Do you really need more traffic to win more business?

Look what effective Landing Page Optimisation (LPO) and strategic content development using Google's new Web Optimiser can do to your bottom line..

What percentage of visitors are you converting?

A landing page is the first page your visitor sees when they discover your business in the natural search engine rankings, PPC ads*, banner ads or email marketing links. The purpose of the landing page is to welcome the visitor, provide more information and ultimately lead them to a specific 'call-to-action', for example to proceed to an online checkout or fill out a contact form.

In short, a Website landing page should be a well defined sales pitch.

* All too often PPC ads link directly to the advertiser’s home page. Unless your home page offers a single product, this can be a big mistake. Home pages normally contain links to all areas of the site, rather than a single clear path to the product described in the Ad.

Which are your most important landing pages?

A good landing page should contain one clear call-to-action, for example click to order, book, buy, contact or download. The ratio of individual visitors to confirmed responses represents landing page conversion. Landing Page Optimisation is a technique to help you develop and test new content to achieve higher conversion and more business from your existing traffic.

Google’s new Website Optimizer allows A/B split testing of Web content, making it easier to find out which message, layout, navigation or call-to-action works best. Provided you have plenty of ideas and the means to implement them, LPO is how you fine-tune your Web pages.

What are your Website goals & objectives?

Landing page optimisation is a very simple process:

Step 1. Develop new Web page content

Step 2. Test new content against existing content

Step 3. Measure the effect on conversion

If the new Web content converts more visitors than the original then keep it. If not then keep the original. In either case, steps 1, 2 and 3 should be repeated indefinitely for all your top landing pages.

To plan new Web content ask yourself these questions:

• Does the page have a single, clear goal?
• Could the sales pitch be simplified?
• Would more text or less text improve conversion?
• Could the text make the product sound more desirable?
• Does the page have a compelling offer?
• Are you providing a purchasing rationale?
• Is there too much or too little text?
• Could you build more trust and provide greater reassurance by displaying client testimonials, privacy statements, security certificates, a returns policy, guarantees, company credentials, awards or achievements?

Do your landing pages answer these questions?

Google’s Website Optimizer is able to share Web traffic between two or more versions of the same page. It can therefore show you how new content performs compared to existing content, and ultimately which version provides the highest conversion.

Should you be using Google™ Website Optimizer?

The most important page to optimise is not necessarily your home page, although it’s likely to be high on the list. Commercially, the highest priority is the Web page which:

• Receives the most traffic from external 3rd party sources, and
• Has the lowest visitor retention (highest bounce rate)

Fixing your most popular, yet least effective page first is likely to generate the best return. Individual product and service profit margins may also have a bearing on your Landing Page Optimisation priority.

Will Landing Page Optimisation help you?