How to Make Your Landing Pages the Best They Can Be in This Economic Downturn
The economic downturn has changed the behavior of many users when it comes to landing page optimization. While small, well-tested moves have generally been the best approach when it comes to optimizing, the state of the economy has forced many people to make changes to the way the have viewed optimizing in the past.
Now is a great time to optimize your landing pages! You should not only review all the best practices that you have used and applied in the past, but you should be willing to try some new things when it comes to optimization—things that maybe weren’t in the “old rulebook.”
Here are some examples that you may find useful.
Try being bolder!
You should be willing to try enlarging your call to action, placing it in a more noticeable, “out front” location. Your landing page should really be as eye-catching and as in your face as possible. Audience are very easily distracted, so you need to have something that will really reach out and grab them and get their attention. We know in the past, smaller changes were preferred when optimizing landing pages, but since times are less stable now, it’s worth considering a larger redesign rollout.
Be willing to add options.
Users nowadays are searching for a variety of needs. Marketers should try and remember that their audience is searching for more information and not just making purchases or commitments. Landing pages should be re-worked for a more info-seeking audience.
Keep an eye on your competitors.
In the past pay-per-click marketers have been aware of their competition but maybe haven’t focused too much energy on what they were doing. The main reason for this was that marketers couldn’t be sure at what level their competitors are converting or if they are even converting at all. But now IS the time to be paying more attention to your competitors. Watch for any new site functions they are using and if there are any changes in their content. You should ask yourself what user needs are your competitors answering. And then make sure your own landing page is also answering those user needs.
But there are still some best practices that you shouldn’t forget about completely…some are more important now than ever.
Always be testing!
This is especially important as you are making bigger and bolder changes to your landing page. Once you implement the change, you should allow for enough time for the relevant data to be collected, and then you can closely examine the results. You shouldn’t mistake bold changes for frivolous ones. Try and focus more time on testing the optimization techniques.
Stay calm.
Try and keep your cool, no matter what results come back. Many things are changing these days—including spending patterns and budgets, and so that has to be kept in mind. When you’re evaluating the performance of a landing page and collecting data and implementing changes, remember to keep calm. You will be in the right mind frame to make the needed adjustments.
This next year will see many changes to online marketing tactics—the PPC marketers who will be willing to change with the times are going to be the most successful.
Try and put your energy into making sure each visitor to your landing page becomes a customer. Landing page optimization is such an important element in a successful pay-per-click campaign. Optimizing, tweaking, and fine-tuning really may be the best thing you can do to survive a weakened economy.
