High converting landing pages are powerful sales driver. Moz earned $1 million from a single landing page.
If you’re blogger, you’ll agree with me that web and landing page designs have changed over the last few years. In fact, I just discovered that 87% of pro bloggers now use their personal photos on their landing pages.
I see they happily hire a professional web designer and instruct them to focus on the visual design, not really content like you’ve been made to believe.
Why is that so?
Well, it’s all about building trust. Blogging is not like any other marketing platform out there. If you run a Google AdWords campaign, your goal is usually to make money, or build a list, because your ads will appear when people search for a particular keyword.
This means that your prospects are qualified and ready to convert – so to speak.
Since blogging is about personal branding and trust, you want visitors and blog readers to like you, and trust your opinion.
Consequently, you want to use your personal photo to initiate that trust, especially when you look gorgeous and confident.
Visual marketing is the new trend
Whether it’s for blogging, landing page design or corporate web design, visual approach that engages the users is the new trend. And industry bloggers have come to recognize this truth.
The major reason why these top bloggers use their personal photos to design their blog landing pages is because visual marketing works.
Visual assets include infographics, images, screenshots, charts, video, Slideshare presentations, memes, and animations.
And because visual information attracts more people, Social Media Examiner found that “70% of marketers plan to invest and use original visual assets in 2015.”
So does using personal photo on a landing page design improve conversion rate? Does it inspire visitors to subscribe to an email list, buy a product or share the post?
Yes it does. And there are research studies to back up these claims:
1). Trust on first sight. A study by hornbeam to test people’s ability to identify trustworthy ecommerce sites found that a human photo affects how participants perceive vendors at first glance. Just take a look at the new FourHourWorkWeek landing page:
2). Medalia Arts, an agency that sells Brazilian and Caribbean Art discovered through an A/B testing that paintings of artist photos or human photos increased user engagement (clicks on paintings on the site) by a 17.2%, compared to other forms of paintings, which got a conversion rate of 8.8%.
3). 37Signals.com started to use the real photos of their happy customers as a background for their landing page design and increased conversion rate by 102.5%.
Now that you know how powerful using human photos, preferably your own personal photo on your blog landing page design, how many popular bloggers use it well?
I’ve found 8 of them. Here are their blogs:
1. TheRiseToTheTop.com
Therisetothetop.com was founded by David Siteman. He’s the guy sitting on the tiled floor smiling from chin to chin. He uses his personal photo to confidently build trust with visitors and customers, as well as redirect your mind to the subscription box.
Lesson for you: Use legit and persuasive strategies to draw people’s attention to important areas of your landing page. That way, they’ll act faster.
2. MarieForleo.com
Marie Forleo is the video marketing expert that I’m so proud of. I’ve learnt several marketing tricks from her.
She communicates so clearly and as a result of her confidence and useful content, every blog video content (more like it) she puts out generates massive engagement – over 250 comments.
Meanwhile, her personal photo is right above the header. She’s excited as well as relaxed. And you’ll find an arrow pointing down at the subscription box. Why? She wants you to come on board – to join her email list.
Lesson for you: The email list is the #1 assignment that you must continually pay attention to. The truth is that if you’re not building a list, you don’t really have a business today or tomorrow.
Seth has authored over 20 books. I really enjoyed reading “The Dip.” Permit me to say that Seth Godin is one of the most influential digital marketers in the online world.
Yes, I said online world because when you get offline, there are other smarter marketers that are breaking new grounds.
His landing page looks professional, as expected. I just noticed that he’s not concerned about list building like the above blogging experts do. But he’s putting customers’ focus on his new bestseller entitled, “What To Do When It’s Your Turn.”
Lesson for you: Inasmuch as collecting email leads is paramount and vital, remember that you may not always want to do it.
Because some people are suspicious when you ask for their email address at every step they take when they visit your blog or landing page. Be wise and know exactly when to ask for it.
5. SocialTriggers.com
If you’ve never heard of Socialtriggers.com, then you may have been blogging from under the rock – which is spectacular. I wish I were you!
Anyways, the brain behind that blog is Derek Halpern. He just redesigned his blog landing page, which is more focused on his personal brand and email list.
Though I’ve not invested into his Zippy Courses and Yes Engine – two solutions for getting more out of your online courses, but I’ve read several positive reviews and only a handful complaints.
Lesson for you: When redesigning your landing page or WordPress blog, make sure you create new concepts that will stand you out from the crowd. Remember that the competition is suffocating a lot of bloggers already.
Conclusion
Visual marketing will help you attract more buyers, increase social shares and improve your search rankings. In a recent study, 86% of buyers expressed a strong desire to access visual content before making a purchase.”
So you’ve got to start using it.
I know there are several other blog landing page designs that have personal photos to build trust, authenticity and brand, such as the Suitcase Entrepreneur, Smart Passive Income, Lewis Howes and so much more.
But I find the above really unique in their clean layout. There are good reasons why you may not want to use visual information to market your blog such as lack of funds to purchase video creation equipments or pay for infographics, no technical skills, not outspoken and so on. But don’t give in to that.
If you don’t have the skills or few hundred dollars to buy the right tools, you could start by creating Slideshare presentations for free. Then upload your presentations to YouTube.com and Docstoc.com.
If your content is helpful and easy to digest, you’ll drive additional referral traffic to your blog.
As usual, did you see an increase in the number of social shares, comments, email subscription or sales when you used human photos on your blog landing page?