SEO World:

First, I present a test. Please answer truthfully.

Where do you place primary focus in your online work on a daily basis?

Please select in order of importance of workload:

• A. Search Engine Rankings & Monitoring (___ %)
• B. Web Traffic Building/Link Acquisition (___%)
• C. Website Usability Study and Updates (___%)
• D. User Behavior Tracking and Strategy (___%)
• E. Brand Reach/Social Media Expansion (___%)
• F. Conversion Testing and Profit Tracking (___%)

I certainly hope flavors of all six, but I’m guessing that F, the last one, grabs the smallest attention in your day-to-day? It’s very common, and I see it all the time.

The truth is: You don’t have to spend all that time and work trying to get more traffic or rankings with detailed user click-stream tracking, link building in order to add potentially significant *bottom-line dollars* to your existing business.

All right then: How can you create “big revenue into your business” today?

With existing traffic (assuming “big enough” data rate!) and the overall movement to your website, you should be able to double–and triple–conversions by making just some small changes (some more drastic, perhaps), but overall, pretty easy to implement.

You could try to build more traffic, but it’s generally harder to raise traffic that you need to meet your conversion goals, versus just tweaking your existing page(s) to simply get more customers to buy more of your stuff.

There are many ways to do this. But today, I’ll show you examples from a design team that I have been working with lately, with some amazing results. We’ve seen outstanding success, and extracts from case studies are presented below.

But, let me rehash–from a previous post on my blog–here are some things you can test yourself:

• Headlines: A strong, compelling, problem-solving headline, relevant to topic
• Price of offer: Test different prices
• Bonuses or other incentives
• P.S.: Add a P.S. at the end of your sales letter or squeeze/content page. Many will scroll down your page and read this
• Guarantees: For example, “90 day guarantee or your money back”
• Audio: Test with autoplay or not
• Body Copy: Short and long copy, maximize use of white space, and make it short. Web readers “scan” the page
• Header image and/or banner: Test by turning it on and off, different sizes and colors, too
• Site color/fonts: Red and blue fonts work well; test it all
• Subheaders, taglines: Compelling “problem solvers”
• Images: i.e., “hero shots,” personal pictures of people, then things
• Videos: Very powerful in the new YouTube age. Upload a video to YouTube and make sure to brand it on your page
• Buttons: Different colors, different text in buttons (not just “submit,” but “Yes, download the free whitepaper,” etc.)
• Your Logo: Show it; don’t show it. (You’d be amazed what turning it off may do. Don’t do this if you are Coca-Cola.)
• Credibility, legitimacy: Verisign logo, BBB, Hackersafe, Visa/MC, etc. Add more “flair” to your page.
• Test your signup forms, short vs. long (short forms work better normally, but test this). B2B vs. B2C behavior may differ.

Check out some live examples, granted complimentary by Creative Digital Media.

Below are extracts from its top 10 secrets list, but five overall landing pages design strategies are presented here:

EXAMPLE #1: Keep your opt-in above the fold.

Number 2: Do whatever you can to look professional.

Number 3: Don’t waste space and keep your message simple.

Number 4: Use “eye candy” around the opt-in form.

Number 5: How much “flare” can you use?

To get the complete list of landing page design secrets–with many more examples–please download it here.

In my next post, I will discuss advanced testing via software-enabled tools. This will include how to take the very important human creative inputs and test them via A/B landing page testing and multi-variate, sectional testing recipes. This can all be done in an SEO search-friendly way.

What can you learn from the CNN home page as it relates to “conversion”? (Defined as a visitor performing some action on a transactional or reference landing page).

The video below provides tons of detail about how you can increase conversion on your existing pages. It also makes you think about creative frameworks for new pages that you can (and should) develop and test.

Andy Jenkins (funny but experienced internet marketer seen in this video) explains how his company, through science and research, more than doubled conversion by making just a few changes on existing websites, and how their foveal view eye application impacts their landing page design work.

An example of what this may look like in one screenshot is depicted here:

They are advanced topics, but listen carefully, and the presentation will show you insider tips on optimizing your site for users.

Among the four secrets:

1. Learn how to increase action by a visitor, and fast;
2. Discover how white space should be applied on a page;
3. Find out what every other other page on the internet is measured by; and
4. Explore chunky grouping and how it can affect the eye’s fovea (as contrary to peripheral) view

Did you know that your current landing page may be standing between you and hundreds, perhaps thousands of additional dollars sent to your business?

Well, you are not alone, so I decided to write up some little known secrets to increase your profits online.

Why bother with a landing page?
Imagine the perfect sandwich. It contains a top, middle, bottom.  The acquisition of clients is the top part, the conversion (and the juicy part) the middle, and retention/back-end the bottom part.  If you can make all three in a perfect way, you can eat your way to a great landing page business model.

Who should design the perfect landing page? 
Aren’t you the King or Queen of Internet Marketing? Don’t you know your strategic and tactical angles the best of all? Wrong. Not when it comes to landing page design. It’s the visitor to your page that will help design it for you. But - only if that visitor is tracked and tested in such a way that you can quantify the relevancy and conversion factors of that visitor.

What I mean by that is - you need to test variations of your landing page and classify the “winning pages” (pages that converted) and constantly check your conversion rates. If a 100 folks click or find your webpage and 1 person engages, you have a 1% conversion rate. Your goal is to move this number up and tracking not only the CR (conversion rate), but the dollars associated with each offer and page.

Where do I start to write a landing page?
When you start working on the page, make sure that you start with the relevancy factor. Don’t try deceit, make it compelling and look to solve a problem for the visitor as your core message. Look also at your competition and move to a wireframe layout (where you can move things around), without getting too deep into details at first. Think about what possible headlines, offers and variations of those capture you the most intially. Then, add a scarcity factor to make the offer short-lived. You probably have seen count-down clocks and other imagery to show “limited supply” or “limited offer”. 

Furthermore, make sure that the message to engage the visitor is “above the fold” on the page, so they don’t have to scroll to see your most important sections. You have 5 seconds or less - “a blink of an eye” really - to convey your message and have them take action. A personal touch is always good, it helps to establish trust, which is a key component on the Internet, where visitors don’t know you. Try also not to just “pitch”, but make a softer sell, and think “informational”. If you are in e-commerce (transactional) - it will be different, but test everything as indicated below:

16 Top Things To Test - For More Money From Landing Pages:

• Headlines - A strong, compelling, problem solving headline - relevant to topic
• Price of offer - test different prices
• Bonuses or other incentives
• PS (p.s.) - at the end of your sales letter - many will scroll down your page and read this
• Guarantees - ex: “90 day guarantee or your money back”
• Audio - test with auto-play or not
• Body Copy - short and long copy, maximize use of white space, and make it short - web readers “scan” the page
• Header image and/or banner - Test by turning it on and off, different sizes and colors too
• Site color/fonts - Red and Blue fonts work well, test it all
• Sub headers, taglines - compelling “problem solvers”
• Images - “hero shots” - personal pictures of people, then things
• Videos - very powerful in the new YouTube age. Upload a video to YouTube and make sure to brand it on your page
• Buttons - different colors, different text in buttons (not just “submit”, but “Yes, download the free whitepaper”, etc)
• Your Logo - Show it, Don’t show it. (You’d be amazed what turning it off may do. Don’t do this if you are Coca-Cola)
• Credibility, Legitimacy - Verisign logo, BBB, Hackersafe, Visa/MC, etc
• Test your sign up forms, short versus long (short forms work better, but test this)

Testing all of this and in many ways can be daunting. You can use the web optimizer from Google to start, or write your own (I’m working on a simple, but effective javascript system). There are also vendors like optimost, vertster, kaizentrack and others. They can be very expensive, but worthwhile for the right business.

You should set your ego aside, and recognize that most new users who come to your website, has a “bad” or “I’m busy” attitude. If you can generate relevant pages that try to answer their problems quickly (”the 5 second rule to action”) - you are on your way. The 5-second rule (or less) must engage the user to do something on your site.

Look to overcome this user psychology and test your pages against them:

“I’d like to buy, but:
Can I trust you? If so, prove it!
Are others buying from you? If so, show me!
Are you going to be around if I buy from you?
Is this all too good to be true?”

Alway make sure to apply good SEO - with TITLE tags, Descriptions, Headers and more - watch your money and profits grow!