Let's get into some of the the finer details of
Critical Skill #2: Effective Capture Page Making.
 

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A landing page is the foundation of great inbound marketing strategies.
Landing pages serve as the location of your prospect who “land” on your website.
If you are trying to generate new leads or sell products online, landing pages are the place to that happen.
And in a world where the average attention span online is about eight seconds (or less),
our landing pages must be optimized for instant conversion.

With such a short time to make your first impression, you need to ensure every piece of your landing page
is well-planned and working correctly. In addition to that, many repeat visitors will come across
your landing page. Optimizing your landing page will ensure these folks continuously
see the information they expect, helping them become your brand advocates!

What Is A Landing Page? 



Even in an intermediate guide, it is best to start with the basics. Let’s begin with a quick review
of some core concepts in landing page optimization. A landing page is a page that allows you
to capture a visitor’s information through a lead form. It is where your visitor “land” after
clicking on a call to action button. This is the crux of your inbound marketing strategy.
It is the point on your conversion path where you collect the information
that generates a lead.

As a rule of thumb, a landing page usually includes a compelling header,
exciting copy, minimal navigation, and an optimized form. In addition to good design,
a good landing page employs an excellent strategy. The best landing pages target a particular audience,
such as traffic from an email campaign to promote a specific offer or visitors
who clicks on a pay-per-click ad to promote a specific campaign.

It is essential to build a unique landing page for each offer you create.
You can build landing pages that allow visitors to download or opt-in
to receive your content offers such as:

coupons,
e-book,
gifts,

or sign up for offers
and further down the
funnel such as:

free trials
& product demos.


What's the Difference between a Landing Page
and a Squeeze Page?

Landing Pages Componants: 
 

Why Are Landing Page Important? 



As I explained above, a landing page is where you capture your leads or sell your products.
Therefore, designing an outstanding landing page experience is critical to effectively converting
a higher percentage of your visitors into leads and sales. Landing pages make it much easy
for your website visitors to receive an offer since they are taken directly to the offer
itself rather than having to navigate around your website to find it.

Landing pages also help to clarify what visitors must do to receive your offer.
The best marketing is about delivering the correct information, to the right person,
at the right time. That’s how you create marketing that people love. By directing your visitors
to a landing page, the exact page with the offer, and the form they must complete to get it,
you increase the likelihood that they will complete your form
and convert it into leads.

How to Create a Landing Page that Converts.

Most people have no (or simply the slightest) idea of how to create a landing page that converts.
Instead, they slop together elements that they have seen used in other landing pages – but usually
do not put them together in the same way the owner
of the successful landing page did.

One major problem is ad copy. And that’s fine. Not everyone is going to be an excellent
writer – never mind a copywriter. But as someone selling a product or trying to build a list,
it is important that you know your strengths and weaknesses – and that you either
spend the time to overcome them or hire
someone else to do it for you.

With copywriting, for instance, it is important to use a mix of compelling sales points
with powerful psychological triggers. Most people who create a sales page
miss either one or both of those elements.

For instance, they might concentrate so much on building hype that they don’t actually
explain what solution they are providing – and for whom they are providing it.
If I don’t have a specific problem that your product solves,
why would I buy it? I wouldn’t.

Now, if they fail to sprinkle in psychological triggers, such as “scientifically proven,
” “guaranteed,” and “shocking,” no one will feel compelled to continue reading,
as the benefits will have a low or average perceived value.

In addition to these two problems, some sales pages lack coherency and direction.
The copy looks amateurish and it doesn’t slowly grind forward, breaking down the visitor’s
resistance to the sale – and compelling him or her to
buy more and more at each sales point.



Additionally, if there aren’t multiple calls to action – another form of psychological
trigger – then a potential visitor might never feel compelled enough to pull
out his or her credit card on the spot and make the purchase.

In addition to careful copywriting, there are other important things you must take into
consideration when writing a landing page that converts. For instance,
it is important to build a compelling
case for a time-bound offer.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to invent fake deadlines and constantly revise them each week.
This is a good way to guarantee your complete loss of credibility
in the shortest amount of time possible.

However, when planning your copy, you will want to make sure that you constantly
urge the reader to act immediately by inserting a number of “calls to action,”
as I’ve mentioned previously.

You may want to consider using fly-ins or pop-ups to create more
urgency – or to make a time-bound offer. Perhaps you can use a countdown
to build urgency (i.e., when someone arrives at your landing page,
they have five minutes to purchase the product at the lowest price).




Now, if you’re creating a squeeze page, you might want to employ slightly different tactics.
Rather than building a compelling case with multiple triggers and calls to action
over the course of 1000 words, you may want to simply condense that all into a
compelling headline and one paragraph of “benefits.”

For a completely free-to-join squeeze page, you more than likely won’t have a
considerable amount of resistance to joining, unless the visitor:


Doesn’t see any benefits; and
Suspects that you will sell their email address to spammers.
 

Both of these problems are relatively easy to overcome. In your headline,
simply state the exact benefits they will receive for
joining – as always, mixing in psychological triggers.

In your first paragraph of copy, give them a compelling reason to join now
(i.e., the price might go up, the list might become private,
you’ll get this amazing report).

Now, to overcome the second problem, simply include a short line under your opt-in
form that explains that you will not – under any circumstances – spam them
or sell or give away their email address and name.

 

Tips on Increasing Your Landing Page
Conversion Rate landing page.


There are three major ways in which you can create your landing page conversion rate.
All landing pages created by professionals usually include
these three elements at a few others.



The first way in which you can increase your conversion rate is through personalization.
This is usually done in two ways: the first way is by providing a photo of yourself.
The second way is by adding your signature
to the bottom of your landing page.

This radically increases visitors’ trust. Most people who resist buying products online
do so because they wear of getting scammed by a faceless liar, who won’t
be around when they need help or when they need to return the product.

Tip: By adding your picture and signature, you can
significantly increase your visitors’ trust.

Another way in which you can increase your landing page conversion rate
is by using black text or a white layout. Regardless of what anyone tells you,
this is one of the easiest ways in which to make your page look professional,
rather than pathetic or desperate.

The third way in which you can gain trust is by offering something for free.
This is generally what you will do if you’re using a squeeze page to generate leads:
you’ll offer a free report or five-day course – and then use that to generate leads,
which you will later up-sell or generate revenue from via affiliate sales.
Why is this technique so effective?

Quite simply because it allows them to judge your work and ideas before they actually
have to pay for them. Additionally, it builds trust.

In addition to these three general ways in which to increase your conversion rate,
you should always guarantee a product. If you sell through Click Bank,
you actually won’t have a choice.

But if you’re using Paypal or some other check out (Credit Card processing) program,
you will want to make sure you clearly state that customers can return your product
for any reason within a given period of time after the purchase.

Follow all of these steps and you will significantly increase
your landing page conversion rate.


 I don’t need to tell you how important the conversion rate on your squeeze pages is.
The better it converts, the more prospects you get.
The more prospects you get, the more
sales you can eventually make.

 

So how do you get your squeeze pages
converting like gangbusters? 


Here are 13 things you should be doing on every squeeze pages
you create to ensure you’re capturing every prospect possible

 

1) Know who you’re talking to. On your squeeze pages, you are speaking
directly to your prospective customer. So who are they and what do they want?
You’ve got to know your customer and use the words and images
that will appeal directly to them.

 



2) Keep it simple.
I’ve seen squeeze pages that are cluttered with so much stuff you don’t
know what to look at first. So what happens?
Rather than try to sort it all out,
many people will simply close it. Remember, you’ve got about 3 seconds
to capture attention and hold it. Keep the clutter out and only share enough
to get them to take action right now. Any more than that and
you’re confusing them – and losing sign-ups.
 

3) Split-test. Repeatedly. Use Google Website Optimizer and test your headlines,
your colors, your fonts, graphics, form, opt-in button, EVERYTHING.

 



4) Use one strong focal point only. You can and should use different font colors and sizes,
but you only want one focal point to draw the eye in and capture attention,
and that should be your headline. Everything else should flow from the headline.
 

5) Your entire message should be consistent. In other words, don’t use a headline
extolling the benefits of weight loss and then use bullet points about the benefits
of exercise unless it’s in direct relation to weight loss.
Keep it consistent or you’ll confuse and lose your prospects.
 

6) Match your landing page to your sales page. If your sales page is for a
product that teaches traffic generation strategies, then your squeeze
pages should refer to traffic generation strategies, not Internet Marketing in general.
This might sound basic, but it’s surprising how many times I’ve gone from
a squeeze pages on one topic to a sales page on something different.
 



7) Sell the benefits. Remember, you’re not selling a drill, you’re selling holes.
You’re not selling steak, you’re selling the aroma,
the taste and the satisfaction.
 

8) Forget what you think. So you think you’ve found the perfect headline?
The magic bullets? Just the right color scheme? It doesn’t matter
what you think – it matters what converts the best. See #3.


 




9) Think “above the fold.”
Yes, your squeeze pages might extend beyond the fold – that is,
below the area that shows on the computer screen without scrolling.
But the area above the fold should stand on its own. It should show the headline,
the bullets, and the opt-in form. The below-the-fold area is for those prospects
who haven’t quite decided to opt-in yet and want more info.
 

10) Tell them what to do.
Your visitors landed on your squeeze pages because they’re looking for something.
Don’t be coy or clever – make it clear what they will
get and what they need to do to get it.
 



11) Color matters. Use opposing colors on the color wheel to create contrast,
and then test, test, test. Yes, some colors really will convert better than others
but it depends on your offer and your audience,
so you’ve got to test it for yourself.
 

12) Be trustworthy.
Use short, 1 sentence testimonials that rock. Display your logo,
certification, etc. Place your contact info at the bottom of the page.
If you’ve been in business for years, state how many. If you’ve won awards,
place those on there as well. Don’t clutter your page with this info,
but do make it available.



 

13) Perhaps the best squeeze pages trick, outside of testing, is to ASK them a question
that they must answer with a YES! “Do You Want to Look 10 Years Younger?”
“Are You Ready to Build Your List 10 Times Faster?” “Do You Want To Be Irresistible to Women?”
“Can You Handle Becoming WSO of The Day?”
Strategically placing these on your website puts them in a “YES!”
frame of mind, making them more likely to opt into your list.

Go over these principles many times until these are
ingrained in your mind.

Good luck! 

~Albie & Elizabeta
 

You can see the complete page on the 5 Critical Skills here. 
Come back here when you're done.

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Great job going through this Step! I truly hope you learned a lot!