Publisher Tips
Top tips for landing page optimisation – part 2
As a continuation from last week’s Publisher Tips, here are five more landing page conversion optimisation tips:
6. Talk about benefits rather than features. Features don’t make somebody care. People don’t care about things like “200 million Watts”. But they do care about how you are going to make their life better in terms that they can directly relate to.
7. Try using videos and images to put a point across. People tend to engage better with these, rather than having to read long articles.
8. Alleviate fears. Make sure that any possible doubt that a user has about buying something through your affiliate link has been eradicated with useful content which answers to all the questions and fears that someone may have about that product. Eg. Is it safe? Is it the best of all competitors? Is it the cheapest?
9. Avoid distractions. Try and create landing pages which are clean, and don’t distract users with choices of other places to click somewhere that isn’t your conversion button or link.
10. Provide urgency. Use offers, your tone and design to give a feeling of urgency; that someone should act (click your conversion link) now, rather than later.
Advertiser Profile
Calendar Club
Contact
Glenn McWhinney
Sector
Home & Garden
Tell us something that publishers might not know about your programme?
Calendar Club (offline + online combined) sell around 4 million calendars each year with more and more customers buying online than ever before. For a business that is often misinterpreted as ‘transitory’ as it only seems to exist at Christmas, the printed calendar industry is as vibrant as ever and has not suffered from the growth of electronic devices and online calendars at all – quite the opposite! People realise how much easier it is to keep a paper-based calendar, especially when the smartphone’s battery dies on the train and you have no way of knowing where you should be next, how to get there, or who to phone even! We’ve all been there…
Which months are most important for your brand? When are your key sales periods?
Calendar sales, as you might expect, are very seasonal but with a 24/7/365 website, we keep stock in all year around switching our full catalogue to the ‘new season’ (for the following year) around mid June. Our 3 key periods are mid Aug to mid Sep as this is a key Family Planners purchasing time with the new school year starting; the biggest sales period is mid Nov to mid Dec as people are in gift buying mode; and finally, Boxing Day onwards is busy for the ‘self purchase’ period when people get themselves organised for the year ahead with Diaries and Desk Calendars but also with another surge in Planners sales – Mum’s make up a large part of our market as they are still the family organisers it seems (although we do have a Dad’s Family Planner too!).
Which methods have you found most effectively to motivate your publishers?
I think motivation is about communication and working together to be honest. We have the most success with publishers who we contact personally and to whom we offer assistance. We are currently on an ‘email drive’ via Darwin to ensure that we get to know our publishers much better so that we can offer what they really need. We are finding that niche websites may require specific banners to help promote our products and we are moving towards providing this service now and much more in the new year. It also can’t hurt to pay commissions as early as possible! We intend to make sure all are paid promptly / early over the next week in time for Christmas, for example!
If you could change one aspect of the industry, what would it be and why?
I think the public can be nervous sometimes and wary of some publisher sites that make big claims so we have a responsibility to help educate the public in the nuances of the different models, especially cashback sites which have charitable ties. I sometimes wonder if publishers could all subscribe to a standards authority and link to a resource which helps explain, in plain English, what the customer should expect from the publisher and to provide clear details on how the service in question works. The more clarity there is for the customer, the more confidence they will have and the more purchases they will be happy to make. Publishers work hard to drive traffic to their sites, they deserve to convert as many people as possible and so if the industry can support that more, the better for everyone.
Who is your hero?
Good question! I don’t have just one to be honest… In business, I am a fan of the late Steve Jobs, clichéd as that may be, because of his ability to perceive opportunity at the right time and to seize it to full effect; sure he had a few slip ups but he never gave up and produced not only top quality products but one of the richest companies on the planet today. In my personal life it would be my father for being the most determined man I have ever known, constantly striving to better himself and learn as much as possible about his working world – he still trains pilots to the highest level of skill on Boeing 787’s and he turned 70 years old this year!
Which one website gets you through the day?
Ooo OK so I can’t actually work without using tools like Sprout Social or Asana but that’s a bit boring so I do like to play on get inspiration from sites like, Visual.ly, Firebox.com (I love their new site) and KnowYourMeme.com!
Do you have any new/big plans for the next few months that publishers should know about?
Our big sale will start on Boxing Day – all remaining titles in our online catalogue will be reduced and promoted throughout January. We also have some very exciting changes coming up next year following on from the success of our new advanced Site Search feature – changes that will help us, our publishers, our customers, the government… OK maybe not the government but everyone else, definitely!
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