Landing Page Essentials – Part 4
© 2006, Susan Sweeney / Connex Network Inc.

Landing Page Essentials – Part 4 of 5

This is part 4 in a 5 part series on the importance of landing pages.

When you promote an offer online, whether it be a banner ad, newsletter promotion, or pay-to-play campaign you want to maximize the results of your effort. When done properly, creating a targeted landing page for an ad can greatly increase conversions, or the number of customers who act on your offer.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a Web page created for the specific purpose of driving the target market towards some intended action based on the offer presented in an online ad. The action you want the target market to take might be to fill out a quote request form, a form to view a live online demo, a form to download a white paper, participate in a survey, purchase your goods online, and so on. The key is that the landing page is geared towards racking up conversions; to convert browsers to buyers.

The way your landing page shapes up depends entirely on your business objectives, your target market, and your offer itself. A complex product or service will likely require a lead generation form, while a simple product such as a book or standard cruise package would benefit from providing the target market with immediate access to purchase process. The landing page should focus on only what needs to be present to get the job done – keep it focused.

In the 4 th part of this newsletter series we look at testing your landing pages to make sure they live up to all they can be for your online marketing campaigns.

Tips & Techniques

Testing your Landing Page

There is always something you can do a bit better to maximize your results. There are any number of tidbits you can test and tweak to refine your landing pages – some things will work, some things will not, and do more of what does work. Even the smallest changes can have a big impact. When running a marketing campaign employ A/B testing to see which landing page techniques generate the best responses from your target market.

When performing A/B testing you might do a split run campaign where you run a marketing campaign that directs 50% of your target market to one landing page and the other 50% the other landing page. Likewise, you could put 2 different landing pages in rotation automatically to accomplish a similar feat.

Here is a look at a number of items to consider when testing your landing pages as starting point:

Landing Page Content:

1. Is short or long copy more effective?
2. Is it better for you to use bulleted lists to emphasize key points as opposed to paragraphs of information?
3. Does separating content with taglines or headers increase the number of responses?
4. What happens if you bold or emphasize key points in your copy?
5. What impact does changing the writing stile, or tone, of your copy have on your landing page's ability to convert?

Landing Page Layout and Presentation:

1. What impact does changing the presentation of the offer itself have on results? “Buy one, get one free,” “50% off,” “1/2 price,” “Save $100 off the list price,” showing the original $200 price tag with a strike through and the new price next to it emphasized in bold, red font as $100, etc. are all different ways of presenting the same offer. Which method generates the best response from your target market?
   
2. Does your landing page perform better with vivid imagery, little imagery, or no imagery? Maybe showing different color shots of the same product if it is available in more than one color will boost sales. Try it.
   
3. What colors on the page elicit the most favourable responses from your target market? Does the contrast between the page copy and the background influence sales?
   
4. What font types, styles, and sizes are most effective?
   
5. How many navigation options work best on the landing page? Are you providing the target market with too many navigation options that they get distracted or would the page be effective with more navigation options in tact?
   
6. Where is the best position on the landing page to place the “buy” or “order” button? When the target market completes the order form or selecting their product the first thing you want them to do is add the item to their shopping cart or submit their request, not cancel the order. This means putting the “buy” button as the obvious next step, before the clear or cancel option. Do you even want the cancel option to be immediately visible? That might cause the target market to hesitate.
   
7. Does the “buy” button generate more of a response if it simply says “Submit,” “Buy Now!”, or “Order your Valentine's Day Gift Basket Now!”?
   
8. Have you tested different approaches for your ordering processes? Does or short or long order form work best? Does the same order form perform better if it is split across two steps on two different pages?
   
9. Have you tested variations of your offer to see what generates more results? It might be that the target market is willing to pay a slightly higher price if they know the shipping is free. In a similar note, maybe a free gift will help boost sales depending on what your offer is. For example, sign up for a live demo and receive a free white paper.
   
10. Have you tried cross-promoting different related products and services with your initial offer to maximize the purchase size? You have to be careful because you do not want to give the target market too many options that they simply become confused or disinterested in your original offer.

Capitalizing on any great campaign requires a great closing. Your closing is your landing page; a prime reason you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket. It is highly recommended that you test and refine your landing pages over time. This is by no means a complete list of items worth testing, but it is a good place for you to start.

It is best to test one element at a time so that you can measure results and determine the effectiveness of the new change. If you change too many items at once it will be difficult to attribute how much of an impact the items you changed had on the effectiveness page. If you made 3 adjustments to your landing page at once it might be that 2 of the 3 components have increased the response rate, but the third might have dragged it down a bit, so you are not quite reaching your potential. If you just change one element at a time you can tell what impact your change has on the landing page's ability to convert.

This same testing logic applies to the online marketing campaigns you partake in as well. You want your marketing efforts and your landing pages to work together.