30 great places to land

Landing Pages are used for many different things. Some of us have products to sell. Many of us have apps to sell. Some of us just want to let the world know about our products or services. Landing Pages are extremely important when done correctly they can increase your business and increase your brand.  

When done incorrectly, they can end up being a waste of time. You don’t want your Landing Page to fail whether it is yours or for a client. You want to make sure it is the best it can be. To help out, we have some inspiration for some landing pages that got it right.

Landing page inspiration

Many Landing Pages actually do much of the same thing, but sometimes it’s better to see it and visualize rather than think about it in theory. So here are some wonderfully designed websites that got their landing pages right.  

Bear CSS

This is a rarity where a landing page isn’t asking you to buy or download anything, but it is attempting to be helpful. This landing page is straight to the point and shows you how to use it.

SquareSpace

This an effective landing page because everything lives its own space. It is not cluttered and it is very free of all the fluff. Right away you know what it is Square Space is selling.

CrowdSpottr

I’m sure you can tell that many people use landing pages for apps. CrowdSpottr’s landing page is wonderful because it asks the question and it spells it out for you their step-by-step process.

Designed to Move

This is one of the rare circumstances where its okay to be a little mysterious with your information. It’s not given right away what the purpose is. But you are able to watch a video or download more information. I think people become inquisitive enough to push a button.

Everest

This seems to be a wonderful app that I think is amazing. The landing page is approached differently than most, everything is available for you to see right then without having to scroll. You know its important, you know what the app does and you are left with the choice to get it.

Flex

This landing page is great because of the easy-to-read, easy-to-relate to images and videos that they use.  I think it could be better at explaining what the app is, however, they did a good job in creating enough interest that you do want to scroll down and get more information.

Go Live!

Though this landing page is all above the fold, I think they created so much excitement on the page that you do scroll down and that you understand what this website is about.

Goodmix.fm

Goodmix.fm does not explicitly state what it is they do, however, they have a slider that shows how to use their app. After reading that and going through those steps, you get a better idea of what they do. They made it seem like it’s easy to use their app.

Gridset

I’ve actually heard a lot about the Grid Set app and I think the landing page does a good job of capturing the correct audience via the copy as well as the images on the site. If I was a web designer, I want to see another web designer using your app. 

Grooveshark

Grooveshark is a way to basically listen and with many apps based on this idea of playing music you have to quickly show shy your approach to it is different and better. I think Shark does that with two simple sentences, a call to action button, and a screenshot of what they can do. And again, it’s important to know all of this above the fold.

Hipstamatic

Hipstamatic is an app that basically adds filters to your digital phoneography. The reason this Landing Page is effective is because it showcases photographs taken and it also briefly shows how the app works.

Kaleidoscope

They do a good job of explaining concisely what their app is for. The call to action buttons again are explained. I think its always important to explain the call to action buttons.

Klout

Klout uses their landing page to capture information and get people to use their site. The site doesn’t say right away what it does, but there’s some good brand recognition for Klout. I also love the way you can create an account using an existing social media account.

Treehouse

While some are opposed to using questions and answers to sell things, what I like about this website, is that it asks the question and then it explains the purpose of the website, which I think is effective.

Mixture

Mixture is a very simple Landing Page that makes it pretty obvious what the idea is and that is they want you to sign up for an invite. After you get the information, that’s pretty much the main focus. But again you are able to see more information and documentation.

GiftRocket

GiftRocket explains the process, what it is and has a clear call to action. There is more information on the website and its actually a beautifully designed page.

Ballpark

Ballpark got it right immediately because they used visual hierarchy to get their point across and they did it in short concise sentences that make sense. Track time, send invoices, get paid. Try it free today. This is what I would want to do if I was looking for a different way to send invoices.

Eco

This not only seems like a great idea, but right away they spell out what they do, where they come from, and how you can be a part of it. It seems like something many people would want to do.

Onswipe

Onswipe implores you to think about your content with their app. I think this is effective because what they are selling is extremely popular and useful in today’s age.

Over

Again, this is a landing page that got it right because they don’t have a lot fluff and you know right away what this app is to do and then you know how to get it.

Obox Themes

There’s probably no better way to really get people interested in what you do other than showing it. Obox has decided that they want to show you their themes. The only thing that could have been differently is instead of highlighting the call to action to view the collection, I think it would make more sense to have them sign up, then you have captured information.

Rate Us

What I like about this landing page is the call to action which kind of explains what you can do with the ‘Get Started’ button and also explains what you are doing to get started. I think that’s important because people will always have their own ideas of things and if you can counterattack that, then that’s great.

Rockaway Relief

This one is simple and to the point. They want you to take action and in order to take action, they’ve created a call-to-action button that’s right in the middle of the page. To help pull at your heartstrings they have added some great photographs of what they do.

Save the Mom

This seems to be an app that knows their target market and created its landing page for them. Again, there is really no fluff and the focus here is on screenshots of the app.

Screenr

Of course, we see a lot of the landing pages doing much of the same thing. Again we’ve got informative screenshots and copy that explains the purpose of this site. It’s all about creating interest and this site does that.

Simple

Simple is a well designed landing page. I think they could have had better copy above the fold. However, the call to action and the rest of the landing page are exceptional.

Styli.se

Very rarely do you get to see people use landing pages just for services, but I think Styli.se does a great job of that because they make it obvious what it is they do and they also quickly show examples of that.

Emma

Something that’s important in creating landing pages is to know who you are selling to and this web site has created headlines for their target market.

Mandrill

I think the most effective landing page gives some way to visualize what you do whether that be the screenshot, video or whatever and then the call to action. Mandrill does that simply and easily.

TripLingo

TripLingo takes a bit of a different approach to the site. There’s much more content, but some way or another they find a way to draw attention to their call to action and their purpose.

Remember your priorities

The idea here is to use what works in these landing pages. The most important thing is to gather information about your product and your services, as well as your audience. Create something that is bound to get them to move and to take you up on the call to action that you are offering.

Remember to keep the most important information above the fold and never include a lot of fluff. Again, landing pages are extremely important and can aid in the success of a company. Do as much research as possible. Figure out what works and make something great!

What do you think is most important when creating landing pages? Have you designed any awesome landing pages lately? Let us know in the comments.

Source

Source : internetwebsitedesign[dot]biz

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7 Pricing Strategies Based on Research Studies

For any freelancer, how much to charge clients is one of the hardest things to get right. If you set the price for your services too low, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table and get stuck working with clients that don’t see the true value of your work.

When it comes to pricing, most of us are either guessing or copying what others are doing.

Luckily, we can rely on some research studies to help us price our services better by applying the psychological principles derived from the studies that we’ll discuss below.

Here are seven pricing tips based on research studies.

1. Emphasize on Time Savings

When it comes to purchasing products or services, the lowest price always wins, right?

Not necessarily.

A recent study shows that most people value the time or experience over the actual price of an item. According to Jennifer Aaker, the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business:

"Because a person’s experience with a product tends to foster feelings of personal connection with it, referring to time typically leads to more favorable attitudes—and to more purchases."

Aaker and her research partner, Cassie Mogilner, set up two different studies that gauged participants’ reactions (and spending) when they were presented with options of time versus money.

Participants had more favorable reactions when asked questions about time or experience.

For one of the studies, Aaker and Mogilner set up a lemonade stand (which they called C&D’s) and had their 6-year-old sons sell lemonade in the park.

They used three signs to see if there were any effects on sales:

• Spend a little time and enjoy C&D’s lemonade
• Spend a little money and enjoy C&D’s lemonade
• Enjoy C&D’s lemonade (a neutral sign)

Customers were told that they could pay between $1 and $3 per cup.

Now, not only did the sign stressing time attract more customers to the booth, they were also willing to pay almost twice as much as the customers who wandered over when the money-centric sign was up.

What does this mean for freelancers? When you’re discussing projects with your clients, it’s better to focus on the time aspect of working with you.

Perhaps you want to stress that you won’t miss deadlines (especially if you find out that they’ve had this problem in the past), or that they can save a lot of time working with you.

When it comes to presenting your services, it’s better to emphasize on timesavings and the experience of the service, rather than its price.

Sources and Further Reading

• Time vs. Money: Analyzing Which One Rules Consumer Choices
• Does Consumer Happiness = Time or Money Spent?

2. Reset the Price Anchors Set by Your Competition

You may have found yourself in a situation where a client comes to you with a price quote they’ve gotten from another freelancer, hoping that your services will have a lower price.

You know that the quote from the other freelancer is too low. And even though you’re trying to express that to them with valid reasons, they won’t budge from the price they already have. This is because they can’t get this original price anchor out of their head.

Based on a classroom study by Drazen Prelec, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, when people have lower price anchors, they tend to want to pay less.

The professor asked his students to write down the last two digits of their social security numbers. Then he showed them a series of items.

He passed out paper and had the students write their two digits at the top of the page and next to the individually listed items.

After that, the professor asked the students to write down how much they would be willing to pay.

After collecting and analyzing the data, it turned out that the students with the highest-ending social security digits bid more, while the ones with lowest-ending numbers bid less. For example, the top 20% bid an average of $56 for a wireless keyboard while the bottom 20% bid $16.

This is how easy it is to set a price anchor that will influence future buying decisions.

So how to do you combat low price anchors set by your competition? You could make your service impossible to compare to others by changing the way you present your solution.

For example, instead of offering a generic "website redesign" service, customize the service to the the customer’s needs (e.g., "a website redesign to increase online leads.") That one small change will make sure that your solution is incomparable and will make it harder for customers to reference the low price anchor.

Sources and Further Reading

• The Fallacy of Supply and Demand
• Choice in Context: Tradeoff Contrast and Extremeness Aversion

3. Minimize the Pain Associated with Spending

Sometimes the way people choose to spend money is bizarre. But psychologically speaking, when we spend money, we are feeling a loss.

For example, say you were presented with the option of either getting a guaranteed $80 or an 85% chance of getting $100.

Most people are going to choose the $80 because they don’t want to risk the loss of $80.

On the other hand, if you had to take a guaranteed $80 loss or had an 85% chance of losing $100, most people would pick the second choice. It’s riskier, but they would rather take the gamble because there’s a small chance they won’t lose anything.

Why? Because when we lose money, we are experiencing real pain.

In a joint study from Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and MIT, it was shown via fMRI scans (which measures brain activity) that thinking about losing money by making a purchase registered as real pain in the brain.

Image source: Carnegie Mellon University

If you present the pricing on your services invoice-style with every single service as a line item, you’re making your clients analyze every single service. This causes them pain with each and every "loss."

Instead, bundle your fees into one inclusive solution with one simple price tag. Your clients will get to see the entire picture of your services, and they will only have to deal with the pain of paying once.

Sources and Further Reading

• Researching the Pain of Paying
• The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice

4. Use Weber’s Law When Raising Prices

When it’s time to raise your prices for existing clients, you should stay away from one large price increase and instead raise your prices in small increments over a period of time.

That’s because of something called Weber’s Law.

According to Weber’s Law, consumers don’t register a price increase until it’s highly significant.

When it comes to raising the price on products and services without raising a red flag with your clients, the magic percentage is under 10%.

This is why companies like Starbucks only raise the price of their drinks a few cents at a time.

Obviously, if you quote an hourly rate you’ll want to let regular clients know your rate is going up. Do this by sending them an email letting them know that, to keep up with demand while still delivering high quality work, you’ll be raising prices by a specific date.

You’ll be surprised how well these types of increases go as long as you’re following Weber’s Law by making several small increases instead of one single, large increase over the same period of time.

Sources and Further Reading

• Definition of Weber’s Law
• Weber’s Law and Why Big Business Believes You Won’t Notice a Price Increase Under 10%

5. Create the Right Context for Charging More

We all have our preferences, but at the end of the day, Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks both sell coffee.

So why is it that Starbucks gets away with charging more for their drinks? They give their brand a different context — a context of luxury.

This is seen in a study by Richard Thaler.

The scenario: You and your buddies are hanging out on a hot beach and decide that you really want a cold beer to cool off. So your friend can either go to the run-down grocery store or the nearby resort hotel.

Thaler found that people are willing to pay more for the beer from the hotel. In fact, they think that it’s unfair to be charged the same price at the grocery store as they would pay at the hotel.

Think about that for a second. The beer is the same no matter where you buy it, but the fact that it’s coming from a resort hotel gives it more value.

For freelancers, this means that the details matter. Create an experience for your clients that tells them you provide a higher value service than your competitors.

Be the Starbucks, not the Dunkin’ Donuts.

Invest time and resources in building beautiful looking contact forms, a website, cost estimate forms, and proposals that will help you set the context for what you’ll be able to charge.

Sources and Further Reading

• Exuberance Is Rational

6. Show Gains and Losses the Right Way

Need to incentivize a client with a discount? Then make sure you’re discounting the right way.

Customers place a lot of weight on percentages of their discounts.

For example, let’s say that you’re about to buy a t-shirt for $20. But the salesperson informs you that the exact same shirt is on sale for $15 at another branch located 20 minutes away. Would you make the trip to the other store?

Compare that to if you were going to buy a pair of designer shoes for $200. When you get to the checkout counter, you’re told that 20 minutes away there’s a store selling those shoes for $195. Would you make the trip then?

According to another study by Thaler, when presented with those scenarios, most people would choose to travel to save $5 on the shirt but not on the $200 shoes.

So even though they’ll be saving the exact same amount of money, people are more likely to act when the percentage is larger (25% versus only 2.5% in the example scenarios above).

For freelancers, this means you should give discounts in large percentages by discounting the things that cost a small amount.

Let’s say that you’re working on a project with landing pages and social media marketing services that costs a total of $10,000.

Instead of offering 5% off the entire cost, offer them 75% off the bundled social media marketing service. Both of these discounts save the client $500, but they’ll be more likely to take action by seeing the huge percentage of savings.

Sources and Further Reading

• Mental Accounting Matters

7. Small Words Matter

Can one tiny word make the difference between winning and losing your client?

According to a study from Carnegie Mellon University, absolutely yes!

Professors Scott Rick and George Loewenstein decided to test the copy used when describing the fee associated with joining a usually free DVD trial offer.

They tested these two phrases:

• a $5 fee
• a small $5 fee

By adding the word "small" to the copy, they saw response rates improve by 20%!

Yes, a 20% improvement because they added the word "small."

When crafting your own proposals and estimates, pay close attention to phrasing. Consider using words like "small", "minor", "low", etc. They do — as shown in the study by Rick and Loewenstein above — make a difference.

Sources and Further Reading

• Intangibility in intertemporal choice

Summary

Okay, now that I’ve thrown a lot of studies at you, let’s do a quick recap:

1. Craft your proposals so they emphasize the time your clients will save or the experience they will get from your service
2. Make your solutions incomparable to your competition by showing how you’ll solve your clients’ problems
3. Bundle your services into one all-inclusive price to cut down on the perceived "pain" your clients feel when spending money
4. Opt for more frequent price increases instead of one large price increase
5. Ensure that your website, proposals, and contact forms are designed well so that your clients feel like they’re buying from a high-end company
6. Give larger percent discounts by discounting smaller amounts
7. Include words like "small" or "low" in your copy to enhance response rates

Related Content

• 5 Pricing Tips to Earn More on Client Projects
• 5 Tips to Consider Before Giving Out Discounts
• Designing Pricing Plans for Subscription-Based Web Apps
• Related categories: Project Management and Resources

About the Author

Ruben Gamez (@bidsketch) is the founder of Bidsketch, a web app that helps freelancers create professional looking proposals in minutes. He’s also the author of a free guide that teaches freelancers how to get more clients with a perfect proposal.

Source : internetwebsitedesign[dot]biz

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Holiday Shopping: eCommerce Expectations Are High, mCommerce Not So Much

They say good things come to those who wait and retailers have waited long enough for a boost in sales! Looks like this might be the year.

Chase Paymentech talked to a variety of retailers and found that the majority (59%) of them expected 2012 sales to top those of 2011. They were also very optimistic about the percentage of sales coming in through online channels.

Now, I’d like to present my reward for the Short and Sweet Graphic of the Week. It goes to eMarketer!

Seriously folks, it doesn’t get more plain than that. eCommerce is on the rise but mCommerce is still barely a blip on the radar.

I think this year, plenty of shoppers will be using their smartphones and tablets to get discounts, do research and locate gifts but this won’t be the year of the mobile Christmas, not yet. Next year maybe, now that tablets are flooding the market.

When asked what challenges ecommerce companies face this holiday season, surprisingly “competitive pricing” came in second with only 25% of the vote. The biggest concern (52%) was “reaching new customers.” “Reaching return customers” came in third with 23%.

86% of these companies will be turning to Facebook for online promotions which blows my mind. I think it can be an effective tool for keeping current customers engaged but I don’t see it as a good tool for bringing in new customers. 70% said they’d be using Twitter and I like this idea better, mainly because Twitter posts are more searchable.

Pay-Per-Click advertising may be old school, but it’s still the best way to reach new customers. Great content on a website or blog will also help you land at the top of the search engine heap. You also might consider running a giveaway or incentivizing current customers to bring in referrals.

The one advantage online has over other forms of marketing is that it can be tweaked on the fly. So don’t be afraid to throw out a last minute promotion if sales aren’t what you hoped for after CyberMonday.

Source : internetwebsitedesign[dot]biz

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