5 tips to improve conversion on your landing page

By Mike O'Sullivan
WordBiz Report guest editor

Pointed question: "Hey, how'd that email ad do last week?"

Typical answer: "Well, we got a good number of clickthroughs."

Yep, your ad copy succeeded. But whatever you wanted people to ultimately DO...

- Register for a webinar
- Buy or demo a product
- Subscribe to a newsletter
- Give you their contact information for some other purpose (in exchange for a white paper, an industry report, etc.)

...well, not many of them did it. Your landing page dropped the ball. But next time it won't if you follow these five guidelines:

1. Pick the One-Trick Pony

Your landing page should have one purpose: Persuade your prospect to take your ad’s call to action. That’s it.

And that’s why I strongly suggest creating a unique landing page for every email ad, whether it’s an ad you’re placing in an e-newsletter or a standalone email you’re sending to a list.

Does that mean a generic page you already have can’t do double duty?

No. For example, say you’ve bought a Google pay-per-click (PPC) ad. Someone who finds you via a search engine is specifically looking for the type of product or service you provide...and you may decide your home page is the most appropriate page for the ad to direct to.

2. Focus, Focus, Focus

I once came across an e-newsletter ad from a large, universally-known enterprise software company (which I’ll decline to name here). The ad offered a free “kit” comprised of two white papers and a product demo.

So a prospect clicking through to the landing page would be looking to learn more about the kit and how to get it, right?

But the first half of the landing page copy talked exclusively about the PRODUCT.

When crafting your landing page, know the path you want your prospect to take and guide him or her along it. Cut out copy that might read beautifully but actually distracts from the task at hand. And only talk about your products and services if it will enhance the value of your SPECIFIC offer. In the example above, the company’s product pitch could have done just that had it been (briefly) incorporated into the description of the kit.

Keep reminding yourself: “One-trick pony.”

The next question: How MUCH copy does a landing page need?

It depends on the ad it’s following up. With an e-newsletter ad, you don’t have room to say much about your offer, so your landing page must expand on it. But if it’s a standalone email, you’re able to say a lot more. So your landing page just has to close the proverbial sale. And, it depends on your offer.

Here’s an example of a landing page that followed up a standalone email. Its conversion rate? A solid 60%.

(Full disclosure: The company, NetLine Corporation, is a client. And I worked on this campaign.)

3. Eliminate Any Opportunity for Hesitation

Make someone hesitate and he or she may back out. No matter how valuable your offer.

So spell out as clearly as possible what steps your prospects need to take and why, and tell them how you’ll use the information they give you.

And in cases where your registration process extends beyond your initial landing page (which means it’s not obvious to the prospect how many hoops he or she needs to jump through), state how long the process will take. Debbie makes this excellent point in her recent article Top 3 Tips for Effective Text Ads.

Finally: Whatever you’re trying to get your prospects to do... make sure they can do it! One technical snag and your time-strapped prospect may give up. So before you go live, go through the process yourself to confirm everything works. And have a few colleagues outside your company do the same.

4. Carefully Formulate Your Registration Form

What information do you want people to give you? Just name, company name, job function, and contact information? Or additional qualifying questions on top of that? And how many questions can you safely ask?

In the article mentioned earlier, Debbie makes this comment: If you demand too much time and effort from your prospects, you risk scaring them away. And for that reason, you might not be well served choosing a free trial or other offer that requires too much qualification.

But it all depends on your objective and target audience.

If the offer’s valuable enough to them, then they’ll fill out a longer registration form. They may even expect it. In some cases, perhaps you WANT to screen out anyone who isn’t willing to go through the requisite hurdles!

Bottom line? Prioritize. Figure out what you MOST want people to tell you. What’s “absolutely non-negotiable” if someone wants your offer. Then ask for it. Have other questions you want to ask? Consider leaving them out.

5. Test!

You’ve heard me utter the phrase “it depends” more than once. Which predictably leads to THIS assertion: There’s no such thing as a perfect landing page.

So experiment! If possible, see if you can test two landing pages via an “A/B split”. This means that half the people who see your ad will arrive on one landing page if they click the link... and the other half will arrive on the other one.

You can test the phrasing of qualifying questions. Longer copy versus shorter copy. Fewer questions versus more questions. See what works best and apply what you’ve learned to future campaigns.

And make sure to test only one variable, otherwise you won’t know what’s causing the difference in conversion!

Useful Link:

Top 3 Tips for Effective Text Ads by Debbie Weil, Publisher WordBiz Report


About the author: Mike O'Sullivan is an independent marketing writer.

This article was first published in the Nov. 12, 2003 issue of WordBiz Report