Posted in Landing Page Optimization	February 1, 2007

The stale and unattractive sales letter landing page at ChinaInvestorReport.com fails to make a good impression

By Peter A. Schaible, Editor-At-Large Mequoda Daily and Library

Note: This is a mini-review. The full review can be found at the Mequoda Library with free access for 30-days (Expiration: March 2nd, 2007).

For individuals with money to invest, the search for undervalued growth stocks now leads to Asia, spawning a brace of new investment advisory newsletters.

China Investment Report by Business Financial Publishing, LLC may be a worthy publication, but its sales letter landing page makes my head hurt.

This site is unattractive, lacks a compelling headline, looks out of date, and sells your email address to its confederates without your explicit consent.

Today, we offer excerpts of our review of the sales letter landing page at ChinaInvestorReport.com.

1. Headline (Strategic Intent) - C - Gets attention but...

Here we have a textbook example of an advertiser who believes that the name of his product equates to a headline for his advertisement.

(SFX: Buzzer sounds. Quiz show emcee's voice: "No, sorry, that's not the answer we were looking for. But thanks for playing. You've been a wonderful contestant and we have some very nice parting gifts...")

Let's get this straight. "China Investment Report: Inside the Booming Chinese Internet Sector" is certainly displayed large enough on the page. But it's not a compelling headline, for cryin' out loud!

There's no benefit statement. No offer. No value proposition. No call to action. No poignant or thought-provoking question.

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3. Email Capture (Relationship Building) - C - Unclear intent

The letter's signatory—Ian Wyatt, Editor-in-Chief, Growth Report—doesn't explain the user's commitment for accepting his offer of the free report. The skeptical consumer is wondering what the price of "free" really is. Is Mr. Wyatt asking us to agree to accept a free email newsletter or other commercial email in exchange for the report?

Once ChinaInvestorReport.com has your email address, you arrive at a second order flow page that invites you to subscribe to "additional Special Bonus Offers" before you click Complete Order and are directed to a page where you can view and download your copy of "China Investment Report: Inside the Booming Chinese Internet Sector."

It's still unclear why ChinaInvestorReport.com wants the user's email address. As there was no promise "not to share or sell" our email address, we might ought to expect email solicitations from numerous other investment information providers.

If so, I would rather have been told so and agreed to this quid pro quo explicitly, not implicitly.

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4. Content Webification - B - Instant PDF download

On page three of the order flow, the user can download the PDF report. It's painless for experienced users, but including specific instructions about "right click, save target as, etc." would make it more user-friendly.

Also on this page is a thank you note from Mr. Wyatt, which says, in part:

"Our records indicate that you also would like the following offers from our select partners. Below is a record of the offers that you selected. You can look forward to receiving information directly from the following partners in the coming days and weeks."

So now we know the price we'll pay for having given up our email address.

BFP does make available both email and postal information to selected advertisers. It states this on the Policies and User Agreement page of this website, but no where else that we could discover.

I would have liked to have been informed of this sooner.

6. Links to Order Flow - D - Big, bold, red button

There is a single, large order button on the landing page and one hypertext link. The button color is red, which in Western culture is associated with stop.

Perhaps of interest is that in Taiwan, the color red is associated with the Chinese Communist Party in China and with Mao's Cultural Revolution, a period of political persecution that lasted from 1966 to 1976.

Money in Chinese societies is traditionally given in red packets. Stock market gains in China and other East Asian countries are displayed in red, while losses are displayed in green.

Red is an important color in Asia, with multiple meanings, including happiness, love, passion and luck. But never "Order Now". Likewise, in Eastern culture, red is the worst possible choice for an order button.

Note: This is a mini-review. The full review can be found at the Mequoda Library with free access for 30-days.

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