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4 Steps to Improve Your Landing Page's Performance

Landing pages are the place where it all begins for your customer. Or ends, depending on how well the page performs. Want your pages to do their duty? Then let’s begin, shall we…

We started off earlier this week looking at how to find landing pages worth fixing (as well as demonstrating our most important landing pages by way of example the day before that).

But once you have figured out what pages you’re going to fix, what do you do? Easy. Just follow these 4 steps:

  1. First, find out where your traffic is coming from. I showed you how to find your Top Landing Pages yesterday. Now, in Google Analytics, click on the link for the first page you’re going to work on. Check out the Entrance Sources for the page (other analytics programs offer similar functions). In the example below, most of the traffic (88%!) comes from search:

    Entrance Sources via Google Analytics

  2. If, like the example above, most of your traffic comes from search, check out the Entrance Keywords report. It will show you which terms your customers are using most often to get to this page. If the traffic isn’t coming from search, you’ll need to visit the linking sites driving the highest traffic to see what their link text is. In either case, make a list of the top words customers use to find you. I cannot emphasize that enough. These terms are half the battle.
  3. Work from your list and incorporate those terms into your title, copy and call-to-action. This does not mean “keyword stuff.” The point isn’t to load the page up with the word (remember, you already rank for it or draw traffic because of it); you’re trying to guide the visitor through using their own words.

    For example, if your top term is “affordable office furniture,” be sure your headline is (something like) “Affordable Office Furniture from $99” and that your call-to-action includes “affordable office furniture” too. “Shop Now” is good. “Shop for Affordable Office Furniture” is better. (Though testing which one works better is always best).

  4. Finally, it’s not enough to get visitors to want to buy. They also have to want to buy from you. So, as you’re improving the page’s relevance using the technique above, you also want to improve your customer’s trust in you. How can you do that? unbouce has a great list of simple techniques that will improve your customer’s trust.

Getting customers to engage with your brand requires getting them to stay on your site. These four tips are the beginning of building that engagement. They’re not fool-proof; bad design, copy or call-to-action can still kill you. But they’re the first step into getting your landing page to work for you.

Did I miss something that’s working for you? Tell us all about it in the comments.


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Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

This Post Has 0 Comments

  1. An *excellent* summary. One question: if your site’s key words are very competitive, should you perhaps consider alternative keywords that can be just as helpful?

    One thing I want is for my landing page to be memorable. So whena visitor sees my site, they won’t categorize it with all the other “stuff” and marketing flotsam out there. Thanks for a good article.

    1. Thanks for the comment, Mary. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

      As to your question, if your keywords are very competitive, it may be tough to find alternatives that are equally strong. If strong alternatives exist, there’s likely to be heavy competition for them, too. That said, finding the right long-tail keywords that match what your customers are looking for can be a great way to drive qualified traffic. If a term like “landing page optimization” isn’t working for you, maybe something like “small business low traffic site landing page optimization” will be just what the doctor ordered. Ideally, you’re tracking your keywords through to conversion, so you should be able to determine where you can afford to pay more for highly-competitive terms and where you’re better off looking for longer-tail terms.

      Again, thanks for reading. And please let me know if you have any questions.

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