If much of digital marketing is a pragmatic, statistically-based science, then developing successful landing pages is an art form. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, developing a quality landing page that converts is among the most essential elements of a high-performing website.
I often use the term “develop” when talking about landing pages since consistent testing and optimization are such a large part of developing a landing page that works. As Anne Holland’s Which Test Won illustrates, it’s virtually impossible to guess what will produce the best performing landing page, so the process of refinement rules.
So where do you begin when judging landing page performance? In Google Analytics, you can start by viewing your top 20 landing pages at Content > Site Content > Landing Pages. The pages with the highest bounce rates will illustrate who’s underperforming and who’s winning. Then it’s time to start testing. Is the page loading quickly? Is your call to action loud enough? Do you need additional content? Is your AdWords traffic to the page segmented properly? Be sure to consult both the winners and losers when looking for clues before and during testing.
As with all digital marketing, it’s a good practice to set up a dashboard for your landing pages to include entrances, pageviews, bounce rate and page value. Assigning a dollar value to conversions is a great way to segment your audience to help define higher value activities and conversions. Then you can prioritize your next steps using a mix of these metrics as they compare to each of your traffic sources.
I use the Unbounce landing page tool to help manage much of the development and testing process. It provides a quick and easy framework for testing performance of new fields and page components while providing really faster reporting. Unbounce has also added some solid functionality to pass your leads to marketing automation and CRM tools such as Hubspot and Salesforce.
