Wanted to quickly share what, frankly, was an amazing turnaround for the conversion rate on a client's landing page based solely on reducing the amount of copy on the page.
The initial landing page had several paragraphs of copy on the lefthand side of the page briefly describing the client's business and a form on the righthand side for visitors to complete and submit to obtain access to a free white paper. A link to the landing page was inserted into an ad running in an email newsletter targeted at the client's primary customer base - hedge funds and private equity shops. Bad news - of the 52 visits to the landing page (as measured by Google Analytics), only one visitor requested the white paper. A simply atrocious 2% (with rounding up!).
We weren't sure why the results were so bad since this landing page layout had worked real well for other clients. We thought about the audience and concluded that hedge fund and private equity folks are so busy, harried and stressed that they don't want to spend time reading alot of copy. So we drastically cut the copy on the lefthand side of the landing page to pretty much one paragraph, and then invited visitors to complete the form on the right to obtain their free white paper. Bingo! The conversion rate jumped to 40%!!!
Now that's a real bump up in conversions. Can't promise such magical results all the time, but the experience shows that landing pages need to remain zealously focused on a single goal - conversion. Cut out all the fluff, and keeping in mind the characteristics of your audience, craft copy that encourages visitors to complete your form and submit (of course, the promised item to be delivered upon form submission has to be compelling to the audience you are targeting).
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