I’ve been spending a lot of time reading through Marketing Sherpa’s Landing Page Handbook and have learned quite a bit, and even started testing a few ideas from this book. It’s full of a ton of information… and, to be honest, I had never even heard the term ‘hero shot’, up until today.

In the Landing Pages Secret Handbook, Marketing Sherpa describes a Hero Shot as the following:

A ‘hero shot’ is a picture or graphic representation of the item being marketed, whether it’s a tangible product, the cover of a report or the photo of a webinar presenter.

So, if you take a look at Adwords For Dummies, on Amazon.com, you will notice the image of the book… this is the ‘hero shot’. Now, although that may not be too interesting for some, it does bring up a good point. I see a lot of Landing pages that do not entice me in the least bit when I arrive… and what’s funny is — MOST of these Landing Pages do not use Hero Shots on their pages. As a matter of fact, the book goes to point out that a lot of people try using clip art or ‘cartoonish’ style graphics on their pages, with no relevant images.

The irony? While going through some of these Landing Pages, this is exactly what most of these Landers use (irrelevant images)!

I’ve run into Software Program downloads with no Hero Shots or any relevant graphics to the Software until you click on Screenshots. Why? This is absolutely destructive, in my opinion. But, I knew this for a long time… it’s not like this book slapped me in the face with using Relevant Graphics.

OK, so what if you’re an Affiliate of a product that does not provide many choices of Graphics?

Easy: make one/some! I explained that using Photoshop Actions such as CoverActionPro comes in handy. You can create these Hero Shots very quickly.

I have to admit… I’ve seen some very odd versions of ‘creating Hero shots’, including one from Wealthy Affiliate, themselves (notice the cartoon character… not sure what that has to do with the book, although it’s a GREAT book!).

One of my favorite examples of a great landing page (although there’s no such thing, in a sense), is Google Picasa’s Landing Page.

Notice the ‘Hero Shot’ (Screen shot of the program)? Also notice that the ‘Action Links’ (links you want the person to click) is like it should be… Blue and underlined. The content is all “above the fold” (no need for scrolling down) and it’s straight forward information.

Of course, you will more than likely see this Lander change over the course of the next few weeks or months… they’re constantly testing ever aspect on this page, from the Headline to the Hero Shot to the Features/Benefits.

There’s not too many images to distract you from taking the Action they’re looking for you to take and there’s just enough information to make you want to try it out.

Does this mean that you should design YOUR lander to look like this? Of course not… it all depends on the Product you’re trying to promote.

Some landers will have better Conversion rates than others using Long Sales Copy than Short Sales Copy, and vice versa. Some will do better using images of the products, some will have better rates using images of a person. It’s all going to depend on you, the Merchants landing page and, of course, the product you’re promoting.

I HIGHLY suggest testing and tweaking your landing pages using Google Website Optimizer to test out different aspects of your Landing pages. Headlines, Body Copy, Images, etc.

If you’re not testing and tweaking your landing pages, you’re losing a lot of money in sales/commissions. This is a fact.

Good luck!