What Makes A Landing Page Suck

Scoring a sale is more than just getting a visitor to click, it requires a sales technique projected through a quality landing page. Unfortunately, living in a world where visitors have the attention span of a gnat, we see landing pages being chocked full of flashy text telling the consumer what they want to hear. This does not always translate into a sale and more times than not will discourage the visitor and resent such an in your face sales attempt.

Images


Stock photography is another method used by landing pages that show people completely unrelated supposedly jumping for joy over whatever you are trying to sell. Guess what, buyers are not stupid, they saw those same 20 somethings excited over car insurance that are now trying to push your Viagra lead.

My suggestion, be creative, take some of your own pictures. Or at least, if you are serious about your affiliate business, try purchasing some one off photos. You gotta spend money to make money.

Long Ass Page

Ugh, the dreaded 5 page, page. It's a never ending wall of text and quotes that never seems to end, no matter how far your scroll bar takes you. If it takes you that long to sell me, chances are you need to rethink your sales tactic. Remember, consumers online generally don't have that long of an attention spam. To put it into perspective, would you really want that used cars salesman to go on for 45 mins about the $1,000 car you are about to buy?

My suggestion would be to use better descriptive terms and consolidate wordy paragraphs. Flowery talk can work depending on what niche you are working in, but generally short, sweet, and descriptive sentences will get the job done. Tell the buyer what they want to know and nothing else. This can better be accomplished by having multiple landing pages, focused on the keywords or ads used to find the page.

Unrealistic Quotes

Again, this gets back to the idea that the people you are selling to are not complete retards. Show some respect to those about to spend money with you, don't try and pull a smooth one by them by having outlandish quotes from supposed customers. I don't care how great the product is, no one will be quoted as saying that your digital download was better than an orgasm.

My suggestion, get real quotes from real customers. If you are an affiliate then generally you can contact the company offering the product and request some reviews from actual customers. If this is not possible, then please don't fall into the trap of making junk up, just leave big quote marks off of your landing page.



Afterthoughts

Look, I know not everyone can create sales worthy landing pages that convert well, but there are alternatives available. For starters there are always graphic artists available to create these pages for you, assuming you are good at writing and can write up the copy. Or, there are free landing page templates available that can get you started on the right track.

Good luck affiliating, it's been a touch summer so far for some, and the end of the year isn't looking any better.