Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Happier Landings

In the past six months or so, I’ve helped three B-to-B clients test and refine their landing pages.

More than ever I’m impressed with how seemingly minor changes in copy and layout can bring significant boosts in conversion.

While I can’t share specific proprietary information about these tests, I can give you some general tips on what you might try if your conversion rates seem low.

First, let me clarify that these landing page tests were designed to improve results for sales lead generation. Prospects are offered free information offers (white papers, case studies, webinars, etc.) in exchange for filling out a form.

There are indeed other types of landing pages, but these suggestions are specifically based on my experience with lead generation for complex sales.

So here are my five tips for boosting landing page conversion:

1) Leave out your usual navigation

Your web designer may wish to lay out a landing page based on your usual sub-level page navigational structure, but this is usually not a good idea if lead capture is your goal.

While your web site itself should be extensively interlinked, your landing pages should be mostly self contained. Too many choices means too much competition for attention.

Sure, it would be nice for a prospect to explore your site, but keep in mind that your goal is a conversion. A prospect who is encouraged to click off your landing page often does not return – and that means fewer leads for your sales team.

Yet complete self containment isn’t a good approach either, so the best way to approach this is to omit your usual site navigation and place a few small text links at the bottom of your page.

These text links could lead to a page about your company, a page about your product or solution (as long as it is relevant to your offer), and a contact page.

2) Incorporate a tangible representation of your offer

Way before the Internet came along, B-to-B direct marketers knew from testing that showing a picture of a white paper or case study on a reply card brings higher response than with no picture.

This is probably because the image takes the offer out of a rather nebulous and hypothetical realm and reinforces it as something tangible, helpful, and available for not much effort.

The actual cover of your white paper may indeed suit this purpose, but if it seems somewhat plain when you reduce it to an appropriate size, you might want to ask your designer to jazz it up a little.

As long as the title is the same, nobody will really care that the picture of the white paper doesn’t exactly match the actual cover. For a webinar, you could use a screen shot.

The best location for this image is at the left and just below the top of the page.

3) Keep everything short and sweet (and relevant)

Landing page copy should be short, the tighter the better.

Place a succinct headline above the image of your offer and make sure it pays off the promise of all its benefits. Expand on this with a caption of no more than about 25 to 30 words placed below the image.

The rest of copy should rely extensively on bullet points. Use bold text for the first two or three words of each bullet point and make certain those words resonate clearly with the benefits of the offer, not features of your product,

Indeed, you should avoid too much emphasis on your product or solution. That’s not why prospects are coming to your landing page. Promoting your solution comes later – after a prospect coverts to a lead.

Add relevance by making sure that the headline delivers continuity with the previous copy. By previous copy, I mean the email, ad, search engine listing, etc. that the prospect was viewing just before clicking to your page.

If, for example, you sell comprehensive network security – and your prospect came from a search using the word “spyware,” make sure that word appears prominently. If the prospect came from a search for “anti-virus,” use that word instead.

The closer your landing page copy reinforces what the prospect was viewing immediately before clicking to your page, the better your conversion rates will be.

4) Don’t ask for too much information

You want prospects to complete your form, but the more information you ask for, the less likely it is you’ll get a conversion. So ask yourself, what do you really need?

For example, many forms seem to request a fax number, but does your sales team really need this? Wouldn’t they rather have more leads with no fax number than fewer leads with fax numbers?

What you really need is the basic contact information – name, title, company, address, phone, and email. Asking for more means a dropoff in conversion. This dropoff is rather moderate with about two additional questions, but it’s severe if you ask for much more than that.

If you’re going to ask questions beyond the basic contact information, make these questions easy to answer. Ask a question and then offer four or five radio buttons for the answer. Massive dropdown menus seem to be a great barrier to getting the information you’re looking for.

If you do ask for extensive information, you can expect leads that are far more qualified, but you’ll get fewer of them. If your goal is make darned sure a lead is well qualified before your sales team will even bother making a phone call to follow up, then you should definitely ask for the information you need.

But if your priority is quantity, ask for less information upfront and let the sales representative gather the additional information on purchase intent, etc.

Oh, and be sure to reassure the prospect that the information won’t be shared. A good place to put this language is next the field where you ask for email address.

5) Provide a logical next step

Once a prospect completes your form and downloads your information, don’t just serve them a standard thank you page. Give them some additional options.

Now is the time to start selling your product or solution. You could offer links to additional white papers, case studies, data sheets, etc. or invite the prospect to explore some specific pages of your site.

Bear in mind that your prospect may want to read your information later, but you can expect some additional traffic to your main site, provided you promote this option to your prospect once the form is completed.

Perhaps you are already incorporating these best practices into your landing pages, but if not, I think you can expect some big improvements.

You spend an awful lot of money getting prospects to your landing page. Make sure it works as hard as possible so you can leverage every opportunity to build your prospect database and keep your sales pipeline full.

Posted by Richard Bloch

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