Explore

Whitelisting-Optimized Landing Pages

Goals

Design landing pages that maximize the likelihood a user purchases from the whitelisting partner.

Business Need

Brands deploy marketing budgets to get different messaging in front of their target audience. Paid whitelisting is one of these marketing approaches. In paid whitelisting, brands pay a publisher to run ads on the publisher’s social media accounts, where the ad talks about the brand and leads users to a landing page on the publisher’s website which talks about the brand.

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The Quality Edit⁠

(TQE) is one of the bigger publishers that offers whitelisting. An example partnership might be:

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Molekule⁠

, a brand that makes air purifiers, pays TQE for whitelisting.

TQE writes an article about Molekule.

TQE launches a Facebook ad mentioning the air purifier. Clicks to those ads land on the TQE article about Molekule.

The reason this “works” is that seeing a trusted third party talk about a brand is often a more powerful for of social proof than seeing the brand hype itself up.

As part of a beta test in June, we will be working with several brands to evaluate the viability of Marmalade content to help brands acquire cost-effective, high purchase intent traffic through whitelisting partnership.

Landing Page Research

Add examples of whitelisting pages below.

The Quality Edit (TQE)

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Meta Ad Library⁠

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Observation: the majority of their recent ads link to the brand’s storefront instead of a TQE article.

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https://www.thequalityedit.com/listicle-articles/parachute-cloud-cotton-gifting-quilt⁠

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https://www.thequalityedit.com/articles/linen-hot-sleepers⁠

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TQE x Jade Leaf Matcha

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Whitelisted article from TQE for Jade Leaf Matcha⁠

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This product’s

Amazon listing⁠

has 90K+ reviews, meaning, it’s a big product.

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Jade Leaf Matcha is running Meta ads to their own PDP⁠

. I do not see Meta ads from Jade Leaf Matcha or TQE to the TQE article.

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The Fascination x Obagi Medical

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Example whitelisting page⁠

for Obagi Medical.

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Obagi's IG⁠

has 180K+ followers.

The Fascination’s whitelisting pages seem highly optimized for conversion to the brand’s store.

They use an outbound link service called

Linkby⁠

Every link on the page points to Obagi’s storefront.

Interestingly, “The Fascination” wordmark doesn’t link back to The Fascination’s website.

Clearly highlighted link text

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Big button CTAs

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Sticky bottom nav

Personal photo

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Apartment Therapy

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Meta Ad Library⁠

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Example whitelisting page for Doordash⁠

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Example whitelisting page (listicle) for Sherwin-Williams⁠

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Example whitelisting page (gallery) for Air Wick⁠

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^ They also used video ads sourced from influencers like

@blessedlittlebungalow⁠

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H-PROOF

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CSP/Collection page⁠

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Their collection page (equivalent to our CSP page) has a card format with a clear CTA for each card (SHOP NOW)

Additional user validation that they have landed on the right content with a heading above and an additional validator with a guarantee below the cards

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PDP Page⁠

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The first fold of the page on a mobile device contains all of the information you need to make a buying decision

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Product image

Reviews

Descriptive product title

1-2 sentences of what the product is

Add To Cart button is clearly defined and does not fight for any other CTA’s

The rest of the PDP page is clearly treated as its own standalone landing page that provides great info should a user still need convincing to purchase and decides to keep scrolling

I know for a fact that they have tested a different version of this landing page that included featuring reviews (social content) more prominently which resulted in good conversion rates as well

Tarte Cosmetics

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CSP/Collection Page⁠

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Once again, clear defined CTA’s on the product cards

Adding in a price in each button helps the user makes a better decision and better “primes” them for the PDP page

For Marmalade, adding in a price helps users understand that they are viewing products for purchase

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PDP Page⁠

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They do a great job with images; very descriptive and clearly help sell the product

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Quick short description of the product directly below the product title helps identify the purpose

I love the review highlights section

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Our equivalent of this paid by whitelisting partners could be excerpts from articles written by us

I would also add in another section for mentions from social media similar to what Classic Tees has done on their PDP

Classic Tees

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CSP/Collection Page⁠

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Heavy focus on price sets the stage that these are purchasable products, event without a CTA button (aside from the plus icon on the bottom right)

The category page splits products into subcategories by featuring a larger subcategory image

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PDP Page⁠

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Love their featured creative section; this is basically ads that they have done that are used as specific explainers of product features

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The product info sections are hidden behind tabbed navigation but the main conversion boosters are part of the core page

before/after/fit video

reviews (interesting that it’s sorted by highest ranking instead of most useful)

social ugc

faq

Others

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https://www.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/why-im-ditching-collagen-for-armra-colostrum⁠

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https://thedailypost.co/from-brittle-to-beautiful-my-journey-to-reviving-my-hair-with-euforas-triple-bond-repair/⁠

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this is run by Snow Agency

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Requirements

Primary goal: the primary goal of these landing pages is to present information in a way that significantly increases the likelihood users purchase the brand’s product.

Outbound links: The goal for brands is to get users to buy their products. As such, the landing page needs direct links to the brand’s storefront PDP where the user can purchase the product.

One-off pages: The only traffic to these pages will come directly from ads. As such, they do not need to be integrated into the rest of the app.

It’s ok to remove and/or de-emphasize app-based UI elements that don’t contribute to maximizing conversion.

It’s ok to build custom eleme

Starting Points

The Marmalade web app wasn’t designed to be an optimal ad landing page. However, there are pages that we would like to test as starting points:

CSPs (Curated Search Pages)

Example

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https://prod.marmalade.co/q/housewarming%20gifts⁠

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Hypothesis

Showcasing a product within the context of a “Best Of” CSP page maximizes conversion rates (even though the brand’s product would be near other products).

Questions

HMW change the CSP design so that it:

Highlights the brand whitelisting product and de-emphasizes getting users to upvote?

I.e. replace this sticky header with information about the product that the ad is referring to.

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Highlights the Product Content (comments, product details, etc...) that educate shoppers on why they should purchase the product.

Has more direct links to the outbound PDP?

I.e. add links to the sticky header (?)

Observation: The CSP pages have some overlap with Allure’s Best Of pages:

https://www.allure.com/best-of-beauty-2023-winners/skin⁠

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PDPs (Product Details Page)

Example

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https://prod.marmalade.co/m/areaware/p/everything-nice-butter-dish⁠

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Hypothesis

Showcasing a product in a full landing page based on the PDP maximizes conversion rates.

What would we show in place of the Related Products?

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The Fascination’s whitelisting articles⁠

are structured to answer the top questions users might have. HMW incorporate that into the page?

Marmalade Content

What information do we want to present to users?

Comments

Why? Comments provide social proof that can increase conversions i.e. user purchases from the whitelisting partner.

How?

We can highlight/curate a single comment per product. Users can click in to see more comments.

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Or we can show an aggregated view but this might be too much information for users/compete with other elements.

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Product details

Why? We’re driving traffic to our whitelisting partners’ PDP pages but we still need to introduce users to their product(s). What information can we show here that isn’t on their PDP page?

How?

Product cards: this is our most compact format and users can click into the community activity to see more social proof.

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PDP hero: the hero section is information dense but has all the key elements we might want to show (social proof, brand and product details) without requiring additional clicks.

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Ranking: we can rank the products from a brand using the Trending Product component.

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Brand details

Why? Users are more likely to buy products from brands they feel connected to.

How?

Brand profiles: this might be too much information but seeing an overview of the brand could give users some useful context.

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Brand overviews: this feels like a more compact way to present the brand information but it requires an additional click.

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Upvotes

Why? This is another form of social proof that could increase conversions but unless we show upvotes within a brand, this could decrease conversions i.e. even if a brand is most upvoted in a CSP, users would see other products alongside it.

Lists

Why? This is also another form of social proof that could increase conversions but unless we show AaFind completely dedicated to a brand, this could decrease conversions.

Next Steps

Present ideas for what information might be contained in a whitelisting-optimized landing page. Do this for the two starting points: CPS and PDP.

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