[TIPS] Optimize Your Landing Pages, Increase Your Sales

by Paul Marshall

Your Landing Page Design can make or break your conversion rate.


All the search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising isn't going to create the sales you want with bad landing pages. You'd be just wasting your time and money.

And the truth is that almost EVERY page on your website is a landing page, except for your Privacy Policy, Terms of Use or Service, and possibly your About page.

I've seen websites more than DOUBLE their conversions with landing pages that are properly designed to convert traffic to conversions (such as opt-in sign ups and direct sales).

Think about it -- doubling your sales without increasing your PPC advertising or without increasing your SEO efforts! How much money could that put in your pocket?

When you take advantage of strategies like that, that's when you start beating out your competition!

What's Landing Page Optimization All About?

When searchers come to our websites from the search engines, they are in a path from one website to another.

We have to interrupt that process, drawing these searchers into our website and into our story.

We must balance the connection with our visitors and make an emotional connection, while offering them real substance, as well.

We MUST answer these questions:

1. where am I?

2. what can I do here (what is your offer)?

3. Why should I look here and STAY rather than click away? This MUST be answered in the top 4 to 4/12 inches of your Web pages (above the fold)

How Do You Begin Optimizing Your Landing Page Design?

First, start by clearly explaining what you want your website visitors to do and WHY they should do it.

Why should they buy from you or opt-in for future contact? What's in it for them?

Why should they choose you over other websites they can visit? What separates you from your competition?

Essentially, what's your Value Proposition?

You should be able to clearly explain the advantage to your website visitors in 2 to 3 short sentences.

Right now, if you're not sure exactly how to describe your Value Proposition, you're surely NOT alone! The great majority of people I coach with their websites are in the same boat, when they start out.

My suggestion: Start brainstorming and making good notes. It also helps to have the input of a Internet marketing consulting coach outside your business, who can help you clearly define and explain what you offer your website visitors in a compelling manner, without using your industry jargon and lingo.

Reduce Anxiety from Your Purchase and Opt-in Processes

Anxiety can also be defined as fear or concern. Now, you can never have a anxiety-free website, if you sell a product or service or if you seek an opt-in email address.

Anxiety occurs in opt-in sign up processes, when providing an email address. When making a purchase, providing credit card information causes anxiety.

But how can you REDUCE the anxiety to the least level possible?

There are many techniques you can follow to accomplish this.

One of the best examples is to post your Privacy Policy page link right next to your sign up button, for your opt-in contact. This helps reassure your visitors you aren't selling their email address and will generate a higher opt-in conversion rate than not posting your privacy policy, all other things equal.

Other anxiety reducing techniques are:

1. emphasize credit card security when ordering

2. offer pricing guarantees

3. deal with product | service quality concerns with guarantees and third-party certifications, awards, etc.

These techniques must be used at the exact point where the anxiety occurs.

Next, Reducing Friction from Your Web Pages

Friction can also be defined as annoyance and irritation. To maximize your sales and opt-in conversion rate, you need to minimize the friction all across your website.

Friction occurs in the prospect's MIND, not really on the page.

It is a Psychological resistance to a given element in the sales process.

So, how can you reduce friction?

One way is to limit fields to the minimum number needed for both purchase and opt-in forms. Friction = Length and Difficulty.

While space here limits a complete discussion of all the techniques you can take advantage of, another way to limit friction is to make your landing page design take advantage of natural eye movement, working with it, rather than against it. You've got to be careful with multi-column designs.

Wrapping it Up

Using Landing Page Optimization techniques will help you potentially DOUBLE your conversions...your direct sales and opt-in sign ups...without increasing your PPC advertising expenses and without requiring higher SEO rankings.

Source : Optimize Landing Pages
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[INFO] Calculating the Costs and Benefits of Pay Per Click Campaign

by Jeremy Gislason

Is a Pay Per Click Campaign In Your Future?

Pay Per Click

You have no doubt noticed the abundance of PPC ads when you're online. And when you perform a search on most search engines, there are tons of links at the top or side of the results list that are different from the rest.

What differentiates these ads from each other? What costs more? What offers the best results? The answers are in the testing of your particular ad. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't let anyone else fool you

You bid to have your site link displayed on the results page for that particular keyword search. Depending on the search engine you use, either the highest bid or the best performing link will be displayed first on the page.

You pay the amount of your bid every time someone is directed to your website by clicking on the advertised link. It doesn't get any more straightforward than that.

The cost of Pay per Click advertising

Depending on the search engine you use, you may have an initial deposit when you open your Pay per Click account of around $50, and a minimum monthly spend of around $20. Your bid amounts will depend on your chosen keywords.

The bidding system means that the more popular keywords will end up being very expensive. Keep a careful record of what you are spending on PPC advertising as the costs can quickly mount up and you can end up paying more than you are making.

The following simple calculation will help you decide what you can afford to pay for Pay per Click advertising.

PPC Revenue
------------------- = Revenue
PPC Visitors

To get the most out of Pay per Click advertising, bid on as many keyword phrases as you want to afford. Consider less popular keywords that are more targeted to your potential members, and which will command a lower price per click-through.

Monitor and analyze your Pay per Click results carefully. Look both at which keywords are getting you visitors and which of these visitors are actually signing up to your membership site, or buying a product from you. Focus on the keywords that are getting you the most sales rather than the most visitors.

If you are using PPC advertising extensively it may be worth using a bid management system, or even employing a bid management company to manage your advertising campaign. This will ensure you are not spending more than you are making, and will help you to focus on the keywords that are generating valuable, targeted traffic to your site.

Researching Your Keywords

Do this correctly and you'll be able to drive hoards of very targeted visitors to your sites instantly.

Here's a method you could use to discover the ads that are working and where to put your ads.

Type in one of your best keywords into Google.com search and look at both the natural results that come up as well as the paid results that appear.

Visit the top 10 - 20 sites that come up in the natural results and see if they also have google ads on them. If so - you should copy and paste those urls in a notepad or doc for your natural search research, I'll explain why shortly. Only write down the urls that also have google ads on them.

Then take a look at the top and right side paid results and either take a screen shot or just copy and paste the ads into a notepad. This will be your paid ad research notes.

Do the above for as many keywords are you want to use yourself for your ppc campaigns.

Now, come back the next day and do the same process on the same keywords. Do this daily or maybe every couple of days if you like over a period of several weeks.

What are you looking for? You are looking for consistencies.

First of all, keep your eye on the natural search results if those same top 10-20 website urls keep appearing everytime in the same order or if they are changing. Reason is sometimes a site can get ranked #1 or #2 for a keyword right away but then dropped down after a few days or weeks.

What you want to find are the sites that have good page rank and are consistent with natural search results for your keywords. Now what you want to do is go into your Google Adwords account and set up a campaign - simple yes? But here's the key, instead of just setting up a campaign in niche market categories you are going to set up campaigns where you control the exact url your ad will be shown on.

Following me where this is going? Remember that list of natural search result that also display Google ads you have? Now is the time to use it. You simply use the Google Adword options to set up specific urls for your ad. Not just the domain but the exact url which could be an inner page with content directly related to your keyword.

Now your ads will only be shown on highly targeted content pages that you control. Meaning you now have highly targeted ads set up and if they are on very popular sites such as say CNN, Entrepreneur.com, or the New York Times etc you could instantly send hundreds or even thousands of visitors to your sites.

Now, part 2, back to those paid ad research results you have jotted down in your notepad. Again, you are looking for consistent ads which keep appearing all the time for your keywords. Most likely those ads are profitable (unless the owner just likes losing money or something) so you could model your own ads after those that seem to be working well.

Just change the niche words around and more than likely you can use very similar phrases in your ads. By doing this you are setting your ads up for potentially higher click thrus.

Doing this along with the targeted ad campaigns and you can be sure to expect some heavy traffic to your sites.

Side note: While the description text you use for general SEO is designed to get as much traffic to your site as possible, your description text for PPC advertising has a different purpose. Because you are paying for each visitor, you want to make sure that only people who are likely to join your membership site actually click on the link. Your description will make it very clear what your site is about to attract the visitors that are most likely to generate revenue for you.

Make sure you test, track, and reevaluate. One campaign may not generate the results that you like, but another may. Keep track of not only the clicks that you receive but the actual purchases from those clicks, that is where the real power is. Read more...