Greg Krehbiel on Publishing and Online Marketing

Avinash Kaushik has a very interesting article on measuring the value of “upper funnel” keywords.

The basic idea is that different types of keywords get you different kinds of traffic, and that it doesn’t make sense to evaluate all your keywords on the same basis — i.e., first-visit conversions.

So if you’re not going to evaluate keywords (that you’re paying good money for!) on the basis of conversions, what do you do?

Kaushik says you put keywords through a funnel analysis. Some of them introduce people to your company / website, but they’re not likely to convert. Measure them by bounce rate.

Others relate to category or brand. You measure them by time on site or return visits.

Finally you have your “conversion” keywords, which you measure by sales.

Okay, this sounds reasonable, but it sounds a little like the “branding” pitches you get from people who sell display ads. “No, these ads don’t convert off clicks, but they increase traffic to your site, brand-related searches, etc.”

Which is all well and good if you can prove it!

That’s where you get into the tricky analytics portions of the discussion, which involves “multi touch attribution analysis.” What’s that, you ask? It’s “the art … of measuring truly pan session customer behavior.”

Lovely. Can I do that with Google Analytics? (Maybe. See comment 16 in the post I link to above.)

Oh, but I said I was going to talk about landing pages.

If this theory really works, it argues for different landing page strategies for different groups of keywords.

Many people design landing pages for “conversion only.” Drive visitors straight to your cart and don’t give them any options to do anything else!

(There’s a smarter, middle ground that gives them some other options, like going to your home page, but that’s for another day.)

However, if I have a pile of keywords that are designed to get people interested in my content, I obviously don’t want to send them to a page that says “buy my widget” and nothing else.

So Kaushik’s “funnel” approach to keywords leads to a strategy that involves several different groups of keywords going to several different types of landing pages — and a headache of a time tracking it all in some fancy pants analytics tool.

Greg Krehbiel Landing pages

I was at the SIPA Washington conference this week, chatting with colleagues in the publishing industry about this and that, but mostly landing pages.

A lot of people seem to think of the web as a fast-moving, short-attention-span place where quirky people with ADD are blazing from page to page as fast as they can click.

In order to grab these people, the story goes, you need short sales pages that get right to the point without a lot of text. And God forbid you make them scroll.

I’ve not found that to be the case, and almost every person I spoke with who had tested long vs. short copy found that long worked better. (One person said his test was inconclusive.)

This applied to landing pages and to email copy.

Obviously you need to follow basic copy writing rules. Headlines should offer a compelling benefit. There should be a clear call to action. Etc. Etc. (More on that later.)

But when people are interested in a product, sometimes they want to read about it for a while and get comfortable before they buy.

In direct mail, some companies use very long copy. Like 18 pages. (I’m not kidding.)

So don’t be afraid of a long sales page. Use Google’s Website Optimizer to test long vs. short and see what you can get. (If you don’t know how to use it, there’s plenty of good help on Google’s site, and there are some youtube videos about it. Or you can ask me.)

And oh yeah. The other thing is this idea that a page has to look “professional.”

It seems there ought to be something to that, right? Who wants to buy a product from people who can’t even make a decent web page?

OTOH, have you looked at Craigslist recently?

I’ve tested pretty vs. ugly, and often ugly wins.

It may be that I’m trading short-term sales against long-term trust in my brand.

Maybe, but I’m not convinced. I think the “you need a professional design” thing is promoted by the graphic designers.

Except …. You do need to make your site “professional” when it comes to usability. I don’t think you need lovely colors and a crisp layout. But you do need to put things where people expect to find them, and you do need to make it easy for your visitors to use your site.

Greg Krehbiel Landing pages

These are my notes for a SIPA Roundtable discussion on landing page optimization.

The visitor to your landing page is asking these questions:

• Am I in the right place?
• Can I trust this site / company?
• What do I do next?

Am I in the right place?

Consider how the visitor arrived at your site and make the transition from the previous page as smooth as possible.

The visitor has a goal in mind and wants to know if this page is relevant to completing that goal.

Can I trust this site / company?

Any kid and his mutt dog can make a web page, and web visitors know that. You have to win credibility with your visitors with …

• A professional design
• A guarantee
• A good brand name
• Transparency (“About Us” and “Contact Us” links)

What do I do next?

Your page should be goal-oriented. Goals might include …

• Browse news articles
• Sign up for an e-mail alert
• Buy a product
• Watch a video
• Get more information

Whatever goal your page is directed towards, make it plain to the user how to achieve that goal and avoid unnecessary distractions.

However – don’t try to herd your visitors, and do provide links back to your homepage. (It helps with your page rank on Google.)

To optimize conversion rates, focus on usability

Keep it simple

• Make links speak for themselves
• Make the structure of your website predictable
• Provide clear feedback to user actions
• Make it hard to commit a serious mistake

These are just guidelines … and I’m not sure they’re all true!

Think of these concepts as you come up with ideas for your landing pages, but always test them.

For Discussion

• Reaction to these guidelines?
• What’s worked for you?
• What difficulties have you faced?
• Have you tried …
  • Cool effects (Ajax, jQuery, etc.)
  • Video
  • User ratings, testimonials
  • Other?
• Do you test your landing pages?
• What do you use?
• Any problems?
• Any successes?

Resources

Let’s Talk Landing Pages

Optimizing Conversion Rates: It’s All About Usability

Creating effective landing pages – optimization tips

Greg Krehbiel Landing pages

10 Landing Page Optimization Tactics gives this advice.

In today’s “give-it-to-me-quick-or-I’m-out-of-here” world, you need to keep your landing page very focused and pretty simple.

Why do people have such a quick draw on relevance?

Perhaps it’s because the barrier to entry for new products, new services, new advertising, … let’s face it, new annoyances … has become so small that any clown with a computer can get his voice on the street.

If you were going to pay $100,000 on an ad campaign, you’d going to take some time and do it right. But if you can whip something up in five minutes and start driving paid search traffic in another 30, you might not be so concerned about quality.

The web is full of cheap garbage and shoddy pages because it’s so easy to do.

Your visitor is looking for something. To find it he has to wade through 100 pages and decide if you’re one of the 99 bozos or the 1 keeper. He doesn’t have a lot of time to fool around.

You have to build trust by making it clear that

• your page is relevant to his search,
• you’re a trusted and trustworthy merchant, and
• it’s easy for him to do what he wants to do … get information, buy a product, whatever.

I don’t believe the problem is short attention spans. Once you build trust and convince the user he’s in the right place, he’s willing to hear you out.

Greg Krehbiel Landing pages

Here’s some good advice on making effective web pages.

I particularly like the advice on over-coming “choice paralysis” in this one — Design To Sell: 8 Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert

7 More Useful Tips To Help Your Site Convert

Greg Krehbiel Landing pages