You’ve probably visited some sites recently that featured a video clip explaining why the company’s product or service is perfect for you. While some sites let you start the video at your convenience, others launch the video when the page is loaded, forcing you to either:

a. Stop reading anything else on the page and watch the video

b. Stop reading anything else on the page, find the stop button and stop the video

c. Do your best to read the contents of the page, while trying to ignore a talking head

To determine what impact automatically starting the video has on conversion, we performed an A/B test of the exact same page for a B2C lead generation site – the control was the video automatically starting at page load; the test page required the visitor to start the video.

Here are the resulting conversion rates:

Video starting automatically            9.9%

Video not-starting automatically   11.9%

The results don’t surprise me, except i would have expected an even greater difference in conversion rate between the two pages.

Stay tuned as we plan to replicate this test on a B2B lead generation site as well as an eCommerce site.

Landing Page Optimization, Landing Page Testing, online video

I recently read an interesting article posted on SearchEngineWatch.com by Mark Jackson – “Google AdWords Quality Score — That’s Old-School for SEO”  http://searchenginewatch.com/3631651

The driving point of this article is that Google’s Quality Score is going to be base in-part on the content of the landing page.  If you are bidding on a keyword “Big Fatty Hamburger”, you better make sure that you have a Big Fatty Hamburger content-focused landing page. 

The article implies that this move by Google is very similar to SEO where you optimize your site around the keywords you wish to show up for in organic search.  Makes sense, right?

I too was under the same impression until I asked a question to our Account Specialist….   Their response is quite interesting:

“While this could help with their website conversion rate, it wouldn’t really affect their site quality score. In its current iteration the site quality component is geared more toward demoting sites that offer a poor user experience or less than above board business model, rather than rewarding more relevant sites. Basically, that component is either neutral or varying degrees of negative. There is no bump given for things like keywords on the landing page and the like. Let me know if you have other questions about this.”

That being said, if raising your quality score is your goal, making individual landing pages for each of your keywords is not going to cut it.  Google wants a positive user experience and as long as your site is not misleading, has a privacy policy, link to the homepage, and a proper website layout, then you get a 10 out of 10 (for this aspect of the quality score calculations.)  Your time is better spent a/b testing ad creative than creating or paying a web developer for dozens of unique pages.  It is important to note that these comments are based on addressing the Quality Score.  We believe very strongly that Landing Page testing is an integral part of a building a successful PPC marketing campaign – but the intention and focus should be based on increasing the Conversion Rate, not the Quality Score.

Landing Page Optimization, Quality Score

You can ask almost any kindergartner in the world what their favorite color is and they will respond with a very decisive answer. “Blue”, “red”, “green” or “the whole rainbow” are just a few of the answers that I remember hearing in grammar school. Colors appeal to the senses and emotions in a very powerful way. I recently read about how mental institutions and hospitals have been using color therapy since the 1930s. The exposure to certain calming hues has had powerful results in many patients. If color can have this much influence in the offline world, image the role it plays in the world of Internet Marketing.

This design below has been converting between 6 and 8 percent…

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conversion improvement, Landing Page Optimization

So you are getting visitors to click on those alluring 75 characters that make up your pay-per-click ad. The obvious good news is that your site is gaining traction, but the bad news is that you are shoving out advertising dollars on traffic, not guaranteed leads. Yes, more traffic most likely results in more leads, but there are ways to get the same amount of leads, if not more, by modifying your landing page. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could convert traffic into leads without spending the extra advertising dollars? Thus paying less and receiving more? Let’s go back to the basics:

Con-ti-nu-i-ty [kon-tn-oo-i-tee]

1. the state or quality of being continuous.
2. a continuous or connected whole.

Is the landing page congruent with the ad creatives? You may get plenty of visitors with an ad reading “Signup today to win a tropical cruise”, but your bounce rate will be through the roof if your landing page has images of Alaskan vacations. (more…)

conversion improvement, Landing Page Optimization