Let’s continue our space journey by visiting Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore, where she has kindly added Space Dust to her listings and promotions. Continue reading
Since we last met, the school term kicked off to a speedy start, which cut down my writing time to just two days a week again. It was great to see the new little faces of the Reception class – some of them are only just four years old! My intervention groups have changed this term with a focus on the early years and one of the junior classes. That means a more concentrated effort on those struggling students and more time for me to help them along before the half term.
I’ll be giving a sneak preview of the sequel to the book and, at the end of October, Space Dust will be accompanying me to the October Literary Festival! Joining the likes of 
I will also be holding my own Book Corner work shop at one of the local libraries. All the characters from my books will be getting involved in craft sessions and activities to entertain and enthrall readers of any age. Don’t worry if you can’t attend. There will be live updates and videos right here and on my author website, so you won’t miss out!
Don’t forget to order your copy of In today’s post, we’ll look at how to design an optimized landing page and how to apply a few psychological principles that are proven to convince visitors to take action.
How to apply psychology and design an optimized landing page
Create a compelling headline to draw visitors in
To capture visitors’ attention immediately and keep them engaged on your page long enough to evaluate your offer, you need a compelling headline. Speak directly to the benefits of your product or service and how it fulfills an essential need for your prospect.
One technique to use is the focusing effect.
The focusing effect is the tendency of people to place too much emphasis on one thing at the expense of others. When it comes to your landing page headline, though, you can use this to your advantage.
Your product or service likely has many benefits, but highlighting your unique value proposition (UVP) in your headline helps prospects focus strongly on that one feature. In turn, your UVP encourages them to click your CTA button.
JumpCrew lists several of its benefits in the copy, but highlights its UVP (more customers for less money) in the headline to grab visitors’ attention and make them hungry for more information:
Another way to craft a compelling headline is via message matching. Message matching provides a consistent message from ad to landing page to make prospects more comfortable in converting on your landing page offer. It is most common in headlines, but it can also be demonstrated through images, copy, and colors.
Getting your prospective visitors to notice your message is all well and good, but keeping them on your page is what turns them into serious customers. Adding interesting and relevant content will entice your visitor to explore your page and seems pretty obvious, but there is more you can do to add interest.
Include engaging media to keep visitors engaged
In the list of landing page best practices, video and images both play a critical role in persuading visitors to take action. For example, on average, a visitor will stay on a web page with video (5 minutes and 50 seconds) longer versus a page with only text and images (43 seconds). So it’s no surprise that videos have proven to increase conversion rates by as much as 80%.
Landing page images often employ the “deictic gaze” — a visual cue to draw the viewer’s attention toward an intended object. The most common example of this is a person looking towards the CTA button, drawing the visitor’s attention to it so they click it.
Take a look at this page, and notice where your attention goes:
Adding a video relevant to your product may not have been your first choice for engaging a new audience, but it could be an easy way to add interest to your product.
Moving on from the visual aids, Brandon breaks down the impact of content. What could be breaking news on a new book or your ‘must have’ Christmas offer may be derailed by content that falls flat on its face. How do you stop this from happening?
Write ultra persuasive copy
Not only should your copy be readable, it should also be easy to understand. Stay away from jargon and write in a way that a 6th grader would understand. For example, if your solution saves people money, don’t say “closefisted.” Instead, say cost-effective.
Also, loss aversion can be an effective psychological tactic. It’s based on the idea that people value not losing something more than gaining something. So telling your prospects what they’ll be losing if they don’t convert is a surefire way to get them to take action — especially when you combine this with a free offer.
Take a look how Webinfinity applies loss aversion to their landing page copy with their headline and first section header. First, they ask visitors if they’re losing the PRM technology game. Then, they tell visitors they’re losing the game if they’re still using older technology:
Now that you have your visitor’s attention and they are there to stop and browse for a while, do you convert them into customers that buy or keep them entertained by the visuals and content? What is required to set the right tone to create a reaction to the smorgasbord you’ve prepared?
Urgency is another effective strategy to incorporate in your landing page copy. By letting prospects know they must act quickly to redeem the offer, you’re persuading them to convert. This is often done in conjunction with a countdown timer, like a webinar landing page or event registration page.
Next is the decoy effect. It involves at least three choices packaged smartly together using persuasive copy to convince prospects to select the option you want them to choose. Sales pages (like a pricing page) in particular use this tactic in which adding a decoy option (a third option) to a set of original options tends to increase the prospect’s preference for one option over the other original option. Meaning, one option is inferior to another, but in the middle ground compared to the least favorable option.
Here’s how The New Yorker uses the decoy effect on their subscription landing page. By adding the best value option — both print and digital subscription for the same price as just either one by itself — it makes choosing that one a no-brainer:
Whilst finding the perfect balance between the tone of the copy, highlighting headings to match your mail shot and creating images to keep your prospective customer on your page, we can’t forget the importance of balance:
Utilize white space to focus their attention
White space and various color combinations are great for providing visitors with a pleasing visual experience, but they also play a vital role in persuading visitors to click your CTA button.
White space (aka empty space) helps isolate certain elements on your landing page, like forms and CTA buttons, so they can draw maximum attention. By surrounding important elements with white space, you effectively tell visitors what you want them to focus on.
When it comes to color, consider the Von Restorff Effect, which states that people tend to remember things that stand out to them most. With landing pages design your CTA button in a contrasting color (preferably a color that hasn’t been used anywhere) so it’s very obvious where they must go to redeem your offer. If you’re unsure of which color to choose, look at the color wheel and choose the opposite color of your page’s dominant color. For example, if your page is mostly blue, select orange for the CTA button.
Look how Five9 surrounded their CTA button and video with white space and designed it in a contrasting color to make it “pop” off the page:
The day started relatively well with my daughter’s birthday cake turning out pretty good.
Once the morning run was done, I sped home to power clean the stinky hole we call a home and throw it back into a civilised state after a weekend of vegging. Unfortunately, in my rush, I assumed the sprogs had cleaned their rooms, knowing that I had threatened them that we were going to have a person come round to give us a quote on some work. To my horror, I led said gent up the stairs to take a look at the bedrooms and lo and behold the most embarrassing sight met my eyes. I won’t go into any detail out of pure shame, but let’s just say I had to apologise for the state of the sprogs’ bedrooms. He just smiled and assured me that he hadnt noticed anything. Well, I did and I bet a blind man would have sensed something was wrong with their bedrooms (probably after tripping over toys and dirty clothing strewn across the carpets). I was mortified.
Thoughts by Mello-Elo 