If business is war, then landing page testing and development are pitched battles to win consumers over competitors. Just as in war, the first thing we do in developing landing pages is to create a strategy

This is the process we use in Engine Ready’s landing page development section. First we like to list out strengths and weaknesses of a clients offer, product, or service.

For this example let’s say our new client makes stand up desks (a hot topic in the office lately!)

These are the strong points of their product:

- Numerous Health benefits to using one over a traditional desk.

How is it healthier? Answer: Better for posture and back. Aids digestions and increases calorie consumption by burning an additional 60 calories per hour over a sit down desk. Breaking this out for someone uses a desk 8 hours a day 5 days a week leads to burning an additional 9,600 calories per month.

- Client reports receiving emails from customers who are very pleased by their new stand up desk.

If someone pays full price for a product or service and still writes a thank you note to the company they’re more than a satisfied customer. If it’s possible, we like to speak with them directly. A conversation with a customer evangelist can be very beneficial to the development of a strong landing page.

- Height Adjustment is very easy.

Since it’s easy to adjust, it’s especially well suited for home offices where more than one person uses the same computer. And for companies where more than one person uses the same work station.

This is the weakness of the product

- It’s 9% more expensive than similar desks.

Why is it more expensive? The main reason is that because our client is smaller he does not get the same discounts larger manufacturers get when they buy materials in bulk.

There’s not much we can do with this.

Almost as a side note, the client mentions that the ball bearing system in the adjustment arm he uses is more expensive. Why? Because he uses Swiss made ball bearings and pulley system which are better quality. What does this mean to the consumer? It’s smoother to adjust than other standup desks.

After bouncing ideas around we decide on turning the weakness of the price comparison to competitors into the focus of the pitch.

We do this by building text around this theme:

“The only stand up desk with the Glide Adjustment System. It might be a bit more expensive but over the life of your desk it’s less than a penny a day.

Because all stand up desks provide the same health benefits, the secondary focus will be the calorie burning and health benefits.

From there, we fill out the rest of the page with applicable text and order a 15 second video clip showing an elderly woman adjusting the desk height.

For the first split test we reverse the benefits focus and make the health features the main focus and the glide adjustment the secondary point.

If  you’re considering landing page development, why not give Engine Ready a call?  We’d love to speak with you!

Engine Ready, Internet Marketing, Landing Page Development, Landing Page Optimization, Landing Page Testing, search marketing

If you’re not familiar with Engine Ready’s free software suite, Conversion Critic, you may want to take a moment to utilize some handy online marketing tools.  Conversion Critic can be used to evaluate your landing pages, check for broken destination URLs in your pay per click campaigns, and to forecast the performance of your PPC marketing efforts.

The calculator is perfect for computing expectations for a new campaign.  Many marketers and business owners want to calculate the risk associated with a new campaign.  Accurately forecasting return on ad spend is a challenge shared by all marketers, which the PPC Calculator attempts to relieve.

The free tool will also illustrate how slight changes in the conversion rate or cost per click can significantly impact your bottom line.  In the example below we can see that a 0.5% increase in conversion rate (everything else being equal) equates to thousands of more dollars in revenue.

Example:

Slide the button, or manually input your ad spend.

Forecast snapshot of performance.

conversion rate, cpa, EngineReady, Internet Marketing, Keyword Opportunities, Online Marketing, PPC, search marketing, Software, Tools

On December 22, 2009, Engine Ready’s Brian Lewis and SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin arranged for a holiday networking party for the local San Diego SEO community. About 35 internet marketers showed up at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in San Diego to join in some great networking, beer sampling and appetizer munching.

Rumor was that there were even isolated pockets of SEO related discussions going on … imagine that …

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An interesting study has been recently released that shows the growth in mainstream acceptance and use of social media as a tool for shoppers.

According to a comScore survey, 28% of respondents indicated that social media has influenced their purchases. Of those influenced, most had read consumer reviews and expert product reviews. Interestingly, almost 1 out of 10 of those people mentioned that they were influenced by postings on Twitter, from either a company’s Tweet or friend’s tweet.

A similar study was performed by a search marketing agency in 2007, and at that time, Twitter was not even on the radar as a tool for holiday shoppers.

So, it’s pretty obvious that retailers will need to increase their attention to their social media strategies including the 3 primary movers: product reviews, Facebook, and Twitter. For those who have yet to jump in, here are some tips:

1. Identify your social media goals (customer service, branding/awareness, marketing, product update communication), and the metrics by how you’ll evaluate campaign success.
2. Identify the “players” in your industry, and begin to follow their Tweets. Get a firm understanding of the conversations taking place about you and your competitor’s products. It’s important to do a thorough job of listening before jumping in.
3. Setup up auto alerts in Twitter with your company name, name of your products, and those of your competitors, so you can quickly stay on top of the incredibly dynamic nature of conversations relevant to your products.
4. To maintain and grow your follow list without alienating your readers, be sure to provide a ratio of tweets of at least 4 to 1 of “value or information messaging” versus “marketing messaging”.
5. Whenever possible, provide links to the source of your information messaging.

Engine Ready, Facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Twitter