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What is Landing Page Optimization?
An introduction for beginners
Landing page optimization is the process of increasing the number of conversions that take place on a website landing page or sales funnel. According to wikipedia: “Landing page optimization (LPO) is one part of a broader Internet marketing process called conversion optimization, or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.” Yawn.
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Let’s break this down to beginner basics.
You sell the all amazing Super Widget 451 on your website. You are currently getting 10,000 visitors to your site each month, and 1,400 of those visitors actually buy it. That’s a conversion rate of 14%. Niiiice!
You’re feeling like a rock star living life La Vida Loca from all the money you’re making.
But one day you think to yourself, “Man I’m a genius. Seriously, I’ve got the golden touch. But…”, then it suddenly dawns on you that 86% of all the people who go to your site actually say “NO!”. An overwhelming sense of dread sets in… you drop your margarita, get up from your poolside lounge chair and run to the vacation penthouse master suite and cry your eyes out. “Nobody loves me! Waaaaaah!”
How to track conversions without a “conversion page” in Google Optimizer
When you set up an AB Experiment through Google Website Optimizer, it expects you to have a few separate pages:
- The Control Page
- The Variant Pages
- The Conversion Page
For most websites this isn’t a problem, but what if you’re unique? What if you don’t have a typical conversion page to thank the user?
Don’t fret – we’ll show you how to trigger that conversion script if your end goal is a download, redirect, or something else non-standard. You can even use these techniques to confirm your visitors are actually reading your copy.
What is Landing Page or Website Optimization? The Basics. And why it’s important, nay, CRITICAL!
Website optimization (or Landing Page Optimization) is the process of testing different variations of your web page to find the best converting website. In figure 1, you see an example site as the starting test page, then with many different types of tests, conversions are tracked, statistics are analyzed, and a winning page is selected.
- fig 1. Process of Landing Page Optimization
Although there are many types of testing, the two basic testing processes are A/B Testing (or split testing) and multivariate testing.
See our post on the difference between A/B testing and multivariate testing.
The whole goal of landing page optimization, is increasing the action or value of actions from your site’s visitors.
fig 2. Before Landing Page Optimization
In fig. 2 you have your current site producing a number of sales or leads per site visitor, your conversion rate. Whether you are trying to get your visitors to purchase a product or fill out a lead form, your goal is to get as many qualified visitors to complete an action as possible.
fig 3. Increased Sales After Optimization
Of course it stands, in fig. 3, that if you can increase the number of visitors that complete that action, without having increase that actual number of visitors coming to your site, then you have increased the value of each visitor. That increases your profits. BAM! Now we’re talking. Now you’ve got more people taking action on your page, making you more profits! Ah, the sweet life…
Here’s an example without your pages being optimized:
For example, you spend $1,000 per day through PPC (pay per click advertising) for 4,000 visitors and sell 100 widgets at a advertising CPS (cost per sale) of $10/widget. You make a profit of $3 per widget so your daily profit is $300. 30% ROI on your marketing dollar.
- Cost Per Click: $0.25
- Total Visitors: 120,000 visitors a month
- # of Widgets Sold : 3,000 widgets a month
- Profit: $9,000 a month
Now, with landing page optimization, let’s say you increase your sites performance by 20%:
Assume you start testing and making changes to your pages, and produce a result of 20% increase in conversions. (That is a modest increase, 21% is the lowest increase we’ve achieved after 4 months with new clients.)
Before, you made 100 sales per day at a cost of $10 per sale and a profit of $3 per sale, but after:
- Additional “Optimized Sales”: 20 widgets a day (20% times 100)
- Total Visitors: Still same 120,000 visitors a month
- # of “Optimized” Widgets Sold : 600 widgets a month
- Additional Profit: $7,800 a month (600 times $13, you aren’t paying for extra traffic)
- Increase in Profits: 86% increase
Ok, just in case you missed that, a 20% Increase in conversion yields 86% Increase in Profits! That’s $93,600 per Year Increase for this example.
Holy Shenanigans Batman, that is incredible! Seriously, why are you still reading this, when you can be making your site more money by doing testing?!?!??
I understand it’s difficult to get started, and unfortunately, sometimes it ain’t as easy as it seems. That’s why Conversion Voodoo offers landing page optimization services. We get the ROI faster, and we help stop the lost revenue that is bleeding from your website right now. Whether you use a company like Conversion Voodoo, or do it yourself, bottom line get started today!
The difference between A/B Testing (or split testing) and Multivariate Testing
There are two main types of landing optimization testing methodologies: A/B Tests (Split tests) and multivariate tests.
Here are the basics for the two main types of landing page optimization methodologies:
A/B Testing (or split testing), is the direct testing and statistical comparison between 2 or more pages. In A/B split testing, you are not testing basic elements on a page, you are actually testing the different between the performance of separate pages. In figure 1, this is an example of a test between two different pages. After a statistically significant amount of traffic is sent sent to these 2 pages over time, you will be able to determine which page performed better, and use that page as the main page for the pages you were testing. A/B testing can be done between 2 or more pages at a time, depending on the amount of traffic you have.
figure 1. A/B Split Test Example
What is A/B and Multivariable Testing?
In our previous post, we gave a step-by-step tutorial on tracking your website statistics using Google Analytics. If you do not have any form of reliable website analytics, I strongly urge you to check out our post here.
Now that you’re receiving reliable traffic statistics on your site, the first question you probably have is:
“Why are my goal conversion ratio so low?”
This is the main question that drives many of our previous and future clients to us.
And the answer is quite simple: Your website is not doing a good job persuading its users.
So how do you create a site that better convinces your user to act?
Simple – you test, test, and test.
There are literally an infinite amount of variations you can try testing. Not only that, but a graphic or ad copy that worked for one site does not mean it will work for you. Since every single site is a little bit different in its topic, traffic, demographic, etc. the only way to know what will increase you website conversions is to test it yourself.
There are two popular methods of website optimization test.
- A/B Testing
- Multivariable Testing