How to Make a Landing Page

A sales page or landing page is often the most important page to get leads or conversion. You can either utilise a sales page through a Google ads campaign to lead visitors to your page or through Search Engine Optimisation methods. Either way, once you’ve gotten the visitor to your website, your landing page should make the customer convert. Either by means of emailing you or calling you directly. If your landing page is not convincing, whatever efforts you use for marketing or organic visitors won’t mean a thing.

The structure of landing pages is often an art and it takes a lot of tweaking to find out the best format that converts best. It is not a guesswork and should be backed up with data and if possible, A/B testing to find the best format or headlines.

As such, I would like to share the 10 checks you should use for your landing page before launching.

10 Checks Before Launching Your Landing Page

Headline Text

title and description headline

Whether you are getting traffic from Facebook, Google Ads or organic searches, it is important to grab the attention of your potential clients with a catchy headline. Your headline determines how hooked the client is to your product/service. If you are using Google ads or organic search engine pages, make sure that your title tag properly defines your product and service and the description should support your title tag. This is the same for your Facebook post or ad, the first sentence should describe your service and the subsequent sentence giving support to the product or service. For our campaigns, we found that using numbers to support your service makes a great impact on our campaigns. Headlines such as “Professional Cleaning Services with Over 10,000 concurrent cleaning contracts” Or “save 20% on our services with every 1-year contract” numbers usually reach out to the analytical business minds of individuals and it usually works wonders in almost every industry.

Above the Fold Content

“Above the fold” content refers to the content that the visitor is presented with the moment he enters your site. Below the fold content, on the other hand, refers to content that he needs to scroll down in order to see. The above the fold content should match the title tag and description tag that enticed the visitor to click. This will match their expectations with reality and make them stick to your page read on. Not click out, or bounce.

Avoid Unnecessary Links

Your landing page should not have any unnecessary links for visitors to click away. Always remember that your landing page is there to sell your product. Giving them something else to read about will distract people from what you want them to do and cause a delay from your objective… which is converting them into sales.

Distracting Content

It might be tempting to add elements that can beautify or improve the experience for the visitor but are often counterproductive to converting. Always remember that too much information, images or video content can discourage a user from making the next step in your marketing funnel. If that information is not necessary for your sales, don’t put it in.

Call to Action

call to action buttons

Assume you managed to convince the visitor to take the next step and fill up their information or credit card details. A good call to action is needed. Ask yourself if you need the customer to call you or send you an email. If an email is needed. Make sure only necessary details is required. I’ve seen so many calls to action contact forms fail because the visitor was uncomfortable with the number of fields and details was required. With the number of security lapses going on, people are less willing to provide key information and this can lead to poor conversions. In most cases, you should only need the following information: Name, Email. Other forms of information such as contact number should only be required after some follow up through email correspondence.

Proofread Your Content

The one thing that ticks me off when I read a sales page is a poor use of vocabulary and sentence structure. It gives me a sense of how much work was put in and the conscientiousness of the writer. And it isn’t just me too. Studies have also shown in an A/B testing scenario that a poorly written sales page with grammatical errors and poor sentence structure tends to have a lower conversion rate than one that has generally no mistake.

It is good practice to proofread your content after you have written it, get someone else to read your content and finally, read it once through after a few hours.

Does my Sales Page Fit the Needs of My Client?

Often times, businesses are too focused on selling their product and service without understanding more about the customer. Customers and visitors visit your website because they have a problem. Not because of how great your business is. Instead of focusing on your product or service. Put yourself in a client’s shoes and structure your sales page around what they need. By doing so, you are able to meet their needs first making them more inclined to lock in with your service/product.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a common sight on almost all websites but are an intangible resource that most visitors are looking for. Most people want a perfect service without any hiccups and testimonials are a great way to assure them that you know what you are doing. If you have testimonials, place them before your call to action and in order of importance. People are more likely to convert when they see a company which they recognise that has used your service or product and have something good to say.

Mobile Optimisation

mobile optimisation

Mobile users contribute to over 40% of visits for all 100+ of my client’s websites and websites that we own. This growing trend is an indication of the growing trend of using just a mobile device as their sole device. Optimise your page and test to ensure that all elements are mobile-friendly and can load quickly. Remember that not everyone has the same access to fast 4G/LTE connection. One suggestion will be to use Google’s AMP for lightning fast speeds.

Test

Before launching your sales page/campaign, it is always wise to test every single element. This means opening the page in different browsers, testing on Android and iPhone platforms, testing the loading page, content forms and proofreading your content once more. You will be amazed at how much money it will save you instead of finding costly mistakes after launching.

Conclusion

After 10+ years in the industry of internet marketing and launching sales pages for our clients, I find that these 10 fundamentals never change. To this day, I use these 10 checks to ensure that my sales page has these essential elements, and it has proven beneficial in most cases.

 

Why Websites Aren't Enough

Why Having Just a Website is not Enough

Websites have long been regarded as an essential tool for business owners to broadcast their service or products on the world wide web. However, as we progress into the 21st century. Some might feel that just having a website is just not enough to get more online leads or conversions. Follow us as we uncover why this is getting more apparent in 2018 and beyond.

The Inception of Websites

The first website was launched in 1991 and was just made up of text informing everyone what the World Wide Web(www) was. Since then, the website has evolved to even form content management systems, e-commerce stores and even engines to hold and display data and information. We have truly come a long way. Early adopters of these technologies reaped the most benefit especially when they developed their business model and website right. Take for instance Yahoo which had the search engine dominance before Google can into inception and Amazon which used to solely sell books and now in 2018, sell almost anything from toiletries, games and even makeup products.

How many Businesses own Websites in Singapore?

Singapore boasts one of the largest percentages of internet users across the entire population with nearly 2 of 3 Singaporeans having access to the internet. From a research from Asia Pacific Digital Marketing Yearbook 2009, It validates that 80% of Singaporeans have shopped online and are one of the highest spenders in Asia. Imagine the number in 2018. However, it is quite sad to say that less than 60% of businesses in the ACRA database even has a website. There is still a large chunk of businesses that still rely on brick and mortar methods to market their products and services. Websites are essential because they elevate the status of your business and improves the overall image that your business might bring.

Why Websites are not Enough

Just having a website used to be sufficient to generate more leads in the early 2010s. However, with Instagram and Facebook added to the foray, businesses must now adapt and add that into their repertoire. Social media platforms bring a great avenue of social discussion about your product and service which can greatly elevate the reputation of your service or products. Many businesses solely rely on Facebook and Instagram through their social media marketing advertising arm to bring news firsthand to their loyal customers and building your Facebook page and Instagram will reap benefits in a long run with constant engagement. Using other products such as Google my Business is also a great way to list and find businesses on Google Maps.

Google my Business

Spreading your Eggs Across Different Baskets

life 101 tells you never to place all your eggs in a single basket, whether it is dealing with stocks, having additional income streams. Websites are the same. You should never just use websites but rather a 360-degree approach in your online marketing methods. This is why Proximacy addresses all our clients in the same manner. We take the time to look at your business, see where you are lacking in terms of online presence and then recommend you a total approach to address these loopholes. If you are looking to increase your web prescene to exponentially, do contact us and we will be more than willing to have a chat first to find out what your business really needs.

Facebook Advertising and Should You Try It

Facebook advertising

If you have been using social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, You probably should have noticed that more advertisements are flowing into the platform. Backtrack 5 years ago and things would have been different. While it does draw some frustration on users’ end, it actually helps users find new products and information that they would not have gotten through these platforms.

Facebook marketing or Social Media Marketing as we know it is advertising solely on these platforms through sidebar ads, news feed ads or even video advertisements. While they can be intrusive to a user’s experience on the platform. Research and analytics have proven that it is a very effective means of engagement with potential customers. More than  2.5 million Singaporeans are currently on Facebook. Research has also shown that the most active point of the platform is usually during the commute to work or even before bed. With users spending on an average of 1 hour per day on Facebook. You can see why so many companies are jumping on the bandwagon.

 

How does their advertising work?

Facebook is one of the biggest data collection platforms to date. With over a billion users, Facebook has information on where users stay, their interests, their likes, hobbies, what they share and even the type of video you watch. With this information, advertisers have the ability to literally pinpoint the customers that might be interested in their products. Facebook then displays your ads to the requirements in your demographic so that it reaches the right people.

facebook targeting

Facebook Ad Auction

Just like Google’s Paid Search: Google Adwords, Facebook uses an auction system to allow advertisers to bid for their advertisements. Through that system and other metrics, Facebook then decides which ads are shown to users. Of course, other metrics such as the volume of clicks, the number of likes, shares and even the relevance of the ads do matter.

Tracking your Performance

Just like Google Analytics or Google Adwords, You can also track the performance on how your ads are doing. Ads Manager is Facebook’s “software” that tells you everything. From how your ads are doing by the amount of share and likes to even the traffic and engagement with other users. You can also set up goals alongside Google Analytics for a deeper understanding of how your ads are organic searches compare.

facebook manager interface

Effectiveness

So with all that was said, is Facebook advertising really that effective? The short and simple answer is a resounding Yes! With about 40% of the population on Facebook and a large and constant userbase, it is one of the best bang for your buck methods to achieve your marketing Goals. Many of our clients have experienced better Return on Investments than Search Engine Marketing methods such as Pay-per-click. With that said, Facebook marketing still has its limitations. While a substantial percentage of our population is on Facebook, the majority of that population are within the age of 13-30. A large percent still rely on tradition online marketing methods such as Google’s search network or Youtube. If you are planning to solely use Facebook as a means of advertising, it is important to determine the demographic you are after and research on its viability. A well-balanced approach would to always use A-B testing for a couple of months to see which platform brings about the best lead generation.

 

 

 

Why Font Type Matters

The debate on whether font type matters in marketing and website design has been the debate of the 21st century. With so many different types of fonts available and variations, it can be difficult to choose the right font for your website or material. Here are a few reasons why font matters.

Differentiation of Content Type

Consistency in this manner is about making sure that the different portions of your website have the appropriate font size, type, and differentiation. It needs to be easy for visitors to spot and to understand the different segments of your website. Maintaining these differentiation helps to create a uniformity throughout your website and enhance the user experience.

Take for instance the picture below of an e-commerce site. The title is always the biggest at 20px while the description of the product is 14 px. This allows the user to automatically differentiate between the title tag and the description tags. Our brains have already been programmed this way right when you start using the internet. This is why developers never have to put the title as “Product Title” for you to know the name of the product.

Hierarchy of Importance

It is very common when marketers or content analyst use differently sized font types and sizes to emphasize a certain hierarchy. Ever seen a title that is bolded with all upper case letters? It denotes a sense of urgency and tags a level of importance to that text. Making such subtle changes can change the mood altogether and the importance of select text. A good example will be posters on ads that want to market a certain promotion such as a club like Molecue. They place an emphasis on the pricing of the beer in order to place certain importance to the text. Your eye is likely to be attracted to the price and not the product because of the placement and size.

 

Design Effect

If you are a company dealing with the younger generation, you might want to emphasize more on the design aspect of your website. The younger generation demands exquisiteness, a combination of elements to invoke certain emotions and the use of font to create a nice effect. There is nothing sweeter than a good balance of the perfect font and a well-placed title to invoke certain emotions. By using a mixture of fonts and colors, you can achieve that balance and soothing effect that can invoke individuals to make a purchase. Some great examples are Apple advertisements and their website. Their website is simple yet achieves the desired effect for all their products.

 

Our Recommendation

While it is important to understand the placement of text, type, colour and size of the font, you should always take into consideration the limitation of the performance of the font. Some fonts that are not widely available in the web might not have the performance you desire and could slow down your website loading speed. For a good selection of fonts, you can try Google Fonts. For websites, you should only ever use a maximum of 3 different fonts for the sections for your website. A font for the main content, another font for the Menu content and lastly another font for items such as your advertising materials. The last thing you want is for every page to have a different font which will ruin the uniformity of the website.

 

Integrating your Website with SEO

If you are reading this article you are probably wondering what is Search Engine Optimisation(SEO). SEO is about optimising your website to make your website show up in the search engine search results. For example, typing “florist Singapore” and your website showing up on the first page. About 50% of businesses in Singapore owns a website to help market their services and products. However, did you know that having a website is as good as placing a storefront in a non-populated estate? People who do not know about your business just have no way to find your website on the internet unless they know your business by name. In this post, we will talk about how to differentiate a website that has done SEO and which hasn’t. And also why people choose not to have their website with SEO.

Differentiating between the websites with SEO and without

While it can be easy to determine if a website that looks modern and updated, it is impossible for the untrained eye to find out if the website has done conscientious work on their search engine optimisation. Check out some of these tips below if you are unsure or our post on what onsite SEO is.

Proper Title tags and Description

One of the easiest methods to find out if a website has proper onsite SEO is through their title tags and description. An optimised website tends to have the right amount of words and characters for the title tag and description tags, Good use of keywords for each page, unique title tags and description tags for every page while poorly optimised will have duplicated title tags and descriptions and usually descriptions that do not make any sense.

Onpage Linking

Conduct any search terms and you’ll probably find Wikipedia in the top few search results. One thing you will definitely notice is the amount of linked anchor keywords they have on just one page. Just one page can be linked to over 100 different pages and that is what Google usually likes in a website; Good interlinks to relevant information based on keywords

Loading Speed of a Website

Have you ever waited so long for a website or an image on a website for so long that you switched to another website? I know I have and it is extremely frustrating especially in this day and age to have a website load more than 5 seconds. Google feels that way too. It tends to penalise websites that take more than 4 seconds to load and they even estimate a loss of 10% of visitors for every second above 4. Pictures are one of the biggest cause for concern for websites and it needs to be optimised by compressing and reducing the resolution to make it web friendly. Don’t worry also if you want DSLR quality for your pictures. Compressing a picture takes very little detail from the picture and it is hardly noticeable to the untrained eye. Loading speed can also be optimised by using sites such as pingdom tools or thinkwithgoogle speed test

Website Content

Content is king and there is no doubt about this fact. Google takes content very seriously and often awards website with relevant and good content while penalise websites with poor content, duplicated content or short articles. Make sure that every page in your website is purposeful and contains the necessary information you need to keep the visitor reading. The key is contextual knowledge Most websites make the mistake of placing too little information on the website which makes it difficult for visitors to understand about your business. Make your website your sales associate and put the most information possible on it.

Why don’t Business Owners use SEO

Believe in the system

Business owners that haven’t been in tune with online marketing will always want to stick to something they are used to. Online marketing has existed for about 2 decades since the birth of the internet. Traditional marketing such as print media or Tv advertisements have always been the norm for such businesses and they have mostly relied on brick and mortar styled models to market their service.

This is why we created this blog to help educate website owners or businesses owners about the benefits of online marketing techniques such as Search Engine Optimisation, Seach Engine Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. There have been many success stories from owners just using Search Engine Optimisation and we hope that more people will integrate SEO into their business so that they can properly compete against website with SEO.

The Perception of High Cost

Ask any business that has dwelt with traditional marketing methods and they will tell you of the high cost it involves with little method of tracking. Print media or TV advertisements can promise the outreach number in the millions but are unable to tell you of the leads generated from the advertisement. From your website, there are many methods that you can track the leads coming from your website and the conversion rate per visitor. Whats more, SEO tends to target visitors from specific keyword request, which will result in relevant visitors every single time. SEO packages tend to cost upwards of $1000 per month and will depend on the competitiveness of the keyword. When you compared the different forms of marketing, you’ll see that SEO is actually affordable and probably will bring you better leads than other forms of advertisement.

Unknown to them

It is on us to inform businesses what is SEO and how it can benefit them. Therefore, it is essential to always educate them before selling any sort of package. Always make sure your digital agency understands your business and how the process of turning visitors into client works. We have created an article about how SEO agencies should conduct their approach with potential customers.

 

 

communication is key

Biggest lies from Web Marketing Agencies

About 60% of businesses in Singapore have a static website to showcase their products and services. However, only about 10% of such businesses employs Search Engine Optimisation(SEO) or Search Engine Marketing(SEM) to boost their website’s efforts.

reputable SEO agency

The beautiful thing about developing your business through online means is it cost very little when you compare it to hiring a sales executive or advertising on traditional outlets such as TV or print media. Development of your online capabilities as a business can come in a form of developing a website, conducting search engine optimisation for a existing website or generating leads through search engine marketing. However, because of this demand, there are many unscrupulous businesses promising search engine success for a small fee and no work from you. We hope to uncover these lies and hopefully educate the public how to steer clear from such businesses.

Low Costs

While it may be tempting when you receive emails about individuals or companies promising you page 1 glory on Google, it is usually one of the triggers you should be aware of. Any reputable company dealing with web services will tell you that the man hours required to produce quality work will require a fairly substantial amount. Whether be it search engine optimisation, website design or search engine marketing. If the company can offer you a really low rate for their services, chances are you won’t be able to customise how you want your work to be done or the work was cloned from client to client. Giving you sub-standard work which eventually could be penalised by Google for duplicate content.

Understanding Your Business

Any company that just wants a quick buck will never want to meet up with you to understand your business. Understanding how your business work and the processes to secure a client is quintessential evidence that the web marketing agency wants to have a long lasting relationship with you. The agency should understand how your business works, processes that are in place and how you close a lead. This way, the web agency will be able to recommend you the best method for your business. Remember that all businesses are different and requires different methods in order to succeed. There is no 1-method that fits all.

Credibility

Credibility is one of the most important things to have as a web marketing agency. A company which can produce results will usually succeed in a long run due to the positive experience and results they bring to clients. Before you embark on any project, it is important to understand from the agency what are their past clients, what was done for them and the results as a result of the partnership. I will break down the deliverables you should be asking.

Search Engine optimisation

getting past results from clients who have done SEO is the most tangible result you can gather. You can always ask for their keywords that are ranking, the search quantity by Google and also the analytics. While the agency will have the right to mask their past client’s information due to confidentiality, you should still be able to see their work and what they did in order to achieve the search engine ranking.

Search Engine marketing

An agency that is in full knowledge of what they are doing will be able to bring you leads for a low cost. Look for metrics such as return in investment as well as overall leads generated based on the spending. Great agencies will also explain to you what is happening so that you aren’t left in the dark. Not knowing what you paid for.

Communication

communication is key

Communication is key in order for any partnership to be successful. There should be constant communication between the web agency and the client. You should always ensure that you know what the agency is doing for your website at all times and be able to substantiate it with analytics as well as reports on what was done. The agency should be proactive and have a representative that can answer to your emails or messages within 48hours.

Results that walk the talk

If you are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on your online campaign, you should be results driven. Always check to see if the agency is working towards the deliverables given to you during the quotation. Always request for certain objectives to be delivered in order for the full payment. Most agencies will require a 50% deposit for confirmation of the services needed and the other 50% once the objectives has been met. Make sure you discuss what you want to achieve before making any formal agreement.

Conclusion

Web solutions can be expensive and it is essential for you to set specific objectives that you want to achieve with your website. Don’t jump to the best deal you see straight away be also weigh all the above points to the agency. This will give you a clearer picture whether they can be trusted. After all, these projects usually take 6-12 months to complete so getting stuck with an web agency which you like will probably be beneficial to you.