Grading the Landing Page #1 – eQuorum ImageSite

Today I’ll be bringing you the first in what will be an ongoing series – Grading the Landing Page. In this series, I’ll be following promotional materials to their subsequent landing page. Once I get there, I’ll go through some of the positives and negatives that I see. I’ll be giving my opinion on what I think is or isn’t working, and what I would do to improve. Note: This is purely my opinion and not based on any analytical data.

I’ve seen my fair share of landing pages, and I’ve had a great amount of experience optimizing them to maximize the amount of leads they generate. I’ll be taking a look at a variety of different landing pages out in the wild, and stacking them up against best practices. Some get and A, while others get an F. While I grade these landing pages you’ll be able to learn some key points that every single one of your landing pages should have, as well as things you should steer clear of.

My first shot at grading a landing page is for eQuorum’s ImageSite software. I followed a link I saw on a page I was reading about content management systems, and this was where it took me:

I can’t show you exactly what happened, but the graphic at the top was animated upon my arrival. The arrowed list off to the right was not visible when I first landed, and neither were the buttons for “Learn More” and “Request Information”. This leads me to my first lesson on landing pages:

• Have all key information readily available on the page

First off, the graphic they used is far too small and complicated (even when it’s not animated). This by itself probably leads to people bouncing off of this page. One thing that might prevent the bounce is a link to more information, such as the “Learn More” button. But if that button isn’t readily available to the visitor, as is the case here, it can’t help them when they are looking for it. So as a rule of thumb, if you use animation on your landing page be sure that all of your key information is independent of it.

Another huge problem with this landing page is that there is no form directly on this page for a visitor to request more information. Which leads me to my second lesson on landing pages:

• A contact form is absolutely necessary on all landing pages

The whole purpose of a landing page is to capture a visitor and convert them into a lead (or sale). This goal is impossible if you don’t give the visitor a way to provide their information!

Now lets say that the animation intrigued me and I decided that I wanted to request more information. I click on the “Request Information” button and I arrive here:

There are a couple of issues here. First, I always tend to make my forms as easy and painless as possible to fill out. My fallback position on forms is that I want it to be as easy as possible for a visitor to fill it out. The problem on this page is that every single field is required. For example, is having the lead’s City, State, and Zip Code essential information to follow up with them? I would say it definitely isn’t, so this could be safely removed.

Another huge problem I see is the Clear button at the bottom of the form, conveniently placed right next to the Submit button. What exactly is the purpose of the Clear button? Do you think a potential lead would be happy about filling this form out and then accidentally pressing the Clear button? Definitely not! When you are creating forms for your landing pages, a good rule of thumb is to make it as simple as possible and a good way to accomplish this is to remove all non-essential elements.

There were a great many things that I could have went into with this landing page, but the points I touched on were the most glaring issues I could find. I’m gonna have to give this landing page an F.

Grading the Landing Page is a regular feature on Professor Lead, and I’ll be grading another soon. If you would like to suggest a landing page for grading, please e-mail me at professorlead@gmail.com.