Version User Scope of changes
Apr 2 2008, 8:35 PM EDT (current) santaed 3 words added, 2 words deleted
Apr 2 2008, 8:32 PM EDT santaed 1430 words added

Changes

Key:  Additions   Deletions
17 Steps to Squeeze the Highest Possible Return Out of Your Website Marketing Investment... 17 Steps

Before I jump into the 17 ways let me define some terms.

What is a Landing Page?
In online marketing, a landing page is a specific web page that a visitor reaches after clicking a link from a search engine listing (FREE of sponsored) or any other online advertisement. You can even direct visitors to landing pages in off line advertisements by adding something like get your free money saving coupon at www.mysite.com/COUPON. Often, a landing page will feature content that is mentioned in the link or ad. In the case of Google's FREE listings the landing page is optimized for a specific keyword term or phrase in order to obtain high rankings..

What is a Conversion?
A conversion is getting your visitor to take the action you WANT them to take once they get to your website. The desired action may be submitting a sales lead, making a purchase, viewing a key page of the site, downloading a whitepaper, or some other measurable action.

1) Improving your conversion ratio does not increase your costs. You’ve already invested the money to attract visitors to your website, improving your conversion ratio allows you to get a better return on that investment. In other words...

2) By improving your conversion ratio, you now generate higher revenue from those same prospects.

Let’s say you spend $2,000 per month to at attract visitors to your website, say this generates 4,000 visitors, if your conversion rate is 5%, and your average order value is $100. This generates $20,000 per month in revenue.

By achieving just a 10% improvement in your conversion ratio, that is simply going to 5.5%, your sales rise to $22,000 per month. That’s $24,000 in incremental FOUND revenue at the end of the year, and each year to follow. A 20% conversion rate improvement grosses $48,000 NEW INCOME per year.

How Much Does This New "FOUND REVENUE" Cost You? Nothing!

3) Higher revenue, for the same cost, means your margins or profitability just improved significantly. In my example, a 10% conversion rate improvement drops the expense to revenue ratio from 10% to 9%. A 20% improvement drops it to 8.3%, and so on. I hope you are seeing the whole picture here. Very SMALL improvements will have a HUGE impact on your Bottom Line.

OK... Here Are The 17 Steps

1. Install Google Analytics
Few things can influence your website success more than the response and conversion rates produced by your marketing and advertising efforts.

Google Analytics allows you to easily track what is working and what isn't. Google Analytics is free, very easy to use will allow you to pinpoint problems areas as well as track the ROI on your Internet marketing investments..
2. Thoroughly Define Your Target Market
It’s very hard to fight the tendency to want to appeal to as many people as possible, but the more specific you can be the better your results will be.

3. Start With Your Landing Page
Create a landing page that’s going to convert well, then build the ad out from there.

4. Match the Ad
Conversions are higher when landing pages are tied to specific ads, and they should follow through on the creative expressed in the ad. What I see time and again is that people make an offer on an ad, and then fail to make the offer on the landing page.

5. Long Copy vs. Short Copy
Conventional direct marketing wisdom is that long copy always wins over short copy. Well, not always. Recent tests show that while long copy wins over short copy in some cases, short copy performs better than long copy in others. Of course, a lot depends on the quality of the copy. So the only way you will know what’s going to work for your site is to test it.

Don’t automatically assume that long copy (or short copy) is going to work better for your site - no matter what some copywriting or online marketing gurus tell you.

The “keep it simple, make it clear” short copy landing pages featured:
Large typeface
Above the fold for 800x600 resolution design
Big Action Buttons

6. Credibility Icons
Signing up with organizations like the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Hacker Safe and displaying their logos on your site can often significantly increase your conversions.

7. Security Assurance in Order Form or Shopping Cart
Test adding a few lines of content prominently in your order form or shopping cart page assuring visitors about the security of their financial and personal data increases conversions. This often proves to be a very important variable especially if your target audience tends to be somewhat older in age, or somewhat new to purchasing things on the Internet.

8. Header Present vs. Not Present
Landing pages must always have a good-looking header at the top of the page, right? Wrong. Several tests have found that removing the banner led to a large increase in conversions.

9. Submit Button / Order Button Text
If you have a short copy landing page test the text used in the Submit button or Order button. A lot of people who have a landing page with a form use the word “Submit” as the caption of the Submit button. Tests indicate that you may be able to get a large increase in conversions by testing a more descriptive Submit button (like “Download Now”).

10. Audio/Video Message
A lot of online marketing gurus recommend that you add an audio message welcoming people to your site and explaining what your product does. While this can definitely increase your conversions in some cases, we’ve often seen this reducing conversions significantly as well. So if you are planning to add an audio or video message, make sure to test it first to determine whether it is really increasing your conversion rate.

11. Testimonials
Adding as many testimonials as possible to your landing page always increases conversions, right? Not so. I just studied 2 case where adding testimonials didn’t help. In one case, the landing page already had a lot of testimonials.

12. Urgency
Is there an incentive for people to order from your website right now instead of postponing their purchase until later? If not, you should test an offer (a discount, a free gift, etc.) that is linked to a sense of urgency so that your customers order right away instead of deciding that they need more time to think about it.

13. Headline
You probably already know that the headline can have a huge impact on your conversions. Along with the price, the headline tends to produce the maximum increases in the conversion rate of a landing page. So make sure that you test your headline to find out which headline will work best.

14. Price
It surprises me that so many online marketers don’t bother to test the price of their products to find out the price point that will maximize their profits. Instead, they simply set their price based on what their competitors are doing (or worse, based on gut feel) and as a result, they end up over-pricing or under-pricing their products. TEST, TEST, TEST!!!

15. When using Google Analytics...
...use a separate landing page for each ad. This makes it easy to track where each click is coming from. You know that everyone in this bucket was from this ad.

16. A Single Purpose
The main and most visible link should be the one that gets viewers to do the action you want them to do. You may have a subtle link to your home page for people who want more information.

17. Thank you pages for the Bump
The place for other offers is the thank-you page. That’s your opportunity to say, ‘Hey, if you like that offer, now’s your chance to...,’.

BONUS INFO
Tip #1. Test only one page at a time
This seems obvious, but it’s surprising how often people will change every page on a site, test performance and then realize that they don’t know which changes had the greatest effect. By testing one page, you turn the rest of your site into a control mechanism and ensure you get valid results.

Tip #2. Warn search engine spiders away from extra test pages
You could be penalized by search engines if your site appears to have several duplicate (aka mirror) pages. It’s a good rule of thumb to always include basic code that tells search engine spiders that duplicate test pages are not to be indexed.