Landing Pages: what, why and how

Landing pages are a vital element in any online marketing campaign. They are one of the best ways to convert clicks into clients, and maximize your site performance. Here are some tips for getting started and building an effective landing pages.

The What
A landing page is a page that a visitor reaches after clicking an online ad or a link. Your landing page should do one of three things—give your prospect reason to convert, enable them to do so, or resolve any concerns the prospect may have about converting. If any of the information on your page does not accomplish this, then it shouldn’t be there.

The Why
Now, you probably wonder, why couldn’t I just send them to my homepage? Well, there are a few answers to that: 

1. don’t make people work hard to find what you told them would be “right there.”
2. you can’t assume the visitor knows anything about you.
3. you can test different offers/calls to action depending on the source.
4. it’s one-stop “shopping” for the user with minimal distractions.

Be sure to have a clear connection to the ad/link and purpose before creating a landing page.  What are you offering? Who do you wish to appeal to? Why would they be interested in your offer? What do they need to do to participate/purchase?

The How
These are standard elements any landing page should have:

• Clear headline
• Compelling copy
• Careful use of keywords
• Minimal navigation
• Minimum number of fields on a contact form
• Urgent call to action on button
• Image use
• Put your most important info on the upper left side

In addition, Marketing Experiments identifies these as the six factors that will affect the performance of landing pages:

1. Friction – how much work the visitor has to do (this includes the reading)
2. Incentives – extras that are thrown in to sweeten the deal
3. Visitor motivation – how much they want what you have
4. Value proposition – the perception visitors have of you and what you are selling
5. Anxiety – the perceived risk to the visitor
6. Credibility – how well you convey trustworthiness

Finally, be consistent with your branding and look and feel, and appear trustworthy. Users want to see a design that is consistent with the advertisement or link that brought them to your page so they know they’re in the right place.

Social Media: Learn from the Pros

Toprank Blog post addresses the common questions most online marketers face when tasked with launching a social media campaign: how to justify investment in a social media strategy, how to decide on tactics and how to measure success.

Charlene Li’s, co-author of Groundswell, kicks off with these words of advice:

1. SM is a person-to-person activity. You are not speaking as “the company”, but as a person. Most companies don’t know how to do this, and it takes a lot of practice to find that voice and feel comfortable with it.
2. Be a good listener. All companies say they listen to their customers, but do they really LISTEN and let people know that they are listening?
3. Be patient. This takes a long time because you are going to be transforming your company, one person at a time.
4. Be opportunistic. Start small with the people who are most passionate about building relationships with customers.
5. Be flexible. You never know what’s going to happen so you have to constantly adjust your thinking and learn.
6. Be collaborative. You need people from up and down the management chain to buy-in.
7. Most importantly, be humble. Remember that you are not as powerful as the groundswell. If you forget this, they will let you know.

Be sure to read the full post. You might find some inspiration and ideas.  Advice comes from a myriad of Social Media marketers from comapnies like Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Intel, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil and as well as a mix of SMM consultants/agencies.

User Experience in a Nutshell

 You’ve probably heard a designer before talk about the user experience. Many books and articles have been written about the subject as well.

A little bit of this should appear on a particular area to enhance the user experience.  And a little bit of that should be consistent throughout the site. That mix of colors will make the user experience delightful.

But what exactly constitutes a successful user experience?  Here are some important factors:

1. Clarity:  Make it easy for the user to move around and understand how to interact with your site.
2. Conciseness:  Keep it simple and don’t overdo it with explanations. If they are on page where you’d like their undivided attention, take away any distractions. Leave only what’s needed.  
3. Familiarity:  Make them feel welcome and safe to continue navigating through the site. If you are introducing familiar icons/images, make them behave the way that is expected. If it looks like a tab, make it work like a tag. 
4. Responsiveness:  Provide feedback on the status of an action, similar to the ”loading” display on a YouTube video or the number of steps that it will take to go through a shopping cart so they can keep track of the progress.
5. Consistency:  Helps build familiarity, and in turn, they will feel at ease. Maintain the layout and key elements consistent throughout or you will have a confused user.
6. Attractiveness: It’s not just about making a site pretty. There is no one way to do so and it very much depends on the audience. But make it enjoyable, and pleasing to the eye.
7. Efficiency:  Help them do what they need to do on a page with no fuss and no gimmicks.

These are rather simple concepts, yet sometimes we tend to forget that when we build a site, we are inviting others – not ourselves - to have an experience online so the least we can do is make it a good one.

Search Marketing Success

Whenever I get approached for a SEM project, one of the hardest points to make across is the variety of factors that are involved. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard people boil it all down to just keywords. Then, of course, is the time it might take. Great results happen overtime. Just like a good cassoulet, you need to bring all the ingredients together, let them come to a nice simmer and allow the flavors to develop. Search Marketing is no different.

Over a year ago, Matt McGee (a writer for Search Engine Land and Small Business SEM) published an awesome article about all the factors that make a good optimization strategy successful. Here are some points extracted from that article that I think are well worth sharing.

• Commitment: SEM projects need a committed client who is enthusiastic and engaged in the process.
• Planning: Any project will only be as successful as measured against the established goals. Do not skip this step and tkae your time to define your goals. This will determine the success benchmarks along the way.
• Product/Service:  Always focus on offering quality products and services.
• Education/Information: Stay informed and alert to the ever changing search marketing industry developments.
• Patience:  There are no short cuts, no quick fixes. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And in search marketing, the wrong tricks can get your site penalized. Success almost always takes many months, if not a year or more.
• Design & Usability: Have a website that’s attractive and easy to use. You are building a site for your visitors, so always make it easy for them to do what they came to your site to do.
• Keywords : Targeting the right keywords is the first step. Do your research and find the ones that will best serve you. Then, just spread your “keyword dust” in all the right places.
• Analytics:  How will you know you’re successful if you have no way of measuring what you’ve done? Measure, analyze, adjust strategies and tactics as needed. Rinse and repeat.
• Tools:  Having access to good tools is a good thing but more important is knowing how to interpret the data they provide.
• Crawlability: A search engine cannot index pages that its spider cannot crawl. Be mindful of this when you include Flash movies, Javascript in your site. A seasoned designer will be well aware of this. 
• Content:  Content is King. Develop good content, that is both relevant to your users and searchable for the search engines. Additionally, good content will make it easier to get quality linking.
• Links: We know your content is great but the reality is that without relevant, quality links,  your site won’t rank well. Link traction is a must.
• Be Found:  Social Media Marketing and Local Search are musts. The later is especially vital for  most small businesses. The goal is to be found, easily.
• Reputation Management:  What are people saying about your company? Do you know? Not more than ever, with the explosion of social media and the ever influential user reviews, you need to make sure to monitor your online reputation and be aware of how your brand is perceived.
• Trust:  In SEM, trust is power. When you have trust from users and search engines, you’re on the way to search marketing success.

Success will be achieved by the interactions and contributions of each of these factors. Just like every ingredient, every spice makes a great cassoulet.

Analytics against Performance

Lately, I’ve been trying to bring attention to web analytics since they are often times overlooked and misunderstood. But before digging into the numbers and start analyzing, there’s a simple question to be answered:

What is the purpose of the site?

Your site might exist for various reasons so the metrics to pay attention to will also be different.  These metrics and ratios are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will help you determine if your site is living up to its name.

My site exists to…	An important KPI …
provide information/data	goals or task completion and conversion rates. Example: white paper downloads or video streaming metrics
generate leads	conversion rates. Example: what percentage of your visitors successfully filled out a form.
sell products	average order value. You need to know how much a visitor is worth to your site and ultimately, your business.
connect people	average time in between visits (a.k.a. latency) and repeat vs. new visitors.

As simple as that. Your measurement of success will only be as good as the clarity of your answer about your online goals. Does this help?