Yesterday I addressed a RevLeader in the RevMax Private Mastermind when they inquired about making their own landing pages. While the main question was, “What program to use for development?,” The conversation shifted to technology and then optimization. I told Ryan that I wanted to extract some of the points from the Mastermind and share some things publicly.
Here they are:
Whether you use Sublime Text 2, Dreamweaver or freaking notepad to create your mobile landing pages, there are some things you need to consider.
Have a headline? Cut it. Read it back and cut it again. Seriously, this needs to be as short as possible. I’m talking about less than four words. Even if it’s primarily image-driven, less is more.
Everything you want the visitor to do needs to be available instantly. No scrolling, no tapping, it has to be right there. Load time is the most important aspect of any landing page; the page can be beautiful but if it doesn’t load quickly, it’s useless.
Some people think there can be no blank space. While the call to action (CTA) needs to be instantly visible, a paragraph break or a simple space could actually make your page come off as less cluttered and easier to read. White space is fine and should be there.
In addition to your CTA being instantly available it needs to be clear and strong. That doesn’t mean just because it sticks out that your visitor can understand it. One successful marketer once told me, “keep it simple stupid.” I didn’t appreciate being called stupid but they were right, the more simplistic, the more conversions.
Load time — speed — whatever you want to call it, it’s king. I cannot reiterate enough to make sure your LPs load quickly and do not include technologies like Flash or plugins that take forever.
jQuery (loaded from a Content Delivery Network ‘CDN’) can be used if needed but consider HTML5 and insure images are in .jpg format. When you test, test on a 3G connection if possible, which will essentially give you a worst-case scenario. Not everyone has a 4G LTE connection or Wifi access but if you can load a page in less than five or six seconds on a 3G connection, it’ll only get better.
Get a page that works and tweak it until you feel you have maximized that LP’s potential. Even small changes can have a big impact.
Avoid superlatives to communicate value. Remember, we’re trying to keep it simple and use as few words as possible. Sometimes words like “best” or “totally” do nothing to enhance your call to action and instead detract from it.
Bullet points, on the other hand, are always good. I don’t know about you but I like to read bullet points that are short, concise and to the point. One of the things speechwriters are taught when giving a speech is to utilize bullet points so their speech is easier to remember. The same concept can be applied to your landing pages. Use bullet points to communicate your call to action. It also provides steps to your visitors
Something we address all the time around here is to do your research on your traffic. Not all landing pages work on all devices. Use your analytical data to find out what device is dominating your traffic and tailor your page for the dominant device. I just got finished explaining to a friend why it’s a bad idea to port a successful campaign from one country to another and one of the reasons is different countries show preference to different devices.
