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Conversion / Testing

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Landing Page Optimization Silver Bullets Tim Ash , CEO, SiteTuners.com - Dec 1, 2009

I have spoken many times on the topic of "Landing Page Testing and Tuning." A common audience question is: "Can you give me some tips that always increase conversions?" Unfortunately there are no such "silver bullets" that work in all circumstances, but the following broad themes have been very useful to me. These are not specific prescriptions, but rather promising areas and directions for your own testing explorations.

Less Is More

Although the general idea of uncluttering is powerful throughout the decision process, this testing theme has an especially powerful impact on improving visitor awareness. If visitors do not recognize quickly that you have something in which they might be interested, they will leave your site immediately. These short-timers are the ones who have "bounced" and not clicked on any other links from their original landing page. They represent a significant problem.

Within this problem lies the opportunity for clearing away the clutter and significantly increasing the number of people who have meaningful interactions with your site.

"Less is more" applies to a whole range of test elements:

• Fewer and smaller graphics
• Shorter bulleted text
• Reduced number of choices and links

Cut until you can't stand it any more, and then cut some more. You will be surprised at how little content is needed on a well-designed, direct-response landing page. Don't be afraid to try radically stripped-down alternative test elements.

Personalize It

Personalization builds desire and affinity for your particular solution. Customization can be a powerful conversion tool. Personalization can be tested using a wide array of available tactics.

Some examples include:

• Echo the keywords that visitors used to find your landing page as the page title
• Pre-populate your search box with the text of the keywords that visitors used to find your landing page
• Present localized content by using geo-targeting information
• Don't require people to log in if they have been there before
• Fill in checkout information for returning e-commerce buyers
• Customize content by visitor role once someone has self-selected
• Allow visitors to configure your product or service offering
• Display deeper or richer content to those who have shown enough commitment (based on page views or time on your site)
• Show last-minute special offers via exit pop-ups to visitors who are about to leave your site without converting
• Follow up by phone or e-mail if someone abandons your registration process partway
• Proactively initiate a live chat session if your visitor is clearly struggling with something on your site

Of course, you have to be careful to use personalization properly. It can be very effective. However, if your tactics are unexpected, they can backfire and become off-putting in a "big brother" sort of way.

Some of the suggested testing elements above require the use of a content management system and multiple session tracking, or even tie-ins to your customer relationship management (CRM) or sales force automation (SFA) systems. New segmentation, targeting, and business trigger capabilities are also becoming increasingly common in Web authoring and testing tools. But even without these, many personalization tuning elements can be implemented by the use of simple cookies and information extracted from the visitor's browser environment settings.

Test the Offer

Ultimately, it is your offer that gets a visitor to act. However, when considering specific testing elements there are a lot of ways that you can influence someone:

• The primary offer
• The total solution surrounding the offer
• Headline
• Sales copy
• Images chosen
• Call-to-action text and graphical format
• Repetition of the call-to-action in multiple screen locations and formats
• Offer context, such as bracketing the desired action in a bronze/silver/gold set of
• options
• Limited availability or other scarceness indicators (e.g., deadlines, remaining
• inventory)
• Pricing

No single silver bullet will increase sales, but if you experiment diligently with the ideas above, you're likely to see a significant boost in conversions.

Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners.com, a landing page optimization firm that offers conversion consulting, full-service, guaranteed-improvement tests, and software tools to improve conversion. SiteTuners' unique AttentionWizard.com visual attention simulation software tool can be used on a landing page screenshot or mock-up to quickly identify major conversion issues. Tim has worked with many leading companies and is a highly-regarded speaker at Internet marketing conferences. He is a contributing columnist to several industry publications and is the author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization.