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How to improve your Landing Page Optimization ?
2
Jul
Jul
In this post, I'm going to write about Landing Page Optimization (LPO) and give you advice on conversion optimization.
What is Landing Page Optimization ?
A landing page is a webpage that is displayed when a potential customer clicks on an ad or a search engine result link. This webpage typically displays content that is a relevant extension of the ad or link.
Landing page optimization (LPO) is part of conversion optimization (also known as Conversion Rate Optimization - CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.
Conversion rate is computed as the ratio between the number of people ordering the product/service and the number of people visiting the page.
LPO aims to provide page content and appearance that makes the webpage more appealing to target audiences.
LPO makes you gain customers
LPO is very important since improving it can be an easy way to gain customers.
For example, several tests led by MarketingExperiments enabled the New York Times to significantly improve the conversion rate of its Electronic edition.
First, the design of the page was optimized: the new landing page included the offer price, standard buttons were replaced by radio ones, and the call-to-action weighted more effectively. By changing the display of the offer, the customer's decision was simplified, which reduced friction.
Second, they changed the regular paid offer to a 7-day free trial offer, which resulted in reducing customer anxiety.
Image: MarketingExperiments
In the end, the LPO resulted in a dramatic increase in conversion rate (more than 1000%) and enabled the New York Times to gain more subscribers.
Emphasize your value proposition
The most effective way to improve your LPO is to emphasize your value proposition. Your value proposition is the primary reason why a suspect should buy from you. I'm not going to go into marketing details here but, in a nutshell, keep in mind you should always:
1. Differentiate your offer from the competition's;
2. Excel in at least one element of value;
3. Be the best choice for your optimum customer;
4. Address both the value proposition of your company and the value proposition of your product.
What to do for your value proposition ?
Concretely, you can do the followings things in order to optimize your landing pages:
- Tie your value proposition into the headline.
- Use short form that asks for required fields and therefore avoid long form asking for unneeded information.
- Display weighted graphic to show progress along the subscription path.
- List benefits above or next to the subscription form, so that visitor avoid scrolling down significantly.
- Use a chart of benefits (one of the most effective visual display of the value proposition).
- Re-emphasize the free-nature of the offer and the immediate benefit if appropriate.
- Place credibility indicators in close proximity to the call to action.
A simple way to test your value proposition is to create a couple of online ads with different summaries and measure their click-through rate. The one with the highest click-through rate identifies the value proposition that is the most appealing to your potential customers.
Express an effective value proposition
Now that you have a strong value proposition, let's see how to convey it through your landing pages in the clearest and most compelling way possible. Your value proposition has to be in line with two elements: congruence and continuity.
Congruence means that every element of your page either states your value proposition or support it. This can be expressed in your logos, price, design features, images, colors, etc.
Image: MarketingExperiments
Continuity means that each step of your buy process states or support your value proposition. For example, when someone searches a certain keyword, your ad should include the same keyword, as well as the header in your page. If a potential customer lands on a page which is irrelevant to its search, you have a discontinuity in addressing your value proposition.
Image: MarketingExperiments
Motivation of user
The motivation of user is also a significative factor which drives the conversion rate.
The point is to determine the motivation of user within a given channel. To do so, you can analyze the performance of the channels of traffic that generates revenue for your business (for example emailing, paid search...). Web Analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Woopra help you evaluate the cost of the traffic and the revenue generated from that traffic, and determine the channels with the highest profit.
For your top channels, it can be interesting to analyze the nature of your customer, the reason why they're buying and see how you could customize your landing pages to appeal within those channels.
Keep in mind that relevance leads to conversion: you should always combine channel relevance, creative relevance, and landing page relevance.
How to lose money on PPC
26
May
May
You want an example of how to lose money with ppc (pay per click) program, I am going to give you one. I have just seen this today, and yes, there are thousands of websites who lose money this way, check the image below.
Whenever somebody types “Beijing”, their ad for a massage appears on google paid placements! And thus, whatever the second and the third word is!
So if I type “Beijing magazine”, I am probably not looking for them right? Still, their ad appears, not targeted, and there are big chances if I click on it that actually, I am not going to be interested by their “massage” services…
It’s easy to earn money online… as easy as it is to lose some.
So, when you chose your keywords for your ppc program, with adwords for example, and if you don’t want to ask professionals to do it (like THEM), then please, use an exclusion list too, so that you don’t waste your money.
5 Ways Google Knows your Backlinks are Bullshit
15
Apr
Apr
Let’s think as a search engine.
First, the more backlinks you have, the more google considers your website as important. BUT, what if the backlinks come from the same webmaster?
The meaning is just that he’s linking his own websites, and not that his content is outstanding. So, these backlinks are less important in the point of view of the search engines, their “grade” should be lower. Your SEO won't work (or work less)
How can google know that it’s the same webmaster behind several websites :
Let’s think as a search engine.
First, the more backlinks you have, the more google considers your website as important. BUT, what if the backlinks come from the same webmaster?
The meaning is just that he’s linking his own websites, and not that his content is outstanding. So, these backlinks are less important in the point of view of the search engines, their “grade” should be lower. Your SEO won't work (or work less)
How can google know that it’s the same webmaster behind several websites :
1) Do you use analytics on all your websites with the same google account? Then google knows all these sites are more or less yours.
2) Do you buy all these domains with the same registrar account? Then google knows it through a whois query.
3) Do you host all these websites on the same server? Then google knows the IP, and is likely to consider that it’s the same webmaster behind.
4) Do you use the same google adwords account on these websites? Then google knows it’s the same person who is taking profit from them… aka same owner.
5) Do you use gmail account settings to use different emails with different domains? Then google knows that you are linked to these domains, so you’re probably one of the owners / employees / webmasters.
This list can probably be bigger, but here are some big things google can know about you and your websites, and therefore lower the “weight” they give to a backlink from one of your sites to another.
Truth is, they would do good by applying these rules, since this would make their search engine more efficient and more accurate…BUT, this is also a way to scare webmasters, and to make them NOT use gmail / analytics / adwords and go for the competition instead… which is a bad signal.
In your opinion, what is the policy google is following?
Learn How to Choose an SEO Company
27
Mar
Mar
This is a piece of advice about which seo companies you should fear, part of How to Chose an SEO company?
Fear companies who tells you you can be inside 15421254 directories in one second. First, it's a lie, and then this would hurt your ranking. Google is not stupid!
Escape from those who want to throw 154215445 times the same word in your 20 pages website. Google, baidu, yahoo, all use statistics to check that you are not over using a word.
Hide from those who promise you to be first on hotel, after 1 week (because they are lying). There are very competitive keywords, and their for you have to use a strategy, not pay voodoo master.
Do not follow those who will promise you 1000 relevant backlink in a night (they use spamming robots). They attack for example blogs without captcha. Again, search engines are not stupid (and the engineers who design them as well).
Be careful of those you pay according to the traffic growth (because they can buy ads who will disapear as soon as you stop paying them, with the traffic they were bringing)
Don't copy, google knows it better than you're teachers used too (and if your teachers were good at finding out, imagine what google can do)
to sum up, "don't be evil", bring valuable information, optimize your website so that you put the right words at the right place. always think as a user. if "i type your page title, and i find it, will it be valuable information for me") search engine optimization is not about tricking, it's about serving...serve your readers and serve search engines, they will serve you
