Conference Buddies

Writing a good advertisement is only half of the battle. Once someone is on your site the conversion process must begin immediately. This session will discuss the process of cleaning up your landing pages to make them produce as much as possible.

Moderator: Ken Jurina
Speakers:
Tim Ash, CEO, SiteTuners.com @sitetuners @tim_ash
Brad Geddes, Founder, bgTheory.com @bgtheory
Kate Morris, Founding Demon, Marketing Demons @katemorris
Joanna Lord, CMO, YourJobStop.com @joannalord

Kate Morris @katemorris

The Parts of a Landing Page

• Visual Interest
• Relevant Content
• Call to Action
• Navigation

Example: Bose.com

Call to Action

• Should be above the fold
• Do NOT build a landing page without this
• Keep forms as short as possible

Example: BofA lead gen form

Relevant Content

• Think: What are you advertising?
• Keyword targeted copy and headline
• Don’t use the homepage in ads unless you have ONE product
• People have short attention spans
• Test, Test, Test
• Content and page length should be dependent on the searcher’s intent, give them what they ask for

Bad Example: L.L.Bean. Ad should have landed on the raincoat page.

Visual Interest

• Utilize whitespace
• Embrace simplicity
• Focus on product/service/cross selling

Good Example: Geico landing page, simple and clean
Bad Example: State Farm landing page, has too much info

Navigation

• The two camps
  1. give them a choice
  2. keep them prisoner (not leave)
• Test

Tracking

Never start a campaign without tracking

Conversion Rate

• Over time how may leads/sales happen from the traffic you get
• Benchmark versus other campaigns
• Track your entire sales cycle if possible

Cost Per Conversion

• $5 pro vs. $50K product
• Gauges whether you can afford the campaign/page

Bounce Rate

• About 30% is awesome!
• 50% Good-Okay
• Over 70% – something is wrong – time to test and revise

Eye/Click Tracking

• Who is clicking on what

It’s all relative! Test!

Brad Geddes @bgtheory

Only 10% of queries is transactional, over 80% is informational

Awareness -> Interest -> Learn -> Shop -> Buy = Buy Funnel

Informational Queries:

Example: Candles
Search query on “Candle Burning Times”
You should not land them directly to a shopping page
You should bring them to a Comparison chart, then link to shopping cart

Example: Remodeling
Search query on “Kitchen Remodeling”
You should send to them to About Us page, years in business, customer testimonials OR add these elements to your landing page to build credibility.

Narrow Theme Sites:

Example: Chicago Nanny Services
Take searchers directly to view Chicago Nanny Resumes (because that’s what they are looking for) (for search, but not for banners)
Banners converted better on home page (with certifications and increased trust factor)

Ambiguous Queries:

Complex questions, will stop search i.e. Merchant Accounts, Mortgage Loans, etc.

Example: Mortgage Loans
If you bring the user to the application process directly and the user still has questions, they will leave mid way and finish the form on the website that answers all their questions. i.e. If the form has different options, and the user is unclear they will not finish the form, and finish else where, i.e. What is a 30yr ARM or reverse mortgage?

Chances of dropping off a form:

1 to 5 fields 26%
6 to 10 = 32%
More than 10 fields = 42%

Product Queries:

Example: Samsung DLP TV
The best landing page is to send them to is the Samsung DLP TV Category page (with Top selling options/variations for people that want a Samsung DLP TV but not sure which option or size).

Most people can only hold 5-7 items in short term memory

Too many options is too confusing

Brand Searches

• For PPC, if you pay for it, get value out of it!
• Send searchers for brand terms not to your home page i.e. send them to the what’s new section

Thank You Page

Add suggested products, loyalty program, anything that keeps them engaged with your website

Analytics

• Set up goal funnel visualization
• Monitor bounce rate by landing page
• Find out what are consumers searching for

Joanna Lord @joannalord

50% of companies are still driving traffic to the home page instead of landing pages 75% still have less than 4 landing pages built out
Only 25% of companies are testing landing pages on a regular basis

2 Sides of Advanced Tactics

In-House Tactics:

• Assess & Streamline (streamline every process possible)
• Automate
• Connect multiple Goals
• Landing page templates, CMS, auto-expire pages, preview/Q&A system
• Data collection, auto-remove bad performers

On-Site Tactics:

• Multivariate testing (multi-media attention grabber, dual navigation options, addressing customer concerns, etc.)
• Multi-page pathways

3 Key Points to Landing Pages

1. Anticipate User Flows

• Dual Option Button (pre-page them)
• Multiple Page pathway
• Present same info 2 ways
  Visually/Text
  Standard/Rich Media
  On Site/Downloadable

Example: Vermont Teddy Bear, Monster.com

2. Go Beyond Conversion

• Branding / post- conversion Focus
• Viral/Social Media add-ons
• Interaction/TOS

3. Push Your Testing

• Multi-variate
• Macro summary of data
• Multiple toolsets & integration

Example of tools: SiteSpect, Ominture, WiderFunnel

Main take away:

• Streamline/Automate