I don't like the word "optimization." It has surpassed the level of buzz word and has officially been overused in every which way. While the word itself annoys me, the process of improving what you have to get more from it still rings true. I think we can all get onboard with the concept, but what about the process behind it? I am constantly surprised by the number of people that tell me their boss or client simply doesn't want to spend time on landing page optimization.
I've put together a little something I think explains the norm pretty well:
(Origional photos courtesy of Shutterstock).
Instead they would rather work on increasing traffic to ugly unoptimized pages. While you would think selling LPO in-house would be an easy task, you would be surprised. Often I hear objections centered around lack of resources, inability to project return, and my personal favorite--"We simple don't have time to revisit pages that are already built."
Uhmmmm. Okayyyy.
So you, myself, and the rest of the cool kids know that optimizing your landing pages can be a huge win for your company, but how do you make the case for it in-house? It just so happens I have a few ideas for you on this. Below you'll find seven ways I've been able to convince clients and bosses to take a break from building up, and rework the foundation. Hopefully, you can use some of these the next time you are faced with what I call, "The Anti-Optimizers."
1. Evangelize the cause prior to starting.
You know that old saying, "make the case before you need the win?" Yeah me neither, I just made it up, but it stands true in this case. For most things you want to push through in-house, you will see less resistance if you start talking it up prior to the pitch. For LPO in particular, I suggest sending out emails with links to good case studies that show the value of LPO, or possibly dropping stats in meetings about how simple tweaks can result in "X." Doing all of this before asking them to allocate resources can set a great base for future conversations.
2. Pull the numbers to make a case in-house.
Call me a pessimist at heart but I love looking up crappy data. Yup it's true. The good news is we all have some of it to find. Your client, your company, whoever you are hoping to convince has data sitting in their analytics to help make the case for LPO efforts. The hard part is not necessarily finding the data, but relaying it in a positive light. You need to show all of the low hanging fruit around you.
Examples include things like showing industry standards for metrics like bounce rates or time on site, and then highlighting your own and the..uhmmm...discrepancies. Another idea is pulling your best converting pages, and showing what % of your site fails to perform at that standard or anywhere near it really. Those simple data pulls can go a long way.
3. Show potential successes.
Okay for you optimistic, rainbow-loving, happy data people...this one is for you. Do the number crunching. Take the time to show what an increase in performance could mean to your bottom-line. The best way to do this is to show ranges. Show them what a 10% increase in X would mean, a 5% increase in X would mean, and what something as small as a 2% increase in X would mean (don't forget to stress "something as small" and pause for dramatic affect...it works). By highlighting the potential successes, you turn that negative conversation into an opportunity for growth.
4. Know the costs & resources involved.
This is all about doing your homework. Just like any other time you try to convince someone to spend time or money on something, you should be prepared to give estimations. Whether you use a free tool like GWO, or another option that costs a monthly price, have those numbers on hand.
Also know how much design and dev time you will require for these changes and tests to get up on your site. You will be prepared for the questions, and hopefully put to rest any concerns about LPO wasting your company's money and resources.
5. Show competitors and their efforts.
This one is another favorite of mine. Nothing lights a fire like showing people where they are losing ground. If you want to make a case for your company doing LPO, what better way than to show your competitor testing out homepages, landing pages, different buttons, colors, etc. It may take a while to snag the screenshots, but it is sooo worth it. Trust me.
6. Run a small test behind closed doors & preach results.
This one is a bit of a gamble, mainly because it could totally backfire...but hey who doesn't love a little risk? Exactly. So get testing. Take one of your medium trafficked pages, and set up a quick A/B test. Change something drastic though--like the intention of the call to action, page layout and nav, or possibly the entire color scheme.
You may be thinking wouldn't this be more like a multivariate test, doesn't this get complicated? Well yeah, but you aren't really testing in hopes of finding out something revolutionary. Hear me out. This is what we call --down and dirty testing. Show two vary drastic alternatives for one page. Show Page A to 50% and Page B to 50% of your traffic , your results may not be the key to your company's success, but it will prove that different landing page experiences evoke very different actions by users. It's intuitive to us marketers, but sometimes people truly believe all pages are equal. Scary, I know.
7. Take ownership, start the ball rolling.
This is my last and final idea for you...it's sort of like a virtual high five. When it comes to making the case for anything in-house, I find the most effective way to convince people something is worth doing...is by doing it. So go get started, get the specs written, or the test versions mocked up. Then pitch the four to six steps left, explain how the hard work is done, and it's time to push it live. Your drive for the project will be appreciated, and hopefully the ambition will be contagious.
Well there you go. Hopefully you can use some of this the next time you run into a wall. LPO is no longer a side project we run when we "think something is wrong," it should be an ongoing process at every company. If you spend time driving traffic to your pages, you should spend time improving those pages.
Do you have a favorite tool or tactic for awesome LPO? I'd love if you left them in the comments below! We can all start sharing the LPO love together, group hug anyone?
ROFLMAO!
Imagine a new visitor to this blog. WTF is LPO? dog food?
https://www.acronymfinder.com/LPO.html has 43 definitions. #4 is Landing Page Optimization, which is probably what you're talking about.
Common courtesy, not to mention good writing practice, is to introduce a term first, give its abbreviation or acronym, then you can use the acronym.
and BTW, using LPO in the URL does absolutely nothing for your SEO
;-)
Infact Joanna never said here that she was talking about SEO... but it is complementary to any SEO effort.
You know, it's the old story... WTF I need SEO if my ROI is 0?
Landing Page Optimization, and generically Conversion Rate Optimization, is that second step more and more Clients (or Bosses) are demanding in a 1 pack service from people like me and you.
@stevenalowe
AH!!!... I have to ask you to forgive my comment. I was maybe still half sleeping and I did not read properly your comment. Yes, LPO in the TITLE and URL is due for ranking in long tail used by geeks like us ;)
Thanks! I did wonder what this was on about. It's a case of YAA (Yet another acronym)
Common courtesy, not to mention good writing practice, is to introduce a term first, give its abbreviation or acronym, then you can use the acronym.
Says the man who starts his comments out with ROTFLMAO ;-)
Doh! Sorry I think I assumed it was a more widely used acronym than I should have. My bad. Thanks for the tidbit. Gianluca is correct below though, I meant "LPO" as site wide best practice. I didn't mean solely for SEO purposes. In fact most of the writers for the SEOmoz blog are the SEO gurus, but I'll be writing less SEO-specific blogs, focusing on things like best site practices, performance marketing, acquisition tactics and improvements, etc.
But thanks for the feedback, in the future Ill be sure to give more background before I tackle those topics outside specific topic of SEO. :)
Hi Joanna, great post - I start group hugging :-).
I like those arguments because mostly there is too less time to practise LPO - but you made the point. We definitefely should! Of course for the favour of our clients and therefore they will love us.Especialle I will use the "pause for dramatic affect". Thank's!
Man you must get up pretty early in the morning to always be first in line at the SEOmoz water cooler Algo! :-)
Or maybe your browser has the SEOmoz blog as its opening page ;)
I get up early and the first thing I do in the morning is to read what's new in the seo world. My "luck" is that the post blog posts are written in the US late night - that means I see in pretty early in the morning in Europe.
I am also impressed with your batting average for first comment! I appreciate the kind words :) The "dramatic pause" has always come in handy for me ;)
Hey Joanna - really glad to see this article on LPO!
I really like your use of the term “Anti-Optimizers”, and with these seven steps it shouldn’t be very hard to convince whom ever that is to take part in LPO. While I think all seven steps can be useful, I’m a big fan of step 3 – show potential successes. Lets face it, if you’re ever going to convince an “Anti-Optimizer” you’re going to need to show them how LPO is going to increase there ROI. And in this case numbers will definitely do the talking for you.
Many “Anti-Optimizers” are so concerned about generating traffic to there landing pages that they don’t really care about what type of traffic they’re getting. Rather, they’re just happy their landing pages are getting a lot of hits. Therefore, you must explain to the “Anti-Optimizer” that to increase conversions you need to generate TARGETED TRAFFIC instead of trying to get everybody and there mother to your landing page. Statistics show, that even though your landing pages will be getting less overall traffic, the more targeted traffic will increase your conversion rates significantly while generating a higher overall ROI in the process.
Again, great post Joanna – always look forward to reading them.
"Targeted traffic" ... those are some beautiful words. You are spot on. The number of people out there driving volume without any concern as to the quality amazes me. Of course there are always exceptions to this quality over quanity approach, I believe with LPO it should be a guiding principle.
"make the case before you need the win?"
I didn't know this old saying either, but surely GoodNewsCowboy yes [inner joke]
.....
Seriously, thanks Joanna for these suggestions, that personally I find useful also for people like me who are consultant.
Infact, the resistance to LPO is the same. Especially when it comes to small business, that have usually the "time syndrome" (when will I see results?, how much will it take the optimization?...) and LPO needs time in order to be prepared, tested and analysed.
I usually start the evangelization process since the first phone calls with a potential client, in order to make him understand the importance it has whenever he contacting me for PPC or SEO (or both). As the adquisition of a new client usually takes its time (again, especially with small business), that negotiation time is very precious in order to educate the client and finally include LPO in the consultancy.
Thanks again Joanna :)
No, no, no Gianluca. You've got it backwards. CaseyHen is the old fart who knows all the antiquated sayings that we young pups have only heard our Grandparents use!
Hi Joanna! What a great post. I would add on to your fourth point in saying not only should you know the additional costs that a tool may cause you to incur, but also how that tool can help you save money in the long run. Many landing page tools today run on branded, templated systems reducing the time and resources needed to get landing pages launched and into the testing process. And then, of course , once they're up and being testing they should bring in a better return on your media spend. This means your company can spend less money on ads but still increase conversions. LPO is beautiful : )
Something that I have never understood about landing pages is whether or not they should be created on a new domain or the existing one. Should I be making a landing page on a new domain that uses the keywords that I am trying to rank for?
I subscribe to the theorem "Keep all your link love on the same domain"
I know there are reasons for having separate micro-sites, but my (often flawed) advice would be to concentrate all efforts, which would include landing pages, on the same domain for a few reasons.
1) All your link juice would be pouring into the same pitcher (more or less)
2) When ever a campaign is over, it's easier to redirect pages internally rather than maintaining a separate site just for a redirect.
goodnews nailed it.
On the flip side, there are companies like HubSpot that are making a killing for themselves and their clients even though the offer the hosting (and optimization tools/strategies) on key conversion pages that are not on your site. Interesting concept for the pure blood business person who is filled with ideas but no technical acumen.
Personally, I need as much as possible strategically integraterd into a targeted domain.
LPO is important, of course, but that it’s only the first step in optimization. If you want the best possible ROI, it’s essential that the entire website is optimized – from the homepage to the checkout. For example, we’ve seen cases where companies were able to increase their conversion rates by over 300% simply by altering a check-out button on their page.
I side with you on the ludacricy of objections (excuses) for avoiding optimization—‘We simply don't have time to revisit pages that are already built." or lack of resources. With the amount of self-serve options, platforms that allow the marketers to have full control and the enormous positive ROI gains, how could one ever afford NOT to test, optimize and better the visitor experience?
I used GWO and ran a simple split test - changed the colour of our call to action button from blue to orange.
Resulted in a 25% increase in conversions over a 2 month period.
Well worth doing as I've found that quick wins like this can really help get the boss on board.
This is the kind of action that I find really interesting. Doing something as small and seemingly insignificant as changing messaging and colours on buttons, watching the results and then rolling out further or rolling back and trying again. However, it can be a little overwhelming to know where to start when there are so many permutations.
Also, it can be difficult when a page has a varying mix of traffic from day to day (i.e. one day a page could receive 100 visitors from natural search, 0 from paid search. The next day we could up the PPC spend, receive 100 visitors from natural search and 500 visitors from paid search - and conversion could go up or down) What's the best way of guaranteeing a fair test and being sure that the improvement in conversion rate is down to the on page / UI changes that have been made?
For me this wasn't such a problem as we've got a pretty steady traffic pattern, and we're not using PPC.
I'm not sure about this, but in the GWO setup there may be a way to specify which traffic you want to test against.
If such a setting exists, you could set it up to filter a certain traffic source out of the results or only run the test on visitors from organic/ppc/referral etc.
Thanks I'll take a look. This is something I've been meaning to get onboard with for a while, but has fallen down the priority list time and time again. I think I'm just cautious about jumping to conclusions and rolling out the wrong action.
Wow that is really awesome. Thanks for sharing that story. Those simple yet big wins are good things to highlight for sure :)
A good post. But i don't think i will agree with running small test behind doors. What if your boss or some jealous colleague saw a different version of the page(s) you are testing and blame you later for poor conversions or drop in sales and then later you are asked what else you have been doing behind the back. You put your own credibility and your job at stake. I once landed myself in deep trouble for buying some domain names on behalf of my company (without telling them in advance). I didn't want my competitors to purchase those domain names and get some competitive advantage. Though my intentions were good, some of the people in the company thought i bought them to compete with my own company later. It almost cost me my job. So i will highly suggest not to follow this advice under any circumstances.
Selling anything in-house is much more difficult than out-house let alone LPO. And i think one of the basic rule of selling is to sell in simple jargon free language. Which means don't use words like LPO at all. Businessmen (clients, boss) understand only one language. The language of sales and revenue $$$$$$$. So if you can convince that how working on the pages will improve the bottomline, i see no reason why anyone will show resistance to changes.I think sending out emails of case studies is not a good idea. They often land up in the 'to read later' list and then that 'later' doesn't come. Best is to get an appointment and start selling your ideas face to face. I have found that using your competitors as case studies is the best way to get approval of your ideas. "oh our competitor is doing it. we should do it too". No second thought (most of the time). Otherwise a HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) may not be able to relate your case study with his business model, products or services and may discard it.
Thanks for sharing your personal story about the domain buying. When I say run a test in house, I do mean on less visible, lower priority pages. I also wrote it assuming that the reader was in charge of these efforts and had full reign to tweak things on site. In-house marketers do have a lot of red tape to get through so I think you make a really valuable point, that you consider prior to testing.
I also appreciate the tip of jargon free conversations. I've def been the one to drop acronyms and such and realize that my client was beyond lost. Its a best practice to adhere to for sure. Thanks!
On the jargon free note, I got approval for some landing page work using the following strategy:
"We have special landing pages so that people people who click on certain ads, in certain places, can get a different set of content, right?"
Yes!
"I know we mainly use these different pages for stats purposes, but I was thinking. We know a whole lot about the people who click on certain ads in certain places, right? For example, we know that this group here is primarily composed of 70+ women, whereas this group here is primarily 24 - 32 year old men, right?
Yes, we did that research....
"So, why are we showing them the same content?"
*long pause*
"Why don't I change the content so that we target each group with the content we show? I should have actually done this before...."
Yes, what a great idea!!
"And of course, I should likely do some testing to make sure our conversions are as high as possible right?"
Yes, of course!
--------
Get 'em saying yes and the sale is easy. :-)
Since Google is now showing previews of pages on search results, I would think LPO would be especially important at a time like this. When users can literally see the page before they click through, having strong visual design is key.
I agree. I'm also glad that they have this so it is easier to weed out the keyword-stuffed spam sites
Thank you for bringing attention to LPO / CRO. One can argue whether it's something that falls under the SEO's role, but I think it's the single most important aspect of online marketing for two reasons:
a) LPO / CRO increases the profitability of ALL of your campaigns, what else can do that?
b) LPO / CRO provides extremely valuable feedback to all areas of your business, including sales, operations, and marketing. If web visitors respond 10X better to an offer of blue widgets than an offer of red widgets, the implications could be dramatic. Yes, you stress blue widgets on your landing page, but your salesteam can also pivot to pushing blue widgets, operations starts making plans to produce more blue widgets, you buy print ads in "Blue Widget Weekly", etc. So much of what we learn online can be applied offline.
One can argue whether it's something that falls under the SEO's role,
Good point Derek. It has also been argued that Analytics, Linking, Design, Social Media, etc., etc. are indeed separate disciplines and not strict SEO.
I tend to see things more holistically, and through my rose colored glasses (another expression I learned from CaseyHen) I see them all as "SEO" using Gianluca's (gfiorelli1) definition of the acronym Search Experience Optimisation.
I prefer online marketing or e-marketing myself. SEO has so many preconceived notions attached to it, many of them bad.
I agree that a business must take a holistic approach to marketing online, but I believe it's important to spell out the differences between SEO, paid search, display advertising, social media, email, analytics, CRO, etc. It's not a matter of one method versus another. I just believe it's impossible for a client to truly understand the online marketing process and the value it delivers unless he/she understands all of the different elements of online marketing, how they work, why we do them, and how they compliment each other.
I think we both see the world the same way, but I'm probably more stubborn on the boundries of SEO as a term.
You bring up a really good question. Does LPO fall under the SEO's role? Our SEO here doesn't actually do much LPO, it tends to fall under a few different roles--product, acquisition marketing, design even. I think there is a lot to be gained if your in-house SEO takes on some testing for LPO purposes. I really like your arguments for this case, and I think it might be worth getting a blog post up to see what others think :) Thanks for the idea! I'll see if I can get something together, so we can see where others weigh in on it...
I would recommend mouse tracking tools, or if you have some budged, order some great eye tracking tests with a special equipment. This is what you really can do about your best LPO and getting more clients. I have seen very nice presentations live and I have really impressed.
Couldn't agree more. Going through the same thing right now, this post definitely helps. Thanks!
Joanna this is crazy because I just got out of a 2 hour meeting where the goal was to have our client do 3 custom landing pages through us for his terribly awful website. After 2 hours of "this will help your PPC", "increase conversions" he still didn't get it. I'm going to give some of these tips a shot, and I'll let you know how it goes.
This couldn't have come at a better time, thank you.
Reinforces the notion that SEO, needs to work with info architecture and graphic design.
(don't forget to stress "something as small" and pause for dramatic affect...it works)
Wow Joanna. This line is could be a post unto itself. What great advice! And not only for LPO/CRO. You could totally use it while trying to sell the benefits of SEO.
This post was an excellent road map to kick start new paradigms. I'm actually filing it under "Business of SEO" as I can see multiple uses for your tactics.
Ohhh thanks! You are so right though. By stressing the small, actionable option you are setting yourself up for a much easier road. People like to hear options they can wrap their head around :)
Is there a difference between LPO and CRO other than its targeting one page?
I like the article a lot, I think it is much easier to sell someone on the LPO if you explain to them their conversion rates and then follow through with the A/B testing. It could backfire, but it might be huge.
Caseyhen wrote a great blogpost about how to track your call to action conversions with google analytics, it can be applied for to analyze LPO to some extent as well.
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-analytics-event-tracking-to-monitor-calls-to-action
The word LPO is generally used in case of PPC campaigns and deals with one page only. CRO is used for optimizing the whole business process to improve conversions. This includes all online and offline business operations.
Hi Spencer! Like Himanshu said, landing pages are mostly for campaign traffic; however, they don't necessarily have to be one page experiences. You can also test microsites and conversion paths as landing experiences. Depending on what the purpose of your landing page is and where you traffic is in the buying cycle, you may want to use a single page or multipage experience to present more or less information.
Let's not forget that a great use of LPO is the homepage as well.
You can find more abour CRO in a recent interview with conversion rate experts here
Thanks for the link Himanshu. I love those guys and always enjoy reading about what they do and how they do it. And I'm a total fanboy of the Conversion Rates Experts Squirrel.
Thanks for the link to Casey's post. It is definitely a great one. In my opinion LPO is more of an umbrella term, because you can in fact be optimizing for other things than just increased conversions. There are a number of engagement metrics, secondary goals, etc. that people are hoping for when pushing time to LPO. Even something like focusing on a page as a constant "assist" to another page or section, is a great way to milk the success of one page for a better site experience.
I do love CRO, but there are a lot more formulas involved, and stats available to make that case. I think in general convincing someone to invest in "increased conversions" is an easier battle than convincing them to "make the page a better experience." :)
True. It seems like there can be so much more overlap in those two fields though. Or at least it would be much easier to pitch it that way I think.
Also, After reading all these comments and acronyms I totally agree about the overuse/watering down of ending every one of these with "Optimization" Bleh. Hopefully I can coin a term and change it. Anyone ok with Landing page improvment, augmentation or any other synonym? :P
It's funny to read an article on this blog where half the words aren't blue. Almost thought there was something wrong with my computer.
Ha! Yeah I could have linked to a million other articles, but I just wasn't feeling it. I also left out other images I could have got in there. Today for some reason I wanted it to be about the writing...and my silly attempt at creating a graphic :)
Don't forget to thank everyone involved after a successful test. Send a case of Mountain Dew to the developers that helped you set it up. Give the graphic designer an Apple gift card. Make sure that you get credit of course, but spread the love too.
Absolutely! Highlighting the people that helped you along the way should def be the final step :) Thanks for the reminder!