I just got an email from a business partner about a 9 Landing page split-test contest which ended last month.

An SEO Company named SEOmoz held a contest and invited people to design landing pages to do two things:

1. Capture People’s Information
2. Convert Those People to a Sale

Out of 9 finalist, including some very pretty and “professional” designs, the top 2 performing landing pages were:

1. Classic Long Copy Sales Letter (260 Opt-ins, 73 Sales)
2. Short “Above the Fold” Capture Page (365 Opt-ins, 69 Sales)

Here’s a shot of the results:

Jonathan Mendez, who helped with the contest was interviewed and as the last question he was asked:

Q: Do you have 3-4 top tips that you could share on landing page design and testing that you find to be exceptionally beneficial?

A: Sure, how about I give you three for design and three for testing:

Design

• Simplify everything
• Reinforce intentions
• Limit choices

Testing

• Let the data end your test, not your calendar
• Understand results by segment
• Technology is only as good as the marketer using it

Very interesting stuff on the power of effective copy and simplicity over lot’s of bells and whistles and ‘artsy fartsy’ designs.

In the FREE Attraction Marketing Bootcamp, I go over Capture Page and Sales Page design in detail, where I strongly encourage designers to baseline their pages first with ONLY copy (words).  Then after you have winning copy, improve the looks while testing any changes.  Sometimes adding cosmetic upgrades to a site will actually lower convertions, so always test.

Here’s a link to the full article:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/announcing-the-seomoz-landing-page-competition-winner

Remember, marketing is the one thing everyone has an opinion about, but where few actually know what they are talking about.

To Winning Copy,

Ferny Ceballos