The tiny Swiss town of Obermutten (population 79) recently boosted it’s profile hugely. Like their page on Facebook and the town will print out your profile picture and post it on the town bulletin board. This was fine until the board was full and now with around 12,500 likes the townspeople have taken to using any available surface to display their fans.

Matt

Every effective landing page is a marriage of strategy, creative & execution. Even when your strategy is sound, if you fail to execute landing page best practices, it can hurt your ability to convert. Run your landing page through this 10-point checklist to make sure you have the basics covered.

Message matched. Your landing page copy should mirror the words and phras­es used in your ad. Make sure what the visitor clicked on is reflected very clearly when they land on your page. This is called ‘pathway to purchase’ and it helps reduce bounce rate by reinforcing the visitor is in the right place.

Relevant. Just because your ad & page copy match doesn’t necessarily mean your page is relevant. Make sure your page is rel­evant to what you offered in your ad, and rele­vant to your call to action. Everything needs to be cohesive—the copy, the offer, the images.

Valuable. Is there a clear value proposi­tion in your offer? The role of the landing page isn’t to inform, it’s to sell. So don’t be afraid to make your pitch. Tell people why it’s in their best interest to convert.

Above the fold. Make sure your most important content is above the fold. That means copy, images and calls to action. You can have good stuff below the fold, but the best stuff needs to be high on the page.

Scannable. Long sentences, tons of bul­lets, lots of paragraphs—it’s hard for a visitor to read all that! On the landing page you have only a few seconds to make your case. Make sure that it’s easy to scan the page and absorb the overall message. Vary the length of your sentences, use bullets (and keep them short), and make sure paragraphs aren’t too long.

Visually actionable. At a quick glance it should be very clear what the key ac­tion is on the page. What does the page want the visitor to do? Pick up the phone? Fill out a form? Click a button? Whatever it is, make sure your page is very obvious and very ac­tionable. It should visually compel the visitor forward into the desired action.

Distraction minimized. Edit, edit, edit. Get rid of unnecessary copy, graphics and especially links. Every element of your page should be increasing your odds of con­version. No exceptions. Get rid of extra links, unrelated calls to action, superfluous graphics and anything else questionable.

Easy to convert. Make sure your con­version is clear and easy to act upon. If your conversion is someone picking up the phone, make it really easy to see your phone number. If it’s making a purchase, then adding to the cart needs to be super simple. If it’s complet­ing a form, only ask for information you really and truly need. Just like minimizing distrac­tions, you want to eliminate hurdles between the click and the conversion.

Feels good. The most subjective point, but important. Take a gander at your page. Ask others to look at it too. Does it make the visitor feel good? How good is your page as compared to your competitors? Don’t neglect the ‘feel good’ factor—even landing page visi­tors want great experiences!

Tested & optimized. Landing pages are the perfect place to test—copy, images, offers, layouts, forms. You name it, you can test it. Without testing you are leaving conver­sions on the table.

Source: Ion interactive

Good design is a crucial part of any successful website, and its importance grows as the internet gains more experienced, demanding users. A visually attractive and intuitive website says a lot about you, your company and the way you think and demonstrates your willingness to engage your target audience. An experienced web user will make almost instant decisions about you based on first impressions of your site, and if that impression is negative they won’t go past your home page.

With this in mind Google is testing a new feature called Instant Previews which allows visitors using its search engine to preview home pages by clicking on a magnifying glass by the listing. This not only previews the page but also highlights and enlarges text which contains keywords from your search. If you rely on traffic to your site from a Google search then looks have never been more important.

Matt

The U.S. Justice Department cleared the way last month for Continental Airlines and United Airlines to merge, creating the world’s largest airline. The airline will be called “United”. This is an interesting branding case study. In the pictures above you can see proposed aircraft branding once the merger takes place. The aircraft livery uses branding cues from both legacy carriers. It literally “unites” the two brands. The design retains the white aircraft fueslage, and includes the Continental Airlines globe on the tail. Two logo typefaces have been proposed so far – firstly, the airline name using Continental’s serif typeface and secondly, the airline name using United Airline’s sans serif typeface.

USA Today has reported that customer feedback would like to see the merged airline retain the famous United Airlines tulip shaped “U”…so, I guess you can’t keep everyone happy!

Bulkhead Nigel.

Back in June I posted a blog about Apple’s new iAd network which allows developers to embed highly interactive advertising within their Apps.

Now up and running the platform is receiving mixed reviews. An article in the LA Times says both Unilever and Nissan have been impressed with results with customers spending up to 10 times longer interacting with the iAd than with comparable online advertising.

On the other hand Apple’s control over the process of creating the ads seems to be causing a few issues as the industry is not used to this – and projects are taking longer to roll out than expected, according to The Wall Street Journal .

Matt

On July 1 Apple plans to launch it’s new mobile advertising network for iPhone and iPod touch devices called iAds. According to Apple “iAd offers advertisers the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web, and offers users a new way to explore ads”, with the advertising experience taking place within apps rather than redirecting users to a browser window.

When you select an ad it will take up the screen using HTML5 and from there the user can interact with and explore the ad.

This comes after Apple bought the advertising network Quattro Wireless earlier this year. Google are also looking set to enter the mobile advertising arena (on their Android platform) with an agreement to buy mobile advertising firm AdMob.

IT research company Gartner put the global mobile advertising business at $13.5 Billion by 2013 due to the increase in smart phones and other mobile devices.

Matt

 Global marketers such as Nike are describing the 2010 FIFA World Cup as a larger event than even the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That scale, combined with the intensity of interest in the sport, the national pride of fans and the fact that it’s the first major global sporting event ever held on the African continent…figures to sell a lot of sneakers.

FIFA sponsors…a group to which Nike doesn’t belong, by the way…spend up to $40 million for the privilege.

“It’s the No. 1 event in all of sports,” Trevor Edwards, Nike’s VP-brand and category management, recently told the company’s investors, adding that the World Cup will be viewed by “half the world’s population.”

All I can say about this three-minute epic by Nike…is holy shit!

Pitching can be pretty exhausting, but it can also be quite fun and exciting, it’s kind of the ‘competitive sport’ version of what we do, when there are lots of pitches on and once I feel like I’m a contestant in some sort of graphic design/advertising reality TV show along the lines of Master Chef or Project Runway. Here’s a cool segment from an Australian where 2 agencies og head to head to try and sell difficult ideas to consumers. In the first, agencies come up with a campaign to drum up public support for invading New Zealand. In the Second they must convince people NOT to holiday in Australia.

David McLeod

Furniture giants Ikea have come up with an interesting guerilla campaign currently running in the subways of Paris. The company has set up mini Ikea environments featuring the actual products and using traditional billboard spaces to add context (and further products). A great way to showcase to comfort and (hopefully) the durability of their products, whilst making life a little more pleasant for the commuter. Nice.

Matt