Episode 008 - Landing Page Basics and Conversion Goals

The first thing you need to do is lay out your site and think through your landing pages. Every aspect of your site should lead to your conversion goal.

Some common conversion goals are:

  • Making a sale
  • Contextual ads being clicked
  • Signing up for affiliate programs
  • Adding a name to your mailing list or newsletter
  • Getting subscriptions to your blog
  • Having a visitor become a member of your forum
  • Having visitors refer friends to your site

Ideally, you should have one conversion goal for your site. Recently, a lot of billboards promoting a certain company’s website popped up were I live. Out of curiosity I visited their site. When I got there, I tried to figure out what they wanted me to do. After a few minutes I couldn’t tell what they wanted me to do so I took a guess. They had a prominent image and message promoting their podcast. To my dismay their podcast hadn’t been updated for almost 6 months! Why are they spending so much money on billboards just to have a terrible conversion on the traffic that comes to their website? The odd thing is, is that this company teaches adult education classes for those wanting to better understand finances or real estate investing. I think a clear conversion goat for their website is generating leads.

I hope I didn’t spend too much time on that but the idea of guiding your visitors towards a conversion goal is important. Shooting for multiple conversion goals is risky. Its even worse to have ambiguous goals. In the book Good to Great (highly recommended) they discuss the hedgehog principle. A hedgehog only knows how to do one thing, curl up in a ball and wait. Even though the fox is more cunning and tries many things the hedgehog doesn’t lose to a fox. Time and time again its those companies that know what they do best a do it over and over again.

Next time we’ll delve into writing optimized pages and how to outline your entire site to be search engine friendly.

Good Luck,

Matthew Ryan

4 Comments

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4 Comments

  • Nia
    April 30th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    This is what I’m working on:

    DONE (for now)
    master-cleanse.info
    my-audio-book.info
    buynoworlater.com

    WORKING ON (for now)
    me2ultimate.com
    leaveamerica.info
    gotoportugal.blogspot.com

    NEEDS MONETIZATION
    audio-book-directory.com

    NOT ACTIVE, COULD TOSS, RE-VAMP, FINISH
    belize-today.blogspot.com
    ready2sellnow.blogspot.com

    I OWN
    ready2sellnow.com

    I ant to build more statis sits or more sites for which I’ve “posted to the futre” withgo articles or exine or other freebies.

    At most I believe I can handle 4 active blogs but for right now I will handle one…once me2 is on autopilot (post wise)through end of August I can focus on ‘leave’ and ‘go’.

    Take a look at my sites and see if you can identify the hedgehog. Thanks. I’ve been “into” this for almost 3 months so I know some stuff and I don’t know some stuff. Let me know if you need some semi-skilled labor to crank out some stuff for your unused or partially used domains so you can get those autopilots set up and monitored so you don’t feel silly for jumping on the next bandwagon or rather pursuing the next brilliant idea that you have.

    I want to embed mp3 conversations/interviews on a couple of my sites. It’s good media

    why not write a flow chart that needs to happen from brilliant idea to ka-ching, ka-ching and figure out on that chart (mind map, sidewalk, whatever) what you personally want to do and what you want someone else to do. Then just state the positions you need filled on your beisbal team and when all players are in place we have a tele conference for the ready set go orientation, ground rules and a confimation of the goal and how we are going to get there..

    either that or just sell your domains or put them in a vault …if you DO just move on, you still should get a team together cuz you still have your strengths and weaknesses. You still have your passions and your apathies…Do what you love and find others who love the parts you’re not thrilled enough with to stick with to finish.

    Of course you already know this stuff. Oh, yeah I no IT background per se but with WordPress and all the information, redundant even information, out there and the willingness to do the ready aim fire over and over…well what can I say this isn’t rocket science.

    Okay. That’s my idea. What do you say?

    All the best, Nia.

    skype same email, how about you? I loathe typing.

  • Matt Ryan
    May 1st, 2007 at 10:48 am

    @Nia

    Thanks for sharing what you are working on. I looked at each of your sites and for only doing it for three months they look great.

    I, for one, love audio books. So I’m glad to see you’ve got a passion for that too. Digg, Delicious, and Reddit all value sites like those so that might be a place to get traffic.

    The flow chart idea with links is an awesome idea.

    Thanks for the comment.

    Matt

  • Nia
    May 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 am

    Hi Matt,
    Thanks for taking the time to read that long comment with those ump-teen typos! My goodness. I appreciate the traffic tip. You looked at my sites? Cool so you can see your mark at me2ultimate.com I presume…

    All the best,
    Nia.

    P.S. I was going to bed but I’m going to see how long it takes for me to change the theme to Cutline, increase the text size and get change the font face to something non serif like Arial or the en vogue Georgia. Then I slip my reader in and activate one, then another comment-er pluggin which I uploaded tot he pluggins folder of each of my WP sites about 12 hours ago…huh? Looks like I’m 3 hours short of another all-nighter…what the hey…so be it. I hope I can get this done in under an hour..I am really getting a bit tired.

  • Nia
    May 2nd, 2007 at 1:32 am

    Wouldn’t you know it!

    Shared BlueHost server being re-booted. Now? So the work is halteed–temporarily.

    No problem I have my schematic and little checklist.

    I shall return! Veceremos.

    All the best, Nia. :)

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