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Internet Marketing Tips: 5 Reasons You Should Use A/B Tests to Create Better Landing Pages

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Although landing pages are crucial to the success of a company’s site, many marketers are not taking the time to enhance this element. In a recent webinar hosted by Marketo, the importance of landing pages was discussed. According to WhichTestWon.com, a site that focuses on collecting Internet marketing data, less than half of all marketing professionals are conducting A/B tests on their landing pages. By following a few simple tips and adding components to their landing page, such as an eCommerce offer, conversion rates are more likely to go up and more users will complete online forms.

Many marketers are wondering the same thing: what elements need to be monitored and tested on my landing page? Research has shown that by running A/B tests on the following five components of a landing page, conversions will increase and landing pages will become much more effective on the consumer.

  1. Buttons and Response Links: Button visibility can make all the difference in form fill-outs and response rates. The buttons on your landing page need to stand out and catch the eye of the consumer.
  2. Headline Copy: Try different formats and wording for your headlines. Sometimes, the short, catchy phrases work best, while other times, longer, more detailed keywords work best. It all depends on your audience and who you are trying to draw into the site.
  3. Distraction Removal: Conduct an A/B test to find out ways to improve and change the layout of your landing page. Pinpoint elements that are useless and are just creating clutter on the page, and remove extraneous copy or images.
  4. Images: Test out multiple images to discover the most effective display for your landing page. You can try using pictures of males versus females, different facial expressions, various races, etc.
  5. Forms: According to research collected from WhichTestWon.com, forms with fewer required fields actually received more completed submissions from qualified leads. If you have longer forms, break them up into different pages to avoid overwhelming the consumer.
  1. Buttons and Response Links: Button visibility can make all the difference in form fill-outs and response rates. The buttons on your landing page need to stand out and catch the eye of the consumer.
Headline Copy: Try different formats and wording for your headlines. Sometimes, the short, catchy phrases work best, while other times, longer, more detailed keywords work best. It all depends on your audience and who you are trying to draw into the site.
Distraction Removal: Conduct an A/B test to find out ways to improve and change the layout of your landing page. Pinpoint elements that are useless and are just creating clutter on the page, and remove extraneous copy or images.
Images: Test out multiple images to discover the most effective display for your landing page. You can try using pictures of males versus females, different facial expressions, various races, etc.
Forms: According to research collected from WhichTestWon.com, forms with fewer required fields actually received more completed submissions from qualified leads. If you have longer forms, break them up into different pages to avoid overwhelming the consume

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    Posted in Internet Marketing Training, social media marketing | 1 Comment »

    SEO 101- 3 Tips for Marketing Your Business on Facebook

    Friday, August 27th, 2010

    More and more businesses are creating Facebook pages, but not all businesses actually know what to do with them. Simply having a page doesn’t mean you’ll get lots of new customers and visits to your official website. You need to know how to create and manage your page to get the most out of it.

    Here are some excellent SEO 101 tips from Mashable

    1. Update Your Page Regularly
    A page with outdated or few discussions, posts, and comments gives the impression that your company is unprofessional, or doesn’t care to interact with their customers. These are obviously not impressions that you want to make. Update your page regularly with posts that contain relevant information, news stories, links to your blog posts, videos, etc.

    2. Set a Goal
    Decide what you want to achieve with your Facebook page. Do you want 10,000 “likes” by the end of the year? Do you want at least 5 comments on your page per week? Once you’ve set a goal, you have to decide what you need to do in order to achieve it. If you want more people to “like” your page, you may need to extend your network and promote your page. Post a link to your Facebook page on your website, blog, Twitter feed, and e-mails. If you want more people to comment on your page, post thought-provoking questions or post relevant interesting news stories that are bound to get people talking.

    3. Post Photos and Video
    People love pictures, and with the popularity of YouTube, they obviously love videos as well. This is especially helpful if you want to show off certain products or the results of your services (if you run a hair salon, for instance, post before and after pictures – with customers’ permission, of course!). You can post videos to your page that show tutorials on how to use your products, or a bio on the company.

    There is a lot more to Facebook, but using these three tips will help set you on the right track. Contacting our local SEO firm can help you learn more about what you can do to build your Internet marketing strategy and get the most out of an effective social media marketing campaign.

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    Posted in Internet Marketing Training, Online Social Networking | 2 Comments »

    The Real Truth About Hitslink vs. Google Analytics

    Thursday, June 17th, 2010

    Using website analytics is an important part of a successful Internet marketing campaign. When looking for an analytics solution, there is a lot to consider. One of the decisions you’ll have to make is whether or not to use a free service, like Google Analytics or a paid service such as HitsLink. While free may seem to be always the best price, it’s also true that you often get what you pay for.

    If you just want to know the basics, and can’t fit HitsLink into your budget, Google Analytics may be right for you. However, as you will see here, there are many advantages of using HitsLink over Google Analytics.

    • Unbiased Results. Because Google makes most of their revenue from advertising, they have incentive to overstate their results. Google also profits from click fraud, meaning they often won’t report it. Google is also biased when it comes to charging for AdWords. When using Google Analytics, Google knows how much you make with every click, and can charge you more if they know you are likely willing to pay it.
    • Privacy. Google Trends will share (with your competition!) your website traffic, visitor locations, and the search terms used to find your website.
    • Google Can Use Your Data Against You. When a customer visits your website, Google stores the website visit, and the keywords they searched for. The next time that customer gets online, there will be ads based on the data from their visit to your website, meaning there will be ads from your competitors.
    • Can Prevent Click Fraud. Click fraud is where someone (or a computer program) clicks on a PPC ad for the sole purpose of generating a charge per click, without having any interest in visiting the site. HitsLink can track and monitor this for you.
    • Results in Real-Time. Google Analytics refreshes their results every 24 hours, while HitsLink refreshes results in real-time.
    • Daily Backups. HitsLink does daily backups of your data. Google offers no such guarantee on how often, or if at all, they backup your data.
    • Customer Support. The HitsLink support staff is available via email and phone, while Google does not offer any free customer support.
    • More Detailed Information. HitsLink provides more detailed information than Google Analytics. HitsLink can provide you information on who visits your site, how they found you, how they navigate your site, whether or not they made a transaction, and how effective your advertising is.
    • Different Versions to Fit Your Needs. Depending on how much you want to spend, and what type of information your company needs regarding your website, there are three different versions of HitsLink to choose from.
    • Report Customization. You can customize your report to suit your needs and make accessing your data easy.

    While Google Analytics might be a good option for a small company with a small budget, for most businesses HitsLink is clearly the preferred option. Google Analytics does provide you with some good information, the privacy issues and inaccurate results due to bias make this analytics tool not worth the risk. A tool like HitsLink can help you with the success of your Internet marketing campaign much more effective than Google Analytics.

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    Posted in Business Marketing Online, Internet Marketing Training | 1 Comment »

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