Moderator: Kate Morris
Speakers:
Kate Morris, Director of Client Services, New Edge Media
Joanna Lord, CMO, TheOnlineBeat.com
Tim Ash, President & CEO, SiteTuners.com
Janet Driscoll Miller, President & CEO, Search Mojo

First up is Tim Ash of Sitetuners

Tim starts with the brutally honest insult: Your baby is ugly - why should you care? It’s costing you money. Most landing pages have issues, and need a fresh set of eyes. Our money if filtered through these landing pages, sometimes millions of dollars to these poor neglected step-children of your website.

CPA = CPC/CR
Where CR = conversion rate.

Who should design your site? Typically the answers come back:

• Ad agency
• IT
• Marketing
• Your boss
• Marketing
• Webmaster

The real answer – your website visitors (I dunno dude, some of my visitors are preeeetty dumb). It should be focused only on conversions.

The 7 deadly sins of landing page design:

#1 Unclear call to action – this one is pretty intuitive, you need clear, obvious and compelling call to action items on your landing pages – not cluttered with other junk, and not below the fold. Don’t make your visitors think.

#2 Visual distractions
There are a million and one wrong things to do – relative emphasis is key, don’t put entry pop-ups on landing pages, they’re simply a distraction from a conversion.

#3 Too much text
Do you really expect me to read all this? Nobody will read paragraph text. Unfocus your eyes and look at your page, that’s the impact it’s having (the author takes no offense, regardless of the ten thousand words he’s published live blogging so far).

#4 Lack of upstream continuity
Does your landing page keep the promise that your traffic sources make? Example, consumer reports promises a review of a camera in its PPC ad, but presents you with a ‘join today’ button to see the content. Keep your promises. IMHO this is one of the most misunderstood aspects of all of SEO and PPC, taking the searcher intent into account when you decide what information to present to them.

#5 Long forms
Is the information you’re asking for absolutely necessary to complete the current transaction? No unnecessary fields, info not needed until later, or requirements of supporting info that is not available.

#6 Invisible risk reducers
Do I feel safe? Don’t let your trust symbols/indicators sit ‘below the fold’ – keep them visible! If you can use other trustworthy brands (legally!) on your site, do it. Media mentions? Use the CNN and MSNBC brands!

#7 Lack of trust indicators
Why should I trust you? It’s up to you to prove to your visitors that you’re trustworthy. Gather and display trust symbols, even if they’re just testimonials you made up (okay, he didn’t advise that, ignore that, it doesn’t work *cough*)

Up next Joanna

Post click marketing: it’s what happens after someone has clicked through an ad to get to your site, and apparently, it’s all the rage (coming from an affiliate world, I’ve lived in both pre and post click marketing forever, it’s post-click traffic as comes into my site from the engines, but immediately becomes pre-click for the affiliate ads on the site). The post-click world is centered around converting specific audiences, and helps turn brand traffic to converting traffic. Lots of things to play with:

• Segmenting out traffic
• Keyword research – for what’s on your landing page
• User flow navigation
• Site functionality
• Landing page as a whole

What’s important? Mostly the landing page. Mostly.

The idealist: user > click > page > conversion
The realist: user > click > page > pages> conversinoooon> saldow <Admkw eoaodjwed>coffee (basically)

Realists don’t think in straight lines – real user flows involve coffee, or at least non-linear ummm … lines.

Keys to success: delegate, automate, evaluate

Delegate:
Assign a post click marketer. For this you want an out of box thinker, and you should pair them with a pre-click marketer – they both need to be good at communicating to other teams. Create set of metrics/goals, set unique timelines/benchmarks

Automate:
Streamline every process possible: Build out landing page templates – 62% of ppl have 6 or less landing pages – build more!
Content management system – put the power in the marketers hands, not tech – a good CMS does that
Auto-expire pages – if you’re doing promotional or seasonal pages, set them to auto-expire and redirect
Preview / Q&A system – no manual e-mails, have a checklist system, a standardized test
Data collection – do it!
Auto-remove bad performers – do this for your landing pages, not just your keywords

Evaluate:
Test a/b, avoid multivariate (more complex, less intuitive – do multivariate when you have pieces that you know work, via a/b results)
Basics (portion out, don’t give it to the whole audience/review often)
Adjust & track
Communicate results to other teams

Ask yourself, are all possible user flows addressed?

Janet Driscoll miller from search mojo is up next:

Landing pages and post click marketing (yup, told you it was all the rage)

It’s shocking how many PPC advertisers just dump people onto the website home (besides the obvious quality score pitfalls, imo). After they see this not working, they learn to build custom landing pages, and eventually people start getting their heads around conversion paths, and building custom conversion paths based on visitor type/persona.

The example given showed this from a PPC campaign:

• Homepage converted at 1.17%
• A pre-existing, better page choice converted at 2.4%
• A custom landing page raised conversions to 12.5%

Use dynamic programming language (like PHP) to build your landing pages:

• Increases flexibility – add keywords dynamically
• Ease of multivariate testing: add or remove individual page elements for testing quickly. Perform real time tests
• Quickly incorporate best performing elements into all pages. Example: one form for all landing pages
• Track performance to keyword level
• Tracking things over the long-term, from the granular level like keywords, all the way through to conversions (and beyond, repeat buyers etc – CRM integration can help this) is the best use of information.
• Stay on targeted message
• Keep information above the fold
• Pass keyword through url to headline
• Consider removing website navigation
• Try to stick to one call per action, but provide an ‘escape hatch’ (example: learn more)
• MUST READ: marketingSherpa landing page handbook

Google website optimizer: doesn’t allow for changes (or additions) to a test. Not as simple as it appears on first glance (if you know the html programming to make this work, you can likely just do dynamic programming, which is more flexible) – she recommends if you’re going to use it, get started with some professional help.

What to test?

To truly make landing pages the most effective they can be – you must continually test them against other versions. While one layout works for one ad group, company or product, it may not work as well for another. Test page elements, pay layouts, and messaging. Test your own audience, does ‘buy now’ work, or ‘add to cart’ work? It’s all about your audience.

Conversion paths

• Conversion paths in the real world are no longer linear, think about how people are working their way through your site.
• They provide segmentation – you can provide specific offers to specific types of visitors by splitting them into different conversion paths
• Qualification – ensure that the leads you are getting are more qualified. Only send conversions from the most promising path to sales and reduce their overhead of calling unqualified ‘leads’.
• Gain partial data over time – learn from visitors as they progress through a conversion path

Segmentation is achieved by offering two main options as a path for people to follow once they land. Literally two big boxes with different messages which differentiate your visitors in some way (one of which will usually end up with stronger leads). Scrub away the non-qualified leads.

Capturing the segmentation data: use cookies to record data on a path. When the visitor finally signs up, download all of the cookie data into hidden form fields – this provides your sales force with added knowledge about the prospect. It’s really really really important to use deduplication software for your CRM database.

Additional resources:

• Research: marketing Sherpa landing page handbook, marketingexperiments.com
• Books: the paradox of choice, the big red fez, beginners web design for roi, advanced honest seduction
• Blogs: search marketing sage. Blog.search-mojo.com and post click marketing blog

Related posts:

• Live Blogging SES Toronto 2009: Search Ads & Landing Page Clinic
• Pubcon live blogging: Conversion Rate Testing and Optimization
• Live Blogging SES Toronto 2009: Campaign Performance Tracking: Basic Tips
• Six Habits of Highly Effective PPC Managers
• Pubcon 2009 Live Blogging: Smart Keyword Research & Selection