallie and Annie in The Parent Trap (or Sharon and Susan, if you’re into the 1961 Hayley Mills original), duplication has always brought in its wake confusion and opportunities for mischief.

(Now don’t get offended if you’re a twin – I’m talking about the other one, not you ;)

Duplicate Content Penalty

Google doesn’t like twins much either. Or triplets. Or octuplets.

That is to say, Google penalizes web pages that it deems to be near-exact copies of existing web pages. It won’t let them appear in search results.

You can understand why. If I have a page that ranks highly for "game show buzzer" (don’t ask ;), Google doesn’t want me making 9 more copies of the page and dominating the entire first page of search results.

So Google rewards the first page it finds with all the search engine mojo it deserves, and slaps all subsequent copies with Duplicate Content Penalty.

And that, boys and girls, is about all I know about Search Engine Optimization. And all I thought I needed to know.

Until…

The AdWords Quality Score Duplicate Content Penalty

Google decided to apply the very same rule to AdWords landing pages. This means, if you’re split testing landing pages to find the very best one, you may end up with Poor quality scores for all the keywords pointing to that landing page.

And the landing page will look perfect. The right title tag, the right content, the right format, everything perfect.

Except that it’s a copy of a page already indexed by Google.

How to Avoid the Twin Sin

If you haven’t yet made this mistake, here’s how to avoid it:

1. If you have a landing page that’s already indexed by Google (that is, it shows up on the left "organic side" of search results), test it as a destination URL in AdWords to make sure you’re getting a good quality score for your important keywords. If not, fix the title tag, header tags, content, inbound and outbound links, etc. All the basic SEO stuff we AdWords people have been forced to learn. (See Grade Grubbing with Google for details.)

2. Add the following meta tag between the <head> and </head> tags at the top of every new page you create to test against the original:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

How to Atone for the Twin Sin

What if you’ve already made the mistake? And your quality score is miserable, and you can’t afford clicks, and you don’t know what to do to improve that landing page any more?

Google, in their infinite benevolence, has given us mortals a chance to receive absolution for the Twin Sin. We can petition the Mountain View Olympians to remove pages from its index. Here’s how:

Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools and sign in with your Google account. Add your site and get it verified by adding tags or a tiny HTML file to the site (so Google knows you have FTP access to it and therefore can be assumed to be the owner).

Then, from the Dashboard, select "Tools" and click the "Remove URLs" link.

Then select + New Removal Request and enter the URL of the page you want removed from the index (make sure you don’t choose a page that’s got good search engine rank right now).

The best practice is to index your best-performing landing page, since that’s the best place to send organic traffic (remember, that kind of traffic is free!).

Then add the "no index" tag to all the new landing pages you’re testing against the original. When you find a winner, change the original page to reflect the improvements. That original page is still indexed, recently updated (which Google loves), and a more effective sales tool. And then you repeat the process with your next round of split tests, always keeping the new pages off the Google radar with the "no index" tag.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, my evil twin wants to go eat some cake for breakfast.

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Bonus Quotes

When I was born the doctor took one look at my face, turned me over and said, "Look, twins!" 
~Rodney Dangerfield

When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic. 
~Steven Wright

A reader wonders:

If I have a lot of related keywords, do I need to send each keyword to it’s own landing page? Or can I automatically insert the keyword into the title tag of a dynamically generated landing page?

My response:

Dynamic keyword insertion into the landing page may work for Google in terms of assigning relevance (and hence a high quality score) to a keyword-landing page combo, but it doesn’t always work for the person searching. Different keywords may require different stories, different emotional appeals, different motivations, etc.

For example, look at a couple of keywords in my field:

adwords help

adwords consulting

They might be considered synonymous, but I’d probably send adwords consulting traffic to a page talking about my consulting practice, and adwords help traffic would go to a product, or even a free newsletter.

Simply swapping out "help" for "consulting" doesn’t capture the big difference between the two needs/problems/desires.

There’s an easy way to find out, though: Try it and see if the conversion rate is pretty equal across a bunch of keywords. If one keyword converts much worse than the others, then you know that traffic requires its own dedicated landing page.

I’ve been noticing the use of the color red lately. As a single splash of boldness on a web design, designed to draw the eye toward a desired action or important testimonial.

And since reading the excellent Save the Pixel, by web designer Ben Hunt, and studying website attraction principles with the very clever Sean D’Souza, I’m starting to actually pay attention to what I like in the way of design, and why I like it.

Here are a couple of examples of the use of red on the web: Read the rest of this entry »

As of April 1, 2008, Google has tightened their rules on Display URLs.

There’s been a lot of confusion about what the changes will mean, because as my colleague Bryan Todd points out, the new rules look an awful lot like the old rules. So what we may be facing here is a serious attempt at enforcement.

Basically, here’s the deal:

Your display URL must use the same domain as your actual landing page.

So if you’re testing 3 different domains, how on earth can you do that? Each ad only gets one landing page. Sounds impossible, right?

Fortunately, there’s a way to pile multiple domain names onto the same website. For example, let’s say I want to test the following URLs:

askhowie.com

thegoogleguy.com

adwordshelp.com

And I want to send the traffic to http://askhowie.com/givemelotsofmoney

I don’t need to set up three different websites. I just create the page at askhowie.com, and do a neat trick called aliasing. Basically, it’s telling the internet to assign different names to the same IP address.

Once I’ve set up the aliases, the following pages will all contain the exact same content:

http://askhowie.com/givemelotsofmoney

http://thegoogleguy.com/givemelotsofmoney

http://adwordshelp.com/givemelotsofmoney

And that will be true for every page I set up at askhowie.com after that. No need to do any extra work.

I was going to spend a couple of hours creating a really clear tutorial on how to do the aliasing, but thankfully, Bryan Todd beat me to it. Check out his comprehensive guide to Aliasing, the Universe and Everything (well, that’s a big of an exaggeration, but I’m a little giddy at the thought of all the work he’s saved me.

A reader wonders:

I am a programmer and I wanted to use javascript to dynamically create custom landing pages.  Do you know if Google will treat my landing pages exactly like a user (by running my javascript) or will they all look the same?  Unlike PHP, the javascript will get executed in the user’s browser and will display my keywords and other info on the page for the user to see.   I guess it’s possible that it doesn’t matter if all Google does is track user behavior rather than landing page relevancy…

Here’s my answer:

"Sorry, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about."

Fortunately, I was able to forward the question to my good friend David Bullock, a brilliant marketer who is also a formidable process engineer and tech-head.

Here’s his reply:

There is no good answer for this one. Google is trying to read everything, but it can’t see Java script right now. But the question is does it “see” and index the content that is generated.

Here’s a discussion on the issue of Java and Google, along with a test. 

Here’s a tool to let you “see” what the spiders see.

Thanks, David!