Optimise traffic to your landing pages

If you’re not taking customers to the right page on your web site, guess what? You’re losing money! CHRIS THOMAS

By Chris Thomas

Creating cool landing pages can be a great way to improve your online sales. But, if you get the “formula” wrong (and lots of people do), you’ll lose money. Pretty simple.

I reckon there are two types of landing pages, the first being a page specifically designed and dedicated to a single marketing message, where the objective is to entice your visitor to take some kind of defined conversion action. 

As I’m sure you’re aware, typically a conversion action involves:

• Buying something.
• Signing up for something.
• Providing an email address (mailing list capture).
• Filling out a form with your personal contact details for follow up.
• Entering a competition.

For example, you’ll often see credit card providers creating dedicated landing pages with the specific aim of getting you to sign up for a new card. A couple of examples from Citibank and the ANZ:

As you can see, these pages are separate from the main website; there’s no navigation to distract you from the main aim – applying.

If you’re impressed with either offer, click on the links that follow: Citibank or ANZ ?

The second group of landing pages are often really just standard pages within your own website. If you can’t afford to spend up big on dedicated landing pages (like the banks can), here’s where you have a chance to really improve conversions.

Please, please, please. If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign (Google AdWords) please deliver traffic directly to a targeted page on your site.

Here’s an example of what NOT to do – follow the sequence carefully:

• Step 1. Someone searches on “Audi A3” and clicks on your Google Ad.
• Step 2. They are delivered to your home page and left to fend for themselves…

“No, No, No! I’m getting lost here. I can’t be bothered trying to find the A3 link. It’s not obvious where it is. I’m out of here.” And feeling frustrated with you.

Come on Audi. You already have a perfect, relevant landing page for what I just searched for – “Audi A3”. Why not deliver me there? Here it is:

THIS is where I should be taken when I click on your Google Ad!

It’s likely you’ll also improve your quality score through Google AdWords, resulting in a higher ad rank, and lower minimum bids! You’ll also see higher time spent on site, lower “bounce rates”, and maybe some test drive bookings and perhaps even the odd sales inquiry phone call.

Now that we’re delivering traffic to exactly the right pages, next week I want to talk about how you can play around with various elements of the page to test which combination will give you the best conversions.

Chris Thomas heads Reseo a search engine optimisation company which specialises in setting up and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns, Affiliate Programs and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.

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