Is Your Landing Page Working?
Saturday, 29 November 2008 10:12
After writing an overview of landing pages, I received a question about testing your landing pages. Here is a brief overview of the simplest form of testing.
Web Analytics
Before we begin testing you need to have some kind of web analytics software to gather data about the visitors to your website. Because I use Google Analytics the article will be geared towards this package however, I'm sure there are many ways to accomplish the same thing. Check out my post on getting Google Analytics set up on your website.
Choose a Testing Method
There are two main methods of testing, A/B split testing and multivariate testing. Here are basic definitions of each:
A/B Split Testing - This method uses two completely different pages and compares the outcomes.
Multivariate Testing - This method uses variables defined within a page comparing which variables and combinations of variables produce the desired results.
We will focus on the much simpler A/B method for the remainder of this article. I highly recommend Landing Page Optimization by Tish Ash for more in depth coverage of this topic.
Create Your Pages
The first step is to create at least two versions of a landing page with the same desired outcome. Landing pages should be brief, to the point and action-oriented. Tell your visitor what the next step is, don't make them guess.
Pay-Per-Click vs. Search Engine Optimization
To test what is working and what isn't you have to get traffic to your website. There are two main ways to do this, pay-per-click advertising and organic SEO. Because there is generally a conflict between good consumer-oriented copy (the information you provide to get a visitor to convert) and search engine optimized copy (the information a search engine looks for to determine your rank in search results), a good landing page should probably rely on PPC. This allows you to focus on one task, getting visitors to convert.
Setup Goals
Once you have landing pages coded (including the JavaScript for Google Analytics), you will need to setup goals. Goal tracking in Google Analytics allows you to view the reverse path of users who completed a set goal.
A goal can be a web form submission, either to sign up for your newsletter or request a quote, make a purchase, download a file or whitepaper or anything else. Let's say the goal is to request more information using a web form. You will need to setup a thank you page that visitors will get redirected to once they have submitted this form. Enter the URL of this page as a goal through the Google Analytics website.
To setup a goal in Google Analytics click the 'edit' link on the right-hand side of the screen for the website you would like to create a goal for. The second heading on this page will read 'Conversion Goals and Funnel', under this heading will be G1, G2, G3, etc. To the far right of each of these will be an 'edit' link, click it. Here you can setup your goal.
Once you have setup your pages, your PPC campaign, and your goals, you simply have to drive traffic to your website and see what happens. Which version of your landing page results in form submissions for this example? Keep the one that works and try another variation. You can make small incremental changes to the page or sweeping changes, but the goal here is to keep improving your conversation rate.
Is That It?
Umm... no. Landing page testing can be as complex as you want it to be. I intentionally left out references to standard deviation, binomial distributions and other fun-filled aspects of statistics. Please don't look so disappointed! Again, this is something you can invest endless amounts of time, money and effort into and this article should serve as nothing more than a basic primer.
