Testing Your Landing Page

There is always something you can do a bit better to maximize your landing page results. There are any number of things you can test and tweak to refine your landing pages. Even the smallest changes can have a big impact. When running a marketing campaign, employ A/B testing to see which landing page techniques generate the best responses from your target market.

When performing A/B testing, you might do a split-run campaign where you run a marketing campaign that directs 50 percent of your target market to landing page A and the other 50 percent to landing page B.

Here are some items to consider when testing your landing pages:

Landing Page Content

1. Is short or long copy more effective?
2. Is it better for you to use bulleted lists to emphasize key points asopposed to paragraphs of information?
3. Does separating content with tag lines or headers increase the number of responses?
4. What happens if you bold or otherwise emphasize key points in your copy?
5. What impact does changing the writing style or tone of your copy have on your landing page’s ability to convert?

Landing Page Layout and Presentation

1. What impact does changing the presentation of the offer itself have on results? “Buy one, get one free,” “50% off,” “1/2 price,” “Save $100 off the list price,” showing the original $200 price tag with a strikethrough and the new price next to it emphasized in bold red font as $100 are all different ways of presenting the same offer. Which method generates the best response from your target market?
2. Does your landing page perform better with vivid imagery, little imagery, or no imagery? Maybe showing different color shots of the same product if it is available in more than one color will boost sales. Try it.
3. What colors on the page elicit the most favorable responses from your target market? Does the contrast between the page copy and the background influence sales?
4. What font types, styles, and sizes are most effective?
5. How many navigation options work best on the landing page? Are you providing the target market with so many navigation options that they get distracted, or would the page be effective with more navigation options intact?
6. Where is the best position on the landing page to place the “buy,” “order,” or “reserve” button?

Capitalizing on any great campaign requires a great closing. Your closing is your landing page—a prime reason you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket. It is highly recommended that you test and refine your landing pages over time. This is by no means a complete list of items worth testing, but it is a good place to start.

It is best to test one element at a time so that you can measure results and determine the effectiveness of the new change. If you change too many items at once, it will be difficult to attribute how much of an impact the items you changed had on the effectiveness of that page. If you made three adjustments to your landing page at once, it might be that two of the three components have increased the response rate, but the third might have dragged it down a bit, so you are not quite reaching your potential. If you change just one element at a time, you can tell what impact your change has on the landing page’s ability to convert.

This same testing logic applies to the online marketing campaigns you partake in as well. You want your marketing efforts and your landing pages to work together.

Today’s Web traffic analytics and Web metrics software provide great information on what’s working, what’s not, and also the implications of testing elements.