Tag: web landing page

Does Your Landing Page Add Incentive or Repeat What Recipients Already Heard?

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Every offer made online through email, social media, ads, or sponsored links should direct people to a webpage on your site dedicated to that offer.  These landing pages are a tried and true best practice because if people land on a page that doesn’t reinforce the offer they were interested in, confusion and abandonment multiply.  However, good landing pages bring additional reasons for recipients to take advantage of an offer.

Your online target audience is looking for reasons not to take advantage of your offer.  And with good reason, there are so many opportunities and promotions online that we tend to have a strict filter.  There simply isn’t enough time in the day to keep up with every marketing message we encounter online.  So your landing page needs to reinforce the benefit of completing the offer.

The problem is that many landing pages repeat information rather than build on it.  How is this done? Many landing pages just repeat the initial marketing message.  For example, it’s not uncommon to receive an email marketing communication, click on the offer link, and find the exact same info and layout but with a form at the bottom.  Sometimes this is done strategically like if the page has a promotional video that couldn’t be delivered directly via email.  Many times, however, it’s done because it’s quicker to copy and paste the information than to build a custom landing page.

It’s a good idea to use some formatting and content from your online promotions to create consistency.  It’s a bad idea to copy it verbatim with no additional selling points.

The reason is that you usually don’t need to repeat yourself.  Some people will be very motivated to take advantage of your promotion.  They won’t look at your landing page and complete it as long as they clearly see the offer is the same.  Reinforcing the offer on the landing page is for the group of people who are interested but not quite convinced.  Repeating what they already saw is a poor way to convince them to complete the offer.  The landing page should have additional information about the offer that highlights subsequent or additional advantages.

There are a lot of schools of thought on landing page effectiveness and optimization.  Only two rules apply to everyone.  Your landing page needs to have a single focus of getting visitors to complete the offer and tests should be run to improve results.  Beyond that you are free to customize your content and layout.  Use that freedom to build a page that reinforces the promotions done for the offer.  Reinforce the offer with additional benefits and more in depth information so that people that need to know more to complete a landing page conversion are reassured to do so.

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Define Success: Website

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Website metrics are often simplified to website metric, visitors. While the number of visitors is certainly important as we need traffic, many other metrics are a better measure of success on a website.

There are several web metrics that can be used to define success based on the company objective:

  • Bounce rate – This serves as a reverse goal, meaning a low rate is better.  Bounce rate designates how many people land on a page and then move away from the site.  It’s a great way to see if your content is delivering what visitors expect.
  • Time on Page – With a little analyzing you can see if people are using your webpages as you intend.  For example if it’s an article and they only stay a few seconds, then it’s unlikely that your content is engaging.  Conversely if it’s a directory and the time on page is low (and bounce rate isn’t high) it confirms that people understand the navigation easily and are finding the link to information they want.
  • Conversion – This takes some set up in the metric system but there should be clearly defined conversions for every site.  These are typically landing pages and a measure of how many people took advantage of a landing pages offer like newsletter sign ups, contact form, or event registration.

Truly valuable information comes from mixing these metric and analyzing the story it tells.  For instance viewing visitors to a conversion page and see how many people fulfilled the conversion is a powerful way of gauging offer and page layout effectiveness.

Don’t simplify website metrics into visitors only.  After all if people only visit the site and without taking any action, it’s unlikely that the website has fulfilled its real purpose.

Internet Marketing, Site Conversion, Web Maintenance , , , , , , ,

Is Your Call to Action Luring Visitors In?

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A good call to action is a Siren Song.  Your target audience shouldn’t be able to resist its lure.  However, many times websites calls to action are a dud.  They ask for a lot and provide little in return.  Make sure that your call to action is appealing to your website target so that conversions are consistently generated.

The first hurdle to making a good call to action is knowing your audience.  If you make “gut calls”, then you don’t know your audience.  Instead do some testing on calls to action.  Create landing pages for as many as three calls to action.  Make the layout and language as similar as possible.  Then send it to test audiences that fit your target profile.  That will illustrate what calls to action are appealing and which draw little interest.

The second step is to test and track layout and content.  Some changes will vastly change visitor’s perception of an offer.  For testing purposes it’s best to make small changes and see how that affects the metrics.  After the first test is complete, make another small change and see if that improves conversion.  This can be a tedious process but it ensures gradual improvement rather than guesses that may or may not help the call to action.  A layout and content that clearly communicates the call to action and the benefit to the visitor is the critical to ensure that visitors take advantage of an appealing offer.

Just remember that unlike a siren song we want to serve our visitors needs, not dupe them into dooming themselves.  Make sure that your call to action is sustainable for your business and you can deliver on the promise the call to action makes.

Internet Marketing, Site Conversion , , , , , , ,

Email Subject Lines – Be Direct

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Jakob Nielson wrote a great article on email usability.  There is a lot of good points but I wanted to focus on his section about subject lines.  As a rule of thumb, if you have doubts on what the subject line should be . . . be direct.

There is a great example in the article of a subject line that the ad or marketing people probably loved.  And with good reason, it’s a witty one liner.  It just sucks as an email marketing subject line because it doesn’t give recipients a clue as to what the email is about.

In marketing and advertising it’s easy to be swayed by our cleverness.  The problem is that almost all email recipients don’t have time for clever.  They get too many communications to want to revel in advertising wit.

Make subject lines to the point and open rates will be better.  Our testing typically shows a 10% – 20% decrease in opens if a question or tag line is used in the subject line vs. a direct subject line that summarizes the email content.  The same is true for subject lines that are too long, so don’t attempt both direct and witty.

Tell recipients what you want to talk about.  The email is the chance to tell them again with more detail.  Finally the web landing page is a chance to tell them a third time and give them an opportunity to act on it.

It might not be flashy, but in email marketing the subject is your first chance to say something. Make sure it sets recipients up for the email’s content, not leave them guessing about what a clever subject line has to do with anything.

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