Creating Landing Pages That Actually Convert

Part I: Introduction

Z
Exactly, I’m the sponsored links or the little classified listings that you see on Google, also on Yahoo, on Bing. So that’s us and we do this for a wide variety of clients that range anywhere from a modern pop to some of the biggest companies that you hear everyday in the news whether it’s Ideeli or Tommy Bahama or Terminix or TeleNav all the way--all across the board in different industries.


J
Today we’re covering landing pages, and as you know of course landing pages are very important if you’re doing SEM and PPC particularly well. So why don’t we talk about what a landing page actually is and how you use it over at Elite.

Z
So, a landing page for anybody who doesn’t know is the actual page that they’re sent to from a marketing channel. So everybody has a home page of a website, many pages within the site. But landing pages are used primarily for people that are coming from a marketing channel. So if you click on a Google AdWords ad or even a banner ad or if you come from an email marketing page, it’s a page that people are sent to in order to get them to complete a certain action.


Z
So it might be signing up for an email list or buying something or it might even just be downloading something or just browsing the site.

J
So in other words when I’m looking at a sponsored link if I were to click on that sponsored link, the page that I’m taking to, that would be the landing page?

Z
Correct, right! And some issues that people actually and people who are not performing marketing channels like SEM well or people that are sending people to the home page ‘case if you think about it if I’m searching a certain keyword. Let’s say that keyword is you know for talking about Tommy Bahama. If I search you know, men swimsuit I’m taken to the home page. First thing is they talk about t-shirts and about bathing suits and they talk about the furniture so I’m not really gonna be sure where I find what I was looking for. However, if I search men swimsuits I’m actually taken to a page that has men swimsuit, I’m more likely to complete that action whether it’s buying something like I said or even picking up the phone to call about a certain product. And this extends further than just e-commerce. You know the landing pages are most used in a lead generation phase. So a lead generation would be something where you’re just putting your name and phone number and to be contacted later. So, for example, Terminix, you know, if you’re looking for pest control for your home and you’re sent to their website you’re not gonna--you’re just gonna see information about the company. Not a place to put your name in or to get somebody to contact you.

J
Alright so, one of the biggest benefits of a landing page like you said is honing a message.



J
And saying something very direct, very clear based on somewhere that a person had been before. What are some of the other benefits of landing pages?

Z
Tracking. So it’s important to understand what those visitors are coming from so you can have a specific landing page for people coming from a certain marketing channel. So for example if they come from Google then you can specifically target people that are coming from Google. Welcome Google visitor, you know. If somebody’s coming from--



Z
You can do cheesy things like that that you see. You’ll see “Welcome New York Visitor” from Google. You know, cheesy things like that happen but you want that they resonate with that person.




Personalized.

As much as people like myself and people who are in the industry, we know what they’re doing but most people aren’t in this industry and most people don’t know what’s going on and they like that personal approach, you know, on the internet. So you can personalize it, you can track it and understand certain visitors. And those, I think those are the most important aspects. And you know from a Google perspective, the more relevant your page is to that keyword that the person has searched, the actual less--you’ll pay less. So Google assigned called quality score which most people in the internet marketing know about. And that quality score is if you’re able to match what your ad says with what your keyword says and what your landing page says you’re likely to be ranked higher at a cheaper rate.



Z
And that’s in the page search field. And then most importantly, natural results in the middle of the page, it’s 80 percent of the results and that’s the same way. It’s ranked based on relevancy. So if your landing pages and all the pages on your site have lots of content that talk about what people will be searching you’re likely to rank higher on those pages.

J
So it’s safe to say then that it--landing pages, some of the benefits would be it communicates a very clear message, one. Two is that it can be very personalized, and three is that if you do it properly it can potentially save you money.

Z
Right. And you don’t need--landing page doesn’t have to be just a one off thing that doesn’t have to do with your website. It should be an extension of your website, right? So it should be a page that you can actually get to, right. Most people use landing pages and it’s not saying that you could find within the website but at least it connects the users and still gives them that experience like they are on the website but they’re on kind of this sub website that’s gonna make them do what us marketers want them to do.

J
So you maintain the color palette and the header. You can do change some things but make it feel like the same site.

Z
Exactly. And that’s--and the best way so people feel like they’re still involved in the website ‘cause for the most part people, you know, people that are going to a site that they’re unfamiliar with, they’re probably doing research so they’re gonna go to multiple pages. So you want them to feel like they’re involved in the experience, like they’re in the store. I always try to tell people about internet marketing whether it’s a marketing site like what I do or even website, you know, the website guys, make them feel like they’re in a store. Think about a store. You know, when you’re thinking about keywords think about what somebody would say to a store clerk. You know I want this--I want brown shoes in size 11. Not like I want shoes. That’s not what you would say if you went to a store. So at a website you know you make it or in a store, you make it very clear. There is women’s is over and men’s is over here. So make it clear to people on websites. So, landing pages are kind of the extension of that. Once you get somebody to the women’s section, now where is the women’s swimsuits and where is the women’s pants.

J
So applying a bit of humanity to the taxonomy.





Z
Make it easy for people, you know. I hate to say it but most people they need to be told what to do and where to go. And that’s what landing pages are used for. They’re told what they should do, how they should do it, where they should do it. They’re told all, everything that they need to know because you need to act like they’re not gonna know what to do.

J
Right. So thinking about it in two steps, right, if I’m searching for something on Google. Ideally, the taxonomy-- your keywords, right, would be very specific like you said brown shoes, size 11.




J
So that someone can potentially find exactly what he or she is looking for and then the landing page takes away some of that thinking. And says, here’s is what you’re looking for exactly what it is and what the next step is potentially, either to purchase it or take an action, sign up for an email list, whatever it might be.

Z
Exactly, so if you put yourself in the scenario of Clark’s which is a shoe company, Bostonian, if you’re searching for the shoes and you search for you know Clark’s size 11 shoes and I took you to a page that just have everything on there you would have to take 5 or 6 actions to get yourself to a Clark’s, you know, size 11 page. But if I took you to the page with all of the size 11 shoes you’re able to click on the one that you wanted, then click Add to Cart and then you’re already in the buying process and that’s what our job as marketers is to do and that’s what landing page optimization specialist job is to do so my job as a marketer is to get the person to the landing page that has the best fit. A landing page optimization specialist is to get them to complete the action as much as possible in order really to make the client the most money, right.

And you might have a variety of different landing pages.



J
Like you said size 11, you give all the brown shoes that are size 11.

Z
Right. And everything with the internet is test and retest, right? I have no idea what works. You know, I have some great examples to show today but yes, they work but could they be tweaked and made better and work even better than that, you know. You know, let’s say if a conversion rate for a client is 5 percent, what if it was 8 percent?



Z
It changes the game. If you can double your conversion rate and you just keep the same amount of traffic so therefore the same amount of cost.




J
And I’m sure it varies from industry to industry quite a bit.

Z
Yeah, I mean they’re not even close to the same. If you’re talking--any--most industries is apples to oranges, you know. You might get into some similarities if you’re talking about pest control versus insurance ‘cause you’re asking for one action. So it’s really they vary by industry but they vary by action. What you’re trying to get the person to do is how they vary, so.

J
Got it.

Z
Somebody like, you know, Terminix and GEICO, while they’re completely different, they’re actually gonna have a similar process. You know, they wanna know who you are and where you live. Well, you know, an Ideeli versus a KGB Deals, while one is closed and one is like restaurants and ideas like that, they wanna know what your likes are and who--and what your demographics are. So, they are--they can be, they’re--for the most part they’re very different by industry but they’re also really different by what the action is that they’re trying to get you to do.

J
I think that’s really important to note that it’s the action and that’s how the landing page varies and it could be similar from industry to industry but it’s the action.



J
We’re gonna cover 5 different sections. One will be layout and design, the next will be copy, and then images and video and the call to action, and then tracking and testing.

Part II: Layout & Design

J
Tells us a little bit more about layout and why it’s so important.

Z
So layout is important to actually follow what the user wants. You know, like I talked about before about a store and how to relate things online to a store. If you think about when you go to a store, what’s the first thing you see is the big shiny logo out in the front of the store and then you walk in and then you have big signs everywhere.



Z
And it’s where people’s eyes go. They put those where people’s eye goes. So just like a landing page layout is so important because you have to think about where people’s eyes go. So in the examples I have here, some eye tracking studies and heat maps that are done, people’s eyes really go from the top left of a page, down the middle to the bottom right.




Z
You know, the top right is still important ‘cause people still look there but really the progression of eyes go from the top left, down to the bottom right and they will look in the top right. So if you start to think about websites that you’ve been to, you see the logo on the top left.




Z
And then you see a title right below that and right when you get to the middle of pages where you start to see the meat of the page and what they want you to do. And then as you scroll down to the bottom it starts to give you more information.



Z
And if your eyes pop up to the top right you’ll sometimes see a phone number. You’ll see a promotion, the product offering, whatever it may be.



Z
So if you see in these studies that you see here. And you can also think about a search engine. A search engine was done the same way. Search engines were built and Google was built on the fact that people’s eyes go from the top left to the bottom right so think about a search engine. On the top is a paid ad and on the right are paid ads as well. Now, in the middle you have the natural results. But here’s an interesting fact is that 80 percent of about traffic goes to the natural results and 20 percent goes to paid ads.



Z
That 20 percent is somewhere around the 20 to 25 billion dollar industry.



Z
And they were smart. They made it because they knew that people who are really paying attention to the page were gonna click on paid ads.



Z
So all that 80