Critique My Page


This is new landing page I have designed for PPC traffic. It’s like a mini-site. As per knowledge we have, customers would like to explore and know about the company before they will make a decision to call (or fill a form) and that’s the main reason it’s a mini-site. Our major competitors have such mini-sites too. Form fills i.e RFQ does not convert as high as phone call so it’s not primary CTA.

Link: http://try.escapere.com/flights-underdev/

Please give me your views on how to improve it further or what should be added or removed or moved.

PS: some links are not working on this page but they will be working soon.

Thanks
Sal


10 replies

Hi Sal,

If it’s a mini-site, does that mean there’s no goal? If driving calls is the goal, even though it’s a final goal, it should still be much more prominent without distractions. 

As Oli Gardner mentions in this book of his, your landing page needs to be setup to achieve a singular goal. Me and my team followed that advice, and I can say for a fact - it has helped immensely. I really like how you have everything setup below the fold so not going to go there just yet (maybe the images need some work, but all in all, nothing to complain about)

This means some work on above-the-fold:

  • Remove the social sharing icons on the top 
  • Move those links to the footer (this also depends on your ppc - if you’re paying someone to come to your page with a specific keyword or category, give him everything pertaining to that keyword and nothing else. this also helps quality scores)
  • In fact, I’d suggest remove the whole blue top bar
  • Stop the sliding images (I think one image of a flat-bed first class seat conveys a heavy message by itself)
  • The headline positioning can do better. In fact, I found myself following the F-shape pattern (point #4 in this article but all other points are worth the read too) so I think having the headline on the left might work better.
  • The platinum member seal is very distracting.
  • The credit card images are distracting as well (pretty much every travel company accepts cards - I think if you accept bitcoin on the other hand, show it off by all means)
    I’m not good at re-arranging things so I’m not able to mentally figure out what I would prefer to make it look like so I’m going by elimination first. If you apply my suggestions, maybe then I can further figure out what to change haha. 

Hope this helps. I’m sorry it’s not all rainbows. But there is one great thing - the headline itself. Did it’s job very well.  

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks for all inputs. Please see my comments below. I had reasons to do many things I did.

  1. Yes, it is a mini-site and there is only one goal. Goal is to persuade customer to call our toll free number. Some customers don’t want to call so we have request a quote online option too. Quote requestsin email does not convert well.

  2. Social sharing icons - You have asked to remove them. I have purposely put them in top navigation bar which is very small. secondly, it shows 4K users like us. Doesn’t it gives social proof?

  3. Navigation bar - Traffic on this site will be very smart set of people i.e top business man, business owners, senior managers, ceo, rich and wealthy people. They would like to make sure they are dealing with genuine company. Ticket prices are much higher. They will range from $2500-$30000 and even more. So, we have made mini-site for them to explore to upgrade their knowledge about company before they make a call. See our competitor site at http://www.donotlink.com/i0mz and http://www.donotlink.com/i0n0 and yes, their home page is ppc landing page. Second one have gone through CRO phase too. Some users will come to site to get hotel booking (by mistake)

  4. Removing sliding images - Co-incidently, both links i have above have some form of sliding images on their home pages/ppc landing pages. I am hesitating to remove them. Why would they have that?

  5. Moving headline to left seems like good idea. (change done)

  6. Platinum member seal - since transaction values are high, this seal helps creating credibility and reliability showing that we are platinum verified. Isn’t it? I think credibility is important. What do you think?

  7. Removing credit card images loos like good idea. (change done)

  8. What’s wrong with images? Darkness and size problem? I’ll be happy to know your views.

Btw, mobile site is live but we can discuss it later (yes, I want to keep you busy :))

Thanks  :)
Sal

Hello Sal,
One quick thing that struck me on the landing page and from your comments…
Have you considered having a distinct landing page dedicated to corporations?  
There’s a lot that you could A/B test to see what works, but it sounds like your target audience (and most repeatable business) would be coming from corporations who want to save money and time.  
If that’s the case, consider separating the two and directly addressing the needs of the corporations. 
What hours are you available for scheduling flights?  Do you book hotels?  Do you pass through rewards?  What are your payment terms?  Do you offer a direct line to an account manager?  What guarantees do you offer?  What enables you to offer better rates than the direct supplier?  Do you assist in creating internal travel request documents?  How do our employees book with you?  And so on…
Hope that helps and best of luck on your inbound efforts!
Best,Joe

Hi Joe,

Thanks for input. We are not targeting corporations through this landing page and yes, there can be dedicated page for corporations. But I don’t see any such page for established players so I need to understand how that will work out.  If you will see http://www.donotlink.com/i0n0, our competitor, and they are 37 year old company, they just have a simple landing page for corporate, just like us. Helping corporations outsource their entire travel to us is slightly different business and that space is not our immediate goal. There are companies dedicated in that area only. To answer your other questions - 

  1.  Currently our team will be available 24x7 but we will run ppc only 9:00 AM EST to 7:00 PM EST
  2. Hotels? - Yes
  3.  Rewards passthru - it’s being worked out. so, yes
  4. Payment terms are dependent on tickets booked. Those are mostly set by airlines.  Refundable tickets can be refunded or changed and non-refundable obviously cannot be so a flyer can buy our insurance to conver unforseen circumstances. We are only agents. 
  5.  Since corporate accounts are not direct focus, no dedicated account managers but customers can reach their preferred agent directly
  6.  Once ticket is issued, Guarantees in airline industry is offered by suppliers i.e airlines. If you buy additional insurance, you will have additional guarantees
  7.  We can meet or beat the rates of our competitors. This is our secret sauce 🙂
  8.   Internal travel request docs - Not as of now
  9. Since we are not focusing on corporate accounts, they will just call our toll free number

let me know what changes in landing page we can do to improve conversion.

Thanks
Sal

This may just be me, but your imagery strikes as very much stock. Doesn’t evoke much. You know what I mean? Sometimes when you see images, you can decipher their “realness”. 

Looking to your competitors is a good thing, but copying “modelling” their site to fit yours sometimes doesn’t bring the benefit (point #1 in this article). Just because your competitors are using it doesn’t mean you should too. Especially when there’s a lot of information about things like sliding images killing conversions. 

Social sharing icons provide social proof, but so do your testimonials. I would hypothesize that textual testimonials have a greater impact as social proof than number of likes. 

However, if you feel so strongly about some elements that probably work because your competitors use it - there’s no better software than Unbounce to prove your theory. Test them as variants. 

Good luck Sal!

Thanks for input. I am going to remove sliders as that seems common sense and do A/B test to see if it improves anything.

I’ll try to get more real images from flickr.

In Short… You need more friendly faces, less clutter and a clearer CTA! Get them to act now -invoke more action and action colors… Red yellow … Use lots of contrast etc…

Hey Sal,

I see where you are coming from.  

Two specific points of feedback as a traveler:

  • 20-70% is a wide range and readers may be doubtful without an explanation of how you are able to get better rates.  Think of Trivago’s explainer video that shows how they are able to search all deal sites to find you the best price.  Not recommending you to mimic Trivago, but thought they did well in the video below.
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRmLcUIqCHI
  • What are the benefits?  The copywriting mentions seamless travel planning, customer service and concierge…what will this look like?  Give visitors an understanding of how the experience and individual benefits will look like.  Maybe that is peace of mind knowing that 24/7 they can call within an hour of flight departure to reschedule in case of emergency or even just running late.  Maybe it’s a stress free experience with an organized itinerary and travel guide.  And so on…

There are tons of best practices that you can test, but finding your unique value and communicating it clearly might be the conversion boost you are looking for.  It’s at least worth testing, right? 🙂

Best of luck,
Joe

Thanks Charles. Very helpful. For me, it has been a challenge to find real looking photos of business class and first class flights.

Thanks for helpful ideas Joe. I am going to use these ideas in new variants

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