The Basics Of Landing Page Analysis

Whenever we go online and visit a website, the first page that we arrive at is the landing page. This has a huge bearing on what we do next.

If the landing page is informative and engages you, there’s a fair chance you’ll continue to use and explore the site further. If it is slow to load, difficult to read or there’s no obvious pathway through the site then you will head for the exit.

The success and failure of a website often relies on the quality of its Landing Pages. If they fail to convert traffic, so too does the site.

For this reason, many sites invest a great deal of time and effort in testing and analysing their landing pages. The testing process, as you might expect, involves a lot of subtle changes to the page’s layout. It also requires an understanding of what the searcher is looking for and how best to help visitors convert.

Sometimes the alterations are far-reaching, including whole segments of text, other times less so, perhaps moving or changing the colour of a button within your call to action. Whatever the issue, it has to be identified and then properly tested.

The testing process usually involves having two pages running in parallel; one being the original, the other with an amendment. Your programme will automatically filter visitors in an even split between the two pages, even dropping a cookie so that they will only ever see that page when visiting your site.

Over time a pattern will form, identifying which page converts better, allowing you to make effective changes that will improve your site’s performance.

However, the landing page analysis is what starts all of this off.

As stated, you have to be prepared to delve deep into a page to find elements that are undermining its performance. This takes some technical skill and an appreciation of your audiences psyche. What are they looking for? What do they want to see? Is there enough content? Is there too much? Is it too slow to load? All are relevant questions and all need answers.

To identify an under-performing page you have to refer to the statistics. Perhaps you’ve been running an expensive PPC campaign but some pages have done better than others. Maybe, despite good rankings and far-reaching SEO work, your site has a high bounce rate for some key terms. All of this will be highlighted by an analytics package.

Don’t underestimate the power of statistics. They will highlight things that you have never previously been aware of. It can get you to the crux of a problem that you may never have known even existed before.  This of course is vital in landing page analysis.

The more analysis you are able to do for your landing pages, the better your understanding will become. While in the first instance you might find yourself shooting in the dark a little, unless problems are obvious of course. It will take a reasonable amount of experimentation to really get to the bottom of your site’s problems.

Once you’ve established a problem, tested it thoroughly and found a solution, this will give you encouragement to make changes elsewhere. The process does take time, but all the while you’ll be getting a better understanding of what your visitors expect and how you can get your site to convert with greater frequency.

So landing page analysis can take a fair amount of effort and understanding, but ultimately you should get far more in return. With any website, it is vital that you are able to convert the traffic you receive into meaningful custom. The best place to start is the first place people will see on your site, which of course is the landing page.

About the Author

Steve Logan is a professional Copywriter for Hampshire-based SEO Agency Impact Media. They offer a full range of search marketing services including SEO Copywriting

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Landing Page Load Time

Adwords Marketing – How to Optimize Your Landing Page to Get More Conversions

You earn money when a visitor converts.  Until your visitors convert you are spending money.  No matter what your conversion is, either sell a product or collect and email address, you want a visitor to take that action.  Your landing page must convince the visitor to convert.  The following are several ways which you can increase the conversions of your landing page.

* Do research.
Build your landing to speak to your ideal visitor.  Keep everything the page geared toward that ideal visitor.  A landing page trying to capture a broad spectrum of visitor attention is destined to get a lower conversion rate.

* The headline is important.
Your landing page headline is perhaps the most important marketing message your landing page can have.  You can be guaranteed that almost every visitor will read your headline, even if they read nothing else.  Grab their attention with the headline.

* Match the landing page to your AdWords Ad.
Having your keyword in the landing page headline will get the visitors attention.  It will tell the visitor the page is relevant to what they searched for.  This will increase you chances of the visitor remaining on your page and reading the rest of your sales copy, and converting.

You can use Adwords Dynamic Keyword Insertion to pass the search term to your landing page as a querystring parameter.  This will allow a dynamically generated landing page to use the visitors search term in the headline and sales copy.

* Give the visitor only one option, the option to convert.
Remove any navigation links, outbound links and advertisments from your landing page.  Make sure the visitor doesn’t get distracted by some other link or message.  You want to them to convert, and only convert.  This means keep your message to a single page.

* Remove unecessary graphics or features.
Again, you don’t want to distract potential customers from your message.  Get rid unneeded graphics, CSS or javascripts.  Keep your message simple and focused.  Removing unecessary elements should also increase the page loading time.  You don’t want to lose a potential conversion because your page was too slow to load.

* Give the visitor every opportunity to convert.
Don’t have only one conversion link or form at the bottom of your page.  Make sure your visitor doesn’t have to search for the conversion opportunity.  Popup windows and DHTML windows provide great ways to attract attention and convert.

* Use Testimonials 
Consumers like Testimonials from third parties.  For some visitors, Testimonials may be more persuasive than your sales copy.  When collecting testimonials you can write the copy yourself and simply ask the Testimonial giver to agree with it.

About the Author

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• Landing pages that don’t convert

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Am I being treated fairly?

I have checked my credit rating and found a debt dated back to 2002! It was only loaded in 2006 though? And I said why did this take so long, they said it just does sometimes, and that they couldnt find me??
I asked what lengths did they go to find me, they said the white pages, however I had just moved a few times. However I dont think they really did try to find me, all they had to do was ask my land lord or my parents??? I never left auckland.
They have left this debt sooo long that even when i pay it i have to wait 7 years for it to be cleared off my name.
I feel this is wrong! and i dont know what to do. Also i told them the debt is in dispute and they have to take it off my credit rating as per fair trading act and privacy act (I saw this on a law web site) but they said no you have to pay??

Unfortunately for you, yes being totally fair. If you incurred a debt it is your obligation to contact your creditors with new contact information (address, phone number, etc..) it is not their responsibility to find you. Secondly, they are required by the credit bureaus to report the information accurately. If you incurred a debt and didn’t pay it they have to report it as such. Also, while you’re disputing information it shows on your credit report as in dispute it is NOT removed from your credit completely. Most creditors will wait until the dispute is resolved to consider lending to you.

Search Buzz Roundup: 5/11/2008 – Google AdWords Changes, AdSense Bugs, SEO Updates, Microhoo News

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