Setting up a website is only part of building an effective digital marketing strategy. Your website needs to perform in the same way as your sales team and that is to create you leads, opportunities and add to your bottom line. A few weeks ago, I wrote about measuring outcomes of your website and in particular the importance of assigning ‘goals’ to your website. So what do you do once traffic is starting to flow through to your site…? Sit back and hope for a wave of enquiries? Sit at your desk and wonder if your marketing to architects campaign or marketing to specifiers campaign has generated any response?
No.
Once traffic has been generated it is now time to measure your website performance and optimise the site to increase conversions. Using various analytics tools you can quickly view detailed data for the pages which are not performing well based on visitor intent and behaviour. If your website is currently generating you 2 leads per month then by optimising your site and campaign landing pages you will start see an increase in conversions over time.
Here are 10 tips to help you create optimal landing pages for your visitors:
1. If you are running multiple online campaigns to generate traffic to your site then check the performance of your landing pages. Landing pages with high bounce rates (60%+) means your landing pages are not performing to scratch. What this means is that visitors land on your page and then left the page immediately. Usually, it is the design or relevance of the page. Is the call to action clear? Is there too much copy? Are you making visitors scroll down the page to get to the key points? Does the page promise to deliver what was on the ad or email?
2. Keep content short and snappy. Remember, you have 3 seconds to grab the attention of the visitor before they leave the page or even the site.
3. Use imagery that is eye catching and relevant to the page content. Usually, visitors view images before starting to read the copy. If the image is relevant then they will go onto read the copy and likely to hit the call to action button.
4. Make call to action buttons clear and visible. Ensure buttons or links are stand out and a clearly visible on the page. These are buttons or links which point the visitor to a form page or a download page.
5. Keeps forms above the fold. If a visitor lands on your page, do not make them scroll down to the very bottom to find the ‘contact form’.
6. Page content must be relevant to your offer or value proposition. Put yourself into the shoes of the visitor and ask “What’s in it for me?” If the content and value proposition answer this question then the visitor is most likely going to convert into a lead.
7. Use Funnel Reports in Google Analytics to find out where visitors are dropping out of the conversion path. If you have a landing page which leads to a product page and then a contact form page then use the funnel report to identify which page is causing a leak during the conversion process.
8. Keep links to other areas of a website to a minimum. You don’t want visitors navigating away from the landing page and the ever important call to action button.
9. Product focused pages should talk about ‘benefits’ as opposed to ‘features’. Re-read tip number 6.
10. Contact forms are important. Only ask for the data that is relevant to the value proposition. Don’t make people fill out mailing addresses if all you need is an email address. Visitors don’t want more spam.
Finally, the biggest tip of all is ‘Test’. Every landing page should be tested. Google Website Optimizer is a tool which will allow you test multiple landing pages with different variations to see which page is more effective at gaining conversions. By running tests you can view which copy length, image type, call to action buttons, placements and design templates work best. What is important is that you test and work out what is right for your type of audience. Architects for example, may prefer pages with lots of images compared to engineers who may prefer to more content and less use of images.
There are many elements to increasing conversion rates for landing pages and campaigns and our My Digital Insider article looks at creating effective landing pages for campaigns in particular for PPC and email campaigns in detail. Have you got any other elements to add to the list?
