Follow me here for a second…

Have you ever walked down the street of a nice town that featured some nice shops? Ever stop in front of a particular shop, look at the store sign or marquee, look around the window and think you found what you were looking for - only to realize it wasn’t… the minute you walked in?

It seems that although the sign/marquee/window gave the indication of what you’d find inside… but just passing through the door itself - brought you to somewhere else.

Odd - heck no… It happens all the time. And it happens even more on the Internet. What we’re talking about here are “landing pages”.

Landing page optimization is perhaps the most important Internet marketing tactic you need to master if you truly want to succeed online. Having an effective landing page that maximizes your conversions will help you dominate your niche market. This applies to both product vendors and the affiliates promoting for them.

In fact, if you’re into Google Adwords you should already know the extreme importance of landing pages. The store sign/marquee/window dressing in the virtual world is a combination of your Title Tag, Description Tag , Headline and Ad. And it’s extremely important that what you say your store or website is all about… IS exactly that - and not something else.

Landing Pages Defined…

A landing page, as you may already know, is a page that your prospect or visitor or anyone looking for information… “land’s on” - when they click your link or your ad. It can be part of your overall website, or a micro-site… but different landing pages can be customized to suit the specific problem you solve, the services your provide, your product or the traffic source. Depending on the type of landing page, it can also be known as a squeeze page, sales page, opt-in page or money page. However, the basic purpose for any landing page no matter what it’s called is to get your visitor to do something - take the next logical step, fill out a form, request information, a demo, a free consultation… some way to get in touch with you. Landing pages are the key to getting your visitor to go beyond just looking and reading your web page. Simply put - you’ll give them something of value, something they’ve been looking for in exchange for their contact information.

As far as optimization goes, there are basically two kinds of tests you can do on your landing pages, Multivariate Testing (MVT) and A/B Testing. However - we’re going to only speak about A/B testing right now - as it is the best one for you based on your available resources and time.

Landing Page Optimization with A/B Split Testing

With A/B testing you basically start with web page A (the control) and web page B as a test page. Both web pages are identical except for the single variable you want to test. For example, both pages may be identical except for the main headline, or the signup link, or the placement of an image.

Once you’ve setup your simple A/B test, you split your traffic between the two pages and observe your sales or leads. After both pages have achieved a reasonable number of conversions, you’ll be able to see the winning page. In advertising - we call this “the control”. The losing page is removed and replaced with another contender - with the main goal to - “beat the control”.

You repeat this process with different layouts, different ad copy, and different headlines until you find the best possible landing page. You’ll know this when your split test results no longer show any significant difference between pages.
With A/B split testing, landing page optimization gets much simpler and faster. You can get really meaningful results with only a small number of website visitors, and get higher conversion rates consistently. You don’t need much technical knowledge either.

Pitfalls of Landing Page Optimization

Although the benefits of optimizing your landing pages are immense, there are several pitfalls to avoid. Key in on:

• Staying consistent. Make sure all other aspects of your landing page remains the same when you’re doing your tests.
• Avoiding redundancy. Keep track of the elements you have already tested.
• Using the right software. Don’t get bogged down with managing software. Stick to your business goals - conversion.