By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2010-10-18 15:57:00 | Word Count: 664
Your landing page is the first thing your visitor sees after clicking an organic or paid (sponsored) listing. 5 seconds on a landing page is how long it takes for someone to leave a site if they feel they are not seeing what they were searching for and what they hoped to see. Just consider what you would do if you were watching TV, clicked on ESPN but got the Weather Channel; how many seconds would it take you to change the channel? Your landing pages are no different.
Obviously, it is important that your landing pages are relevant to the keyword / phrase that initiated the search. Beyond this, just how do you know how to improve your landing pages or even if you need to improve your landing pages? You really cannot know and understand the answers to these questions unless you actively use analytical software such as Google Analytics. This essential tool is the key to improving landing pages because it provides statistical insight into true interaction with all of your landing pages.
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Important Stats to Monitor:
1. Keywords / Search Terms Used
2. Time spent on the landing page
3. Percentage of visitors who converted (conversion rate)
4. Percentage of visitors that exited the site entirely
5. Where did they go?
6. What did the visitor actually click on?
7. What seemed to distract the visitor from converting?
There are many more elements, however, what is important is that with analytics you have a window as to how to improve your landing pages.
To address these issues means optimizing the conversion from your landing pages. To accomplish this, it’s important to understand that this data must be responded to through testing in the form of A/B testing and / or multi-variable testing. This process provides you the ability to split what your visitors see into different versions or variations of your landing pages. Then through careful and patient monitoring you will see improved performance for one of the pages tested. Since there are dozens of variables, you must test constantly to seek certain tweaks that will improve the business results of your landing pages.
While you should never pre-judge what tweaks should be made, you should focus on the following key issues:
1. Headline – it’s the first thing your visitor will see. Make it relevant and attractive.
2. Keep it simple – lots of whitespace and clear descriptions / instructions
3. Keep it Engaging – use nice graphics and fonts
4. Strong Call to Action – there must be something you actually want the visitor to do whether it is buying something, subscribe, signup, enroll, etc. Make it easy for the visitor to do this. Keep the steps clear and limited in number.
Improve your landing pages by understanding your landing pages. This involves careful monitoring through analytical software. Respond to the data by testing new versions of the landing pages and focus on just one or two variables at a time. Continue to test and monitor and add new variables along the way.
Keep this process going and create a virtuous feedback loop that serves to increase your conversions and your Return on Investment.
Do you seek to improve your landing pages and your online results? Contact us … we can help!
