Landing Page Makeover Clinic: 10 Tips for Better Book Sales

Since Brian likes me to cover the “conversion” beat for Copyblogger, I’ve been actively collecting spot-on quotes, resources, tip lists, etc. to help you make the most of your online sales/marketing copywriting efforts. So let’s start with a pretty good quote about our favorite topic, landing pages.

A landing page is communications, not advertising. Landing pages are where you communicate valuable information. Advertising gets people to click to your landing page, but once a prospect is there, the landing page should focus on communicating the value of your offering to the buyer.

I pulled this from Web Ink Now, David Meerman Scott’s blog, Web Landing Pages: Required for Search Engine Marketing. I like this quote a lot, although I’d add it’s where you communicate value AND direct a specific response/action from the visitor — even if that action is to click through to another page.

There’s other good stuff in this post, much of which we’ve covered in previous posts. What’s interesting to me, though, is that the landing page for his new book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR could use a boost in landing page effectiveness. If David were to ask me to revise this page, here are 10 changes I would offer:

• Strip away the page template navigation and other extraneous elements so the focus is strictly on the product and the pitch.
• Open the page with a strong, benefit-rich headline that speaks directly to the reader’s self-interest.
• Tell me more about what the reader will learn by reading the book and following its advice.
• Revise the copy from a little less “I” and a lot more “you.”
• I’d make the product or “hero” shot bigger and more prominent. I might put the first BUY button under the photo.
• Move the praise from below the fold of the page, edit tightly and move some of the items in the left column. The rest I’d highlight in shaded boxes throughout the copy.
• Line of text in red, bold or plain, is very hard to read. I’d use red sparingly and use a deep blue for heads and subheads.
• Feature the “specials” so they’re seen by the reader. (To review the special, I need to use a link that takes me to a different page. I might use a clickable pop-up here to keep the reader on the landing page.)
• Again, rather than send me to a different page to read the forward, I’d edit it and present the gist in a clickable pop-up.
• Ask for the order, use your own BUY button rather than Amazon’s (it can still link to Amazon), and put the title of the book adjacent to it.

Want the Maven to Makeover Your Current Landing Page?

After I prepared this post, I got to thinking it might be fun to do Maven Makeover Clinics as an ongoing feature, with landing pages contributed by Copyblogger and Copywriting Maven readers. You submit the URL of an existing landing page (your own, please), and I’ll critique in an upcoming post. I might do some in-depth reviews like the one above or “quick-tip” my way through several.

Now before you get all excited about getting a freebie, I’ll tell you right upfront that I don’t work for free (well, not usually :=) You wanna play? You’ll have to pay, but not me. I’m going to ask that participants pony up a donation to my one of my favorite charities, Heifer International.

Please, no emails just yet.

I’m still hammering out the details, including a special email address and yes, a landing page, to handle the requests. I’ll be back within the next few weeks with specifics.