I’ve always been behind the philosophy that telling customers what to do on your landing pages or website is much better than letting them figure it out on their own. After all, that’s what marketing is, right? We lead them in the direction we want them to take; to see our new product, new offers, new promotions, new content, etc.

However, if you’re working with graphic designers to design a website, I must say, they typically don’t like using buttons. Buttons are also known as a ‘call to action’. We’re calling the customer to take an action. Buttons can certainly ugly up a page if too large, too colorful, or too in your face. The up side to these kinds of buttons is: they work. Adding buttons or calls to action on not only your landing page but throughout your website can help increase conversions and conversion rates exponentially.

For a large client of mine, we had a landing page dedicated for user submissions requesting more information. This page was accessible via top hand navigation on all pages of their site.

What I did was add an additional ‘request more information’ button to the body of all the pages of the site that also takes users to the same ‘request more information’ landing page. Just by adding these buttons consistently throughout the website we increased our conversion rates 8% and conversions by 33% in one month.

Sometimes customers can actually ignore (although not on purpose) top, left or right hand navigation on websites, especially if they’re looking for content.  So by adding your call to action clear within the body of your content they may be more likely to take that action.

Here are a few tips I’ve tested using buttons that have worked wonders for me:

1. Add multiple buttons throughout your website (be sure not to be too annoying though)
2. Make your buttons above the fold  – very important
3. Set your buttons to a different color from the background of your page to make it more visible and stand-out more to the user.
4. Be precise in the verbiage you’re using on your buttons, don’t just say, submit, but rather, ‘Get your free Info Kit Now’.
5. Wherever there is a button, there is a form to be filled out. Be sure to send customer’s confirmation pages/emails confirming you have received their information and how to contact you with questions.
6. Be sure to make your call to action a button, or button like. Some people prefer to use text link calls to action that don’t necessarily have the same effect as regular buttons.

Adding buttons to your site are not difficult, you’re graphic designers should be able to create a unique button in about 2 minutes or less, and programmers can program them to a site in about the same amount of time. They’re a great way to increase conversions and conversion rates for your PPC account. If you haven’t convinced your marketing team that adding buttons to the site will help, use Google’s website optimizer, which allows you to test a version of your landing page with the button and one without the button. Website optimizer will then show you conversion rates on both conversions. Not too many people can say ‘no’ when numbers are there backing you up!

A great way to help increase your CTR and conversion rates is to take your top  performing keywords, and put them into new campaigns, targeting each state individually. When you write your ad text, be sure that state’s name is in your title and if possible in your description line. This will help increase your click through rates because even if people aren’t typing in a state or location specific keyword, tailoring your ad text to the users location still makes it a custom ad specific to that user.

In addition to tailoring your ad texts to that particular location, you can also customize your landing pages by using dynamic landing pages for a particular location. Now personally I think making 50 different landing pages with a state name in the title is a bit much. However you can create one landing page with dynamic titles that will change depending on the users search query.

I would try testing out a few of your top performing locations before making the big leap into creating 50 different campaigns targeting all 50 states. One place you can look is Google Analytics to find out which location is driving a majority of your traffic.  Simply login to your Google Analytics account, under visitors to the left, click on ‘map overlay’.  Scroll down below the map and you’ll see a list of countries, click on United States, and that will give you a breakdown of each state within the US. If you sort by visits, then you’ll get the state with the most visits first. You can see in the screen shot below, for my PPC account Indiana and Kentucky drives the majority of traffic to my website. Therefore I could create two new campaigns and landing pages targeting Indiana and Kentucky specifically to increase conversion rates.

Not only can you increase your conversion rates by taking users to a more specific landing page targeted to their location, but you can also increase your click-through rates with your new location targeted ad texts. By increasing your CTR’s you can easily increase your Quality Scores and decrease your cost-per-click without losing position. It’s a win-win situation.

If you’re like a lot of companies, running tests on your landing pages used to involve numerous meetings with your IT department, development hours in order to get everything designed and launched, as well as additional time to analyze the active tests. Your life as a search engine marketer got easier when Google launched Website Optimizer. If you have access to your landing page code, and you have some basic coding skills (or someone in close proximity does), then you can quickly launch tests, analyze the results and adjust accordingly.

With Website Optimizer you can run all of your testing in one location. (And no, this isn’t a paid plug for for this tool. We just think it’s extremely helpful!) You can monitor your tests, make adjustments as needed and improve your conversion rate. As far specific technical requirements are concerned to launch tests with Website Optimizer, I’ll leave that to the help section of the official website.

However, once you have your account open and your ready to start improving your landing page performance, what exactly should you be testing? Here is a list of landing page/website elements that you can test in order to learn what appeals best to your audience.

Headline: Your headline, along with almost every other element on our landing page, needs to be relevant, timely and appropriate for your audience. First, your headline has to assure the user that they’ve landed (pun intended) in the right place. In this vein, your headline needs address the core concern of someone who arrives on your page. From the first second of a user’s arrival, you need to tell them that you have the answer to their search.

There are numerous ways to write and test great headlines. Here are just a few ideas for testing new headlines:

• Try using emotional copy that will appeal to the user’s hopes, dreams, fears, aspirations.
• Test customer-focused vs. company focused headline (example: We can make your lead prospecting easier vs. You can make your lead prospecting easier).
• Split test using questions against declarative sentences.
• Try using longer headlines that are loaded with benefits against shorter headlines that focus solely on setting up the conversion.
• If you have headline copy that works well, then you can test the different font sizes and color.

Body copy: This is where you back-up the claims made in your headline or PPC ad. If your PPC ad inspired the user to click and the headline has convinced them to read further down the page, then your copy needs to do the heavy lifting.

Your body copy also needs to be relevant to a user’s search, benefit-driven, and written in the manner in which your audience expects. By this last point I mean that you need to know how colloquial, formal or technical the language on your landing page should be.

For the purpose of improving conversion rate, here a few body copy elements to test:

• Try using short text against longer text.
• Test copy that is more emotionally driven, rather than technical or feature driven.
• Your copy should always be relevant, but you can test inserting more of your high-traffic keywords into your copy.
• See if a list of benefits helps increase your performance.

Call-to-action: By this I could mean a few different things: the phrase that you use on your landing page for the desired action, or perhaps the button that users click on to go to the next step in your conversion funnel. Either way, you need to test it.

In regards to actual text, you should test a few different phrases to see which appeals to users best. Does a shorter call-to-action such as, “Sign Up’ work better than a more detailed one such as, “Get Your Free Guide Now.”

Also, you can test the color of your call-to-action buttons. Usually when there is an article written about landing page testing, someone mentions the button color. But it works and it’s worth testing.

Contact form: In the past, I have found that the next two are the hardest to test. The difficulty lies in the fact that the contact form is usually tied to a database. And if the contact form is damaged in anyway, then the leads will not populate correctly. However, if you can adapt, then this can be a quick win for testing.

For contact form testing, you should try out:

• Different lengths of your form. Try to using a longer form, and then try a version that is short enough to get above the fold.
• Ask fewer questions. How much information does your sales team need to follow up with a lead?
• How many required fields do you have? Can you make some of them optional?
• In regards to contact information; do you display your phone number on the landing page? How many calls do you receive from your landing page? Try removing the phone number to see if this inspires people to fill out the form.

Trust/Credibility symbols: Does your industry have certain certifications that will display your level of expertise and help build trust with your audience? If you don’t have them on your landing page, you should test this out. Also, if you’re accepting any type of payment, displaying safe-purchasing symbols can help improve your conversion rate.

Try out different offers: This is a quick one: you can highlight seasonal  or time-sensitive offers on your landing page. This is pretty straight forward. See which offer generates the best response and use it again at the same time the following year or even the next month.

Mini-site vs. Landing page: Once you have conducted a series of tests on your landing page and you feel that it’s as good as it’s going to get and you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board. By this I mean you may need to completely re-think how you use landing pages. However, at least when you start this process, you’ll have a control landing page that you can test against.

With this tactic, you may to test out a mini-site or a multiple-step conversion process. Or if you’re using one of these longer forms, you may want to go the opposite direction and use a shorter landing page.

If you want more ideas on how to optimize landing pages for higher conversion rates, you can check out our podcast series, PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast.

For more in-depth information on landing page testing, I highly recommend Tim Ash’s book, Landing Page Optimization. And I also recommend Always Be Testing by Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar for additional information on Website Optimizer. Very helpful resources!

Keep in mind that there is a cost to landing page testing. Some of your tests are not going to be successful, but your results should improve over time. Optimizing your landing page is a continuous process that will lead to enhanced results when executed properly and with care.

The PPC Hero team has provided an analysis of the well-formatted elements of the landing page, as well as some ideas which could be tested to continually improve PPC conversion rates. Our discussion focuses on the following areas:

• PPC ads/keywords – Branded terms are pretty much always going to convert at a higher rate than most other keywords, but using longer-tail keywords or more descriptive keywords may help with conversion rates as well. We also discuss how specialized ad text gains search volume and lowers your cost-per-conversion because these keywords are likely to have a higher conversion rate than the generic “girl’s coats”.

• Landing Page Graphics – The design of the page matches the content: fun kids coats. However, we do suggest testing a plain background. The brightly spotted background distracts from the design and color in the coats, so a plain background will help the products pop more. Also, the logo at the top is slightly pixelated and might look more sleek if it were cleaned up a little bit.

• Landing Page Navigation – The links at the top of the page should be the most important – if the mailing list sign up and size charts are not your most important links, move these down and replace them with higher priority links. On the landing page itself, you could test having each of the photos lead to product categories, not individual products, as another way for people to easily navigate to what they want. A third point on navigation we mention here is the mailing list signup. If you want people to sign up for your mailing list, you might want to put a box where they can submit their address directly next to the call at out the top of the homepage. People are more likely to fill it out if they can do it without having to navigate to a different page – there’s more immediacy.

• Landing Page Trust building – We mentioned a few things that you can highlight to build credibility with users including: About Us, Returns Policy and Secure Ordering Symbols. These should all be at the top of the page. You could also highlight benefits of the products’ quality like: machine washable, superior workmanship, or special orders available.

Visit the www.KidsCoats.com site and follow along with the PPC Hero team’s suggestions for various elements of the landing page!

Download MP3 podcast files:
1. PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast – KidsCoats.com (13.3 MB, .mp3)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player to listen to the podcasts.

Here is a quick snapshot of KidsCoats Landing Page:

KidsCoats.com Homepage

Are you interested in having your landing page critiqued by the PPC Hero team? Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. Check out our submission guidelines and send us your information!

The PPC Hero team has provided an analysis of the well-formatted elements of the landing page, as well as some ideas which could be tested to continually improve PPC conversion rates. Our discussion focuses on the following areas:

• Page aesthetics & trust- a clean site design establishes credibility & encourages user engagement, but reducing clutter and adding trust symbols such as association & certification logos can convey trustworthiness to website visitors.

• Conversion methods- multiple, prominently visible conversion methods on the page give users many opportunities to convert. Language changes could improve calls to action and color changes could draw more attention to some of the conversion methods offered.

• Website and landing page content- the site offers a plethora of useful information for potential clients and answers questions clearly. Testing some navigational changes on the landing page for important site content could help users find the information they’re looking for more quickly.

Visit the www.first4lawyers.com site and follow along with the PPC Hero team’s suggestions for various elements of the landing page!

Download MP3 podcast files:
1. PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast – First4Lawyers.com (7.8 MB, .mp3)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player to listen to the podcasts.

Here is a quick snapshot of First4Lawyers Landing Page:

First4Lawyers.com Homepage

Are you interested in having your landing page critiqued by the PPC Hero team? Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. Check out our submission guidelines and send us your information!

The PPC Hero team has provided some tips on some elements of the site and PPC account structure that could be modified to provide a better user experience, PPC quality score, and increase overall conversion rates. During our discussion we focused on these areas:

• Keywords should be placed in specialized ad groups by searcher intent, and should also appear in the ad text for their ad group and on the landing page.
• Using “trust symbols” such as association membership symbols or security symbols on the site can increase visitor trust and increase the likelihood of conversion.
• Including a link to your privacy policy is important both from a user standpoint and for your landing page’s quality score with Google Adwords.
• A concise contact form is appropriate, but the page should give users an idea of the benefits they will directly receive by filling out the contact form, direct them to fill out the form, and make it more apparent (in a headline for the form) what action you want them to perform.
• Using different methods to geotarget searchers may assist in reaching a wider, but still very relevant, audience.

Nick’s core keywords include:
houses for sale, houses for rent, rent to own houses, homes for sale, homes for rent

Download MP3 podcast files:
1. PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast – GreensBoro500.com (12.7 MB, .mp3)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player to listen to the podcasts.

A sample ad text reads:

Greensboro Houses
$2000 Total Move In!
Quick, Simple Process.
www.Greensboro500.com

Here is a quick snapshot of GreensBoro500’s Landing Page:

GreensBoro500 Home Page

Are you interested in having your landing page critiqued by the PPC Hero team? Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. Check out our submission guidelines and send us your information!

With these challenges in mind, our fearless PPC Hero team has provided some tips on solving some of these problems. During our discussion we focused on these areas:

• If Business Plan Pro is the main driving keyword for this site, then the keyword density could be enhanced.
• Opportunities to improve the flow of the landing page.
• Include more features and benefits.

Nicole’s core keywords include: Business Plan Pro, Business Plan Software, Business Plan, Business Planning software, Writing a Business Plan, and Business Plan Template.

Download MP3 podcast files:
1. PPC Hero Landing Page Optimization Podcast – BusinessPlanPro (14.5 MB, .mp3)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player to listen to the podcasts.

Here are a couple quick snapshots of BusinessPlanPro’s PPC Landing Page and it’s homepage:

Business Plan Pro's PPC Landing Page

Business Plan Pro's Homepage

Are you interested in having your landing page critiqued by the PPC Hero team? Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. Check out our submission guidelines and send us your information!

I am working with a client who sells high-end, custom office furniture. Over the past few weeks our conversion rate has been down so I started analyzing our ad texts, keywords, bids, ad positions, search query reports, and the other usual suspects that could cause my performance to fluctuate.

After running numerous reports within our paid search campaigns we didn’t discover any major performance problems. Our impressions, clicks and click-through rate all remained steady. There were not any specific campaigns, ad groups or keywords that were well below the others. Also, our bounce rate, pages-per-visitor, and time-on-site stats had actually increased. Overall, conversion rate was down and there was no smoking gun in our paid search campaign to blame.

Of course, we conducted ad text optimizations, we adjusted bids accordingly for keywords have historically under-performed. So, we were able to make some changes in or to optimize the account. But I was thinking that there was something else going on.

I was reviewing our lead reports and noticed that online leads and inbound calls were down, and their decline was parallel. This lead me to believe there was an issue that was on a more macro level. After talking with the client, he had mentioned that this time of year may lend itself to users who are conducting more research for these products, rather than actually taking action (but it was just a gut feeling).

I set out within Analytics to see if this is true. Keep in mind, I’m still looking into this issue, but I thought I’d share my findings thus far and maybe it will help you to get a new perspective on your conversion funnel.

Within Google Analytics I reviewed our exit pages from our contact form. Basically, I wanted to see if someone hit our contact form, where did they end up after that (instead of converting)? Here is sampling of my findings thus far (see below).

So, what are you looking at here? In the red box is my lead confirmation page (“/thankyou.php”). I noticed that the  number of people who went from the contact form to the confirmation page decreased by 8%. However, the number of people who are going to all of our other products (that are included in the navigation) have gone up. See below:

This initial report was telling me a few things:

1. That gut feeling may be right. People were leaving the contact form in order to view other products. This could mean that they are not ready to make the commitment and take that next step (i.e contact my client for a quote).
2. Also, this indicates that perhaps we need to review our contact form in order to gain user’s attention faster and at a deeper level, and provide more reasons for them to convert right now.
3. During this time frame, inbound calls also went down. This could also indicate the users are doing more shopping than buying as well.

We have not exhausted our analysis and there other strategies we are reviewing in order to get our conversion rate back up. But this is a start. We still have much work to do!

What can you take away from this?

• Seasonality can play a big roll in your PPC performance.
• If there isn’t a smoking gun in your PPC campaign, review your website to see if something has shifted.
• When your conversion rate is down, it’s always a good idea to review your abandonment rate within your analytics tracking (it helps to set up goals in Google Analytics). This can show where people are dropping off and how you might be able to pick them back up again.

Now, back to PPC landing page optimization.  The tactics I describe in this post will not only improve your Quality Score which can increase your ad position for a lower cost, but can also help convert more people that come to your website.

Now, I will admit that most of these tips are for lead generation, not all of these tips would apply to an ecommerce website.

1. Call to Action/Buttons – It’s no secret that adding a call –to- action or a button that is large and very noticeable on your PPC landing pages will help increase conversions. Anything that draws attention to a user is more likely to get clicked on. Tell people what you want them to do on your landing page, don’t just assume they’ll know automatically.
2. Minimal Navigation – The key to successful PPC landing pages is keep the user to from getting too distracted.  Remove the top, left or right hand navigation from your main site on your PPC landing pages. Simply have your company logo at the top left of the page with a link to your homepage.  That will be enough for people to click on if they need more information before converting.
3. Important information above the fold – Some people who are searching for a service like yours are sometimes in a hurry. If they enter your landing page and don’t see what they need to do within the first 5 seconds, they’re likely to bail.  Be sure that your call to action, button, or form is above the fold.  Be sure to check Google analytics to see what resolution size the majority of your users are currently using. This will help your designers make the important information above the fold for most of your users.
4. Easy-to-scan copy – I’ve worked on clients before that use way too much industry language in their PPC landing pages.  You have to think that if an executive is looking for a service they’re likely to ask their assistant, intern or even a receptionist to do research before they engage in anything. While the executive may know all the industry jargon the assistant or intern may not.  Also, these people who are searching for many companies are in a hurry, and simply just scan the copy on your landing page and don’t necessarily read through it all the way. So break up your copy into several paragraphs instead of one large paragraph. And I like to use the rule of thumb to put your benefits or advantages of choosing your company in a bullet list or numbered list so it stands out more prominently.
5. Few images to convey professionalism – Some PPC landing pages I have seen have a lot of well, dorky images that don’t convey any professionalism whatsoever.  This can really turn off a potential client and make you look untrustworthy.  Have one to 2 images on your PPC landing pages that show professional looking people, smiling as if they have just engaged in yoru services and are incredibly happy.  Also having too many images on your PPC landing page will make your load times longer.
6. Fast loading times – One factor of the Google Adwords Quality Score is the load times of your pages. If it takes more than 10 seconds to fully load your pages that’s way to long. It should take less than 5 seconds. Large flash files, too many images, or animated graphics could hinder your fast load times. Also, if I have to wait for a flash animation to load before I can get information about your services, I’m more than likely not going to stick around or come back.
7. Dynamic headlines – Using dynamic headlines on your PPC landing pages is a great way to better target what the user is actually typing in the search box.  Dynamic headlines are generated by tracking URLs that will insert the specific keyword into the headline. This is like using dynamic keyword insertion in your PPC ads, only it’s for your landing pages. If the page headline is more targeted to what the user typed in the search, they’re much more likely to continue reading and complete an action.
8. PPC keywords in your landing page copy – Many people think this is only true for SEO, but you still need to include your PPC keywords in the copy of your PPC Landing page. This will not only help improve your Quality Scores, but will also help your users connect better to your copy.
9. Short contact form – You could potentially be driving away qualified leads by having a contact form that is too long. If your contact form is running below the fold, it’s too long. You should be able to see the ‘submit’ button above the fold.  Look at your current forms and only require the information you truly need. If someone sees a very long form, they may think, ‘This is going to take too long to fill out’ and could possibly skip that process altogether.
10. No Clutter – This is really a no-brainer, but unfortunately too many people make the mistake of dumping too much content on their PPC landing pages.  You should have one main goal of your PPC landing page, not 3, 4 or 5.  Remove any extra copy that isn’t necessarily useful to the user.  Remove any unnecessary images or icons.

If you need any persuasion to make changes to your existing landing pages, just take this for an example:  if you were to make changes on your landing pages, and increase your conversion rates by .5%, add that to your current sales and see how much of an increase that is. You would be surprised how much additional revenue .5% would drive.

If you have any additonal PPC landing page tips that will help increase conversions that I have not mentioned feel free to add them in the comments section!

With these challenges in mind, our fearless PPC Hero team has provide some tips on solving some of these problems. During our discuss we focused on these areas:

• Speaking directly to your audience, and engaging them directly
• If Mr. Steam is the main driving keyword for this site, then the keyword density could be enhanced.
• Opportunities to improve the flow of the homepage.
• Include more features and benefits.

Misty’s core keywords include: mr steam, mr steam generator, mrsteam, and mr steamer.

or if you want to use another podcasting service, just use this link to add the feed.
PPC Hero Podcast Feed

Download MP3 podcast files:
1. PPC Hero Landing Page Critique Podcast – SteamSaunaBath (15.6 MB, .mp3)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player to listen to the podcasts.

Here is a quick snapshot of SteamSaunaBath’s homepage:

Are you interested in having your landing page critiqued by the PPC Hero team? Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. Check out our submission guidelines and send us your information!