Thursday, July 23, 2015

Page Fights Finale: Bloopers, An Epic Face Off and the Distilled Wisdom of 12 Episodes

Page Fights was born in the spring of 2014. The concept was simple: get your landing page torn apart live by CRO experts… or watch it happen to others from the comfort of your own desk.

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Gentlemen, welcome to Page Fights. Image source.

Every month, conversion rate optimization heavyweights Oli Gardner from Unbounce and Peep Laja from ConversionXL Google-hanged with a guest judge to take part in the sacrificial slaughtering of user-submitted landing pages.

Moderators Tommy Walker and Georgiana Laudi kept the show flowing and the rambunctious judges under control, until it was time for viewers to vote on (and crown) that month’s landing page champion.

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Ryan Walsh, our first-ever landing page champion.

The hour-long episodes resulted in a ton of witty banter, often brutal feedback, great quotable moments and hilarious audience participation on Twitter:

But in spite of all the public humiliation and disses, spectators learned a metric ton about A/B testing, conversion rate optimization and landing page optimization best practices.

It was an epic forum for landing page critiques and learning, but all good things must come to an end. Today, we’re saying goodbye to Page Fights.

But not without going at it one final time.

In the finale, we explain why Page Fights is going away, share some of our favorite moments and read some of the meanest comments our viewers left us. Oh, and in the most epic faceoff ever, Peep Laja and Oli Gardner completely brutalize each other’s own company’s pages.

Distilled wisdom from 12 epic episodes

If you’re mourning the loss of Page Fights, we want to leave you with a reminder of everything we learned in the 12 episodes that aired. Here’s a quick and dirty checklist of the top 19 mistakes that cropped up again and again:

  1. The page has poor attention ratio.
  2. The opt in form causes friction.
  3. The unique value proposition isn’t clear – you’re not explaining what differentiates you from the competition.
  4. There are multiple offers on your page or it lacks congruence.
  5. Your offer lacks clarity: the landing page doesn’t explain what you do or what prospects are opting in for.
  6. The page is too short or too long to give prospects the info they need to convert.
  7. The copywriting is stiff, too salesy, or out of order.
  8. The copy focuses on your business rather than the visitor’s pain points – it doesn’t continue the conversation in your prospect’s head.
  9. Your copy is rife with meaningless superlatives.
  10. You’re not addressing all your prospects’ objections.
  11. The testimonials seem fake or the page otherwise lacks credibility.
  12. The headline lacks message match with the CTA or ad that sends traffic to the page.
  13. The call to action doesn’t contrast with the rest of the page.
  14. The headline or copy fails to focus on the benefits.
  15. The hero shot doesn’t show context of use.
  16. Your page lacks directional or scroll cues.
  17. Your pages aren’t mobile-friendly.
  18. Your pages have technical issues (test, ya goof!).
  19. Your landing page video doesn’t complement the rest of your page.

If you’re craving more LPO advice, you can always check out the full archive of the recordings, or read up on our recaps. They’ve got landing page optimization knowledge bombs for days and days:

And a final shout out to our Page Fights participants and audience, who endured many a brutal quip and tweeted so many actionable insights that it made our ears bleed:

Seriously, you guys are the best.

All is not lost

Don’t be sad that Page Fights is over.

I mean, we’re sad too. But we’re also happy to have learned so much.

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So go!

Take what you’ve learned from the public humiliation of others and get to building some of the highest-converting landing pages the world has ever seen.

Peace!

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