Landing page optimisation has become something of a buzz word amongst online marketers in recent months. The only trouble though is that many people still don’t know what it is exactly. So if you’re a little confused, here’s my quick guide to optimising your landing pages.

First of all, a landing page is the first page on your site that a visitor lands on. It’s not necessarily your homepage and most sites will generally have dozens. Each page has a focus, whether it’s to sell a product, get somebody to pick up the phone or to navigate to a page deeper in the website. If it isn’t converting, then something could well be wrong.

This is when you need to do a little sleuthing. By performing a thorough analysis of the page and its various components you can determine what it is that might be putting visitors off. Perhaps there isn’t a clear enough call to action, maybe a button is too far down the page or the content could be misleading. Whatever it is, you need to take action.

The trouble comes when you need to actually make changes. Do you just go in and make wholesale updates and hope for the best? How do you monitor what works and what doesn’t? Could you actually end up doing more damage than good? It is an issue faced by many site owners.

So when you finish analysing your landing pages, you then need to test them. Rather than just making one change at a time and seeing if traffic is affected, you can test various versions simultaneously.

How does landing page testing work though? Well, having analysed what might be causing visitors to leave, you can create an alternative version of your page with the issue amended. This can be done for any number of pages and to cover a full array of elements that need testing.

Anyway, with the alternative page developed you can then set it live. But rather than simply replacing the original, it will sit alongside it, appearing for half of the visitors. With the original page receiving the other half, you should then get an understanding of which one proves more popular with visitors.

Obviously the more visits you receive the clearer the result will be, so landing page optimisation is often only employed by sites with high traffic levels. Moving on though, we now reach the analysis stage. You have the data and can better judge which versions work well and which don’t, allowing you to make changes where needed.

This analytical method to site improvement can work wonders in improving your conversion rate and stemming the flow of people away from your site. If you are working with PPC campaigns, this can help to reduce wasted clicks and keep costs down. Equally, your SEO work certainly won’t be adversely affected in any way either.

So that, in a nutshell, is what landing page optimisation is all about. First you look for issues, then you make changes, test alternative versions and then scrutinise the outcome. This can be a continuing process of improvement and the information gained should help to improve pages right throughout your site.

Author Bio: Stephen Logan works as a Copywriter for leading Hampshire-based SEO Company Impact Media. They offer a full range of search engine marketing packages including Landing Page Optimisation Services.

Category: Internet
Keywords: Landing Page Optimisation,SEO,Search Engine Optimisation,Landing Page Analysis