Want To Learn Something From Best & Worst Landing Pages On Web

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Want To Learn Something From Best & Worst Landing Pages On Web

- Credit goes to Megan Marrs (Original Author) & Word Stream. Original link

Before we get started, it’s important to remember that landing pages aren’t just about the page itself. Process comes into play as well – what did visitors click to be brought to your landing page? If it was an ad, what did the ad say? If it was a newsletter blast, what links did they click? The “landing” process and movement through the funnel is just as important as the physical page design.

In this post, we’re going to evaluate and grade a few landing page examples from each Google search, as well as take a look at some innovative landing page designs that break the mold.

Landing Page Examples Search #1: "Photography Lighting Kit"

The first landing page example comes from Kaezi.

This Kaezi landing page looks great – it’s showing a bunch of studio light kits we might be interested in, and one can click an individual set for more details. There are also some appropriate related categories in the left-hand navigation bar we also might be interested in. Overall the design is clean and we can see the "add to cart" buttons above the fold.
Grade: B+

Next is the photography lighting kit landing page for Cowboy Studio.

The first huge problem is intent – I clicked an ad for photography lighting kits, and this is what I get. This isn’t any kind of kit – it’s just one strobe light. As a consumer chances are pretty good that I’d back myself right out of this landing page disaster and find a page that is better at meeting my needs.
The intent is way off, and the design of this page is a mess. There is a lot of wasted space with the social share buttons and enlarge photo/email a friend buttons taking up way too much prime real estate. The info I really want (details on the product) is lost way below the fold. This info should be bulleted and sit right beside the main product image.

What’s really frustrating is that this site does have what I’m looking for – they just make it hard to find. A little meandering around the site helped me find some actual photography lighting kits, similar to what Kaezi showed.

Grade: C-

That was a pretty bad landing page, but it does actually get worse. Hide your kids, hide your wives, things are about to get really ugly with this “photography lighting kit” landing page example from Fovitec.

Immediately upon arriving at this landing page, as a visitor I am completely disoriented. Where the heck am I? I clicked an ad for photography lighting equipment, so why don’t I see anything even remotely photography-oriented? The only hint that I haven’t accidentally clicked a random pop-up ad is the Fovitec logo featuring an aperture icon in the “O” (although whatever camera allusions the word “Fovitec” is supposed to conjure are lost on me).
Even if I stick around long enough (and the vast majority won’t) to explore, none of the navigation links near the top seem to help me with finding lighting kits. Remember: Don't make your visitors search for what you want them to buy! Make it as easy as possible for them to convert.
Grade: F

Landing Page Examples Search #2: "Dog Beds"

Next we’ll try another Google search, this time for “dog beds,” because we all love our dogs and want them to be comfy 'n' cozy.
Orvis does a pretty solid dog bed landing page – their landing page features a wide selection of dog beds, and an eye-catching photo of a happy, napping pup. The large product photos are also appealing, and you can filter the selection by color, feature, shape, fabric, price and more. Since "dog beds" is a pretty broad query, this meets the intent well, allowing the visitor to browse and find exactly what they need. (By contrast, if I'd googled a long-tail query like "large memory foam dog bed," I'd expect the landing page to be more specific.

Grade: A-


Next up is Big Barker Beds, a business selling orthopedic dog beds for larger dog breeds.

This page is a struggle because it does a lot of things right, but the things it does wrong are pretty damaging. The biggest problem with this landing page is its size. It scrolls down for… get this…. 38 pages. Yup, 38 pages, because the text is HUGE. There’s some really awesome content in there, but it’s lost in the sheer quantity of info.
There are a ton of great Amazon reviews featured on the landing page, and while I love how they used the red underline to highlight key points, there are waaay too many reviews (40+). In all fairness, this landing page about XL dog beds does everything in a BIG way – the text, the reviews, everything. You can’t say the page isn’t consistent.

They have 3 reviews that talk about how easy the bed is to clean, 7 about how the beds are good for arthritic dogs, 5 about how attractive the bed is, etc. It’s absolutely fantastic that so many customers love the product, and it’s really smart to showcase those good reviews, but instead of drowning the visitor is XL print, I’d recommend that there be one shining review about how easy the beds are to clean, one about how they are good for arthritic dogs, etc. Visitors already see that these beds have a five-star Amazon rating (which is a clever trust signal to promote above the fold). If potential buyers want to read more reviews from customers, they’ll go to the Amazon page. Putting every great review on your page only overwhelms web visitors.
While the trust signals up top are great, the first chunk of text below the headline could be a lot more scan-friendly.

This bulleted text found when you scroll down should really be up above the fold where it can be more useful and provide visitors with a better snapshot about the dog beds.

There’s some great info on this page about why this type of bed is recommended for older, arthritic dogs (the info was especially interesting for me as owner of an senior canine) but a lot of this great content gets buried because of the sheer enormity of the page.
Some simple rearrangement of content and text resizing could help this landing page out a lot. (Caveat: I don't know this company's conversion rate, so it's possible that alllll that text below the fold actually helps the page. Stranger results have happened with A/B tests.)
Grade: B

Next up is Pottery Barn. Pottery Barn’s “dog beds” landing page gets a solid fail – clicking their dog bed ad brings me to a landing page for décor accessories. I see pillows, blankets, and slip covers, but nothing dog related.

What’s really silly is that after searching for dog beds with the site search tool, I find that Pottery Barn does offer dog beds. So why didn’t my landing page look more like this?

Pottery Barn doubtlessly has a hefty advertising budget, so why such careless work when it comes to landing pages? This is a real missed opportunity on the part of Pottery Barn. The Pottery Barn brand is well known and has a solid following – I’m sure many consumers would choose PB dog beds over others, but driving PPC clicks to the wrong landing page is throwing away potential purchases.
Grade: F

Landing Page Examples Search #3: "Silk Flowers"

Let’s look at what landing page examples we get as we search Google for “silk flowers.”
This landing page starts off with a big flyer talking about all the cool crafts I can make with silk flowers.

That’s cool… I guess. Really I already had an idea in mind and just want to check out the flowers. There they are down below the fold, thrown together in a hodge-podge manner.

What’s interesting is that when I do click on that flyer about the DIY crafts I can make with silk flowers, I’m taken to this page.

Hey, it's your most popular silk flowers! This is a much better landing page than the one I was taken to initially. Here we see a wide assortment of silk flowers sorted by name and bright, colorful photos. This is a good landing page – it would have been perfect for my initial search for “silk flowers.” However, in order to get here, I had to click a link talking about DIY silk flowers crafts. I don’t see any craft info here. Sounds like this site really needs to focus on intent and think about where they really want to direct visitors.
Grade: C+
Our next silk flower landing page example comes from eFavorMart.

This is another unattractive landing page that’s reminiscent of early 2000s. This landing page isn’t doing much with its headings, and the boring, lengthy (and small-print) content is riddled with very obvious cases of keyword stuffing. This page comes off as spammy and damages any potential trust the brand might have earned (and really, any website that starts with a lowercase “e“ or “i” already raises suspicions).
Grade: C

Landing Page Examples Search #4: "Email Marketing Software"

Let’s take a peek into the landing pages we come across in a Google search for “email marketing software.”
Hubspot comes up at the front of the pack, which isn’t a huge surprise. Their landing page lacks any strong imagery to retain the visitor’s attention, choosing instead to focus on its impressive awards and accolades.

Many other landing pages struggle to rope in and condense their copy, but this Hubspot landing page gets straight to the point. There’s also more convincing copy with social trust signals and customer testimonials below the fold:

This is a solid landing page example, but could still use some touching up. I’d suggest messing around a bit with the button colors. At the moment the buttons are the same color as the background with a subtle orange outline – not irresistibly clickable. Higher contrast is almost always better. There’s also something lacking with that first above-the-fold page. It’s devoid of any energy or excitement and might benefit from some more color or pop.
Grade: B+
Next up is Zoho Campaigns. Zoho also has a strong landing page design that could benefit from a few adjustments.

Most of my criticisms are small, and may even seem petty, but truly good landing pages do require an almost scientific exactness and perfectionism. The Zoho heading should probably fit on to two lines instead of three. The main image is confusing – is this a glimpse of the product itself, or are we supposed to be drawn to the colorful designed templates Zoho offers against the bleak and dreary templates offered by other companies? It’s not clear – a different image choice could really improve this landing page.
While I like the small icons explaining the core components of Zoho campaigns, the colors are a bit too light. Shades of grey text can be preferred to black, usually used to delineate focus (darker text = more important). These icons should demand more attention, as they tell the key benefits of Zoho. There’s also just a little too much white space present. If I’d have to choose between a landing page that’s too crowded or too spaced out, I’d absolutely choose the spaced out page. However, a second testimonial or an extra icon line of features could be added while still maintaining a sleek, attractive design.

While the customer recommendation is good to have in there, it may be better to choose a recommendation from a more recognizable brand or client (and add their logo to the testimonial). Granted, Cathy of Forum Group Events Ltd. might be their top client, in which case, fine (no offense Cathy, nothing personal).
Grade: B
Next we’re looking at SAP. Boy howdy, this is one hideous hog of a landing page. It looks more like a resources page than a product landing page (and an ugly resources section at that). I clicked an ad that appeared for “email marketing software” and the word “email” is nowhere to be found.

It’s a shame because I don’t doubt that some of this is valuable content; it’s great that SAP is trying to create original, helpful content to share with visitors, but this isn’t the time or the place. Some serious visitor intent brainstorming is desperately required here.
Grade: D
Our last landing page example is from Infusionsoft marketing software.

This landing page is quality stuff.
The headings and text are well chosen and placed, with text color variation to indicate levels of copy importance. The colored icons on the right draw the visitor’s attention to the key benefits offered by the product. The trust indicators in the upper right hand corner are discreet but noticeable. The button color and text are appropriate, and I like how the central-positioned form draws the visitor in.
A few things I would change: I might consider moving the testimonials that exist below the fold up higher and swapping out the bottom left text chunk, but it’s not the end of the world.

I am irked a tiny bit that the first name form field doesn’t align with the one below, and that the button isn’t perfectly centered between the form fields, but those are easy fixes. I see a free trial offer as a better incentive than a demo, but maybe Infusionsoft has great success with their demo – each company has their own folder of testing research that can influence certain elements of their landing page. Remember, you know your company best, and it’s very possible that not all general landing page best practices will apply to you.
I believe this might be my favorite of all the landing page examples we’ve looked at.
Grade: A+

04:57

WordStream's New PPC Reporting Tool Unveiled

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WordStream's New PPC Reporting Tool Unveiled

In a recent study, WordStream has discovered that PPC reporting and analysis is a major time sink for many businesses. Reporting can be a messy business – you may initially log into AdWords or Analytics with a specific intention, but you can quickly get lost in the maze of metrics and end up stuck in quick sand, wasting your valuable time and resources.

WordStream’s new PPC Reporting Tool was created to address businesses’ need for a fast, easy, and streamlined way of reporting on PPC progress.

This new PPC reporting tool creates intuitive visualizations of PPC results, letting users:

• Save time on reporting and analysis.
• Easily understand and make sense of your PPC results.
• Communicate PPC success to your team and your clients.

While other reporting tools offer bland and confusing reports packed with secondary metrics, the PPC Reporting Tool features colorful, easy to understand reports that can be shared with managers, or with clients for agencies.

WordStream users can create their PPC Success Reports with the click of a button. Simply log into PPC Advisor and click the “Generate Report” button at the top of the screen.

The PPC Reporting Tool offers a comprehensive report divided into 3 sections:

• The Search Performance Funnel: Shows cost, impressions, clicks, CTR, total conversions, conversion rate, and cost per acquisition in addition to percent changes from the previous month.
• Account Health & Trends:  Offers graphical view of how impression-weighted Quality Score, click-through rate, average CPC, total cost, and CPA are trending across months.
• Top Performers: Features a word cloud of top keyword performers and insight into highest-performing text ads.

The PPC Reporting Tool delivers valuable reports designed to provide PPC Managers will the most important metrics that influence their business, while cutting out the vast hoards of excess data that convolute reporting and cost valuable time as PPC managers struggle to sift through the mountains of metrics.

Let’s take a step-by-step look at the PPC Reporting Tool.

Search Performance Funnel: Assessing The Big Picture ROI

The Search Performance Funnel provides visual data concerning:

• Budget Spent
• CTR
• Conversion Rate
• CPA

The funnel illustration offers and easy to digest look at how your PPC budget is being used to generate clicks, which narrow down to conversions, and finally become your bottom line. The PPC report also shows percent changes from previous months, so you can compare your current report with past performance.

Account Health And Trends: Tracking The Most Important Metrics

In the Account Health and Trends section of the PPC Reporting Tool, you’ll see charts and graphs illustrating your impression-weighted Quality Score, click-through rate, average CPC, total cost, cost per acquisition, and how these valuable metrics are trending between months. 

The PPC Report focuses on these metrics to avoid information overload and to narrow down the sea of reporting data to the most important aspects that affect your business. Once you’ve gotten a clear and accurate look at your PPC performance, it’s easy to log into the 20-Minute PPC Work Week and take immediate action to boost your account.

Top Performers: Which Words Are Working For You

The Top Performers section of the PPC Reporting Tool shows businesses their top-performing keywords and text ads.

Top performing keywords are shown in a visual word cloud, making it immediately clear which of your keywords are bringing in the most impressions and clicks to your business. The report also shows conversions, CTR, CPA and cost for your top 5 performing keywords.

Additionally, the Top Performers section shows your account’s best text ads and offers some brief analysis on how to improve keywords and ad performance.

The Best PPC Reporting Tool

WordStream’s new PPC Reporting Tool simplifies and streamlines PPC analysis for busy PPC Managers – it’s a useful tool for small and medium sized business advertisers, as well as agencies. To recap, the PPC Reporting Tool lets users:

• Create visually stunning reports with one click: WordStream’s PPC Reporting Tool translates your massive piles of account data into a beautiful, aesthetic infographic-style report that is easy to understand and read. It’s a great step away from dull Excel charts and bland tables.
• Receive quick and easy to understand insight regarding account performance: Your generated report highlights the most important aspects of your account, making it simple and easy to measure your PPC account performance and communicate your success with team members, managers, and stakeholders.
• Identify what’s right and what’s wrong in an account: The report makes it easy to see where your PPC efforts are growing strong or falling short. You’ll also get actionable tips on what can be done immediately to improve your account.

22:47

Its True WordStream Can Save Few Quids in PPC Costs

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Its True WordStream Can Save Few Quids in PPC Costs

Google AdWords is good at telling you how to spend more money within your PPC campaigns, but if you're looking to savemoney when it comes to paid search marketing, you'll have to take matters into your own hands. Why? Because Google profits when your advertising spend is high!

That's where WordStream comes in. Our Negative Keyword Alerts, part of the 20-Minute PPC Work Week, are a revolutionary way to control costs in PPC. Negative Keyword Alerts tell you exactly where you're already wasting money in your campaigns, so you can go directly to the source of the waste and eliminate it immediately.

Your priorities as a marketer or business owner are a little bit different – you're using AdWords because you expect to see areturn on your investment. To ensure that your ROI is high, you need to:

• Spend money only on targeted keywords and qualified clicks
• Filter out spending on unprofitable keywords and clicks that don't convert

Again, Google doesn't help you do this because it's not in their best interest to curtail your spending. But doing this work manually – staying on top of all your ad groups and campaigns, looking for keywords that don't perform well or are irrelevant to your business – can take up an enormous amount of effort. Most PPC managers don't have the time to regularly check every ad group for these underperformers, so they have no idea how much money they're wasting.

• Negative Keyword Alerts show you the top 10 actions you can take immediately to cut costs
• See exactly how much money you're saving with each action
• Proactively discover and set negative keywords to stop waste before it starts

Some PPC applications tell you when there's a problem in your account, but they don't tell you what to do about it. A diagnosis isn't worth much if it doesn't point to a cure. But WordStream doesn't just alert you to problems, it tells you how to fix them.

The Benefits Of Negative Keyword Alerts

WordStream's Negative Keyword Alerts are designed to help busy search marketers and small business advertisers get their work done faster and improve their bottom line. The benefits are clear:

• Save money – Each Negative Keyword Alert tells you how much money you're wasting in a given ad group or campaign, and consequently how much you'll save by filtering out unwanted clicks.
• Save time – Don't waste time combing through every nook and cranny of your AdWords account. WordStream's smart negative keyword tools automatically find areas of wasted spend in your campaigns.
• Improve workflow – Negative Keyword Alerts guide you to the actions that will have the most impact on your profits first, so you'll know your time and effort is well spent.

02:32

Want To Extract Best Out Of PPC Negative Keywords -- Try Word Stream

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Want To Extract Best Out Of PPC Negative Keywords -- Try Word Stream

The idea, in any marketing initiative, is to try to get your message to as many interested parties as possible.  You want hot leads and qualified clicks.  This will require you to weed your PPC ( courtesy Wordstream) garden.
In the coming paragraph, we'll lay out a system of generating highly effective negative keywords.

AdWords Negative Keyword List

 

Google AdWords supports something called "negative keywords." This means that within Ad Groups, you can designate not only the terms you want to bid on, but also the variations of terms you don't want included in the basket of clicks that you'll pay for.

 

AdWords Negative Keywords in Search Marketing

 

If we go back to broad match, we can see where this could potentially be a really useful tool.  You can weed out the variations you don't like, right?  But Google doesn’t provide you with a list of the queries your ad is displaying for, or with a record of what people are clicking on when you opt for “broad match.” So you have no idea what kinds of useless ads you’re buying, and here again we encounter the problem of scale. How can a person even begin to approach listing off the seemingly endless, random number of variations that won't bring you the kinds of clicks you want?

 

Using WordStream's Premium negative keyword tools

 

You can easily add negative keywords at both the campaign level (keep them away from all of your ad groups) or the group level (ban a word or phrase from only one group within your overall campaign) with WordStream's negative keyword tools.

WordStream's negative keyword tools allow you to:

• Delete negative keywords - Remove a keyword from your WordStream database.
• Filter negative keywords - Set a negative keyword filter to ensure that a given term is never included in your account or bid on in your Ad Groups.
• Set negative keywords at the group or account level - Designate a keyword filter for your entire account, or only for a specific keyword group.

 In addition, Word Stream's Savings Alerts feature actually alerts you to areas of wasted spend within your AdWords account, telling you exactly what negative keywords to set to start saving money. no other PPC software makes it this easy to save money.

Because WordStream is continually generating new keywords and perpetually identifying the terms and phrases that perform poorly, creating a comprehensive list of negative keywords is a painless (and largely automated) process.

Using WordStream's Free Negative Keyword Tool

 

WordStream also offers an innovative, free negative keyword tool that will help you lower costs and raise click-through rates for more effective, relevant, and budget-friendly PPC campaigns.

WordStream's negative keyword tool is unique because it empowers you to:

• Eliminate wasteful ad spend before it starts by proactively setting negative keywords and match types.
• Save time and increase productivity by identifying whole clusters of related negative keyword candidates rather than single instances of negative terms.
• Efficiently manage negative keyword research by using the same tool to find, and review negative keywords and upload changes directly to your AdWords account.

 Let's take a look at how this works.



When you enter a keyword in the Free Negative Keyword Tool, it mines our massive keyword database of more than a trillion search queries for modifiers that may not be relevant to your offerings. You can then review these terms and tell the tool whether or not they are relevant to your campaigns.

22:07