You can ask almost any kindergartner in the world what their favorite color is and they will respond with a very decisive answer. “Blue”, “red”, “green” or “the whole rainbow” are just a few of the answers that I remember hearing in grammar school. Colors appeal to the senses and emotions in a very powerful way. I recently read about how mental institutions and hospitals have been using color therapy since the 1930s. The exposure to certain calming hues has had powerful results in many patients. If color can have this much influence in the offline world, image the role it plays in the world of Internet Marketing.

This design below has been converting between 6 and 8 percent…

Most of us know the basic rules of landing page design, many of them discussed in a previous post. Landing pages should have a clear and concise call-to-action, effortless navigation, appealing images, readable text, and etc. I know for myself, it’s natural to rely on the accepted formula for a successful landing page, rather than really tuning into the wants and needs of the consumer. This realization came about when my colleague recently showed me a landing page that was converting between 10 and 13 percent. Appallingly, this winning page looked like a design straight from 1997. It was a mess of low resolution clipart, a bouncing image, some small grey text, and a generic contact form. After coming back from my state of shock, I tried to pinpoint what made this horrendous design so successful. The only element of the design that was even remotely appealing to me at least, was a small image of the beach. So, I ran with that.

This design below has been converting between 6 and 8 percent. Decent, but not nearly the results one should be complacent with inside the debt settlement industry.

We took the same structure of that design, but swapped out the background image to create this:

The A/B split test has been running for barely a week, but this new design has been converting at 12.50%! With roughly only 200 views, this design in not the clear winner but the results are promising.

Why is this design converting better than the previous thus far? I believe both of these tranquil images generate positive psychological and emotional responses, but which one does so more effectively? According to Chakra Therapy, the green tones in image #1 are believed to be a healing and balancing, the blue hues in image #2 are believed to be “soothers of the mind”. Although being balanced and soothed both sound appealing, someone in financial debt is most likely stressed and therefore would need mental tranquility. Obviously, this is just a theory and only a true A/B test can tell us who the real winner is but experiment itself really taught me a valuable lesson in thinking more deeply about consumers. Instead of simply criticizing a design based upon industry beliefs and practices, digging a little bit deeper into the needs and emotions of prospective customers is worth considering.

conversion improvement, Landing Page Optimization