Have you been a victim of thoughtless landing page design? Or worse, are you a guilty perpetrator?  It amazes me that some companies make any money, given how hard they make it for prospects to become customers.  Honestly, I have very little patience for this.  Following is an email I sent to an unnamed company (HINT: They’re a job-search site and their name rhymes with “The Matters”).

Here’s the scenario:  Every year I pay to have my resume re-written by an expert.  This year I decided to try out  a new company.

Dear Marketer,

How is this page performing for you?  Are you getting tons of customers?  Well I would argue you’re nowhere near where you could be if this page was actually designed with me in mind.  For one thing, it would be nice if there was a button, checkbox, something–to start down the resume re-write path.  There isn’t.  I fiddled around your site for 8 minutes (yes I counted) without finding what I came here for.

Lucky for you I’m motivated (or dissatisfied) enough to write this email — most people won’t be.  They’ll just forget you and move onto the next company on their list.

I optimize conversion funnels for a living, so I promise you that your customers are spending too much time in “unsupervised thinking” mode.  If only you would at least provide a clear path to conversion – you might be awed by the lift that will result.

You Should Provide Two Distinct Choices:

1.  Get your FREE critique (for those who need a little more convincing)
2.  Get your resume re-write (for people like me who are ready to buy NOW)

It really shouldn’t be this much trouble for me to give you my money.  Whats more, I’m not interested in the auto-responder bucket you’re going to drop me into — I’m past that point so please have a real human being contact me with a quote.  You don’t need to market to me anymore — plus, you’re really not that good at it anyway.  I’ll just take my business somewhere else because you’ve already annoyed me and I’ve already wasted too much time.

Yes this is very direct and somewhat rude — if you’re smart, you’ll politely respond with a “thank you”, then take this as a wake-up call and change your page!

~Tameesha

P.S.  If I get an auto-responder, I’m blogging, twittering and updating the status on all my networks about you — and you definitely don’t want that.

———————————————–