Oli Gardner about conversion killers in landing page campaign
We were like children looking forward to Christmas – all of us, including the graphic designers, copywriters and UX designers. And we were given our first Christmas present: loads of advice of how to optimize the landing pages conversion rate.
Oli demolished a few myths in online marketing by connecting data and design:
- The words like “free” no longer work in CTA. (The button “free”, e.g. in “start your free trial” is less powerful than without the word.)
- You think that „click here“ is useless? Maybe to some people, but it can considerably increase the conversion.
- According to tests, the most convincing word is “because”. If it appears 16 time on the landing page, the page will achieve its best results. A bit farfetched, yes. The conclusion? If you want to sell, you have to explain to people why your product or service is interesting. Old truth which was already proclaimed by Ogilvy.
What was interesting was a use of an instrument UsabilityHub for quick test of the first impression of a landing page. How to do that?
- Do a screenshot of both versions,
- send them to UsabilityHub for test
- and in a while you get a result: What do users, who saw you page for 5 seconds, think it offers.
Simple and effective, you get the results of the test in 5 minutes.

Marty Neumeier: Customers don’t buy brand, they want to be a part of community
The brand building is a direction which the online marketers (who are wading through the floods of PPC automatization, reading the numbers from Google Analytics, have low budget and just as low power) implement and influence with difficulties. A lot of Czech companies, excluding love brands, never really think about it. Will anything change after Marty Neumeier’s speech? Hope so.
Marty’s newest book The Brand Flip (2015) describes changing the model of brand management connected to new technologies and social networks expansion. How should companies consider their brand if they want to be successful?
Marty advises: build customers who will help you to build the brand.
This is a fundamental change in thinking. According to Marty, a brand is as strong as its “tribe” (fellowship, community with the same interests). The company should design a customer – who the customer will become when purchases the product or service. The most important thing, besides attributes, benefits, user experience, is the reason why the customer buys the product or the service. How it influences their personal identity.
A few quick thoughts in closure:
- 10% of loyal customers generate 50% of the income.
- the customers don’t buy the brand, they enjoy being a part of the tribe
- product = symbol of customer’s life.
Larry Kim: I can see PPC future and it is…
Larry introduced strategic view on PPC: surprisingly not from the Adwords point of view but from the social networks’. Because we respond to mobile apps, we were breathless the whole time. The arrival of the mobile era can be felt from every third slide:
- 80% of Twitter users are mobile
- A half of billion Facebook users log in from mobile

Besides the direction that PPC is heading, he also advised us how to push our way to social networks and become one of the most respected experts.
- The key to the success is quality content. Spread it deliberately among the right people.
- To test the content quality use mailing, Twitter, Gplus, LinkedIn. If it performs well, use it on Facebook (this network penalise sites with low interaction).