SMX - Landing Page Testing & Optimization

Session Info

Moderator: Andy Atkins-Kruger (Managing Director, WebCertain Europe Ltd)

Speakers:

• Graham Cooke
  eCommerce Project Manager, Google Inc.
• Anders Hjorth
  Independent Consultant, Innovell
• Jon Myers
  Head of Search / Associate Director, MediaVest
• Mark Simpson
  Managing Director, Maxymiser

Inhalt: Landing Pages - die Seiten, die ein Webseitenbesucher zuerst zu Gesicht bekommt, wenn er von einer Suchmaschine (oder anderes Medium) kommt - sind mit Abstand einer der größten Faktoren einer erfolgreichen Webseite. Daher ist das testen und optimieren von Landing Pages von hoher Bedeutsamkeit. In dieser Session werden Tools gezeigt, wie man Landing Pages optimiert, als auch worauf man Acht geben muss bei der Optimierung selbst.

Session Inhalt

• 13.00: Andy: volunteered to moderate this session. today is a mixture of search engine agencys and product owner. it starts of with the google view.

• 13.00: Graham: Why improving conversion shouldn’t cost the earth. we take a realistic view of landing page optimization.

• 13.01: Q: Who does landing page optimization? 10% of people in the audience

• 13.02: there is a missing link in optimization.

• 13.02: optimising for conversion is about understanding basic human nature, technology and business goals. focus on driving conversion within a framework.

• 13.03: analytics can derrive the problems on your site.

• 13.03: use a web usability framework and analytics to prioritize the areas to fix first.
  • Find (Find product category, Find product within category),
  • choose (category proposition, product proposition),
  • buy (sales proposition, checkout utility).
    it is important to optimize your landing pages. dual approach to optimize landing page and web journey

• 13.04: monitor your optimization! and set actions KPIs.

• 13.05: google tested their own products (google adwords) using google analytics. they did multivariate experiement. they wrote the possible variations down. (WRITE IT DOWN ON NOTEPAD).

• 13.06: created different headings, blurbs, buttons.

• 13.06: using detailed graphical reporting make it possible to identify opportunitie

• 13.07: making small changes can attract +56% to buy the product or not.

• 13.08: you can test every aspect of your website. identify, using analytics and optimize with optimizer.

• 13.08: use analytics to measure where the biggest opportunities to test are, build out simple a multivariate test using a tool such as website optimizer, use the results to determine scale plan, scale successful results across the site

• 13.09: Andy: we move to an agency view

• 13.09: Anders: Do it yourself guide

• 13.10: why do landing pages work? most of us don’t have the same amount of traffic like google to test website

• 13.11: Designer are taught consistency and repetition.

• 13.12: level 1 personalisation: with landing page optimization you know the visitor. Lading page design should make use of the information that you get from search engines (language, demography,…). in Site design people don’t think about this data and the availability

• 13.13: #1 secret of landing page design: eliminate every other element that is not needed

• 13.15: Conversion cues: colour scheme; everything the user needs is on the page; price, distribution, packaging, promotional, offers; simple wording, persuasive efficient, call-to-action, hero image

• 13.17: why do landing page projects fail?
  landing pages are the responsibility of marketing but participation or sign off is requered from:
  1. communication dept: brand
  2. chief technical officer
  3. web developtment team / hosting
  4. sometimes even legal

• 13.18: too many chefs. “You can do anything you like as long as you repsect corporate brand identity”, “Feel free to suggest any changes in the editorial just don’t touch the layout”.

• 13.19: Development cycle of a landing page is just too long. Objectives, Brief, Design, Validation,…

• 13.20: Off-page factors: All clicks are not equal!
  • Free domain name != cheap domain name != domain name
  • Premium position click != side bar click != page 2 click
  • clicks from content networks != clicks from search
  • most landing page testing assumes all clicks are equal
  • differences in the click are more significatn than difference in the color or the page.

• 13.21: landing page projects fail: because it takes too long, too many people and opinions. because the project leader does not have a veto right

• 13.21: recipe for a successful LP project: build af ramework of brand contsants design,…

• 13.21: 123 it’s done: Establish goals and subgoals, benchmark existing pages and competition, build a “best alternative” approcah, get validation for alternative page, A/B/B test against existing page, establish sufficient volumes (link) of homogeneous traffic (brand or gen keyword), run your first test cycle

• 13.22: Jon: 13.2 seconds to proove that the visitor is on the right site after search

• 13.23: is the market for pages? the market is getting more competitive. they is a need to stand out, more than ever a need to optimize, ppc is utilising the “Relevancy Principles” of SEO, The Home page is genereally not a good landing page.

• 13.24: Reason 1: SEO and PPC become “One”?
  advertising relevancy, google rewards your advertising placement and cost with landing page as part of quality score.

• 13.25: sales optimized: it is important that basic optimization principles are followed: deep linking, offer driven (make the reason to stay compelling), easy navigation, sales focus >test and test again.

• 13.26: Cross selling? - are you cross selling other goods? The amazon way! test
  • messaging- how much copy do you have and is it compelling?
  • navigation - keep the searcher on track and navigating to sale not away

• 13.27: once you have the fundamentals of a good page optmized, test the hot spots with eye tracking or click tracking.

• 13.28: 1.8 seconds & 1 glance to connvince a searcher to click through. consumers are less likely to purchase from a brand that doesnt appear on page 1 on google.

• 13.33: the SERPs become more “sticky”, more interaction occurs at the search engine stage. the 1.8 seconds increases with the opportunity to view websites and offers “without click”

• 13.35: “technology only gives you the tools to test out your theories.”

• 13.36: Mark: Stop driving traffic, start selling

• 13.37: case: seatwave ticketing website, selling tickets online. two different buttons online: “buy” or “select”; new button - 27% increase in clicktroughs. and 3% decrease in sales!

• 13.38: what is conversion management? the more traffic driven the lower conversion rates get; traffic is being managed, conversion is being reported on

• 13.39: A/B testing takes one element from a web page and trials it against a second variation.

• 13.39: alliance leicester landing page variation; landing page as list elements is preferred (google introduced that very well). 95% of the audience was thinking the wrong version converts better.

• 13.40: testing method: manual (traditional) or automatic (continious optimization). key areas for MVT:
  • testing header banners
  • testing size of pictures
  • various different type of texts
  • different type of buttons and colors
  • converting “sidebars”

• 13.42: sometimes (during registration process) it is better to have 2 page registration, rather than 1 big page

• 13.44: different form designs need to be tested. even though the same things asked, with a different form you can make an increase in terms of registration.

• 13.47: through testing and targeting and making proper changes, you will gain an uplift in terms of conversion.

• 13.48: what can conversion management solutions do for you? it makes your web site perform better
  • it lowers CPAs
  • increases ROI

Q&A

• 13.49:
  • Anders: stop thinking, start testing! sometimes we get high performing page elements just by testing, leave the gut feeling.
  • mark: have done a lot of tests in the checkout process and up- / crossselling pages. it doesn’t work on all sites though.
  • graham: “one never fits all” - testing checkouts will ALWAYS have influence on the conversion rate.
  • mark: first party cookie is going set for tracking purposes,
  • graham: volume and traffic is a must. 93 days to get significant data, it takes time to evaluate.

• 13.56: anders: you don’t get solid results if you don’t let the test run long enough