Chapter 9 - Convert Prospects into Leads

[Diamond Website Conversion]

A portion of this chapter is made up of a list of “landing page best practices,” One of the most exciting things about landing pages is that you don’t have to worry as much about SEO. This leaves you open to do a lot of other things—like include images—without having an adverse impact on the page. Much the opposite, in fact! Eye-popping graphics catch the attention of visitors and are a great asset to your page.

Take a peek at your competition's landing pages and see how they use images to their advantage. This is a place where you should have fun, and see what works best. What kind of images do you use? Do you create them yourself, or do you use open-license images? What sort of impact are you looking to make with them?

[Shelby]

I cannot underestimate the power of good visual graphics! It is worth the time and money to find good images and graphics. Personally, I usually loose interest fast is I see a landing page without images. I find that I stay on a site longer when the images are relevant and convey the idea of business. Also I like it when provocative, funny or endearing images are used. They are enticing to users to continue browsing the site.

A beautiful website with the right balance of text and graphics will enable the readers to browse longer on the site. The longer they stay on the website, the bigger the possibility that they will come back again.

[Marty]

OK Shelby - I know you won't believe this but - you're right! - I checked out a bunch of sites today doing a competitive analysis and wow in the B2C space just eyeballing it - probably 80% to 90% images & max 20% text & probably much less - it's not the same in the B2B space yet - but how far behind can it be - if a significant piece of the population is visual and most people are no longer on a dial-up connection - images will become a big part of everyone's websites - In the B2B and lead generation sites it can be a bit of a challenge - what do attorneys or accountants do? For web designers - they can use samples of their work - but what does an SEO firm do? or in our case - how many different ways can you draw a conversion funnel???? I think to be relevant you also need to put a new or unique slant on the combination of image and text - and that's going to be a challenge

[Hope]

The hardest part of creating a great image (in my opinion anyway) is trying to get something that is compelling and eye-catching. You can take a picture of literally anything, or of anyone doing anything. The hard part is to get something that is interesting to look at, and something that makes people want to see more. The stock photos of smiling people in suits or uniforms are getting a bit overdone, don't you think?

[Marty]

I think more and more people want to see real people and not the stock photos - they want to see who they're dealing with or talking to