I believe so strongly in the power of targeted, focused landing pages, that I’m going to prepare you for the inevitable battles that will ensue. It is inevitable that forces of darkness will swoop down on you as you prepare a page designed for high conversion rates.
They are not cunning enemies, and this is why they are dangerous. You must get good at playing their game.
Here are some tactics for beating gatekeepers at their own game.
1. Data is only useful to confuse and disorient
You must come to terms with the fact that data will not sway your enemies. It can be used as a weapon.
I recommend printing out random graphs and hanging them around your office. Anyone who comes in to say that the company logo on the page is too small will be instantly dazzled.
When your enemy is trying to get you to add the corporate site navigation bar to your landing page, you can point to one of the graphs at random and simply shake your head.
2. Bureaucracy is Your Friend
Take a lesson from your IT department when it is suggested that the page needs some stock photography on it. Say, “That is a great idea. We’ll add that to the testing schedule right away!”
If they go over your head, you should invoke the “No changes without a test plan!” rule even if such a rule is not written anywhere.
I know it is despicable to use a valuable tool like testing as a delaying tactic. It is actually supposed to do the opposite. But, this is war.
3. Use the Competition to Counter Old Habits
If you’re competition is enlightened, they may be implementing things like landing pages and doing it well.
Not likely. However, you should do some searches for the keywords that are important to your business and see if you can find a competitor doing things right.
Then, when IT delivers a form with the standard “Submit” button, you can point to your competition and say, “They’re going to take our prospects if we don’t do it my way!”
4. Invent Your Own Budget
When you encounter pushback to creating unique landing pages for each channel and ad, invoke an imaginary budget.
“We’re taking the extra cost from the Incremental Revenue Budget,” or “We’ll cover it with the Conversion Premium Budget.”
While these budgets don’t actually exist, we all know that higher conversion rates should result in more leads, more sales and more revenue. We’re just borrowing from the increased future value of our conversion genius.
5. Resist the Dark Side
It is important that you not become your enemy. There are “lies, damn lies and then there are analytics,” to paraphrase Mark Twain.
We know we can draw just about any conclusion we want from analytics to support any position we want, but we can’t do bad science.
For example, if our manager was adding corporate-speak to our crafted persuasive copy, it would be ingenuous to point out the bounce rates for the pages she’d edited in the past. It may not be her copy that did the damage.
Instead, invoke the “Great copy. We’ll add that to the test schedule right away!”
Fight hard, my friends, but don’t compromise the science.
Landing Pages, Copywriting, SEO and Cheech and Chong: For Further Study Oct 1
Landing Page OptimizationPPC Help: Improving your Landing Page | Trada
I’ll say it again: If your SEM company isn’t INSISTING on helping you with landing pages; if they are satisfied to pick any page on your site as a destination for your expensive PPC marketing; then you are being taken to the cleaners.
Most of what you need to know is right here in this article. Contact me if you still have questions.
Tags: PPC help landing page landing pages
How To Implement Rel=Author
Google+ is affecting search rankings for authors on the web, so we need to make sure we’re playing the game. This article from @AjKohn of tells us how to establish ourselves as the masters of our content in the eyes of Google using the “rel” attribute in our links.
Tags: google seo rel=author google+ author
read more
Fiber One Sparks Up Boomer Love With Cheech and Chong | ClickZ
It is always tough to market to a specific target. Here Fiber One is clearly targeting boomers, and a particular brand of boomer. No doubt this will hurt their sales to conservative families. There will be some backlash. But, we all must be creating content for more and more specific markets, and walking away from the others if we’re going to grow our businesses. Hat tip to Fiber One: may your bravery be rewarded with sales and market share.
Tags: content targeting Boomer Fiber
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Language, context and conversions: thoughtful prose from the pros | SEO Copywriting
“The Internet isn’t passive. When you search online, you plan to do something: buy, learn, play, find. As soon as you go to Google, Yahoo or Bing, you’re on the hunt.”
There are those among us who have a true command of words and their use. I marvel at them. It is a power that is critical to persuasion, conversion and selling. Gabriella Sannino clearly sees it as a power to help people solve their problems. What better brand experience can you deliver than to help someone find answers to their questions?
Tags: writing copy seo conversion
read more
It's People! Analytics is people! [VIDEO]
Conversion Marketing StrategyWhat Bouncy Bob, Lost Lucy, Methodical Mary and One-hit Juan will tell you about your business.
“It’s people!” Detective Thorn declared in the 70’s apocalypse flick Soylent Green.
The same can be said about analytics.
In the conversion lab, website analytics is a clinical tool, sterile in its collection of data on our visitors and their behaviors. It is capable of providing rafts of data and reams of reports over hundreds of metrics. And all of this is of little help to us in making business decisions.
I’ve given my analytics a more human face, and I think it will work for you as well.
In How to Use Advanced Segments and Custom Reports in Google Analytics [Video] I use two metrics and two helpful Google Analytics features to capture the behavior of four characters that visit our sites.
When I apply these personalities to The Conversion Scientist blog, I find that:
Juan shows us one of the pitfalls of links to other sites. If you open links to other sites in a new window, it skews your analytics reporting, and doesn’t seem to really help visitors come back to your site.
What can you learn from the people that you meet in your analytics?
QR Codes and Short URLs: Little Packages of Goodness
Conversion Marketing StrategyYes, you can scan the QR Code on this shoe. Give it a try.
They are remarkably simple, and yet very powerful. They can follow your content as it darts across the social media horizon. They can change the structure of the Internet in an instant. They harbor surprising functionality in a small package.
I’m talking about short URLs and their real world twin, QR codes.
It turns out that there’s a lot you can do with these little gems. They’re like little packages of digital goodness.
I explore some of the more interesting uses in Stupid Short URL Tricks: Content Swapping, QR Codes, Mobile Microsites and More.
Among the “Stupid” short URL tricks I discuss are:
I’ve come to rely on them for much of my social media tracking. I’ve also worked them into my clothing. Yes, you can actually scan the QR Code on the shoes to learn more about why Conversion Scientists wear a lab coat.
I’ll be sporting these shoes at PubCon Las Vegas this November. Come check them out.
Shoe design by Sloan Foster.
Brian
Building Great Landing Pages Means Starting at the End
Landing Page OptimizationWhich of the following pages will get more people to download an E*Trade mobile application for their smartphone?
The answer is, I don’t know, but I have pretty good idea which will convert better.
Version A
Version B
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Matthew Roche currently of Bo.lt created page B in “about 30 seconds” from the original E*Trade landing page. He wrote in response to my announcement that I would be speaking about landing pages at the DFWSEM group.
Matt would know something about landing pages as he is the co-founder of Offermatica, now Adobe Test and Target.
Most landing pages look like Version A: complex, leaky, distracting, confusing. What does it take to make a page that is focused like Version B?
I say you have to design it backwards.
I take you through the steps to develop a backwards landing page in my new ClickZ column The Backward Landing Page.
What is Your Website’s Conversion Signature? [Audio]
Conversion OptimizationUnderstanding the signature of your Web site is key to Conversion Science.
Listen to Brian Massey, the Conversion Scientist joins host Jay Ehret to discuss how you use your website to get more leads and customers. He will describe the five primary website patterns and prescribe a conversion strategy for each.
When a Conversion Scientist looks at a Web site, we don’t look at it the same way a designer does. We see see things like click streams, beacons, brick walls and second chances.
Back in 2007, I defined five conversion “patterns” or “signatures” for Web sites, that has stood the test of time. Knowing which conversion signature your website matches tells you where to put your focus to increase leads, sales or both.
If your site isn’t delivering leads and sales for your business, then you may think your site is something different from what your prospects expect it to be.
Jay runs a great podcast and backs it up with a show notes that really compliment the audio content he produces. You won’t be surprised that he’s an ex-radio DJ when you listen.
Download | Subscribe to The Conversion Scientist Podcast
If you found this post helpful, you should subscribe to The Conversion Scientist by email. There is much more coming.
Caption Test for Images that Boost Your Conversion Rate
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingThe Caption Test
Most of the images used on a webpage do not have a caption. This is unfortunate, because readers who are scanning your page will read these, often more than will read your headline and certainly more than will read your copy.
Many web images don’t have captions because there is no intelligent caption that could be written. If you tried to write a caption for many of the images on your site, you would be at a loss.
This is a sign of irrelevance.
Your images leave me baffled at best, distracted at worst.
Left on their own, what would these images tell you about the site they were found on?
Not much.
If you’re selling question-mark-shaped doll houses, orange couches or business apparel, these will work. The sites I found these images on are selling financial services, insurance and IT training, in that order.
You’ve seen these or something like them many many times. Your brain filters out images like this on a Web page.
In Identifying Images that don’t Convert: The Caption Test, I propose a simple test that will help you weed out images that are irrelevant to your visitors, and thus are less likely to help your conversion rates.
If you find this educational, you really should subscribe to The Conversion Scientist by email. There is much more coming.
Email: Using a blog to get Relevance and Frequency (VIDEO)
Conversion Marketing StrategyIt’s not easy to find search marketing firms that get conversion, the part of the search marketing process that puts money in your pocket.
Globe Runner SEO is one of those firms that gets conversion. Notice the questions they ask and the focus they have on conversion in this brief interview.
Here we dive into the kind of conversion strategy you need if you have a considered (long) sales cycle or a high-repeat business: relevant, frequenty, easy email.
Pardon my loopiness. I had just finished presenting to the amazing DFWSEM group. Check them out.
Join The Conversion Scientist by Email to see how it is done.
DFWSEM-Packed house for “The Chemistry of Landing Pages”
Photo courtesy @SarahBoswell
Why Landing Pages Seem So Complicated and What to do About It
Landing Page OptimizationLanding pages baffle and confuse us. There are a dozens of components that could be used on them: testimonials, trust symbols, long-form copy, video, Johnson boxes, risk reversal, and more.
One of the biggest problems is that we believe that they are Web pages first and foremost. This implies that they have our company logo, our Web site navigation, footer links, and that they are designed like our corporate Web site. This creates the wrong context for our landing pages that make them complex, confusing and ineffective.
If you’re new to the term, a landing page is a page with singular focus. It serves traffic from a single source generally and asks for one action to be completed: complete a form, buy a product, etc.
What if we started with the call to action and grew a page from there? Which components would we add and why?
We’ll start with this:
and built our landing page from there. We might find things less baffling.
Watch the video here. It’s part of our CRO Training. And it’s free.
Email Frequency and Relevance: The Instant E-Newsletter
Conversion Marketing StrategyRoy H. Williams, benefactor of the enigmatic business school The Wizard Academy has a simple formula that you should study:
“Salience” is that magical moment when your message enters your prospects’ long-term memory. It means your message will not be swept from the short-term memory that most marketing messages float in.
Relevance is simply how important your message is to a prospect’s current problems. Messages gain relevance when they are helpful, educational, titillating or entertaining.
Frequency is the number of times someone is exposed to your message.
The enemies of Relevance, then are messages exclusively about your promotions, your company or your products, or messages sent to infrequently.
The enemies of frequency are lack of repetition and invisibility. Social media messages have very short lifespans. Thus, for most people, they are invisible. The ubiquitous Leo Laporte complains that, when his posts suddenly stopped appearing on Google Buzz and Twitter, that no one noticed. He didn’t even notice for two weeks.
Email for Salience
Email is highly visible. It is the biggest social network on the planet. Most business professionals spend their day in email. It is how they managing their work.
If email is not working for you, it is probably because of low frequency. Email is a personal medium, and we all are afraid of being seen as spammers by sending too much email.
In The Instant Curated E-Newsletter That Your Prospects Will Love I describe how to automatically create a relevant, frequent email from the industry articles that you are reading every day. You are curating the content, but other talented writers are doing the work.
All you have to do is bookmark relevant articles.
Read the article
5 Ways to Prepare for the Battle of the Landing Page
Landing Page OptimizationThey are not cunning enemies, and this is why they are dangerous. You must get good at playing their game.
Here are some tactics for beating gatekeepers at their own game.
1. Data is only useful to confuse and disorient
You must come to terms with the fact that data will not sway your enemies. It can be used as a weapon.
I recommend printing out random graphs and hanging them around your office. Anyone who comes in to say that the company logo on the page is too small will be instantly dazzled.
When your enemy is trying to get you to add the corporate site navigation bar to your landing page, you can point to one of the graphs at random and simply shake your head.
2. Bureaucracy is Your Friend
Take a lesson from your IT department when it is suggested that the page needs some stock photography on it. Say, “That is a great idea. We’ll add that to the testing schedule right away!”
If they go over your head, you should invoke the “No changes without a test plan!” rule even if such a rule is not written anywhere.
I know it is despicable to use a valuable tool like testing as a delaying tactic. It is actually supposed to do the opposite. But, this is war.
3. Use the Competition to Counter Old Habits
If you’re competition is enlightened, they may be implementing things like landing pages and doing it well.
Not likely. However, you should do some searches for the keywords that are important to your business and see if you can find a competitor doing things right.
Then, when IT delivers a form with the standard “Submit” button, you can point to your competition and say, “They’re going to take our prospects if we don’t do it my way!”
4. Invent Your Own Budget
When you encounter pushback to creating unique landing pages for each channel and ad, invoke an imaginary budget.
“We’re taking the extra cost from the Incremental Revenue Budget,” or “We’ll cover it with the Conversion Premium Budget.”
While these budgets don’t actually exist, we all know that higher conversion rates should result in more leads, more sales and more revenue. We’re just borrowing from the increased future value of our conversion genius.
5. Resist the Dark Side
It is important that you not become your enemy. There are “lies, damn lies and then there are analytics,” to paraphrase Mark Twain.
We know we can draw just about any conclusion we want from analytics to support any position we want, but we can’t do bad science.
For example, if our manager was adding corporate-speak to our crafted persuasive copy, it would be ingenuous to point out the bounce rates for the pages she’d edited in the past. It may not be her copy that did the damage.
Instead, invoke the “Great copy. We’ll add that to the test schedule right away!”
Fight hard, my friends, but don’t compromise the science.