Best Practices of Combining Typefaces - Smashing Magazine 26 Beautiful Landing Page Designs Critiqued with A/B Testing Tips It’s landing page examples time again, and this time I’m going to focus on critiquing the pages from an A/B testing perspective. Each example will examine the thought process you’d go through when analyzing a page (or the reaction a visitor might have when arriving for the first time), a testing hypothesis for how the page might perform better, and some examples of what you could test to prove your hypothesis. This should give you and the page creators some inspiration for further testing, and show what you should consider when you run your own landing page A/B tests. Note: Each landing page was built by customers using Unbounce, and permission was kindly provided by the page creators. Let the critiques and A/B testing tips begin! Actually before we start, let’s take a moment to reflect on a mistake from the past. Do you remember those old grey Windows buttons that said “Submit”? Be warned, I’ll call out anyone (nicely) who uses that foul button language in the critiques below. 1. Thoughts
The SEO Success Pyramid John Wooden, the greatest basketball coach ever, never talked to his teams about winning. He talked to them about preparation and about the process of becoming a great team. Wooden’s philosophy on coaching (and life) is summed up in the “Pyramid of Success,” which beats the tail off all that Self-Help Guru junk you see peddled in books, on blogs, on daytime chat shows, and on late night TV. What’s all this have to do with SEO and online marketing? I would never compare myself to John Wooden, but I do like teaching others about online marketing. SEO Success Pyramid What’s It All Mean? Commitment: Every successful project I’ve ever worked on has involved a client whose team is enthusiastic and engaged. Planning: Success in any pursuit begins with setting goals and developing a plan to achieve them — detailing the strategies and tactics you’ll use, the people and resources needed, and so forth. Education/Information: You’re a business owner; you don’t need to become an SEO expert.
HOWTO: Configure Tor + SASL + irc to connect to Freenode | random neuron misfires Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 8:39 pm| 17,722 views | trackback urlTags: freenode, identd, irc, linux, nickname, Perl, Python, Tcl, VMware, xchat I fought this problem on the train into the city today, because my MiFi‘s hostname was not correctly reversing to it’s given IP (verified by dig) and Freenode was denying the connection; it looked like this: Mar 22 06:51:41 * Looking up irc.freenode.net Mar 22 06:51:41 * Connecting to chat.freenode.net (86.65.39.15) port 6667... Mar 22 06:51:42 * Connected. I wanted to connect, to talk to the folks in #linux, and ask them about another question I had (see newer blog post about fullscreen VMware session for that). At first, I tried installing a few identd daemons, then some of the spoofing identd daemons, then purged them all and decided to try identifying using SASL like it suggested. I did a few seconds of Google’ing and found a helpful website with a SASL plugin in C. /sasl [nickname] [password] FreeNode /sasl foobar MyS3cretPas5word FreeNode
Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page · Formstack Placement and Content 7. Keep It Above the Fold The space a visitor sees without having to scroll is where the most important parts of the webpage should be. 8. Optimize a landing page for conversion over time. 9. Implementing motivational speeches, videos of user testimonials, and product images into a home page can have a positive impact on viewers, as well as give shoppers an extra push to look further into a product. Bellroy uses great imagery and videos on many of their pages. 10. Links connecting the user to a bunch of other sites or pages will distract them and have a negative impact on conversions. This landing page is designed well, but look at all those header links getting in the way of the message!
21 Awesome Ideas to Grow Your Email List Below are 21 ideas for offers that can help dramatically increase the size of your email list and lead conversion volume. Educational / Informational Offers These types of offers tend to be a sweet spot for B2B businesses, because B2B sales tend to be highly considered purchases. However, educational offers can also be useful for high-ticket B2C or enthusiast markets like fly fishing, racing, or technology. eBooks – “Download our comprehensive guide to inbound marketing and ecommerce ” Whitepapers – “Understand how to nurture your email list” Buyer's Guides – “Which LED underbody kit is right for you?” Free Stuff Offers Everyone loves free stuff. Contests - “Send us your cutest dog picture; cutest picture wins free doggy day care!” Coupons and Deals Like with the free stuff offers above, everyone likes to feel as though they are getting a good deal. Coupons for dollars or percentage off – “Sign up for future offers and savings to receive 10% off your next order today!” Events
What Would Seth Godin Do Seth Godin advocates using cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site: “One opportunity that’s underused is the idea of using cookies to treat returning visitors differently than newbies. It’s more work at first, but it can offer two experiences to two different sorts of people.” I built this WordPress plugin to implement Seth Godin’s idea. By default, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. New visitors will appreciate some context and background information about your site. I can be reached at wwsgd AT richardkmiller DOT com. Installation is easy: Download the WWSGD WordPress plugin and unzip it.Copy the what-would-seth-godin-do folder to your WordPress plugins folder (/wp-content/plugins/).Activate the plugin on the Plugins page.Customize settings in the Settings panel, WWSGD subpanel. That’s it! Get this plugin now to grow your business. Initial release.
30 amazing landing pages for your inspiration Landing Pages are used for many different things. Some of us have products to sell. Many of us have apps to sell. Some of us just want to let the world know about our products or services. When done incorrectly, they can end up being a waste of time. Landing page inspiration Many Landing Pages actually do much of the same thing, but sometimes it’s better to see it and visualize rather than think about it in theory. Bear CSS This is a rarity where a landing page isn’t asking you to buy or download anything, but it is attempting to be helpful. SquareSpace This an effective landing page because everything lives its own space. CrowdSpottr I’m sure you can tell that many people use landing pages for apps. Designed to Move This is one of the rare circumstances where its okay to be a little mysterious with your information. Everest This seems to be a wonderful app that I think is amazing. Flex This landing page is great because of the easy-to-read, easy-to-relate to images and videos that they use.
10 Steps To Writing Better Web Content | Springboard SEO Your Web content is in a constant battle against a number of variables competing for your readers’ attention: A link to another website, the back button, their task at hand, the size of their monitor, the number of hours in the day. For those reasons and many others, it’s crucial to give your readers easy access to the information they want, without making them think, and without getting in their way with marketese and fluff. Here are some of the most useful guidelines I’ve come to appreciate in my quest to continually improve my content writing. 1. We all know how important it is to focus on our audiences when writing for the Web, but without a method, that advice can be somewhat abstract. Basic examples of user personasList major characteristics for each audience: Each of your site’s user groups may have identifiable characteristics. Refer to your personas by name when strategizing content instead of calling them “users”. 2. 3. People are very pattern oriented. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.