Top 10 landing page tips to increase conversions

An effective landing page is a core part of the PPC process. The best campaign in the world can’t reconcile a landing page which doesn’t then convert visitors into sales and/or leads. Here are some of the tips and tricks we apply to landing pages to maximise conversions.

1. Set goal

A landing page should have a clear goal, whether it’s getting potential customer details, a one off purchase of a product or service, or simply brand awareness. Establishing what you want the page to actually achieve should always be the first consideration.

2. Copy format

You won’t have much time to convince a visitor to stay on your page. Keep the copy short, to the point, and easily scanable, use bullet points and clear headings.

3. Copy messaging

Be consistent with your ppc campaign ads. Answer questions visitors likely to have about your product or service, tap into their needs and wants. Orientate the visitor, clearly state upfront what the product or service is, with a clear descriptive title. If applicable, state the benefits of the company and service, especially unique selling points.

4. Call to action

Make it an enticing prospect with a catchy title and descriptive button. If it’s a form to get visitor details, keep fields to the absolute minimum necessary, if lots of info is required, split the form into stages with information capture at every stage. Consider using a carrot such as offering an info pack or whitepaper, other options could be ‘Call me back’, ‘Enquire Now’ or if feasible; implement an online live chat facility.

5. Focus the visitors attention

Have important information prioritized at the top of the page, above the fold. Ensure the call to action is in the most prominent position. If using a form, consider using a lightbox (when a call to action button is clicked the page fades out to the background, displaying only the form lit up to interact with). Make sure phone numbers are highly visible and prominent.

6. Trust & Credibility

Give visitors a reason to trust your company. If you have any awards or good reviews, use them. Consider using short, ‘on message’ testimonials, the bigger the company the better. If your company has large clients, ask permission to use their logo’s on the page.

7. Layout

Stick to convention, have a credible header and footer. Include, if applicable; terms and conditions, disclaimer, privacy policy, up to date copyright. Use an empathetic image which engages with the visitors likely needs and wants. Ensure the pages look and feel reflects the emotional appeal of the product or service.

8. Usability

Make your desired goals as easy to achieve for visitors as possible. Spell out the ease of the process. For example; a simple steps 1,2,3 diagram of what you want them to do. If using a form with address fields, consider a ‘post code’ look up facility which automatically fills in the user details.

9. Eliminate distraction

Limit the visitors options, remove the navigation, or any other links that take the user away from the landing page. Don’t let them stray from what you want them to do.

10. Test

If budget allows, try testing different elements of the page to see which converts best. Using Google web optimizer, either a simple A/B test (one page against another) or a multivariate test (swap out individual elements such as messaging, form process, imagery). Striking results can be made from this process.

So we started off well, if depleted, heading out of Leeds towards the open countryside a couple of miles up the road, but quite soon things didn’t go to plan… We lost Paul C (who we thought had second thoughts and turned round, but we later found out he managed to cycle past the group waiting at a junction), and then Ryan just as we were heading off-road and a Yorkshire downpour gave us a soaking…

So we were now 4, and heading towards Eccup. We managed a glimpse of a wet Emmerdale and headed for the bridleways of the Harewood House estate. We were doing well and decided to have a refreshment stop, which turned out longer than planned due to 2 punctures and tube changes – on the same wheel.

By this time it was raining, cold and with the dark grey sky it could have been November, not the middle of July – what happened to summer?

After a muddy detour through Adel Woods, a fight with a branch (which won and knocked Mark off) and one final uphill push, the drowned Lab Rats were back – 3 ½ hours after setting off. Bike ride anyone?

Hi I’m Liam.

I am currently in my first of two weeks SEO work experience with Search Laboratory in Leeds working as a Junior SEO Executive. I am 15 years old, in year 10 and attend cardinal heenan catholic high school.

I have been helping with both PPC (pay per click) and SEO (search engine optimisation).

For SEO I have been going through link building spreadsheets and checking that the links are in the correct category and also whether a link is live.

For PPC I have been using ‘Google adwords’ to redirect Google ads so that getting on to the selected website runs smoother.

I have also helped create monthly spending summaries for each of search labs clients. I have helped with accounting by doing such things as filing invoices and statements etc.

Whilst undertaking my SEO work experience, at Search Laboratory I have learnt the basics of how e-commerce, SEO and PPC work. It has also given me the knowledge of how a business is run and how link building is carried out.

I’ve been set the task to write a blog post with the aim of ranking  number 1 in Google for the keyword SEO work experience. I would appreciate your help by spreading this post around social networking sites.

If you’ve ever seen Google’s Real Time Search in action, you’ll know how great this feature is.

Having the ability to view live news stories the  moment they are published is amazing.

Facebook  updates and Twitter posts can be displayed seconds after they are posted in Google SERPs, which is ideal if you are wanting to find out what discussions are currently taking place for a particluar topic.

If there is a massive news story sweeping through all the major news providers, chances are Real Time Search Results will display in the SERPs. However, what if  you wanted to find out news for smaller news events or a particluar person or random topic and want to find out what others are saying on the matter? Real Time Search wont be displayed in the SERPs due to it not being major news.

Instead you have to,

1) Enter your search query

2) Click More on the left menu

3) Then click updates

4) Real Time Results are now displayed.

This method just seems messy and time consuming.

If you want to search for an image on Google you can use Google Images. Alternatively you might want to search for a video and use Google Videos.

Why not have give Real Time Search its own homepage, for example www.google.co.uk/realtime.

This  would allow more people to use the feature and take advantage of its many benefits.

Hello everyone – I’m Mark and I am the newest member of Search Labs SEO team.

As this is my first post, I thought I’d explain to everyone how I became involved in the world of Search engine optimisation.

I’ve recently graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University studying E-commerce systems. As part of my dissertation I had to create an affiliate website, research SEO techniques and apply those techniques in order to increase the sites rankings in search engines. This would attract more visitors and hopefully generate more sales.

In order to get to grips with SEO, I read various blogs such as;

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Staying up to date with these blogs always allowed me to keep an eye out on what was coming next.

Once I graduated I started doing a bit of freelance SEO for small businesses so that I could gain more experience. This experience of creating SEO strategies for companies was invaluable and was an excellent addition to my CV.

I highly recommend freelance work as a starting point for a career in SEO. Freelance sites such as elance, Get a Freelancer and PeoplePerHour.com are excellent places to find sources of work.

Businesswires Tweet Button

Twitterfying Your Press Release

Twitterfying your press release is a great way of ensuring that your press release receives as much exposure to relevant people as possible.

It is extremely simple to do too.

• Make sure you have an eye catching title
• Include a relevant word in the title
• Place a hash (#) tag against the relevant word

This makes sure anybody tweeting or retweeting the press release includes the topic tag, giving it the best chance of being seen by your target audience.

Example

This week Search Laboratory visited Earls Court for the Technology for Marketing and Advertising (TFMA) 2010. To draw more attention to our stand, on the first day, Ian arranged a staged protest against us. This went down well and ensured that we recieved a lot of interest.

Ian asked me to release a press release, on the morning of the second day, about the protest. This was in order to get as much out of the publicity stunt as we could. I wanted expose the press release to relevant people at the event, so in the actual title of the press release I included a hash tag against #tfma.

Twitterfied Press Release Title with Tweet Button

This ensured that anybody tweeting the press release would have their tweet show up in the real time results for #TFMA, giving the press release increased exposure to the most  relevant people (the people at the conference / journalists reviewing the conference).

Twitterfy Press Release Titles

The Problem

There are a lot of circumstances where an online conversion is hard to achieve or where people prefer to pick up the phone and make contact. For example, high value or complex products where the website has little chance of satisfying all of a visitors questions and anxieties about making a purchase. Often some of a websites products sell well online and others only sell offline leading to an inaccurate picture of conversion rate across the product range. In these situations we lose the ability to track against the keyword and source any offline conversions or sales that are made.

Prompt a return to the site after sale

One way of dealing with this is encourage/trick your converted visitor into returning to the website and viewing a conversion page. This can be done by sending them an email and asking them to click a link to confirm their details (or something similar). The page you send them to in the email will be a special offline only thank you page that holds your analytics code and other tracking codes you may want to add such as Adwords tracking. This email can either be a manually created one (for smaller scale websites) or automated by your website software.

How about pulling sale values into the tracking codes?

A more complex use of this method might see you code the URL you send them to with an order ID parameter (i.e. www.mywebsite.com/offline-sales-thanks-page.html?orderid=12345 ). You can then program your web page to pull out of your sales database the required information that you need to populate the relevant ecommerce fields needed to track actual order values etc.

Prevent false repeat conversions

There is a possible problem with this method in that people will often click the link in the email more than one time meaning you capture multiple conversions for one sale. A possible solution to this is to use javascript and cookies to write a simple script that will only run the tracking code the first time the page is viewed.

Try putting the following code in the header.

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var querystring = location.search.substring(1);

var str;

var val;

var ret;

if (querystring.length > 1) {

str=(querystring.indexOf(’leadID=’) + 7);

val=(querystring.substr(str));

querystring = “yes”;

}

function getCookie(name) {

var sPos = document.cookie.indexOf(name + “=”);

var len = sPos + name.length + 1;

if((!sPos) && (name != document.cookie.substring(0, name.length))){

return null;

}

if(sPos == -1){

return null;

}

var ePos = document.cookie.indexOf(’;', len);

if(ePos == -1) ePos = document.cookie.length;

ret = document.cookie.substring(len, ePos);

return unescape(document.cookie.substring(len, ePos));

}

function setCookie(name, value, expires, path, domain, secure){

var today = new Date();

if(expires){

expires = expires * 1000 * 3600 * 24;

}

document.cookie = name+’='+escape(value) +

((expires) ? ‘;expires=’ + new Date(today.getTime() + expires).toGMTString() : ”) +

((path) ? ‘;path=’ + path : ”) +

((domain) ? ‘;domain=’ + domain : ”) +

((secure) ? ‘;secure’ : ”);

}

</script>

And then this code before the final </body> tag.

<script language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”>

if(!val == false){

var c = getCookie(val);

if(!c){

setCookie(val, ‘tracked’, 1000);

var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));

try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}

//Enter Anymore javascript tracking codes you have here.  You could also add the GA ecommerce tracking here if you can program you site to pull in the correct values.

}

}

</script>

Note I have removed the <script></script> tags from the GA code above as this already sits in a javascript block.  For the <noscript> part of the Adwords tracking this can be omited (and not track anything where javascript is turned off) or added seperately after the code above but wouldn’t remove repeat conversions.

With the code above the page you send the customer to must be tagged with ?leadID=(a unique id)

The above method is one of many ways to go about tracking offline sales.  While it has it’s flaws it offers great benefits when you have a high proportion of offlne sales.

Protesters gathered outside TFMA 2010 at Earls Court to remonstrate about our sophisticated PPC bid management software ‘Bidlab’.

They claim that we have an unfair advantage when it comes to managing pay per click campaigns.

Bidlab Ruffles Feathers

If you want to find out what all the fuss is about contact us online or call 0113 2121211.

An interesting article from PPC blog highlighted the importance of making your PPC campaigns culturally specific as well as language specific. This is something we promote to all our PPC clients who have campaigns in the same language, across different global markets. The main points of the post are summarised below:

PPC advertising is a blessing for many businesses, from your local locksmith to multi-national banks.  One of the main benefits of PPC marketing is the ease at which you can unlock previously unattainable markets in specific countries of your choice.

Sounds great, write a PPC ad, translate it into your desired language and target the relevant countries using the Google interface.

Well, although this is correct in theory, there are some rather weighty issues that we need to address before diving in feet first.

For the sake of this post I will say that we have a Google PPC campaign set up targeting the UK market and we want to duplicate that campaign and target the US market.

In order to do this successfully we can’t simply copy our entire campaign and change the targeting to the US, we have to think about the different advertising cultures that exist between the two countries.  After a bit of research I found this quote from the Independent newspaper that highlights these differences in a humorous, yet very accurate style:

“Viewed from commercial America, British advertising looks like something bent out of shape by a culture so consumed with embarrassment it can’t look a salesman in the eye when he’s making a pitch, particularly if that pitch is laden shoulder high with emotion – love of country, family or God. From a mainstream US perspective our quirky elliptical leave-them-guessing advertising approach is kind of charming, but kind of unworkable too in America, with its fragmented audiences and ethnicity’s, its raging sensitivities and, above all, its huge risks. American advertising is risk averse because there’s so much at stake with those huge clients and their mega-spends. It means everything is researched to death so all backs are covered.”

Remember as soon as you begin targeting different geographic markets  with your PPC campaign you have made the transition into global advertising and as such you need to look at global brands and understand how and why their advertising differs between countries for the same products, when you understand this you can then tailor your ads and keywords accordingly.

It is important to remember when creating your global PPC campaigns that you must be sensitive to the cultural context in which it will be received.  A recent example of a cultural nuance was when a group working to produce victim outreach materials in Arabic were informed by members of the Muslim community that the word “victim” shouldn’t be used because in their culture it has negative connotations.  As a result of this the organisation removed the term “victim” and replaced it with the phrase “those hurt by crime” instead.

In every market there are cultural nuances such as the one detailed above and the only way to find these out is through research, research, and research!  Remember, some of your competitors will be local to these cultures and as a result will understand these markets instantly and design their PPC campaign with the local norms in mind – If you expect your campaign to convert, you should follow suit!

Here Are Some Tips To Get You Going

Research Your Competitors

How is your product advertised on TV in your targeted country? What language do they use? What images are used in magazines to promote the product? How do they deliver their pitch – using humour, using hard sell? using stats to promote it?

Review competitors landing pages and ad copy, do they share similarities? How do they compare to the TV and magazine ads? Are there any obvious differences between how you have or would advertise the product in your home country?

Check Your Spelling

Although we both speak English remember that spelling differs between America, UK and Australia.  Remember that your computer will be setup by default to spell check in your home version of English.

Know Your Regions

Although we may be targeting just one country with our PPC Campaign we should be aware of the cultural nuances between different regions within that country.  As a general rule people speak differently between North and South.  Different terms for the same items are used in different regions so bare that in mind when you are creating your PPC campaign and if necessary separate certain keywords and ad copy so that these areas can be targeted separately.  If we look at the UK –Southerners tend to think of themselves as more culturally aware than their northern counterparts, but the Northerners tend to think of Southerners as soft, phony and snobby. Of course, these are just stereotypes of the British attitude but they do exist and as such you may think about altering your PPC campaign to incorporate these differences.

Learning about cultural diversity in relation to PPC advertising is a never ending process and with the Internet rapidly moving out of America and into every corner of the globe it is becoming more and more important for advertisers to start structuring our PPC campaigns around these cultural nuances.  If you want to convert, think local.

Baidu is currently the most used search engine in China with 37% of the search market share, so for companies interested in advertising in China, it is too big to be ignored.

Baidu is China's No1 Search Engine

Here is a guide to opening a ppc acount on Baidu. However, it’s not easy to open a Baidu PPC account. Before you can even begin to start building a campaign, you will need the following things:

• A Chinese website
• Business license
• Certificate of Authorization
• Proof of website ownership
• Contract between agency & Baidu
• ICP License (maybe)
• 5600 RMB deposit

Some of these steps are simple, others not so much. Going through them one-by-one, we have:

1) A properly translated Chinese website or landing page

Baidu require that you send them your landing page URL in advance, so they can assess the page’s suitability.

2) Essential documents for opening a new account

They are as follows:

a) A scanned copy of the Business License / Company Registration Document of the company whose name the account will be registered under. If you are agency advertising on behalf of a client, you may be able to get away with using your own.

ie . I would use the business license of Search Laboratory Ltd. If your business has ever changed name, then they will require both the original document of registration, and any updated versions.

b) Certificate of Authorization / Authority Document – basically a contract between client and agency, giving you authorization to advertise on their behalf. This needs to be signed by both client and agency. A blank form is available on request from Baidu. Details required on this form are as follows:

Consigner: Client name

Address: Client’s registered address

Legal Representative: Does not actually need to be someone from the legal department; any representative of the company will do, such as the Director

Contact: the primary contact

Consignee: Your company name

Address: your address

Legal Representative: a representative of the company

Contact: the primary contact at your agency

The form also instructs you to attach a “Consigner’s certificate of ownership of the website” as Baidu require proof that the website you’re advertising is really owned by your client. Luckily, a link to the WHOIS online registration details page will satisfy them. (eg. http://whois.domaintools.com/searchlaboratory.com).

c) A fairly straightforward contract regarding between you and Baidu. The twists are:

i) there is a Chinese and an English copy which must both be signed;

ii) It is the common practice in China for all official documents to be stamped in red ink with a company chop (ie. seal, or stamp). If this option is not available, a ‘paging signature’ will do. This means that the pages of the documents must be overlapped, and the signature written across the pages (ie. partly on one page, and partly on the next).

3. An ICP license

They may ask for an ICP license, which is where many will become unstuck. This a permit issued by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology authorising companies to operate inside China. A prerequisite for this seems to be an office or branch of the company in China. I say they ‘may’ ask for this – for my clients, sometimes they’ve asked, and sometimes they haven’t, so you may get lucky.

4. Deposit of 5600 RMB

A minimum opening deposit of 5600 RMB (approx. £500 or $820 as of January 2010) which includes 600 RMB account service fee. You will need to send a scanned copy of the transfer slip to prove payment.

After all that, there’s the simply the matter of writing your Chinese keywords and ad texts, and attempting to navigate the Chinese-only user interface. Alternatively, find an agency with experience managing Chinese PPC campaigns to handle it all for you!