My last post with landing page examples was very popular, so I thought I would review some more pages in a different niche. By critiquing these landing pages, hopefully you will get a better idea of what works for PPC affiliate marketing. My apologies if you are the owner of any of these pages that I selected.
To find these landing pages, I did a Google search for college scholarship. This seems to be a popular niche with CPA networks, although I am not personally involved in these offers.
Landing page 1
This page drops the user off on a cluttered mass of text with no discernable direction to go or path to follow. This would be a great page for quality score which is probably why it was at the top of the paid search results. Perhaps this site just wants visitors, or RSS subscribers to later sell them with an email. If that is the case, they should have made the subscribe button much more visible.
Landing page 2
This page has potential, but falls short. The smiling graduates are good, the short testimonials are good. But the page is oddly spaced and leaves a large blank area at the bottom left. The biggest problem is that the spacing of the page leaves the “next step” button a little low which can place it below the fold of some browsers. (reminder: always test your landing pages is several of the most common resolutions – the resolutions that us tech geeks use is NOT the resolution most of our customers use!)
Landing page 3
This page had the potential to be my favorite of the bunch, but had a fatal flaw. The good parts – the simple bulleted list of highlights, the prominent privacy guarantee, the trust building corporate logos, and the clear actionable path the follow. All killer components of a high converting landing page. But the fatal flaw is the page is too long, putting the submit button below the fold. This will cost conversions.
Landing page 4
This last landing page was my favorite of the bunch. First of all, everything is above the fold and nicely spaced. On the left side were extra links to content rich sections of the site. Even if visitors didn’t convert on this page, there were several opportunities on those pages for conversion. There were 5 bulleted points (which seem to be the magic number of bullets on an LP). The “start now” button was in the center of the page in perfect position for the eye to hit. Lastly, the smiling graduates is a great image to make the visitor feel good about the page. All in all a winner in my book.
This is really helpfull. I need to watch that fold line on my landing pages.
Yes, good post, and a great reminder about screen resolutions… This is extremely important as people’s resolutions are all over the map. Also make sure to test the various resolutions in both IE and Firefox (at least).
- Dave
Wow. Thanks for sharing. I have found it really hard to get examples of good landing pages.
Hi Chad
Thanks for the great article again! I wanted to know, when you design a landing page, what screen resolution would you recommend it is created for?
Having a look at your notes and recommending that the most important information be above the fold, wouldn’t the fold be different on different screen resolutions?
Thanks!
Chad, great reviews. Thanks a bunch again.
One thing I don’t understand is if these are affiliate pages then how come they have their own forms? I don’t know of any advertisers in the networks I use that allows you to post leads directly from your landing page.
Any ideas?
niche, that’s a white label offer. If you can do a ton of volume then you can often set up arrangements to start going direct.
Thanks Matt.
If these are white-label LPs, what would you look for in a normal affiliate page for these types of offers?
David, this was my exact question too. Although, I guess you’d probably have the same format from the last page. On the page you’d give the information and have a clear ‘apply here’ button.
That was going to be my question, thanks for the answer guys.
Awesome! This article is even better than the previous one regarding LPs. Thanks a ton Chad. Although the same question popped up in my head, instead of the form (direct to merchant) I could see like 3 options to click for, each a different offer (sending visitor to each merchant).
all the fields in view and the submit button in view is always the best!
Can you be more specific? What does it mean to have the fields and button in “view”? (probably straightforward but can’t picture what you mean…) Thanks!
Chad,
This is an excellent post. A good landing page is important in order to create conversions.
~Debby
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Nice post. Have read this stuff before but first time to see it nicely illustrated.
Thank you for sharing this ideas about landing page. New added information on my head. Keep posting more valuable articles
[...] Update: Please see another post with many more good and bad landing page examples [...]
Thank you for providing us with four examples of landing pages and your assessement. I would love to read a third articles in your series on landing pages.
A lot to think about. From your analysis, the KISS princible – with a well-placed button – would seem to be the most effective.