Taking a look at a GREAT basic muse page

[PhilnCedarPark]

Several folks have referred me to this. My first opinion was pretty low - I am used to building high-end web sites with profiling, tracking, and e-commerce options.

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But since I had a chance to run a web focus group earlier this week I thought I would show them this page first before the real site. Based on their comments, and an explanation of them from a graphic designer, this is why it seems to be a big hit. According to tracking data, it seems pretty popular for an eBook.

Review was on both the complete page and a "greeked" version of the page (where all the wording is turned into nonsense to get a feel for the design itself. The biggest surprise was just a few items: fonts, style, colors - seemed to make a lot more impact than the text itself. When I did the formal survey later on site impact, everyone could remember the product was about succeeding with web 2.0, was very positive about the site, and remembered the guarantee (though only 4 out of the 20 remembered the time length). None could describe more than two actual promises made.

Look is important!

Hosted eBook - SIte: ClickBank

Positive design comments (actual participant quotes):


Top of page has a professional-looking banner; makes it feel like a real web site. Simple banner clearly reinforces the theme of the site: increasing web traffic.

Only two content fonts, along with the "handwriting" graphic, made site easy to use.

Text is in Times; easy to read.

Good informal lead, clear main lead title.

Honest, easy-to-read text in small chunks; lots of white space.

"Product" graphic made the offer seem professional

Colors make it easy to read.

Like the privacy policy.

Features list in bullet points, allows reader to scan quickly and find features that interest them without having to go through a lot of text.

Like the colors and the highlighting.

Endorsements and customer comments with links - easy to verify the endorsements. Can tell that these are real and not made up.

Notepad summary graphic is great - I scanned down, read that, THEN went back to read the text above.

Guarantee is great - I always wonder about buying this kind of stuff on the web.

All the payment options make him seem big-time; international

Call to action: "Just Click Here To Secure Your Copy!" sounds a lot better than "Buy Me"

Everyone commented on text flow and text comment very positively.


Negative Comments:


No address or email - can't tell if he is real.

Wasn't sure if I was buying software or an eBook.

What is an ebook?

Bullet icons look silly


All in all - a really good review.

The site itself was produced by http://trendyecovers.com/ - I know nothing about them, but if I was doing an eBook I would certainly take a look at them for design work. The prices look pretty good as well.

Would be interest in other opinions as well!

[Marcie]

I just want to throw this out there, but for some reason all these sites that are one page and you have to scroll scroll scroll to get all the content - seem very markety and quickly put together to me. Does anyone else feel that way? Maybe it's just me. I do like the trendyecovers.com work on the product "box".

[GAtkins]

I just want to throw this out there, but for some reason all these sites that are one page and you have to scroll scroll scroll to get all the content - seem very markety and quickly put together to me. Does anyone else feel that way? Maybe it's just me. I do like the trendyecovers.com work on the product "box".

I with Marcie, I don't like them at all. But then again I am not a professional muse guy nor am I a graphic artist and my site itself needs a lot of work according to the reviews, which I am in the process of doing.

Anybody else?

Glenn

[Vagabond]

I just want to throw this out there, but for some reason all these sites that are one page and you have to scroll scroll scroll to get all the content - seem very markety and quickly put together to me. Does anyone else feel that way? Maybe it's just me. I do like the trendyecovers.com work on the product "box".

I agree 100,000% but i'm wondering if they work or not. Personally, I would NEVER buy something off a site like this but maybe a lot of people do...

[PhilnCedarPark]

I also would never buy from a page that looked like this. But I am an advanced web user and have very different expectations. The folks in the focus group were typical, average users who do not use the web in their profession - surfing a few sites, reading the news, updating facebook profiles - not even a blogger among them.

In web architecture, one key step is creating 'personas', representative people who will be using the site (for a deep dive dive see the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personas). So when you are creating any web property, you should not only create "personas" to model who will be using the site, but in some cases actually find people that are in the target audience and interview them.

And sometimes they surprise you. This site was actually very well received by the target audience - which are people who are not programmers, but want to learn more about using the web in their business. They need to know enough to contract for web development, not do it. And their attitudes were very different than mine :eek:

Design for your audience, not yourself. For me, most myspace pages make my eyes bleed. But for a particular audience they are the in look!

[GAtkins]

I also would never buy from a page that looked like this. But I am an advanced web user and have very different expectations. The folks in the focus group were typical, average users who do not use the web in their profession - surfing a few sites, reading the news, updating facebook profiles - not even a blogger among them.

In web architecture, one key step is creating 'personas', representative people who will be using the site (for a deep dive dive see the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personas). So when you are creating any web property, you should not only create "personas" to model who will be using the site, but in some cases actually find people that are in the target audience and interview them.

And sometimes they surprise you. This site was actually very well received by the target audience - which are people who are not programmers, but want to learn more about using the web in their business. They need to know enough to contract for web development, not do it. And their attitudes were very different than mine :eek:

Design for your audience, not yourself. For me, most myspace pages make my eyes bleed. But for a particular audience they are the in look!


Interesting observations, Phil...

Glenn

[Marcie]

makes sense...people buy tabloids all the time too :P

[ewing]

"Design for your audience, not yourself"

i cannot agree more. being a person with extensive sales and marketing background i think MANY people forget this important point.

also, this type of sales letter is common and tons of people buy product (not services) from sites like this.

one negative to this type of marketing is that it is benefit driven only and usually will not meet expectations of the customer (usually WAY too "hypey"). therefore could be damaging to the reputation of that person.

something to keep in mind for those that plan on marketing their product this way.

ewing

[MarkRoX]

"Design for your audience, not yourself"

i cannot agree more. being a person with extensive sales and marketing background i think MANY people forget this important point.

also, this type of sales letter is common and tons of people buy product (not services) from sites like this.

one negative to this type of marketing is that it is benefit driven only and usually will not meet expectations of the customer (usually WAY too "hypey"). therefore could be damaging to the reputation of that person.

something to keep in mind for those that plan on marketing their product this way.

ewing

Well the thing is also that this landing page is the only the first time the customer will be exposed to the product. One of the other goals of this page is to definitely get the customer to sign up for the "Free" .pdf and grab their email address.

I signed up and got the free .pdf and it did have 1 relevant piece of information which is enough for me to consider going back to the site and ACTUALLY reading all of the stuff on the landing page since I only skimmed it the first time anyways.

I don't even know how much the product cost, but after reading the free .pdf I did at least ask in my head, 'how much is this?'...

And customers are all stages of the buying cycle so we're mainly trying to identify customers and keep hitting them... and hopefully eventually when they're ready they'll come back and buy the product.

Of course... yeah... we've all seen way too many of these flat 1 screen long scroll basic websites....

Just wait until Monday... I've been editing an all flash template for my muse... so it's definitely not flat. But my target audience (males 15-30 who watch anime/play video games) kind of needs that, plus I'm really trying to differentiate myself from my loser competitors!


M.

[wildsoul]

YES. It's about what your audience likes.

My particular audience would never buy from a hard sell page like that. (I work with holistic businesses such as spas.)

I remember when I was changing my materials from "friendly" even a little new-age to more corporate-like. HUGE flop. My loyal audience really spoke up, which was awesome. I kept getting mail about this one graphic I removed, "But where's that lotus flower? I REALLY liked the flower!"

This all makes the case for testing!
I'm usually don't bother, I just go with my inspiration.
But really, Tim's advice (and the members here, too) about testing before launching does make the most sense.

PS: Everyone here is so sharp! I'm loving our little forum.

[Mav]

I agree that some may look at a page such as this, not care the way it looks, and then purchase.

But I bet the amount of people that look and leave is massive.
It's not hard or expensive to have an easy to use, high function website that looks BEAUTIFUL and professional. Do a google search for flash templates, refine the search for ecommerce templates.. and wala. Take an hour or two and learn to modify the template or have someone else do it.


For less then $200 you have store on fifth ave instead of the Bronx. Even people with little to no web experience will feel more comfortable, more likely to trust the information they read and be more applicable to purchase from the site.

Worth the money IMO.

Mav

[Vacman]

Yea...

This kind of stuff really tweaks my brain too.

I've been looking into sales copy and how to increase conversion rates on your site.

Everything I see says that the whole one page sales letter is the way to go to get conversion rates up. That did not make a whole lot of sense to me, but it seems that with every option that you give to a person who is on your site (basically with every click they make) you lose more and more people.

Also, just as in most good sales pitches, the order in which you present the information is important. So people opt for the scrolling page, that way people are more forced to read from top to bottom in the order that you chose to present the information.

Those two points create the argument for the one page scrolling sales letter.

Review :)

1.) The more links you have, the more people you lose.
2.) If you have a scrolling centered page you can more accurately control how the information is being presented to your potential customers.

"Hype" is not working as well as it used to. People become skeptical very quickly, you must not discredit yourself by making wild claims or over hyped language or people will automatically disregard your page.

That being said, hype is not necessarily using passionate, or emotional words. It is important to convey your belief in your product, and to get the potential customer emotionally involved in your product and the benefits it can give them.

Remember, people want to buy based on emotion, and then justify it later with logic.