Ten landing page tips to turn visitors into customers

There’s something about a ten-item list that makes us want to get all Hestonian on you and break out the archaic pronouns, especially when it comes to something like getting people who visit your site to actually buy from you. After all, you work hard to get clicks. What could be more important than turning those clicks into customers?
But we’re kind of a live-and-let-live bunch here, and we’re not so big on telling people what they have to do. So consider these a set of suggestions about how to help optimize your landing pages. That way, when people get to your site, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.

1. Tell them why they should buy from you:

Clarity of your value proposition is the most important factor in determining whether a customer buys from you or not. Ask yourself the question: “Why should I buy from this site?”

2. Keep ‘em with you:

Protect your landing pages from the #1 threat to conversions: site flow disruption. After identifying a unique and compelling Value Proposition, you must ensure that you express it throughout your sales process in a clear, consistent and compelling way. Eliminate site flow disruption to help maximize conversions.

3. Don’t try to say too much:

Don’t clutter your landing page with unnecessary details. Instead:
• Clearly state your key message using as few words as possible
• Use summary descriptions, sub-headings, bulleted lists and short paragraphs
• Adopt a standard one-column format for easy reading.

4. Make it simple:

Improve the user experience with a site that is easy to navigate. A simple page layout that employs a clean visual and straightforward design is best. Here’s how:
• Design your site with a clear hierarchy with color and contrast for easily legible text
• Use meaningful and high-quality graphics (don’t clutter with too many)
• Use breadcrumbs to let visitors know where they are on your site
• Employ a clickable logo that takes the visitor to your homepage
• Use color to distinguish between visited and unvisited links.
Just as important, make sure you don’t:
• Employ horizontal scrolling
• Direct links to new browser windows
• Have flash-based content unless required.

5. Call them to action:

Focus on one primary action per screen (don’t stuff too many products onto one screen). Make the call-to-action button clearly visible without having to scroll; don’t bury it under pages of information. Consider using tabs or a pop-up box to consolidate information.

6. Get specific:

Provide product details and a large product image while displaying incentives—such as free shipping and warranty information—high on the page and close to the product. Don’t discourage visitors by requiring registration to your site.

7. Flaunt what you’ve got:

What differentiates you from your competitors? Free shipping (both ways?), discounts, a 365-day warranty, price protection, privacy, customer service, etc.? If you’ve got it, flaunt it!

8. Search yourself:

Make your site easy to navigate by helping potential customers find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. A search feature box should be simple and visible with a type-in field, not a link. To help increase conversions, make sure your search results link to product pages.

9. Rally the believers:

Credibility is a true testament: people don’t buy from websites, people buy from people. Thus, testimonials from devout customers—or even a letter from the CEO/Editor—persuades the unbelieving.

10. Let them make the choice:

“Why should I buy this specific product?” Almost every e-tailer forgets about this, but it’s the question that’s key to Mr. or Ms. Customer’s mind. Prove to him or her why they should buy this over the competitive product by offering reviews, ratings and comparisons.

– Amy Borowicz; Yahoo! Blog

Labels: blogs, clicks, conversion rates, ctr, landing pages, Yahoo

At the end of last week, I started receiving emails from Yahoo "informing me about the savings I've received for my account(s) due to Pricing Discounts":

"Pricing Discounts are designed to take quality into account in pricing traffic from Yahoo’s partner sites. This means that you may be charged less for certain clicks coming from partner sites depending on the quality of those clicks. Quality is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested customers to your website."
The email went on to outline which accounts I got pricing discounts in, listing out the days I received less than quality clicks, and the savings I received. The discounts were pretty good; for the couple days last month where I received discounts, it looks like I'm receiving over a 50% savings. Not so bad!

However, rather than finding out when a refund was going to be attributed to my accounts, Yahoo went on to outline "potential opportunities for reinvesting my pricing discounts" which included utilizing the team for keyword research, increasing bids on keywords that were effected, increasing terms that were otherwise unaffordable, etc. While this is all good (and its great to see Yahoo being proactive with our accounts), I'm left with feeling confused on just how these discounts are being applied, whether I talk to my rep about keyword research or not. I’m sure the goal is to have us spend more on account of these discounts, but I’ll let you know what I find out.

Labels: search engine marketing, Yahoo, yahoo pricing discounts, ysm

When Panama first launched earlier this year, it may have not been an overnight success, but the more time I spend working inside Yahoo’s new search marketing platform, the more impressed I am.

My favorite Panama discovery to date occurred a couple months after Panama launched. While Yahoo has not yet come up with an equivalent to Google Editor, one of my favorite aspects of the AdWords platform, they do have the next best thing…the ability to convert third party campaigns. Now, when I traffic a new campaign in Google, I download the campaign from Editor and upload it to Yahoo’s converter. Yahoo converts the file into a format suitable for Panama. All I have to do is make any necessary changes and then upload the new file.

Since learning about Panama’s converter, trafficking new campaigns has been much quicker, leaving me more time to focus on optimization. I can’t wait to learn what Panama has in store next!

Labels: Panama, PPC management, trafficking, Yahoo