Optimizing Landing Pages for Multichannel Marketing

Strictly defined, a landing page is a singular web page that’s built to receive visitors from a defined subset of a target audience. These pages are responsible for persuading visitors to heed calls to action that will fulfill a marketer’s conversion goals.

The average person may think that all landing pages do is capture email addresses, but that’s not the case. Landing pages may also be used to facilitate downloads, persuade visitors to subscribe to newsletters, show videos, pitch sales, upsell existing customers, or offer other navigational options.

Technically, any web page that’s being used as the go-to destination for advertising and SEO can be classified as a landing page. This is particularly true in multi-channel marketing where different promotional avenues may require different configurations and styles of landing pages that are best fitted to receive the kind of traffic that each channel pushes.

Optimizing a Landing Page

Advertising and SEO aren’t enough to turn visits into qualified leads. Most of the time, marketers have to do varying levels of optimization to make sure the pages get good visibility while serving up good user experiences that encourage conversions. Here are nine steps to optimize a landing page for various promotional channels:

1. Determine the Landing Page’s Purpose

The first step in creating a functional landing page is deciding what it’s for. Are you using it to generate leads? Perhaps to pitch a sale? Whatever it is, the purpose has to be solitary and focused. Trying to get a visitor to do more than one thing usually leads to confusion and failure.

The landing page’s purpose sets the tone for everything from its headline to the body text and right down to its call to action. Keep in mind that Internet browsing attention span is short and volatile. If you bore or confuse your audience, your conversion rate suffers. Keep the messaging simple and united at all times.

2. Identify and Set the Value Proposition

In marketing, it’s never about you and what you want. It’s always about what’s in it for the target audience and how you can leverage that to get what you want in the process. That principle applies strongly to landing pages. It’s never about you, your mailing list or your sales figures. It’s always about the perceived value that your audience will get from absorbing your content and heeding your call to action.

When writing the copy, make the promise explicit every step of the way. Tell the reader how your offering either increases their pleasures or takes away their pains. Write about that in the opening paragraph and make it lead nicely to the benefit statement. Underscore your offers other benefits by enumerating them in short but impactful bullet points. Lastly, make it clear that your audience can only help you fulfill your promise by taking on your call to action.

3. Create at Least Two of Each Element

Landing page design and copywriting aren’t the most exact of sciences. You may have every reason to think that one headline or color scheme is better than another, but the majority of your audience could think otherwise. For that reason, testing is an essential part of landing page optimization. It provides empirical data straight from the field that helps you assess which parts of your landing page are working and which ones need to be improved.

Practically anything in a landing page can be tested. Headlines, buttons, calls-to-action and color palettes can be exposed to a sample set of the audience to gauge visitor responses. Tools such as Google Analytics can streamline the process and help you crunch the numbers for accurate result analysis.

There are two main types of testing used in landing page optimization: A/B testing and multivariate testing. A/B testing, also known as split testing, is the type that switches out singular landing page elements to see which one performs better. Multivariate tests, on the other hand, are experiments that measure which combination of elements performs best.

4. Determine Where the Page Fold is

In newspaper parlance, the fold is the not-so-imaginary line separating the top half from the bottom half of a broadsheet. The most important headlines, images, and news stories are placed above the fold while everything else is positioned below it.

We may be in a day and age where news publications have gone online and folds no longer exist as we knew them, but they go on in a different form. As far as web pages go, “above the fold” pertains to the area that’s immediately visible when the page fully loads. This area is prime online real estate and it will determine whether or not the majority of your audience will stay and scroll down.

Having said that, it’s crucial for a landing page to position vital elements such as the headline and important images above the fold. The promise of value has to be sensed by the audience within a few seconds and without scrolling down.

Granted, users will vary in devices and screen resolution preferences which means the fold may vary from person to person. However, you can compensate for that by planning for what the majority will use. For desktop devices, it’s a safe bet to assume that the average screen resolution will be 1600×900 or close variants of that.

Smartphones and tablets may have totally different display specifications and you’ll want to cater for them with either mobile-friendly counterparts of your landing pages or well-planned responsive webpages that scale down accurately to the devices viewing them.

5. Apply Basic SEO

Search engine traffic is still the best driver of qualified visitors to a landing page. Make sure to use keywords in important elements such as title tags, header tags, image alternate text and body copy. Make sure you use canonical URLs and if you can direct some internal and external links to the landing page, by all means do so.

Even when you’re not relying on organic search traffic to feed visitors to your landing page, you should still apply these optimizations. Title tags and meta descriptions display prominently when your landing page URL is shared on social media. PPC bots also crawl landing pages and award relevance points when these important SEO elements are filled in accurately. Basic SEO doesn’t require a lot of effort but it will reward your landing page in more ways than one.

6. Make Sure It’s Mobile-Friendly

By the end of 2014, it was reported that mobile Internet use has officially surpassed desktop usage. This is a huge development and the trend seems to only be getting started.

The mobile web is a big, open market and early adopters are bound to be rewarded. If you want to tap the latest evolution of the Internet as we know it, it’s in your best interest to make your landing pages mobile-friendly.

7. Remove Unnecessary Links

Think of links within your landing page as exit routes. The more of them you have, the greater the chances that visitors will wander off somewhere and never come back. To maximize your conversion rate, it’s usually best to have only one clickable item: the call-to-action button. This helps you funnel your traffic more easily towards the kind of user action that results in the fulfilment of your conversion goals.

Links aren’t bad per se, but make sure you absolutely have to have them before you place them on the landing page. Examples of these links are the ones leading to your privacy policy and terms of use. Just make sure they’re set up to open in new tabs or windows so you don’t end up pulling visitors away from the landing page itself.

8. Add Social Proof

Social proof is the psychological phenomenon where people assume that the actions and thoughts of others is the correct one. More often than not, adding elements of social proof to a landing page helps increase conversion rates by reducing the audience’s perception of risk.

By that token, badges, testimonials and statistics help you build a better case for your call to action. Social proof widgets are usually placed either on the sidebars or the bottom part of the landing page. They’re completely optional but they’re great to have whenever you can get hold of them.

9. Track it All with Analytics

No matter how good your landing page does when you launch it, there’s always room for you to improve it en route to better conversion rates. Track it with Google Analytics or other web analytics platforms and monitor key metrics such as bounce rates, average times on the page and conversion rates.

This will help you measure user engagement and understand visitor behaviour. It will also shed insights on whether or not you need to make adjustments in order to get the most out of the page and the promotions you’re doing.

Finished

Using landing pages for multichannel marketing isn’t the most exact of sciences and it needs constant testing with corresponding adjustments to yield the best results. Keep refining your craft and better traction won’t be far behind.

Image Source: Outlined IT Icons via Shutterstock.

The post Optimizing Landing Pages for Multichannel Marketing appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

No related posts.

Optimizing Landing Pages for Multichannel Marketing

10 Methods for Optimizing Your Forms for Mobile Devices

Ask any average grownup what object they can’t leave the house without and you’ll get, along with keys and wallets, mobiles for an answer. With mobile device manufacturers sprouting one after another, and with them releasing models better than the last, it’s virtually impossible to not subscribe to the growing trend.

2014 data reveals that in the USA alone, 90% of adults have a mobile phone, and that 58% of them are smartphone owners. 42% of Americans are also recorded to own a tablet computer. In a separate report, eMarketer projected a smartphone ownership of 1.75 billion worldwide by the end of 2014.

These numbers only prove that mobile devices have crossed the border of being a luxury to becoming a basic necessity. If, in the past, our phones were only a mere instrument for communication, today we rely on them when we’re working, entertaining, and shopping.

Optimizing Forms for Mobile Devices

The rise of smartphones, for instance, did not only make shopping easy for consumers. It was also a welcome addition to the already growing online shopping industry. Over time, not only were entrepreneurs busy tending to their brick-and-mortars and/or online stores, they began realizing the importance of mobile devices alongside other channels in reaching their customers.

Forms play a huge part in online shopping, and they have become a staple element in the mobile platform as well. We usually find them when we’re ready to checkout and the site asks us to provide certain details such as shipping name, address, telephone number, and credit card information. However, many shoppers find filling up forms tedious and this can cause the customers’ interest to wane. In addition, online shoppers are usually faced with time pressure and the possibility of an erratic Internet connection, and both of these can affect your mobile conversion rate.

Listed below are 10 ways you can speed up the performance of your customers’s mobile transactions, make their online shopping experience satisfactory.

1. Include only the important details in your forms

If you don’t have the patience to fill a whole webpage’s worth of forms when shopping online, your customers probably feel the same. There’s a difference between answering a full-on membership form and filling up a simple one and buying something from an online store. Compared to the latter, the former option can be dragging, and you risk losing your customer when they get bored once they find out they have to provide three different phone numbers.

Make mobile shopping convenient by giving your customers a simple yet complete order form. Do this by asking only the important details such as their full name, one email address, one phone number, shipping details, and credit card information. You can also include a dropdown menu of the states or countries you deliver to, or better yet, allow your mobile app to ask the customers to use their location. This way, getting their address will be faster and accurate.

2. Use top-aligned labels and fields

Smartphones have way limited view compared to computers, so it’s important that you design a form that can maximize this constraint. One way to do this is by using vertical alignment for the fields of your form. You see, when you use a horizontally-aligned form, there is a tendency that not everything will fit in a smartphone’s view and it’s either the label or the input field that will be compromised. Such a case can becumbersome to shoppers and can diminish their interest.

On the other hand, if a form’s labels and input fields are arranged vertically, then it will be easier for your customers to view the information being requested and the ones they’re typing in. This will help them feel secure about the transaction. It will also minimize them missing a field or even worse have to do it all over again.

In addition, minimize visual clutter from your forms. Your ‘What Is This’ and ‘Learn More’ buttons can be placed in the mobile version of your site. If you must have it on the form, place it somewhere in the page where it will not distract your customers from shopping.

3. Make use of collapsible menus and dropdown lists

Another constraint caused by the limited view of mobile devices is that we have to do a lot of scrolling to see an entire page or fill up a form. While scrolling through screens is normal when using smartphones, many shoppers would prefer a speedy means to buying items online.

Using collapsible menus and dropdown lists can help you reduce the time spent by your customers in accomplishing mobile forms. Instead of making your customers scan until they find their choice in a pool of multiple options, you can group specific items into categories. Collapsible menus are also useful for tying up the details of several major products that you want to put in a single page. Just remember not to start the details as collapsed.

4. Utilize appropriate list selections

In cases where dropdown lists or collapsible menus are not ideal for your mobile forms, you have two other options in open predictive search fields and locked dropped down lists.

An open predictive search field allows your customers to input keywords of the item or service they are looking for, and lists the closest possible results. This kind of form is ideal for long searches or for products that do not follow any specific arrangements. Locked dropdown lists, on the other hand, are ideal for listing specific items in menu, and in following a particular order, say alphabetical or chronological.

5. Opt for single input entities

You’re probably familiar with input fields found in forms both in the desktop and mobile versions of websites. In some cases, these input fields are split into two to three sections such as in names, addresses, and phone numbers. While this has a valid purpose in desktop versions of sites, it may not be as effective as when used in forms for mobile devices.

More often than not, split input entities require mobile shoppers to tap into all three (or two) fields just to answer one label. If you’re going to do this a lot on one form, your customers might lose interest in proceeding to checkout.

In other cases, split entities can also be ambiguous and may confuse customers. When designing forms for mobile platforms, use simpler fields instead of splitting them. For instance, instead of putting up two separate fields for a first name and a last name, use one field instead for a full name. This will help your customers accomplish the form faster.

6. Format your form’s buttons

The ‘submit’ button is the final step to online shopping, and also happens to be the most important button on your form. As such, you need to make it stand out so that your customers remain engaged until the end of the transaction.

Make the button in your form appealing by making its width about 1/3 of your form and by assigning it a bright color. Also, instead of simply using the words ‘submit’ or ‘send’, use more energetic calls to action such as ‘Register Now’ or ‘Submit Application’.

However, avoid using colors that are too bright, or make your buttons move too much because these may distract your customers from clicking. You can use a subtle change in color or hovering on the button when it’s clicked so that your customers would know that they’re finished with the transaction.

7. Set scale with viewport meta tag

The view a mobile device can provide customers may compel them to zoom the page, but accidentally doing so may make the shoppers lose focus on the page. You can control this by using a viewport meta tag on your forms. This will prevent your customers from inadvertently zooming the page, or worse lose track of the form altogether.

8. Exploit data persistence

Shopping via mobile phones can be daunting for some customers, because there are more risks in clicking back to the previous page and reloads until your customer decides to abandon his or her cart after losing their data. Mitigate this potential problem by giving your customers the option to open in a new tab when they click any link that is not of the form.

Also, in cases where they can’t go back to previous pages, give them warning signs such as ‘Agree’, ‘OK’, or ‘Cancel’. By doing this, you’ll be able to tell your customers whether the data was stored in your site or the browser, and help them decided to proceed to checkout.

9. Help customers track their progress

Not all shoppers are keen on filling forms. It would help if you could provide them a way to tell how close they are to being done. You can do this by showing a progress bar on top of the form, and determine which step they are—say, by percentage or just a simple chronology. Keep in mind to limit the steps as much as you possibly can to save your customers’s time.

10. Make the form load fast

Another factor you shouldn’t forget is the rate your mobile form loads. If the page takes a while to complete, your customer might not convert. The fact that your customers have reached the form tells you that they’re ready to buy. Don’t disappoint them with slow-loading pages. The speed of your forms will also rely on the elements you put on the page, so be wary of big images.

As Always, Test Across Systems And Setups

These days, the variety of mobile devices and their interfaces can make tailoring your forms for each one a bit tough. As such, make sure that you conduct tests of your forms on different types of mobile devices and take into account operating systems, sizes, and browsers. Through testing you’ll be able to cover each base and make sure that your form works on every available device.

The post 10 Methods for Optimizing Your Forms for Mobile Devices appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

Related posts:

1. Creating Pixel-Perfect UI for iPhone Applications


2. A Quick Guide to Mobile App Usability Testing


3. Key Elements for a Successful Mobile User Experience

10 Methods for Optimizing Your Forms for Mobile Devices