Get that “One Thing” into your web page headline.

At work we’re always testing, testing, testing.

Recently we ran a series of test which revealed some interesting results.

For instance, if you are pitching a free download from a particular web page, make sure the words “free download” appear in the headline.

If you are presenting a risk-free trial of something...get that message into your headline.

If your product is 20% cheaper than last week, get that 20% or dollar savings figure into the headline.

This may sound obvious, but while we were testing various offer pages, it became clear that the winning pages all had headlines which were focused on the offer, and were very much reader and benefit centered.

And it doesn’t stop with the headline...

When you have that “one thing”...that free offer, 20% discount or whatever...repeat it a number of times through the text. In subheads, body text - and a little formatting helps too – like the use of bold, color and indents.

And when it comes to making your final call to action...repeat that one message there too.

I have waded through the data with my colleagues and found this simple approach to have a very significant impact on conversion rates.

A few thoughts about the “one thing”.

When your page has a very simple focus, and the only intent of the page is, for example, to get people to download a document or program, it’s fairly simple to design and write a page that takes the approach I described above.

But, of course, we often work with managers and bosses who are anxious to add five other sub-purposes to the page.

(BTW – Unhelpful interference from on high is not just a myth. It happens a lot and happens for a reason. In a nutshell, and argue with me if you must, the further up the corporate ladder people climb, the further their feet are separated from the ground. Or, to put in another way, they often lose touch with the reality of what regular people actually do when they read through a web page.)

So what can you do if your “one thing” has become four things?

The best approach you can attempt is to have your page created as a separate landing page.

And if you meet resistance over that idea, bring up the idea of writing the “four things” page and testing it against a “one thing” page.

When everyone sees the difference in conversions and revenues, their attitudes may change.

Concluding thoughts...

There is nothing radical about keeping a web page focused on just one thing.

Nor is it surprising to hear that pages perform better when the offer is highlighted in the headline, and repeated several times elsewhere on the page.

What is surprising is how many pages, even landing pages, fail to come even close to this approach.

As I said earlier, we have tested this a great deal, and the “one thing” approach significantly outperforms pages which either try to tackle more than one topic, or fail to give the offer sufficient exposure on the page.

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