Recommendation For Landing Pages
Telic Media 12711 Ventura Blvd., Suite 210 Studio City, CA 91604 Phone: (877) 905-7800 Fax: (818) 647-6686
Introduction
If you are paying to send traffic to your site, shouldn’t your visitors see the very best page possible when they arrive? Statistically, you have less than 8 seconds to convince them to stay.
Many businesses often send traffic to their homepages, which is a mistake. The homepage is simply an informative showcase for your entire business. This is fine for the returning visitor who is accustomed to typing in the URL themselves. For the first-time visitor, however, it often confusing and overwhelming.
For the first-time visitor, especially one referred by a search engine, the homepage is a poor choice. It is much more effective to use a landing page specifically designed to help a visitor from a paid ad find exactly what they want.
Consequently, you may end up with numerous landing pages, each one designed to address a certain audience or visitor source. It takes time and rigorous testing to find the perfect combination of elements (e.g., the right headline, call-to-action, body copy, layout, images), but you will be glad for the effort as you watch your business grow and grow.
Why Should You Use Landing Pages?
Landing pages are a good way to drive conversions and stretch your marketing dollar.
When traffic is funneled to the homepage, the visitor is often overwhelmed by the number of links and the generalized sales copy. By contrast, a visitor who arrives at a landing page directly related to their initial search query is much more likely to convert.
Some of the world’s leading retailers (e.g., Amazon, Target) use landing pages to improve their search conversion rate. See Appendix A for an example page from Amazon.
Here is an example of how Telic Media has improved a company’s conversion rate:
Company: Email Hardware Provider
Objective: Drive qualified leads to the sales team
History: Previously sent traffic to the homepage for a conversion rate of 0.9%
Project: Develop 4 query-specific landing pages that echo the words used in the visitors search term.
Results: New landing pages had conversion rates that were 2-4 times better than if the traffic had gone to home page.
So, what makes a landing page effective? Here are some of the contributing elements:
1. Keep it relevant:
Research shows you have less than 8 seconds to convince a visitor to stay on your site. Once convinced, you have another 10-20 seconds to assure them you have what they need, so you have to make the page directly related to the search term or ad that delivered them.
2. Keep it short:
At most, people will only read 15 words before they decide whether or not to stay. If they stay, they tend to read slower than they would in print (25% slower). The rule of thumb is to write your copy and then cut it in half.
3. Keep them focused:
Most pages confuse visitors with a barrage of links. When a first-time visitor comes to your homepage from a search listing, these links become “unproductive paths” down which they lose their way and you lose your sale. Limit the number of links offered to a first-time buyer on a landing page.
4. Don’t ask for extra information:
If you are asking visitors to complete a form, only ask for the information essential for completing the transaction. Visitors are wary of providing reams of personal information when all they want is the free whitepaper you offered. Asking for a phone number, in this case, is extraneous and visitors will be less likely to complete the form because they believe you will hound them.
5. Include information on security, returns, etc:
If you are selling a product, be sure to include all of the information regarding your return policy, customer service, privacy policy, security, etc. If possible, summarize the policy and include it on the landing page.
6. Include some elements from your homepage:
A visitor who is coming to your landing page from a search listing may only have seen two lines describing who you are and what you do. Include some of the branding elements from your homepage to help a visitor understand your company and your values.
7. Feature promotions on your landing page:
If a visitor is viewing your landing page along with several others, help make yours stand out with a promotional offer that helps drive a conversion.
These are just a few of the tips for optimizing landing pages. Telic Media can help you develop a landing page strategy that suits your business and your objectives.
Testing Landing Pages
Following are examples of landing page approaches that have worked for many companies. The truth is, though, that you need to find out what works for your audience. If your product is a more expensive, longer lead-time purchase, you may have to alter the approach to copy and page length in order to make the visitor comfortable enough to buy. This is why testing is essential.
MarketingSherpa reports that of those marketers who tested their landing pages, fully 25% reported achieving substantial results with more than a 10% rise in conversions.
Testing your landing page can dramatically improve your results. In some cases you will be testing big changes to a page and in some cases, the changes may be very subtle – regardless, they both can have a big impact to your bottom line.
There are three approaches to testing landing pages:
o Flat Testing
Testing pages that are different from one another in a number of ways. Often this type of testing is done when you have an existing landing page that can be obviously improved in terms of look and feel, level of professionalism, etc.
o Split Testing
Testing two pages that have only one element that is different between them. Keep all other factors the same (including traffic source and volume) and you’ll be able to see what the isolated effect of that one element has on the conversion rate.
o Multivariate Testing
Simultaneously testing a variety of pages with several/many variable combinations across the different pages. This type of testing requires specialized software.
Here is an example of flat testing we did for a leading Distance Education provider:
Our client previously sent all of its paid search traffic to a sign-up page on their site. The page had some copy and a long form that visitors could complete to receive an information package about what the school could offer them.
They received a 9% conversion rate on this page.
We tested a series of page options including:
1.removal of the navigation,
2.changes to images,
3.changes to headlines,
4.changes to body copy,
5.1-page form vs. 2-page form
After several months of flat testing, we were able to increase the conversion rate to 15%, an improvement of 67%!
Whichever testing approach you take, be sure to dedicate some time and energy to finding the right combination of variables that drive results to your landing pages.
How Do You Implement a Landing Page Test?
Implementation of landing page tests varies depending on which test method and which testing vendor you use. Some approaches require you to build and launch the test pages on your server. Other firms allow you to do all the testing off-server by simply changing your DNS to point to the testing vendor site in a user-transparent way.
Determining Statistical Validity
We work to ensure our tests are statistically valid. This means we have enough results in the test to safely assume that the same results will occur in the “real world.”
The factors that go into statistical validity are:
o Number of pages you want to test
o Number of variables you want to test on each page
o Amount of test traffic available
o Current conversion rate
o Conversion rate improvement you are testing for (it takes longer to be sure that a 5% improvement is valid vs. a 100% improvement)
o Confidence level (how certain you are this is valid). Usually we use 90-95%
For example, if we test 1 page
Testing the headline on each page - 2 versions + the control
With 20,000 monthly clicks per page to dedicate to the test from paid search
A current conversion rate of 1.5%
Looking for a conversion rate increase of 25%
Confidence interval of 90%
Duration of the test to be statistically valid = 57 days
Conclusion
Landing pages can dramatically help you achieve your conversion objectives and make your marketing investments worthwhile. Please call me so we can discuss how Telic Media can help your company develop effective landing pages.
