Over the past several months, I’ve been repeating the same advice again and again to our private clients, Inner Circle members, and customers.
Here’s my advice: Dumb It Down.
If you want to double your conversion rate — so more people contact you and do business with you — then you should make it blatantly obvious what people are supposed to do when they land on your website.
Why is it important to “dumb down” your message?
There are 2 good reasons actually:
1. People are really impatient online
When people land on your website, they want to know — right away — whether they’re in the right place. They don’t want to waste a single second. If they don’t see what they’re looking for, they’re gone.
2. Not everyone is as smart as you
Sad but true: the average American reads at a 7th or 8th grade reading level. So skip the big words, and keep it simple. A good rule of thumb is to write like you speak. Keep it conversational and you’ll get better conversion rates.
One of the biggest leverage points in your marketing is your landing page conversion rate — the percentage of people who contact you (or buy from you) when they land on your website.
(In case you’re not familiar with the term “landing page,” it’s the page on your website where you direct people when you want them to take a specific action. It’s called a “landing” page because it’s where a person lands on your website from an advertisement or an email promotion, etc.)
OK, back to my advice…
I’ve repeatedly found that when it comes to landing page design, the simpler you can make it, the better.
Specifically, the more obvious you can make your call-to-action, the better. Seriously, just make it incredibly obvious what your website visitor is supposed to do, and you’ll improve your conversion rate.
Here’s an example of an incredibly simple (and very high-converting) landing page we’ve been testing recently:
As you can see, it’s blatantly obvious what you’re supposed to do. That’s right — you’re supposed to enter your email address to get the SEO checklist.
And because it’s so simple, it converts really well.
(If you want to see this landing page in action, click here.)
In a recent promotion we did, we had a whopping 79.7% of the website visitors who landed on this page enter their email address to get the free SEO checklist.
And I’m not talking about a tiny sample size, either… That was the average conversion rate after 1,174 clicks. That’s one of the highest landing page conversion rates we’ve ever experienced — and it’s all because of how simple the design is.
(Kudos to Ryan at Digital Marketer for the inspiration.)
So let me ask you a question…
Are You Being Too Smart?
Many people will read this advice and brush it off. They’ll assume that my advice is too simple to possibly work. They’re looking for a very complicated cure to fix their advertising.
But that’s a mistake. Instead, I recommend you make things so clear and obvious that it’s incredibly easy for more people to respond.
Your landing page conversion rate is a HUGE leverage point. If you can double your landing page conversion rate, then you’ll get twice as many leads. If you’re advertising in Google AdWords, that might mean you could afford to spend twice as much per click as your competitors. And that means you can buy more traffic than your competitors, which means you gain more market share.
If you want to double your landing page conversion rates, my advice is to dumb it down.
Here’s What To Do Now
Load up your landing page on your computer screen, and take a few steps back. Is it obvious what to do? If not, then dumb it down…
Next, grab somebody who doesn’t work with you — somebody who hasn’t visited your landing page before. Ask them to take a look at your landing page, and ask them if it’s obvious what to do. If it’s not obvious, then dumb it down some more…
Finally, once you’re satisfied that your page is already obvious, go one step further. And make it blatantly obvious. For example, make the text or button of your call-to-action bigger and more prominent, so it’s even more obvious what to do.
(Seriously, we’ve run tests before where increasing the size of the call-to-action button on a landing page provided an extra boost of 10% of more.)
So, don’t be afraid to make your landing page brain-dead simple. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
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