An Interview with Stefan Tornquist, Metrics Editor, MarketingSherpa, Inc.
An effective landing page can make a huge difference to your marketing campaign's success, yet frequently it's the last thing on your project to-do list. We asked Stefan Tornquist, Metrics Editor, MarketingSherpa, Inc. five questions on how to improve your landing page conversion rate.
Stefan is the editor of MarketingSherpa's recently completed "Landing Page Handbook: How to Raise Conversions." He describes a landing page as "a page that exists around a single idea and that idea communicates to an action."
Marketing2IT: What kind of conversion rate should B2B marketers expect from their landing pages?
Stefan Tornquist: The thing about conversion rate is that it's the most individual metric in marketing. It's the result of your campaign timing in combination with the shopping cart, the offer, the marketing message and how all those elements interact with the design of those elements.
Many B2B campaigns end up with 1.5 % to 3% conversion rates. We've seen examples of marketers who get better results because they test and optimize their landing pages. It also depends on what the numbers coming into the landing page were. For example, large-scale software folks can get a small conversion rate and still have the campaign be a success.
M2IT: What are some classic landing page mistakes that can really hurt conversion?
Stefan: The most common mistakes are the simplest to fix. The use of imagery is a place mistakes get made. Because people don't spend much time figuring out whether they're on the right page it should be made as simple as possible for them. You need to have a banner and tag line and imagery that matches the rest of your campaign elements. It's always better to have a relevant image - a cover shot of a white paper - than one that may be more visually interesting.
The most common error is using text that's too small. Eight point Verdana is a very common font that's too small. Usability tests have shown that anybody over 40 may have trouble reading that size.
Another error is asking for too much information on forms. I've seen B2B forms asking for fax numbers. Every additional question lowers completion rate.
M2IT: How does a B2B landing page differ from a B2C landing page?
Stefan: The question really is should a B2B landing page differ from a B2C landing page? The main difference is that B2B marketing has to explain much more complicated concepts and products than B2C. We all know what a TV is, for example.
B2B can benefit from the lessons of what B2C does well: showing what readers will get in a compelling way and providing an easy way to get whatever it is.
Many times in B2B we provide more information than is necessary or helpful. For example, you want to get someone to subscribe to your newsletter. In that process what's really essential is to show them what they'll get and what you'll do with their email. You're dealing with the tension between showing them everything that's great about your company vs. getting the email address that you need to build a long-term relationship. You need to keep the message and content simple - here's a picture of our newsletter and a sample of the content and here's how you sign up. Don't distract with a lot of other offers and information.
M2IT: How do you test a landing page?
Stefan: There are a lot of great options and there's no limit to the impact that testing can have. The process is an iterative one. One search engine marketer described how it's taken a year for one of his clients to build a combination of key words and landing pages but now it's getting three times better conversion than what they were used to.
There are four main types of testing: usability testing, A/B split testing, multivariate testing and eye tracking. A/B split testing compares two examples that are only different in one way. For example, this tag line vs. that one. It's relatively easy but can be a bit time-consuming to test each variable separately. For multivariate testing you really need a vendor's help. This testing looks at multiple variables at the same time. This is key in B2B. You can build a grid of how the variables relate and a complex statistical model. It's faster and easier than A/B testing from the marketer's point of view. You can look at a lower number of conversions, which is especially important in B2B.
Eye-tracking is an exploration of how people look at landing pages. We found that a single element can completely change how people look at a page. Eye tracking results are a heatmap that shows both the pattern of reading and level of attention.
The key lesson of our research is that the interaction between elements is really important and makes a difference in whether someone merely scans the page and moves on or becomes engaged. Something as subtle as the relation between the heading and the image - the placement rather than the copy - can make a difference.
You'll always have people who are in the wrong place. You want them to move on quickly and not use up resources. With others you may have the right message, offer, etc. but you still don't convert. Through testing you'll find out what the critical factors are.
M2IT: What are three things readers can do to improve their landing pages?
Stefan: The first thing is to make sure that the landing page is considered an essential part of the campaign. The landing page is just as important as the ad but it's usually the last thing on the list after developing the marketing message, the offer and the other elements. It's really important that the page be part of the design process.
The second thing you can do is testing. The things you should test first are the choice and placement of images, the content of the introductory paragraph and bullet points, and your conversion mechanism. You should think about what the most important sentence or message on the landing page is and present that in a variety of ways.
The conversion mechanism (either hyperlinks, buttons, text/button combinations, or forms) is where a lot of people get lost. Get some outside eyes to look at the page and run through the conversion process. The best way is to get people who are representative of your audience to sit and try it out.
The third thing is that it's important to see a prospect actually try to do something that you may think is really easy to do. Seeing someone who doesn't share your assumptions use your shopping cart can provide you with the biggest five or six issues on the page.
MarketingSherpa, Inc. is a media company publishing useful case studies, results data, and best practices for marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals.
Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Stefan co-founded Bluestreak, a technology company that was a pioneer in the rich media of online advertising, and grew to become one of the largest ad servers in the industry. As Director of Marketing, Stefan was responsible for marketing technologies and advertising opportunities so new that they did not have accepted names, measures or sales methodologies.
You can learn more about Stefan's Landing Page Report at http://www.sherpastore.com/store/page.cfm/2182.
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