Landing Page Makeover Clinic #27: HiddenSoy.com

Landing Page Makeover Clinic #27: HiddenSoy.com

Reader Comments (29)

  1. You’ve done it once again Roberta…

    I totally agree with you that fear-based headlines really command people’s attention and make them keep reading.

    I would include a really awful picture of someone with a diease from soy, or a pic of something that soy does to your organs… a before and after shot can be worth millions. Just look at the diet industry.

    I would suggest making this at least a two-step sales process instead of just trying to sell the book right off the bat. It will give her more long-term customers.

    Use the home page as a blog instead, showing new articles about the dangeers of soy, gathering an email list, and plugging the book on a frequent basis through marketing. This way, when the person clicks away from the page, you can bring them back by reminding them of your great information.

    The way it looks now, you only get one try to close the sale, which can kill a business. She is going to need a lot of serious incentive to get 100 new people a week to sign up for such a niche product.

    -Joshua Black
    The Underdog Millionaire

  2. Hey Roberta,

    This is awesome! I like how you break down the blog and build it up so we can learn from it. I learn couple of things from this case study. That heat map is a very powerful tool. Going to check it out.

    Chat with you later…
    Josh

  3. Nicely done as always, Roberta.

    I think I’d also consider color scheme. The current feel doesn’t come close to danger for me. Perhaps some reds are in order.

  4. Great advice Roberta.

    “Notice how your newsletter sign-up area doesn’t light-up at all. The main focus is on your book cover and your headshot”

    “You need to put your book and its ancillaries in a secondary position and push your newsletter forward”

    This is very important. You should have one call to action. If you have too many, the visitor will get confused and is unlikely to take any action. Make that one call to action the most prominent. If you give them too many choices (even 2 are too many), then you are not doing a good job.

    “Also, does your newsletter have an actual title? I couldn’t tell from your current content. If not, give it one. Add “Dianne Gregg’sâ€? in front of the name, just like you did the website.” This is very important too. It helps in branding purposes and the visitor can actually relate to it.

    “Again, be specific. Don’t just list a title and call it done. Add 1-2 sentences of description and detail. Add a value to each bonus offering, as well.” Yup, never assume your visitor will know something. Always clear it out to them and show them exactly what they will get.

    And I agree that instead of the soy pictures, there should be something else, as it is an anti-soy website.

    Nabeel

  5. This is a really informative and helpful article for us. We purchased the Thesis WordPress Theme and look forward to learning and using it for our website and landing pages and this will avert the beginner mistakes.

    Especially appreciate the Heat Map link – Thanks!

  6. These are such a good resource, I’m so glad Roberta shares them with us. 🙂 I always learn something new each time she does a makeover.

  7. I love these landing page makeover posts, they are so helpful. This struck a chord with me:
    If this was a print publication, you’d talk in terms of number of pages, size, a number of main articles and a few regular features. So using this as a model, how can you translate this kind of detail to a description of your digital newsletter?

    It seems so obvious that there should be a formula or set template for a newsletter, but it never occurred to me.

    This post also makes me want to use heat maps.

  8. Heatmaps are a wonderful evaluation tool in the conversion arsenal. Used in conjunction with other metrics, heatmaps can uncover trouble spots in a visual, compelling fashion.

  9. Roberta,

    This little article should help grow your legion of fans.

    It’s “show and tell” …and I think that’s critical to the learning process. Too often, we receive good written instruction without the visual element that helps translate the post into something that “turns on the light”.

    Loved the heat map. I guess I’m just a visual guy! I know I learn more from you than many other teachers. Thanks for sharing so freely.

    ps: @Nabeel. I always appreciate your contributions, too.

    Steve Benedict

  10. Roberta,

    Just went to MPG Direct. Is that your site? It’s very simple, and I didn’t get a feel for a gripping headline that held my attention. In fact, there was no headline, unless you count “Specializing in our passion for information”, which was so small ,next to the cup of pencils, that I almost missed it. There didn’t seem to be any call to action. In fact, there were almost none of the elements that you describe above. I was disappointed.

    Please tell me I clicked on the wrong link.

  11. @Jon … a corporate website hompage has a different job to do than a landing page geared to selling, but to your point. My MGP site, like the proverbial shoeless children of the cobbler’s tale, gets short shrift since I spend the bulk of my time ‘making shoes’ for clients. 🙂

    In a hair salon, I always look for the stylist with the ‘worst’ hair. Means she’s busy with her/her customers and no one else in the shop is as good.

    When I get a spare moment, MGP is on my list of biz/personal sites to update.

  12. What about the fonts? I believe I see a mixture of at least two or possibly three fonts, and except for being sans serif, they aren’t complementary in style…the use of Courier seems more disconcerting than “eye catching”.

    I would also suggest changing font colors. The pastel green and orange text contributes to the busy look and simultaneously fades into the background losing their information value. Try sticking to two colors using variations of point size and boldness to distinguish sections…maybe a third color in one area for the call to action.

    The center col. of text needs larger borders, they run into the left and right cols, especially in the middle.

    IMHO

  13. A few more things – I read just one blog post and it had some typos – proofreading is so important, especially when you are sharing information that goes contrary to what many people believe. You need all the credibility you can.

    Also, someone left a nice comment on this post a month ago:

    http://hiddensoy.com/is-soy-bad/

    You never replied. You don’t get that many comments, but surely you can give a simple answer/reply each time you do. Before you say you’re too busy to reply to blog comments, let me mention that I’m a homeschooling mom with an online business and I reply to every comment at my blog. I make the time.

    To succeed online you have to be thorough – it’s all about the details. In my mind, if you improve your landing page but you don’t build on relationships that come because of your articles, you’ve failed.

  14. Roberta, thanks. I know mine is too crappy to expose… I need to get on that.

  15. Great analysis, but it doesn’t look like she absorbed the wisdom you so generously dispensed. There’s all kinds of crazy font colors and sizes, and the page looks unprofessional and disorganized. I was interested in the subject from this post, and then I went there, felt turned off and left.

  16. @Kat – While I do the analysis for one participant – who for their own reasons can accept/reject all/part of my recommendations – everyone here gets to look over my shoulder and learn something they can use for their own sites and blogs.

    @Lola – I’m guilty of the occasional typo and dropped word so I try to be generous with others. But responding to comments is an easy way to build trust and a loyal readership.

  17. What I find amazing is how similar this process is to much of what we do with our own website redesign clients. We don’t handle copywriting, but the rest is way similar.

    Just goes to show you how much different disciplines bleed into each other when it comes to making websites better.

  18. Roberta,
    Really , really good advice, i have emailed you to see if y uo could review our site. I think your comments are very good and i am trying to include the best bits,

  19. To change meta tags or keyword descriptions easily, you can use two WordPress plugins. One called All In One SEO Pack and the other is Platinum SEO.

    These two plugin make it simple.

  20. @Anthony – Or you could just use Thesis so you don’t need to keep updating another plugin every two seconds. Copyblogger uses Thesis so you know it is the business!

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