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.
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.
Here is an example of how Ionic Media has improved a company’s conversion rate:
Company: Email Hardware Provider
Objective: Drive qualified leads to the sales team
History: They had been sending all the traffic to the homepage which resulted in a very low conversion rate
Project: We developed 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 the homepage.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Ionic Media can help you develop a landing page strategy that suits your business and your objectives.
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.
A recent study reported 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.
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.
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.
Multivariate Testing Simultaneously testing a variety of pages with several/many variable combinations across the different pages. This type of testing requires specialized software.
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.
After several months of flat testing, we were able to increase the conversion rate by 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.
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.
Landing pages can dramatically help you achieve your conversion objectives and make your marketing investments worthwhile.