Landing Pages: How to Increase Webinar Attendance

Have you or your business run a webinar? Were you disappointed with the attendance?

It doesn’t matter how awesome, insightful, or informative your webinar is if nobody attends.

Webinars are a great way to increase your reputation as a trusted source of information, but you need to optimize your webinar’s landing page in order to get people to sign up in the first place.

That’s where this article comes in. I’ll take a look at three real-world webinar landing pages and outline exactly what I like about them and what I’d change or test.

These critiques will give you the full picture of how you can optimize your own webinar landing pages and ensure your webinar has the best chance of finding success.

Jon Loomer’s Weekly Webinar Landing Page


Jon Loomer is one of the premier Facebook marketing experts on the web. His weekly webinars have been running for a good length of time now, and have a solid attendance every week.

But could his webinar landing page be even better?

Let’s take a look:

landing pages webinar wishpond

What I Like:

  • The Hook: “Do Awesome Things” is neither the traditional USP or value proposition I usually tout as essential to your landing page, but it is an effective attention grabber. We all want to do awesome things, and (despite it being entirely unrelated to the webinar’s subject) it works to get us to read on.
  • The Image: Loomer uses this headshot on everything he does. This kind of consistency and repetition serves to make his brand recognizable just as much as his name does. I’m sure he tested the efficacy of different headshots (smiling vs serious, etc). His chosen one evokes a sincerity he backs up in his webinars.
  • The Huge CTA* :* There’s no confusion here. The entire landing page is above the fold, and the CTA spans the page. If it were any smaller, on the side or below the fold, I would recommend he use a contrasting color (blue, perhaps) but making it so visually obvious means a contrasting color is unnecessary.
  • The Image: The image effectively communicates both Loomer’s expertise (we see his name, and the headshot again, within the page) as well as denoting ‘Advanced Facebook Marketing’ with a snapshot of the Facebook Ad Reports page.

What I’d Test or Change:

  • A Little More Information: Loomer’s weekly webinars are great, but I think this page might have a higher conversion rate if it included a quick snapshot of what will be covered, something like ‘This week I’ll take an in-depth look at Facebook’s new Website Custom Audience Targeting – so get your pens out!”
  • The Arrow : The arrow is actually misleading as I assumed it was directing me to a link, but it doesn’t. Instead, if draws attention away from the actual links. If it was an inch lower (pointing at the CTA) it’d be one of the things I liked about this page. Instead it’s something I’d test removing.
  • A Testimonial: While most people who attend Loomer’s weekly webinars will already be familiar with him and his business, there will be some who aren’t. I think it’d definitely be worth testing a review or testimonial from someone who’s attended his webinar before. People value the opinion of others, and trust it, more than they do the business itself.

ManpowerGroup’s Webinar Landing Page


Employment Agency Manpower is running a webinar on negotiation with its chief legal officer, Mark Toth.

Let’s take a look at the Manpower webinar landing page:

webinar landing page wishpond

What I Like:

  • The Top Banner: I like the professionalism and quality of the top banner. It’s simple but effective, and the picture of Mark Toth lends it personality. I’d be interested in testing a less-cliche picture of Mark, but couldn’t guarantee the results of that test.
  • The Trust Symbols: On the bottom right we see ‘Official Honoree’ and ‘Top 10’ stamps. Trust symbols have proven to improve sales by 42% in previous A/B Tests. They increase the legitimacy of your brand and landing page traffic tends to trust you more when they know someone has trusted you before.
  • The Poll: I like the poll on the right side, giving people a chance to get involved with the webinar’s subject matter. This is also incredibly useful for Manpower’s blog, as they get valuable information about what their readers and customers want to know more about.

What I’d Test or Change:

  • The CTA: It actually took me a moment or two to even find this landing page’s CTA. That’s bad. Your webinar’s Call-to-Action should be eye-catching and obvious to increase click-throughs. I recommend this landing page test a green CTA to contrast with the color scheme and place it both beneath the three paragraphs on the left side as well as above the poll on the right.
  • The Links: The links on the right side are actually distracting on this page. I’d test removing them and really focusing on the page’s goal (webinar registrations) to improve conversion rates. All of these links could be on the page before this one, but I would recommend removing them on the actual webinar landing page.
  • The Headlines: This page has two value propositions, and I’d recommend focusing on the second one (“Everything you ever wanted to know about negotiation in 60 minutes or less”). This is an effective value proposition, and I’d recommend making it larger and spanning the top left area (where “sign up for my next 187% free webinar” is now).
  • The Free Webinar Value Proposition: Focusing this landing page’s value on it being a “187% free webinar” is a variable worth testing. The mass majority of webinars are free, so this isn’t a very effective value proposition, let alone an effective top hook.
  • The Comment Box: Entry-forms are a fickle thing: ask for enough information that you get value from the form, but not too much that people are overwhelmed by requests and bounce. I would test removing the comment box, as (even though it’s optional) it may be a step too far for most people.

Hubspot’s AskTwitter Webinar Landing Page


Inbound-marketing provider Hubspot is running an “Ask Twitter” webinar, in which two guest speakers from Twitter will team up with Hubspot’s VP of Marketing to discuss how to maximize the potential of Twitter for business.

Check out Hubspot’s webinar landing page:

webinar landing page wishpond

What I Like:

  • The USP: Action oriented and large, this landing page’s headline is straightforward and communicates the value of the webinar really well.
  • Hubspot+Twitter : Including the well-known Twitter logo lends this webinar a huge amount of legitimacy. Marketers unfamiliar with Hubspot will immediately recognize Twitter and be interested as a result.
  • The Extensive Bios: I like giving the full credentials of the webinar’s guests and hosts. This, along with the Twitter logo, communicate a valuable and informative webinar.
  • The CTA: The large orange CTA below the entry form fields is effectively eye-catching. I also like the call itself (“I want to see this!”) which avoids the dangers of “click here” by making the action focused on the audience, rather than telling that audience what to do.
  • The Pictures: Including a picture of each of the webinar’s guests is very effective to persuade landing page visitors. People respond consistently to pictures of people more than they do abstract images or cartoons.

What I’d Test or Change:

  • Bullet-points: While all the information on this landing page is great, and it communicates the value very well, it is also a large amount of text to deal with visually. I’d recommend breaking this information up into bullet-points – especially the guest’s bios and credentials.
  • The Entry Form’s “Ask”: The CTA “Sign up now” is pretty strong language, even though it’s not the clickable button. I’d recommend testing something more casual or beneficial, like “Take Twitter to the Next Level” or “Get access now”. CTA’s like these communicate value, and increase conversion rates. You might be surprised at the effect small changes like these can have on the end result.
  • The Entry Form Itself: As I mentioned in the second example, entry form optimization is a delicate process in itself. I can’t help but think that Hubspot’s entry form is asking a little too much, and they may be seeing some bounced traffic as a result. It’s definitely something worth testing.
  • The CTA: While I really like the orange CTA, especially the text, it’s always worth testing a different color. The orange does blend into the background somewhat. I’d be curious to see the results from testing a dark green CTA or changing the entry form background color to contrast more with the existing orange CTA.
  • The Pictures: Once again this is just a test, but I’d be interested to see the results of the images being more similar to each other. Many of you will be sceptical if this would actually have an effect on conversion rates, but, again, you might be surprised at how small changes can yield big results. I’d like to see a test comparing these three images to three images more similar to Kipp’s in the middle. I think this would increase the professionalism of the webinar and, just slightly, improve conversion rates.

NOTE: Let’s say that a/b testing the small recommendations I made (the number of entry form boxes, making the speaker’s images more similar, etc) only increased this landing page’s conversion rates by 2% overall.

Now let’s say that, before, this landing page was converting web-traffic at 35% and seeing 1500 visitors a week. The 2% change would only give Hubspot 30 more webinar registrations (525 to 555).

But wait, Hubspot’s Pro plan is $800/month. And what if the webinar is converting 1/10th of its registrants?

Didn’t that 2% conversion change just earn Hubspot $28,800 in increased revenue every year?

Yes. It did.

Optimization is important, people.

Conclusion


Webinars are awesome. They’re a great way to increase your business’ reputation as a trusted source, promote your products, and boost your own online persona.

Hopefully this article gave you a few ideas about how to increase the attendance at your next webinar. Keep testing. Keep optimizing. See results.

Further Reading:

By James Scherer ( @JDScherer)

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