This is part 4 to our popular 5 part series ‘Responsive Email is the New Black. The Charity Dynamics creative team has been discussing the importance of responsive email strategy, design and development. In this installment of the series, Amy Martin describes the importance of a responsive landing page.
Well, well, well, you have successfully created that jaw-dropping, red carpet worthy responsive email. High fives all around! You’re all grown up (I told myself I wouldn’t cry)! Your constituents have seen the promise land and they are hooked. Laptops, smartphones, tablets, oh my! Users are reading your responsive email everywhere and loving it. So much so, they find themselves compelled to tap the irresistible call to action button you have optimized within your message content.
Yet, where will this take them? Hopefully, not into another dimension of the time space continuum. If you’re implementing your strategy throughout a user’s entire lifecycle, they should find themselves on a visual and functional continuation of the email they came from. I’m talking responsive landing pages, here!
In order to have successful cultivation and communication, your emails are one of the first entry points to converting your audience. Whether the campaign is focused on list building, increasing donations or anything else under the sun, the objective is still the same. Convert, baby, convert! In order to accomplish conversions, we must create landing pages equally as responsive as our emails.
Ask yourself these questions and consider for a moment what the conversion path is for your users.
• Is your goal clear and concise?
• Can the call to action be achieved across all devices?
• Is the call to action easily clickable/tapple?
• How many clicks/taps are required to complete the conversion?
• Is the landing page responsive?
The answer to the last question should undoubtedly be “YES”! Choosing to ignore this critical step in the process is extremely detrimental to successfully reaching your web marketing goals. Here are some common mistakes to avoid when creating your landing pages. Committing any of these faux pas will surely hinder your visitors from completing the task you have presented them with.
• Unclear calls to action:
You did a great job of convincing your users in the email and made their lives so simple with a tap of a button. Don’t forget to do the same once they’ve committed to bend to your will on subsequent pages!
• Too many choices:
Show them exactly what you want them to do and create a clear focus of the next step. Now is not the time to serve up every single bit of information you have available.
• Limit the number of clickable links:
This is paramount in a tapple capacity, but also drives that conversion rate that much higher. Do not distract them with something shiny or squirrels.
• Asking for too much information:
Do you really need to know the name of the dog on their grandfather’s great uncle’s sister-in-law’s cousin’s side twice removed? If it is not essential, you don’t need it. Take only what you need to survive.
• Too much text:
Again, this is not the time nor place to convey every single piece of information you have. Trust your user’s inherent sense of curiosity to drive deeper if they so choose, or better yet, send them another responsive email touting a different feature you can offer them.
• Visual distractions:
Using too many colors and showing too many images and graphics all serve as distraction to your users. Instead, use color to your advantage to draw users in and force their focus on call to action buttons. Use one prominent image or graphic that clearly defines your goal. And for heaven’s sake, absolutely NO FLASH!
• Not keeping your promises:
Do not promise expert reviews, quick and easy access to information or any other misleading tidbits unless it is precisely that. Instilling distrust in your users is setting yourself up for immediate failure. Users will not hesitate to call you out for it (liar, liar, pants on fire!) or will possibly unsubscribe from your communications all together.
Once you believe you’ve made your landing page be the best that it can be without committing any of the previous atrocities, test that baby! Test ‘til you can’t test no more! Actually take the time to review the tracking information you put in place and make adjustments based on what works and more importantly what doesn’t. By continuing to evolve your entire strategy with your users in mind, you will find yourself at the top of the podium instead of viewing the medal ceremony from the sidelines like our poor US Hockey team (we’ll get ‘em next time, guys)!