Landing Page Optimization: An Essential Ingredient for Paid Search Success
“But is it really worth the investment?” a client recently asked 360 Partners, as we sat down with him to convince him of the value of improving his paid search landing page. To us it seemed like a no-brainer. He was directing his paid search traffic to a page that was designed for organic search and was full of elements that were intended for search engine spiders rather than people: lots and lots of text, no images, and a call to action button buried deep at the bottom of the page. Furthermore, the data indicated that his landing page was subpar: while average conversion rate in his industry is 5%, his page was converting at 2%. Nonetheless, he struggled with investing a large chunk of capital up front for an uncertain return.
360 Partners has repeatedly witnessed the monumental impact that a well-designed landing page can have on conversion rate. Some of our clients, though, don’t share our experience and understandably voice reservations in the face of our enthusiastic endorsement of landing page optimization: will the investment pay off? What if the new page doesn’t convert? Or, worse, reduces the conversion rate?
The potential pay-off can be well worth the risk: in the above-mentioned client’s case, 360 Partners launched a streamlined version of his landing page targeted for paid search traffic and almost immediately doubled his conversion rate, while cutting his cost-per-click in half. In just a couple months’ time, he stands to gain back his expenditure and then some. Now he is a fan of landing page optimization.
We view landing page optimization as an inseparable part of paid search marketing. The idea is not just about increasing the conversion rate on the page where you land your paid search traffic, but something bigger: the entire user experience. The user experience encompasses multiple steps in a buying process, all of which need to work together. You can’t focus on just getting traffic to your site. You need to ensure that the pages where you land the traffic are user-friendly and appealing, and that they meet your users’ expectations. We are often approached by prospective clients prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a paid search campaign, while planning to send all the traffic to a sub-optimal landing page. Because we hate to watch all that potential revenue go to waste, we will outline in the following paragraphs why your landing pages should take priority.
Why You Should Care about Landing Page Optimization
Of all the areas where you could invest your advertising dollars, your landing pages have some of the greatest potential for ROI. In fact, Forrester research recommends that 7 out of every 100 dollars of media spend be devoted to landing page optimization. 360 Partners agrees with Forrester’s suggestions and has seen numerous clients reap large ROI’s from improving their conversion rate. On top of that, landing page conversion is closely interlinked with paid search marketing. The quality of your page design can prefigure the overall success of a paid search campaign. Here’s why:
Paying for traffic to your website is a waste if it doesn’t convert – You may have a well-designed search campaign with wonderfully written advertisements, a targeted set of keywords and closely-calibrated bids, but what good is it all if the traffic bounces off your page once it reaches your site? Not to mention, since you’re paying for the traffic, don’t you want to make the best use of it?
Landing page quality has a campaign-wide impact – Adding some search new search terms to your account may get you some additional visitors, and improving your ads or changing your bids mayimprove costs for a portion of your ad groups. In the meantime, the quality of your landing pages affects the conversion rate and cost-per-click for every ad group in your account. A few poorly-designed landing pages can severely impede your overall account performance. On the bright side, this means that small improvements to your landing pages can lead to exponential gains in costs and conversion rate that will continue over time.
If your competitors care about landing page optimization and you don’t, you will lose – In less-sophisticated niches where the bidding is uncompetitive, 360 Partners has seen businesses succeed with some pretty lousy landing pages. Where competition is fierce, however, the prospects are different: if your competitors have higher-converting sites, they can afford to bid higher on their clicks. They’ll bid you right out of the search results. Your choice lies between improving your landing page conversion rate or exiting the market.
Some Principles for Landing Page Improvement
If we’ve sold you on landing page optimization by now, you may be wondering where to get started. There are companies that execute fairly sophisticated landing page strategies, from focusing on the smallest nuances of page design such as font size and button color, to segmenting their traffic and creating highly specialized pages for each segment. The details do matter; however, in 360 Partners’ experience, many companies are lacking the fundamentals of a well-designed page. We offer you the following guidelines to see how your landing page measures up:
Simplify, simplify, simplify – Businesses frequently have too many things competing for attention on the page where they land their traffic- too much text, too many competing offers, too many links, too many potential distractions. Your landing page design should be streamlined and focused on one thing: leading your user to a conversion. You should eliminate non-essential elements that detract from this purpose.
Example: The client that we highlighted in the introduction is a prime example of the power of simplicity. By replacing his busy, text-heavy page with a simple design consisting of a single photograph, some bulleted text and a short form, his conversion rate doubled.
Offer a clear call to action – Too often, landing pages do not clearly communicate what the purpose of the page is, because there is no call to action, or the call to action is obscured in a huge block of text, or it is lying in secret outside the visible area of the page. If you don’t explicitly tell your users what you want them to do (e.g “Fill out our free form now”), they will have a hard time figuring out what the next step is. Make it easy for them by putting a clear call to action in a prominent spot on the page. Include calls to action in all your buttons, and utilize the copy and page design to persuade users into taking the desired action, as well as leading their eye to the spot on the page where they should take action.
Example: 360 Partners encouraged a lead generation client to change the message in their generic “submit” button to “get quotes now.” Their conversion rate increased by 17%.
Make your landing pages work in tandem with your ads – Many businesses send all their traffic to their homepage. The homepage, which is generally designed to market a large variety of products to many different types of visitors, is a sub-optimal landing page in most cases. Better to have a page designed specifically for the product and messages in your advertisements. The page should match search queries as closely as possible, and should display any offers mentioned in your advertisements- such as free shipping or special discounts- in a very visible location.
Example: 360 Partners took over paid search for an online retailer from another search agency and discovered that most of the traffic was directed to their homepage. The client had some nicely designed product pages that had multiple times the conversion rate as the homepage and were a closer fit for product specific search queries. Product-related ad groups were redirected to these pages, and there was a boost in conversion.
Focus on the benefits to your customer – The temptation is to talk about yourself on your website,and many businesses fall into the trap of raving about the greatness of their company, while providing a laundry list of impressive-sounding features and utilizing a whole lot of jargon in the process. Meanwhile, all that potential customers really care about is how the product or service is going to save them money, or time, or solve a particular problem for them. Your page copy should be focused on what matters most to your customers, and it needs to be written in language that they can understand and relate to.
Example: A client reworded their page headline to mention the specific amount of cost savings that their product offers, and saw a 20% improvement in the conversion rate.
Reduce friction – In addition to persuading your users to move forward, you need to consider what may be holding them back. Could they have a lack of trust in your service? Include security logos (such as Verasign), privacy assurances and a link to your contact information and privacy policy on your page. Are they dubious about price, shipping or return policies? Give them easy access to this information on your page. You need to anticipate the information that your customers require to move forward in their decision process and to provide them easy access to it on the same page. The goal is to make the process as seamless as possible.
Example: 360 Partners ran a test on one of our own sites with an image of a padlock along with a privacy guarantee posted near a spot where we were collecting personal information. The test suggested a 15% improvement in conversion.
Keep in mind, this is just a general overview of what goes into a good landing page design and doesn’t address the finer points of design work, which is best left up to a designer. In fact, the best possible step you can take for creating better landing pages is to hire a page designer who has both a feel for design and an appreciation of website conversion, as these two things go hand in hand.
If you would like some more suggestions on improving your landing pages or your paid search campaign, 360Partners would be happy to provide an assessment of your site. We can share some of our insights from our successes with landing page optimization. Contact us today at searchmarketing@360partners.com for a free analysis.
