I was thinking recently of all the steps that go into building a successful campaign. What is the most important? There are so many factors that can make or break a campaign and so many tools out there to help with each step. But for me, the biggest impact on the success of a campaign is landing page optimization.
Why is landing page optimization in general so critical to every campaign? Most of your costs are relatively fixed: traffic costs, payouts, etc. But your conversion rate off the landing page is one variable that can skyrocket the profitability of a campaign. Imagine taking a 2% converting lander and with smart optimization bumping that up to 15%. What could that do to your bottom line? There is just no other factor that can make as big of a difference as your landing page conversion rate. Take any failed campaign, and I can almost guarantee the landing page wasn’t optimized and tested enough.
So what is the best tool out there?
The Google website optimizer. This is a tool that a private company could charge $100/mo for and it would be well worth it, but luckily it’s free. If you aren’t familiar with the tool, it’s basically allows you to create test scenarios on various sections of your landing page to see which combinations lead to better results. There are basically 2 types of tests you can do
1. A/B test is where you set up 2 completely different versions of a page and see which one performs better. This is similar to testing 2 ads in your PPC campaign.
2. The other test is multivariate, where you can test changes to multiple sections of your landing page simultaneously on higher traffic pages. The results of these experiments are presented in statistically valid results. I recommend multivariate for obtaining the fastest results.
Check out these videos or quick start guide for a good overview.
Learning this tool inside and out and committing to never-ending testing on landing pages has probably been one of the biggest factors in my successes online. Testing never stops, because as good as a page might be working, you never know which tweak will blow the previous versions away. Simply put, if you aren’t optimizing your landing pages with a tool like the Google optimizer, you are losing money!
Amen. The book that has made the most difference to my bottom line in the last 6 months is ‘Landing Page Optimization’ by Tim Ash.
Yes, Tim is the man when it comes to this stuff. Great book and he’s always at the conferences to talk to as well.
This requires to place the Google conversion pixel on the advertisers thank-you page and puts you to the risk of getting slapped pretty fast.
I assume this works only in certain niches and with well established websites/LPs. Any thoughts on that?
Yes, you have to place tracking code on thank you pages or intermediate pages depending on what you are tracking. I use it for almost everything I do, not just certain niches. But if you are worried about slaps you are probably going to get slapped whether you are using the optimizer or not…
I like the idea of automatically optimizing every aspect of a web page and the total web site.
Wouldn’t it be cool to optimize the click-troughs on every link and sign-ups to an email?
Is there any problem in handing over all your conversion data to Google?
Wow, I had no idea Google web optimizer could be worth that much. We’re quite lucky to be getting to use it. Thanks for the guides.
Till then,
Jean
Thanks for the great tip off! This blog has some really wonderful ideas! Thanks for sharing all your knowledge! I appreciate it! Feel free to visit me sometime
agreed. split testing can be a great point of separation between you and your competition.
The best way of landing page optimization is to balance the use of keywords.
Never ever stop striving to improve your landing pages – small tweaks can be golden nuggets – and test test test.
Tim Ash and his book, ‘Landing Page Optimization’, rock.
top factor is a bit much, but it is a fairly large one in increasing conversion rate.
Yes, landing page optimization is important factor. I don’t try Google website optimizer, but now i’ll try it. Thanks.
I agree that you can never underestimate the power of improving your landing pages. You can get a ton of traffic, but the smallest details can be really lowering your overall site income.