4 Landing Page Testing Tips To Remember -vía @ioninteractive

by Anna Talerico

Testing landing pages can be a lot of fun. Especially when you are able to quickly see results, analyze your data and launch new test waves quickly and easily. It’s addicting to launch an experience and see how it’s performing in real-time.

ion interactive - Optimizing Marketing Performance Beyond Landing Pages

But it’s easy to get so wrapped up in the real-time nature of testing that you forget to stop, slow down and be methodical. We’ve blogged about this recently with our 12-point landing page testing process and awesome format for documenting test plans.

Sometimes even in the when you know the right process to follow, you need a little cold water on your face before you make a wrong turn. Here are 4 quick tips to remember next time you are in the heady, giddy phase of a landing page test. Just a little dose of testing reality:

1. Don’t call the test too soon.

2. Don’t despair.

3. Be ready to be wrong, be ready to be right.

4. Learn.

Trust your landing page testing tool, sit back and let it calculate statistical confidence for you. You want to be sure of the results, and results can change before statistical confidence is reached.
Many marketers who are just getting started launch a test with no result, throw up their arms, declare testing doesn’t work and stop testing. Don’t be that marketer. Stick with it, and you will get results.
Be the marketer who avoids getting dogmatic about what will and won’t work, and instead be the one who says, “I don’t know, let’s test it”.
While launching some big new feature or redesign on your site is all risk (you won’t know how it works until you launch it!), taking a simple layout/content/design test live is pure experimentation—little risk, and lots of opportunity for reward

3 Big CMO-Worthy Benefits of Landing Pages – Thanks to @ioninteractive

(…) landing pages require more resources? More content? More effort? Aren’t they more to manage? Isn’t it more to integrate?

Vía ioninteractive.com

To be honest, yes, they do.

Creating campaign-specific landing pages requires work. But the impact that a successful landing page can have on metrics such as cost to acquire a customer and ROI is tremendous.

These are the statistics executives care about and the reason why the lowly landing page should be elevated to a seat worth time and attention from everyone inside your marketing organization, including your CMO.

+INFO? Full article here 🙂

There are 3 primary benefits to landing pages:

1. Better User Experiences

When it comes to post-click marketing, first impressions are crucial. You have 1/20th of a second to impress your visitor after they click, so it’s up to you to make it count.

2. Easy Experimentation

All digital marketers know the value of testing when it comes to web pages, however sometimes it’s hard to conceive and execute a test of a a big idea on the website.

3. Increased Leads, Sales & Revenue:

We now know that landing pages can have a huge impact on the overall visitor experience, and we know that they make testing a breeze.

Tu estrategia de Email Marketing necesita Landing Pages – @fromDoppler

En el día de ayer, 5 de junio, se realizó un nuevo webinar de Doppler Academy “Tu estrategia de Email Marketing necesita Landing Pages” con Fernando Florez, Marketing Manager deLander.

¿Te perdiste el webinar? ¿Quieres despejar dudas? ¡No te pierdas este post! Encontrarás unresumen completo, la presentación y el video para que sigas capacitándote.

¿Qué son las Landing Pages?

Una Landing Page es la página a la que envías a tus visitantes desde cualquier tipo de campaña con el objetivo de que hagan determinado acción. Por ejemplo un click, comprar, registrarse, compartir o aprender algo.

Es muy importante definir un solo objetivo para cada Landing Page. Si tienes más objetivos lo recomendable es crear varias, donde cada una cumplirá una función distinta.

Landing Page vs. Home Page

Durante el webinar, Fernando nos explicó que enviar a los visitantes a tu sitio destruye tus conversiones. ¿Un poco drástico no? Pero es la realidad.

+INFO, te gustó…? lee el artículo completo aquí 🙂

¿Qué quiso decir con esta frase? Como hemos aclarado previamente, a diferencia de tu sitio web, cada Landing Page responde a un único objetivo, por lo cual si envías a tus usuarios allí, estarás superando diversos obstáculos.

Por ejemplo: tú eres el responsable de Marketing de una empresa de accesorios que lanza unanueva línea de sombreros. A través de una campaña de Email Marketing envías a tus clientes a tu sitio web con el objetivo de vender el nuevo producto.

¿Primer obstáculo? Que el usuario se distraiga entre tanta información. Acerca de nosotros, promo del mes, productos, franquicias. Con tantas secciones lo más seguro es que tu usuario termine en cualquier lugar menos donde tu querías que llegue.

¿Qué pasaría si utilizáramos una Landing Page? Centrarías la atención en aquello que realmente te importa ¡vender tu nueva colección!. No habría posibilidad de dispersión por parte del usuario, ya que sólo estarías brindando información sobre los nuevos sombreros.

Otra táctica anti-dispersión es ubicar un sólo call to action por Landing Page que esté relacionado con la acción que quieres que tus usuarios lleven a cabo: en este caso comprar.

+INFO, te gustó…? lee el artículo completo aquí 🙂

High Performance Landing Page Templates for High Funnel Keywords – Thnxs @ioninteractive

At this year’s Conversion Conference in San Francisco, I had the pleasure of presenting three tactics for getting more bang for your paid search buck. I say it was a pleasure, because it truly was. You see, prior to falling into this crazy world of post-click marketing, I was a pre-click kind of gal. My life revolved around SEO, social media, online PR and of course, PPC.

With the paid search world always in the back of my mind, it was just awesome to present on a topic that merged PPC and optimization so well. Plus, who doesn’t want more bang for their buck, am I right?

http://www.ioninteractive.com

As post-click marketers, we understand that every click your visitors make leads them somewhere and we happen to think that should be amazing post-click experiences. The only way to make them amazing to your paid search visitors, is to ensure that they’re giving visitors the right information in the easiest to digest format.

This varies greatly based on whether your visitors search query is considered a high or low funnel keyword. It’s this differentiation that gives you the first opportunity to get more return on your spend. Let’s start with the basic layout. This is what I refer to as PPC meets Landing Page, 101:

Once you’ve identified the type of traffic you have, high or low funnel, you can then start to really think about the type of experience best suited to that visitor’s mindset and where they are in the buying cycle. This is a crucial step.

The Right Format for High Funnel Keywords
Remember, these people aren’t ready to buy, they’re seeking more information and it’s your job to give it to them…without asking for anything in return. These experiences need to:

Stay problem-focused and solution-driven. It’s about selling the solution, not your product
Include industry-leading proof and build expert credibility
Serve a lot of masters coming from a wide range of wants and needs
Please everyone without disappointing anyone

You see, the challenge with creating landing pages for high funnel keywords, is that you don’t really have a read on your visitor yet and they certainly may not know you. At this point, the goal should be delivering lots of rich content that meets a variety of complex needs without overwhelming anyone and still directing them to an end conversion (easy, right?).

In reality, it’s not easy. In fact, it’s downright hard and often requires a high degree of template creativity and content control.

Full article here 🙂

Expanding Universal Analytics into Public Beta

A typical consumer today uses multiple devices to surf the web and interact in many ways with your business. For most large businesses, already swimming in many sources of data, it’s an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity.

Back in October, we announced the limited beta release of Universal Analytics as a way for businesses to understand the changing, multi-device customer journey. Today, we’re excited to welcome and invite all Google Analytics customers to try Universal Analytics.

The benefits of using Universal Analytics to businesses are:

Understanding how customers interact with your businesses across many devices and touch-points,
Insights into the performance of your mobile apps,
Improvements of lead generation and ROI by incorporating offline and online interactions so you can understand which channels drive the best results,
Improved latency on your site by reducing client-side demands.

Testimonials from the initial beta release

Our initial beta customers using Universal Analytics and are pleased with their results. Rojeh Avanesian, VP of Marketing at PriceGrabber.com reports:«At PriceGrabber, we know it’s important to understand consumer shopping behavior so we can provide a more customized experience to our users. Google’s Universal Analytics will solve this problem for us and many sites that are facing this challenge and help us serve our users better by providing them with more relevant content and shopping results. We can use Google Analytics’ metrics to segment our users in a way that improves and simplifies the shopping experience for consumers. That’s what we strive for at PriceGrabber, to make shopping and saving money as easy as possible.»

How to get started using Universal Analytics

If you’re new to Google Analytics, you can choose Universal Analytics when you setup your account. Already using Google Analytics? Create a new web property in your Google Analytics account to set up Universal Analytics and explore the new features.

Here’s what you’ll see when you create a new web property. Select the Universal Analytics column to get the new analytics.js code snippet you can implement on your website:

You can implement Universal Analytics with the new analytics.js JavaScript for websites, our iOSand Android SDKs for apps, and the new Measurement Protocol for all other platforms.

Find more details on how to set up using our help center or developer guide. (Migration guides for properties using ga.js coming soon. Until then, set up a new property in your account for Universal Analytics).

To tag in the most flexible way possible, you can also take advantage of the Universal Analytics template available in Google Tag Manager, which allows you to make additional changes and enable new features to your analytics setup without changing the hard-coded tags on your website. Learn more about how to implement Universal Analytics through Google Tag Manager.

For more information on Universal Analytics, visit our help center and developer guides.

Happy analyzing – in the new and innovative ways you can with Universal Analytics!

Posted by JiaJing Wang, Product Manager, Google Analytics

Ioninteractive.com: «13-point checklist before you launch your next campaign» / @ioninteractive

13 Ways To Elevate Your Landing Pages

Each online marketing campaign is a marriage of three key elements: strategic
advertising, high-performance landing pages, and efficient post-conversion execution.
If you fail to execute just one of these critical facets, your leads may shy away.
So before you launch your next campaign, run your landing page through this
13-point checklist and make sure that you have the basics covered.

ioninteractive.com | @ioninteractive
by Anna Talerico

High-performance landing pages are:

User-Centric. Think about the user experience first and foremost.
Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and run through your landing
page experience. Is your page informative, enjoyable, and visually
pleasing? Or is it disorganized, confusing, or lacking key
information?

Fluid. If your landing page contains links to other interior or external
pages, ensure that these transitions run smoothly by keeping both your
visual elements and your messaging consistent throughout.
Don’t forget to use your confirmation page to remind visitors what
they’ve just signed up for.

Continuar leyendo «Ioninteractive.com: «13-point checklist before you launch your next campaign» / @ioninteractive»

7 Lessons Learned From Launching 5 Products | by Neil Patel

Over the years my co-founder and I have launched 5 products, and we’ve helped hundreds of other companies launch their products. Sadly I can’t say that each launch was successful, but I did learn what not to do over the years.

From each launch we’ve gotten a better understanding of what should be done and I can confidently say that I have a formula for every product launch. Here are 7 things I learned from launching 5 products:

Lesson #1: Collect emails, even before your product launches

One of the first products that I ever launched was Crazy Egg. The launch was very successful, but it wasn’t because I knew what I was doing, instead I got lucky.

Before we even launched Crazy Egg we created a landing page that showed off the product and had an email opt in box for people who wanted to be notified when the product launched.

We didn’t have any traffic coming to the website, so I bought $10,000 worth of banner ads on all the popular CSS galleries. Within months we collected over 20,000 emails from people who were interested in using Crazy Egg.

When we launched roughly 500 of those 20,000 people signed up for our product. We should have had at least a few thousand convert, as our product was a freemium one, but a lot of the emails on our list were stale as we hadn’t emailed them in over 6 months. The big lesson I learned here was that we should have created an email drip sequence in which we kept all of the people on our list up to date with what we were doing versus sending them one email about our launch.

Before you launch your product make sure you create a landing page where you can collect email addresses, as it is never too early to start your customer acquisition efforts. You can easily do this through LaunchRock.

Once you setup your landing page, make sure you follow up with your potential customers on a regular basis. You can keep them up to date with the progress of your product, educate them, and notify them about your launch.

Lesson #2: It’s never too early to get press

Full article:
7 Lessons Learned From Launching 5 Products

E-books PDF courtesy by ioninteractive.com

Learn how to use landing page software in tandem with your current marketing automation solution for exceptional results.

Integrating LiveBall with your marketing automation solution can help you to generate results unlike anything that you could achieve singly. In this guide, you’ll learn how to leverage the Power of Two to create a wider variety of better experience with less effort, more sophistication, greater insights, and streamlined testing.

___________________________________________________

| EMAIL IT

The Ultimate Guide to Effective Landing Pages

From templates to testing and everything in between, this jam-packed best practices manual contains 50 expert tips and strategies for building the best landing pages.

You’ll gain valuable insights such as how to integrate your landing experience with a post-conversion audience, and how to build audience-specific landing pages. In addition, we’re revealing a trove of testing strategies, including which elements are most important to test on your pages.

__________________________________________________________________________

Landing Page Toolkit

| EMAIL IT

This workbook takes you step-by-step from creating landing pages to optimizing them for high-conversion. Learn strategies for testing, segmenting, and messaging success. We even included extra workpages for future use. Read the toolkit and start making high-performance pages today.

______________________________________

About ion
Scalable, Agile Landing Page Optimization & Management

Marketers spend a lot to win clicks. We think every one of those clicks should lead to a great experience. Our cloud-based platform, LiveBall is used by hundreds of global brands to create and optimize post-click web experiences. We also offer a wide-range of strategic services for companies who need help in the planning, executing and optimizing of their post-click programs.

Born of Market Demand
Built for the Future
Designed to Deliver Results
Priced & Packaged to Grow with You
Immediate Deployment
Unlike Anything Else

______________________________

Main 1.888.466.4332
Intl +01.561.394.9484
Facsimile +01.561.394.9773
Twitter @ioninteractive
Email info@ioninteractive.com

Florida
ion interactive
200 East Palmetto Park Road
Suite 107
Boca Raton, FL 33432

Massachusetts
ion interactive
One Broadway, 14th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142

Another 5 Points of Landing Page Relevancy | ioninteractive.com

ioninteractive.com

Over the next few weeks, I will be taking you through the 5 dimensions of conversion-oriented landing experiences, showcasing some examples of pages that are Relevant, Engaging,Authoritative, Directional and that Yield Optimal. In the final post, I’ll give a checklist for conducting your own R.E.A.D.Y review. So, let’s get started with the first dimension — Relevancy.

A relevant landing experience makes sure visitors’ expectations are met, by fulfilling on its pre-click promise. How do you know if your page is relevant? Start by reviewing your ad, then use the five points of relevancy to gauge your effectiveness.

1. Fulfills Promises
2. Targeted & Specific
3. Design Matched
4. Visually Appealing
5. Speaks the Audience’s Language

COMPLETE STORY

Three Testing Strategies For Sophomore Conversion Testers | by Celine Roque

THE DAILY EGG

Hard boiled conversion optimization and design advice

Change the color of your call-to-action button. Test a new headline. Swap this hero image for that hero image.

Been there, done that.

Try these three conversion testing methods for Conversion Testing sophomores.

#1 – Blow it up, start from scratch

Instead of pursuing split tests on specific site elements – such as the headline or call-to-action button – 37signals decided to test two fundamentally different versions of their Highrise homepage. The rationale behind this was that they needed to destroy their assumptions about what may or may not work.

Almost everything was different about each version.

This is an image of the Original Design vs. the Person Design:

The Original Design had several smaller customer photos, while the Person Design had one large background photo of just a single customer.
There were several customer testimonials in the Original Design, while the Person Design only had a single quote from the featured customer.
Only a handful of benefits are listed on the Person Design, while several features and benefits are outlined in the Original Design.
The person design has only one prominent call-to-action: “See Highrise Plans and Pricing”. The Original Design had a navigation menu, as well as options to view more testimonials and features.

The result of this difference was that the Person Design led to a 102.5% increase in paid sign-ups.

Key Takeaway: Rather than just testing small elements of your landing page, try to test radically different versions of the page.

Complete history

What We Can Learn About Landing Page Optimization from the Presidential Candidates

BY SALLY LOWERY | ioninteractive.com

While others are discussing their politics, we at ion have been discussing their landing page strategy. There’s an important lesson to be learned from the presidential candidates regarding the role of landing page optimization in your overall campaign strategy. In a recent study, we identified landing page optimization wins and losses in both of the candidate campaigns race to the election.

ion’s study provides a detailed view into each candidate’s overall landing page strategy and spans social media, email marketing, search engine marketing, and mobile device integration.

It was a tight race on the landing page scorecard, but there’s a clear winner. Check out our latest infographic now and see what campaign wins ion’s landing page optimization review.

http://www.ioninteractive.com/post-click-marketing-blog/

Captivating Mobile Landing Pages

ioninteractive.com
BY ERIK BORTZFIELD

Getting more visitors to your mobile landing pages is great. If they aren’t sticking around, though, that couldindicate something about your mobile page is causing them to abandon.

If you can’t keep their attention with a captivating experience, you can lose them easily. But what does it take to keep a visitor’s attention and get them to convert?

Keeping Visitor’s Attention on Mobile Landing Pages

Optimize the experience – A big part of keeping visitors on mobile landing pages is the experience. If they have to pinch, twist and zoom, your page isn’t giving them an optimized experience. Some marketers neglect topersonalize for mobile devices, but it’s critical if you want to keep people on your page. Continuar leyendo «Captivating Mobile Landing Pages»

27 A/B Testing & Optimization Posts You Shouldn’t Miss | unbounce.com

Do you know NOTHING about A/B testing? Then there are plenty of introductory posts for you below.

Are you a SEASONED PRO?Then seek out the case studiesand more advanced lessons. Personally, I believe you can learn at least one new idea to inspire you as to what you could test, from any good blog post.

I’ve tried to find some of the better recent posts on A/B testing and conversion rate optimization to see where people’s ideas are at right now. You never know when you’ll find that case study that’s just like your own problem, or an important concept you find hard to communicate to your boss or clients.

If you have any other recent and great posts on these subjects, I’d love if you would share them in the comments so our readers can get the most value from this post.

Now test on conversion soldier, test on.

Case Studies

1. What Spending $252,000 On Conversion Rate Optimization Taught Neil Patel

10 insights from an expensive lesson, including: Gathering qualitative and quantitative data before testing, do A/A tests before you do A/B tests (you’ll need to read about that one), don’t expect increases on a monthly basis and multivariate tests never work… or at least for me. Good read.

2. How We Increased Landing Page Conversion from 5% to 55%

6 lessons explained in this case study, including large background photos convert really well, and this is a really interesting one, how adding an email and password option increased signups via Facebook and Twitter (which already existed on the page) by 7%.

3. B2B Lead Gen: A/B Split Test Helps Increase Quote Requests 262%

Everyone loves a good case study, and this one from Marketing Experiments walks you through their whole process from start to finish to show an impressive conversion lift.

4. A/B Testing Generates a 98+% Lift in Conversion Rate for DHL

Another case study, this time from Ion Interactive. Which walks through the target audience, the changes made to the pages, why they were made and what happened in the end. Stats and case studies FTW.

5. Webinar Testing: Slight Title Change Produces 45% Increase in Clickthrough Rate

I love title tests – they are almost always surprising. This one is good because it’s focused on attracting people to a webinar, which a lot of marketing companies are doing now – so listen up and use this info to test your own webinar registration pages.

6. How Changing a Single Word Increased Clickthrough Rate by 161%

I like this one because it starts properly with a hypothesis. Without one you might achieve success, but not know if it was based on your business goals (meaning that you’re still leaving money on the table). #ihatethatphraseftr

7. How Server Density A/B Tested Pricing Plans and Increased Revenue by 114%

If you run a SaaS business then this will be interesting to you as it includes a pricing test. Which is the hardest thing to get right for your business. You have to be careful how you do it though as it’s illegal in some jurisdictions to offer different prices to different people. It’s safer to just play with layout and verbiage changes.

8. Five Surprising Split Testing Tips

I’d say that nearly ALL A/B test results are surprising. But these five are a good set to add into your testing toolkit. Just remember, that what works for one page doesn’t necessarily work for your page – or customers.

9. Split-Test Email Signups Doubled AND Bounces Reduced at the Same Time

A fun and simple test, where you get to guess the winner and it even gets into the details of measuring your results in Google Analytics and WordPress. (Plug, with Unbounce you can see live conversion results right in the app 🙂

For A/B Testing Beginners

10. An Introduction To A/B Testing

You might be sick of intro’s to A/B testing, but this one has a pretty sweet video if you’re someone that prefers to watch rather than read. Definitely one for the noobs though.

11. The Web Developer’s Guide to A/B Testing

Don’t be fooled by the title, this post takes the small business angle for A/B testing. And talks about tools to use, what to test and the benefits of conversion rate optimization. More importantly it covers how to set up a proper test and how to interpret the data.

12. An Introduction to Using A/B Testing for Marketing Optimization

An eBook from the eBook masters at Hubspot. To quote them directly: “A/B testing your landing pages can help you generate up to 40% more leads for your business. Add this result to the benefits you can get from split testing your calls-to-action and emails, and you’ll see some significant increases in lead generation.” It’s 50 pages and has case studies, guidelines, and what you should be testing.

13. Conversion Rate Optimization eBook Listed for Free on Amazon Kindle

I don’t own a Kindle, but if I did, then I’d probably give this free download a go. Nothing to lose right? It seems to be a lead in to a series that you would need to pay for, but if it’s good then why not? It’s like giving a free preview of an upcoming larger book. So in terms of a sales strategy, it’s a good one.

Expert Opinion

Continuar leyendo «27 A/B Testing & Optimization Posts You Shouldn’t Miss | unbounce.com»

How to Increase Your Blog and Website Sales Conversion Rates with A/B Split Testing

Jeffbullas’s Blog

A/B Testing has been used by a number of online entrepreneurs for a long time now. With the huge benefits that it promises, this is not that surprising. Small businesses, medium-scale enterprises and large companies all benefit from A/B Split Testing.

But for you to be able to utilize this tool to its maximum potential, it is a must that you first have even a working understanding of what it is and how it works. This is actually one of the common pitfalls for some online entrepreneurs. They do not reap the full benefits of certain tools because they have not applied it well. Do not be one of them. Do your research and apply the best practices.

What is A/B Split Testing?

This is one of the first questions that need to be answered. Essentially, this is a technique wherein two versions of a webpage, email or personal message is sent to customers. But in these versions, almost all the elements are the same except for one.

The goal here is to track the changes in customer behavior. So when a specific action or change in behavior is recorded, there is only one factor to which the change can be attributed. This is the sole element which was tweaked.

Another thing that you have to keep in mind with A/B Split Testing is that the choice of customers receiving the versions is random. This way, bias or prejudice will affect the results of the test. Also, an appropriate sample size which is well-calculated is also necessary.

The fact is, A/B Split Testing can be pretty simple. You can even do this by yourself if you have the tools. Speaking of tools, there are many available online. A good example would be Google Analytics.

Steps in Conducting A/B Testing

First: Determine why you need to do an A/B testing. Continuar leyendo «How to Increase Your Blog and Website Sales Conversion Rates with A/B Split Testing»

Use QR Codes to Get More Facebook Likes – labnol.org

labnol.org

A store had this large QR code poster at the entrance window that read – “Like our Facebook Page for offers.” I scanned the QR code with my mobile phone and it redirected me to the store’s website that wasn’t quite mobile-friendly. I spent around 8 seconds on the website but couldn’t locate the Facebook Like button and left.

It was a missed opportunity for the brand as the QR Code failed to generate an additional Like on the Facebook Page.

Encourage Social Action with QR Codes

What the store really needs is a dedicated landing page that would provide customers an option to quickly “Like” the Facebook Page without confusing them with too many options. Also, the design of this page has to be mobile friendly as there’s a 99.99% probability that customers would use a mobile phone to scan the QR code on the go.

Scan this QR Code for a sample.

If you would like to build a similar landing page that encourages people to Like your Facebook Page and Follow you on Twitter, you can start with this simple template. The changes you need to make include… Continuar leyendo «Use QR Codes to Get More Facebook Likes – labnol.org»