The Six Best Practices for Optimizing Your Landing Pages

The objective of today's web site is more critical and more challenging than ever, especially when it comes to a multichannel sales strategy. Users arrive at your web site through a number of interactive channels: pay-per-click (PPC) and organic search, e-mail offers and print offline ads. Once there, they need to fulfill the objective of acting upon a promotion, or buying a specific product.

If their entry leaves them unsatisfied because they don't see anything germane to what drove them there, they're most likely to exit, having wasted their time and your marketing budget. Landing pages serve as a gateway between the marketing initiative that brought visitors to the site and the web functionality that enables them to act, such as making a purchase or submitting a lead.

== Decreasing Bounces ==

A web site landing page is simply a page that continues the momentum from the referring channel. A common attribute might be the CPC search keywords that brought them to the web site, or a specific e-mail campaign that was clicked on.

In fact, targeted landing pages with keyword search terms appear more germane to consumers who have come via a specific search engine query. As a result, fewer "bounces" happen. A bounce is a visitor who hits the landing page, stays for a brief time, then clicks the back button to return to the search engine page -- effectively a totally wasted paid click. Targeted landing pages diminish this risk.

For example, an e-mail campaign for a discounted travel package would bring the visitor directly to a landing page that reassuringly describes the offer in more detail and displays links to check availability and book the trip. It seems simple enough, but put yourself in the visitor's shoes and do a few interactive searches of your own. You'll be surprised at how many retailers still aren't using landing pages.

== Tipsand Tricks ==

Creating a effective landing page isn't challenging, and you can easily experiment and learn as you go. First, decide which page you'll need as the landing page for a specific offer. You may very well have a current web page that you can use (one that's more specific than your homepage), but if you don't, consider publishing a new landing page. If that's the case, keep in mind these six top practices:

(1) Include an image along with the offer for visual appeal.

(2) Minimize navigation to keep consumers focused on the objective and reduce distraction.

(3) Keep the look and feel of your primary web site so consumers will immediately recognize your brand.

(4) Don't forget a compelling call-to-action that should have something to do with the offer. For example, the copy for the travel offer above could have a call-to-action such as ”Save Money—Reserve Now.”

(5) Reduce data collection as much as possible to decrease abandonment. If you must collect additional information, try putting those fields onto a form on a second page; the effect is that by the time consumers click through to this second page, they've already generated some momentum in the conversion process and are less likely to bail out.

(6) Whenever asking for personal information, include privacy and security statements to help establish trust.

Landing pages for lead-generation web sites typically should hone in on a single, specific objective -- getting the consumer to register or submit a lead. These types of landing pages should have very little unrelated navigation or content, and should display only relevant, reassuring messaging that encourages users to effectively take the next step in the registration process. There are many similar characteristics to direct mail. Every piece of marketing material, every page, every graphic and every word in a direct mail campaign serves a very specific objective -- there's no waste. Everything is focused on getting the recipient to respond. The same goes with lead-generation landing pages.

Also, remember that you'll need to include the landing page's URL in the hyperlink of the message on the referring source. For example, CPC search, e-mail, and print hyperlinks should all point to your specific landing page.

== Raising it Up a Notch ==

Once you've integrated landing pages as part of your marketing toolbox, you should think about optimizing them for the greatest success. Direct marketers have used A/B split testing for decades to learn which competing ad or sales letter works most successfully, and you can do the same with landing pages.

For example, does putting your product's value on the landing page drive more sales than if you required the consumer to click onto the following page before showing price? Using A/B testing, or more sophisticated multivariate testing, you can determine exactly which combination of alternate offers, headlines, copy, images and calls-to-action are most persuasive to visitors.

Beyond A/B and multivariate testing, you can also use behavioral targeting techniques to present users with landing pages that are personalized based on whether the consumer is new versus returning, time of day or day of week, and so on. Utilizing behavioral targeting alongside testing, you can easily optimize offers and other factors that will drive maximized conversions and increased loyalty. For example:

* Utilize and test multiple landing page strategies to discover which is most effective on a segment-by-segment basis.

* Dramatically increase leads and conversions generated by PPC traffic, without increasing your SEM budget.

* Find search terms and keywords that will yield the best quality traffic, then target those segments with specific, highly optimized offers and appropriate landing pages.

Landing pages are an critical component that should be in every interactive marketer's toolbox. Try out the tactics outlined in this document to produce better landing pages for your visitors. By optimizing landing pages through the practice of testing and targeting, you'll not only increase the effectiveness of your interactive marketing budget, but you'll learn unique and valuable insights into what makes your visitors to take action.

Article Source: http://casinoarticles.us

Eric J. Hansen is the president and founder of SiteSpect and architect of the SiteSpect solution, the leading landing page testing and landing page optimization platform that helps mobile marketers increase conversion rate through non-intrusive optimization.. Visit The Six Top Practices for Optimizing Your Landing Pages.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated