Hacks and tips on creating a super smooth funnel
Psst: NEW – this podcast now has a transcript!
We all know how important our landing pages are. The internet is full of articles hacks and tips on how to create a super smooth funnel, killer Calls to Action and they all promise that if we get our landing optimisation right – we’ll be winner customers faster than a well oiled otter sliding down a pipe.
But how does landing page optimisation relate to SEO and what are the really important things we need to be thinking about when we optimise our pages.
Today I’m talking to Arnout an online marketer from Amsterdam into SEO, Analytics and Conversion – he’s an all-round SEO and landing page optimisation whizz.
Tune in to learn:
- Arnout’s definition of a landing page
- Does traffic from paid search perform the same way as traffic from organic search
- The 3 essential ingredients for a tasty landing page
- The best colour and copy for a Call to Action button
- Whether it’s a good idea to remove navigation from our landing pages
- How can we assess our landing page’s performance
- Common landing page mistakes
- Average conversion rates
- And much much more
About Arnout
Arnout Hellemans is online marketer from Amsterdam into SEO, Analytics and Conversion. He loves tweaking websites and enjoy making the web a better place and making money for his clients. He loves to chat anything digital and help companies.
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Transcript
|
KATE |
We all know how important our landing pages are. The internet is full of articles, hacks, and tips on how to create a super smooth funnel, killer calls to action, and amazing sales copy.
All the gurus promise us that if we get our landing page optimization right, we’ll be winning customers faster than a well-oiled otter sliding down a pipe. But how does landing page optimization relate to SEO, and what are the really important things we need to think about when we optimise our pages?
|
|
[00:01:00]
[00:01:30] |
Today, I’m talking to Arnout Hellemans from Online Market Think, and we’re going to crack in to landing pages and how to make yours better than they’ve ever been before. Hello, my name is Kate Toon. I’m the head chef at The Recipe for SEO Success, an online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization, and I love SEO. Today, I’m talking with Arnout … Arnout Sorry. I keep saying it wrong … Hellemans, an online marketer from Amsterdam, into SEO analytics and conversions.
He loves tweaking websites and enjoys making the web a better place and making money for his clients. He loves to chat anything digital and helping out companies. Welcome to the show, Arnout. I hope that bio was okay. Did I miss anything else?
|
| Arnout H.: | No, not really. I just love my job, but I guess that accounts for more people, but that’s it. Yep.
|
| Kate Toon: | That’s great.
|
| Arnout H.: | I think you have it all.
|
| [00:02:00]
Kate Toon: |
We met online on an SEMrush webinar, probably about six months ago.
|
| Arnout H.: | Yeah. We did.
|
| Kate Toon: | I’ve been avidly following everything you’ve done since then. We just realised, talking before the show, that I have a bike from Amsterdam, from somewhere around there, and it’s made by one of Arnout’s original clients. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
|
| Arnout H.: | Yes. Yes, indeed.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:02:30] |
It’s a small world. As you know, if you’ve been listening to the show, we always start the show with a bit of SEO or marketing related news. What have you been delving into this week, Arnout?
What interesting news have you seen?
|
| Arnout H.:
[00:03:00] |
Well, the interesting news is that since I work in the EU, I work in different countries, and Google basically is localising all results based on your geolocation now, or your IP location. It’s really hard for me to track any progress, say, for instance, in France or in Spain, whilst I’m in Amsterdam.
That’s a bit of a thing. I’m wondering whether Google is moving the right direction, because I was on holiday in Spain, wanted to figure out something in Amsterdam, and it was a hard task to do, and it shouldn’t be.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:03:30] |
Yeah. I feel like localization is going mad.
You can’t seem to get a result that’s more than 100 metres away from you. It’s just crazy local. Well, one interesting thing I spotted this week on SE Roundtable was emojis are popping back into the search results.
They were enabled back in 2016, but then they were banned again. Google promised not to penalise us for using them, but it’s very rare to see them. Barry Schwartz had somebody send in a picture of a little baseball emoji that appeared in one of the search engine result snippets.
Do you think emojis in the search results would be a good thing, Arnout, or do you think it would be a terrible thing?
|
| [00:04:00]
Arnout H.: |
You have it with these tick boxes. Every now and then, they pop up in green, and they really stand out. From an optimising perspective, that could really work, but I think it’d be really messy if you see all kinds of emojis popping up in SERPs.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:04:30] |
I agree. The thing is, anything that adds a bit of colour or difference to your search engine result is just going to drive that click through rate right up. I really miss the days when we had the little pictures next to our these things, but they’ve now gone.
|
| Anyway, let’s crack into the episode, because today we are talking all about landing page optimization. Let’s start with the very basics. Arnout, can you describe for us what is a landing page?
|
|
| [00:05:00]
Arnout H.:
[00:05:30]
[00:06:00] |
To me, a landing page is any page that receives traffic, so basically, with a certain intent. It can be your home page in a way is a landing page as well. I’m often seeing that companies aren’t treating pages that receive traffic, whether it’s paid, whether it’s organic, whether it’s from social, to the max benefit. For me, that is what a landing page is. I think when you have people coming to your site, it’s kind of like a brick and mortar store. If you get them to come into your store, then it should be really easy for them to see what can be done, what you’re offering, what your use fees are, why. All these kind of things. I treat pretty much any page that receives organic traffic with a certain intent as a landing page. I think that’s the way people should look at it.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:06:30]
[00:07:00] |
I agree. I think all too often, people just associate landing pages with particular sales tactics or Google AdWords campaigns. They’ll spend thousands of dollars on optimising this one landing page, and then you stray from the landing page onto their site, and it’s a terrible mess. I refer to this as kind of back door SEO. People put a lot of effort into their front door, maybe their home page, and it’s all beautiful and it’s got a number and a letter box and a pot plant, and their back door is ugly. The truth is, if you’re doing your SEO right, then one of your services pages could be receiving lots of traffic with an intent of people want it. You have to, as you said, make sure that it always explains who you are, what you do, why you do it better than anyone else, a way to get in touch with you. All the things we’re going to talk about today.
Really, any page could be a landing page, is what we’re saying.
|
| Arnout H.: | Yes, yes.
|
| Kate Toon: | Exactly. Often, when we think about landing page optimization tactics, we are talking about those in relation to paid search. Do you think the same tactics can be applied to pages that are getting organic traffic?
|
| [00:07:30]
Arnout H.:
[00:08:00] |
In a way, yes. The good thing with a well-optimised paid campaign, you actually start the sales pitch already a bit earlier. The thing …
Because you can explain what the service is.
You actually have this ad, where you can use visuals or just text explaining what can be found on the landing page. But with the SEO, it’s slightly different, because this is what your title and meta description basically are.
You don’t know the intent of that user, or you don’t know what he’s actually looking for where you show up with your organic listing, basically.
|
| [00:08:30]
[00:09:00] |
The basics are essentially the same.
It needs to be fast. It needs to be well-optimised in regards to title, in regards to everything we talked about. It is a bit different, because you can’t steer the intent, which you can do with paid ads far more than organically.
But the actual landing page itself is in most of the time the same thing, and the same things apply. It needs to be fast and a clear call to action. Tell people what you want them to do. It’s so often I see landing pages there or pieces of really awesome content, but it’s just content. There is no call to action and how you can help them, how that relates to your service or whatever.
Then traffic just becomes traffic, and just people coming in to your store and not buying.
|
| [00:09:30]
Kate Toon:
[00:10:00] |
Yeah. I think essentially you’re saying that the landing page can be optimised in similar ways, regardless of whether people have come to it through an ad or a search engine result snippet, because of course, we have the title tag and we have the meta description, so we have three lines in which we can sell that page and position that page and tease what that page is going to be about. We almost have an organic ad. That’s almost what it is. I always teach the students on my course to treat the meta description as a two-line sales pitch. They’ve got two lines to make their page …
|
| Kate Toon: | … the most clickable of the 10 results.
|
| You started to jump ahead there, Arnout, and talk about the essential ingredients for a tasty landing page.
Let’s just narrow it down to three.
If you were to say what were the three most important ingredients of a good, solid landing page, what would they be?
|
|
| [00:10:30]
Arnout H.:
[00:11:00]
[00:11:30] |
It should be fast in terms of loading times. You don’t want to wait for a page to load.
A very clear call to action.
Tell people what you want them to do without being obtrusive.
Tell them what, and basically repeat that. You might have a call to action start here, but also add one in the bottom.
Adding one in the bottom really, really helps your conversions, because people that take the effort to scroll all the way down on your landing page, they have taken the effort. Make it easy for them to convert.
That’s the second thing. The third thing is proof. It’s not just saying to people, “I’m the best,” but prove that you’re the best. Show clients.
Show what you’ve done, how long you’ve been in business, what they can expect. All that kind of stuff needs to be on a page.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:12:00] |
Yeah, I agree. Your three things were speed, which I think is so, so important. It has to be under five seconds and definitely even under that, if it can be.
Strong call to action, and proof. I think I’m going to pick three different ones, just to be playful. I think a really strong headline that sucks the reader in and makes them engaged and obviously, if possible, connects with the ad that you’ve created or the meta description and title tag.
|
|
[00:12:30] |
I think video can be very powerful on landing page as a way … I’m not a fan of auto play, but I think it’s a great way of explaining the features and the benefits and the advantages of your products and services in an easy, succinct way. I think you’ve talked about proof. I think there’s different types of proof, isn’t there? There’s testimonial proof, and then results based proof. I found just some anecdotal stuff.
On my course sales page, for my big course, I always had the testimonials. I had heaps of testimonials. I had videos. I had engaging calls to action. But when I added results in, when I added graphs and charts and actual results, then the conversion rate went right up. I think we’ve got lots of elements there that we consider.
|
| [00:13:00] | Now, we talked a little bit there about calls to action, and it’s a question I get a lot.
Do you think there’s a perfect colour for a call to action button?
|
| Arnout H.:
[00:13:30]
[00:14:00] |
No. There’s no perfect colour, but what I often see is that because you’ve … A designer has designed something, and say, for instance, the colours of your brand are dark and light blue, for instance. What I then see is that the main call to actions are in one of those colours as well, and thus making it not stand out. The most important thing is for a call to action button or form or anything to stand out within the page. It has to be a different colour. I think that’s the biggest learning that you can have in your website. When you have designers design something, and you just say, “I need a click to my contact form,” make sure it stands out.
|
|
[00:14:30] |
I often do the five-second test. I ask people to close their eyes, then open their eyes, and then the website is on the screen. Then I ask them, “Within five seconds, what draws your attention?” If that is something else than what you want it to be, your call to action or your next step or whatever, then you should change it.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:15:00] |
I could not agree with you more.
I’m sitting here nodding my head. I see so many people who, like you said, have their call to action buttons or their telephone number or their submit buttons in the same colour as their headlines and their logo. It needs to be a contrasting colour. It needs to pop, as we would say. Therefore, I doubt that you can … It’s impossible to prove that any one colour is better than any other colour for persuading an audience, although there are lots of colour charts that you can have a look at. I’ll include some in the notes for this episode. There’s just too many variables, but I think the importance is that it pops.
|
|
[00:15:30] |
Another thing I found, Arnout, and I don’t know if you’ve found it too, is that it has to be consistent. What I like to do is whatever is going to be your call to action colour, you use it throughout the site, so that when anybody sees that, subliminally, they start to understand that that is the area that they go to if they want to do something. Again, that’s from my seeing a lot of websites with 17 different colours for different buttons and different sizes and different fonts. It just looks ugly and a bit messy. So be consistent and make it stand out.
|
| Now, you touched on this earlier. You touched on how many calls to action buttons we should have on our landing page. What do you think is optimal?
|
|
| [00:16:00]
Arnout H.:
[00:16:30] |
I don’t think there is an optimal. I’ve often said to people that when they ask me questions, the best answer is, “It depends.” It depends on the product. It depends on the kind of page. It depends on colours. It depends on most things. I will say that adding a call to action button at the bottom will greatly improve your conversions. You might also consider it not being a button going to a contact form, but the actual first part of the form, because if you can get something little going on, then that is the first step in converting.
|
| [00:17:00] | The other thing is use multiple and also see whether different things work. With one, it should say, “Sign up now.” With the other one, it should say, “Start saving money,” or whatever. I would consider multiple, but don’t go over. Don’t do it too much, like six, seven, eight. I wouldn’t go that far.
|
| [00:17:30]
Kate Toon:
[00:18:00] |
Yeah. I think it depends on how long your landing page is. I think you should have more than one, I think is the answer. We can’t give a definitive answer. Again, I’ve found … I like your idea about having different text on the call to action buttons and seeing which is the button that gets the most clicks. One little copywriting tip here is to try and write your calls to action in a kind of active sense so that you’re finishing the sentence, “I want to.” “I want to get started. I want of buy this awesome deal. I want to …” Whatever it may be. You’re finishing that sentence so it’s a very active phrase. Don’t use words like just buy and submit. Submit is the worst call to action button.
|
| Arnout H.: | Oh, yes.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:18:30] |
I’ve found it’s definitely good to have one right at the bottom of the page, as you said, because some people, although you might not believe it, will read the entire page and scroll all the way through. You’ll want to have one at least above the fold of the page, and also really make sure that you check out how all these things look on a mobile device. We all know how important mobile search is and how many people are looking at things on their mobile. So make sure the buttons are clickable.
|
| One things I’ve found is, on a couple of sites, I have quite a big thumb. I use my thumb. I just couldn’t get my thumb on the button, because it was too small. Big, fat buttons, consistent, and try a few different things out.
|
|
|
[00:19:00] |
This is a question I get asked a lot, as well. Say I have set up a … We’re not necessarily here talking about home page or a page within a site. Say I have set up a specific landing page for a specific campaign that I’m running. Do you think that we should be stripping out the site navigation from that landing page? Is it distracting?
|
| Arnout H.:
[00:19:30]
[00:20:00] |
Personally, I wouldn’t unless you’re in a check out flow. Then it might work. But to me, I usually don’t. The main reason is that it’s really hard, even if you have a good landing page, to convert somebody within one page. Often, they want to know more about the company, the services, the testimonials, that kind of stuff. By removing that navigation, you make it really hard for them to get to that information, which they might need to convert.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:20:30] |
I agree. I think you have to be super confident about a landing page if you think it can do everything. We’re going to talk a little bit about length of landing page in a minute, but people are always going to … People want freedom. They want to click where they want to click. Don’t make it impossible for them. I would not strip out a navigation from my landing page. I think it’s important for reassurance, for branding, because your logo’s up there and everything. And just as you said, people want to move around. They want to look at a couple of pages before they make up their mind. Yep. I agree.
|
| Look. Now, Arnout, we’ve got some questions. I’m going to throw some questions at you from members of our I Love SEO group on Facebook. The first one is from Melinda Sampson. She works a lot with Google Analytics, so she says, “Given Google Analytics tracker bounce, if users don’t click on anything, what else can be tracked to assess our landing page’s performance?”
|
|
| [00:21:00]
Arnout H.:
[00:21:30]
[00:22:00]
[00:22:30] |
Well, the first thing is that this is not entirely true, because Google Analytics will consider a bounce if it doesn’t receive anything. It’s not just about clicks. What you could do is put a scroll event and send an event to Google Analytics when you’re halfway down the page or when you reach the end of the page, because when you reach the end of the page, that, in my opinion, shouldn’t be a bounce, because that person went all the way down. By doing it that way, you get a real bounce rate, in a way. By getting are real bounce rate, it helps you assess the performance of that landing page. I would do it that way, and I’m doing it that way, especially if you have blog posts, because I often hear, “My blog post has 100% bounce rate,” and then I go like, “Yeah, but the blog post is about how to dry your wet iPhone,” which is just a step by step guide on how to do it. Somebody reads that, and there is no real incentive for them to pick anywhere. But it served the intent it was intended to.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:23:00] |
I agree. I think people get too sweaty about bounce rate and see it as a negative. Sometimes, people bounce out because that’s all there is to do. I think event tracking is a great idea, scroll tracking. Also, if you do have a video, you could do some event tracking on video plays. Also, a really important thing to look at is time on page. How long are people spending on that page? If they’re spending 10 seconds, it’s probably not working. The average 800-word sales page should take about five to six minutes to read, so if people are spending that amount of time on your page, they are interacting. Then, if they’re not converting after spending all that time, then you’ve got a problem. Yeah. I think there’s a few different things you can track, and that’s a great point about bounces, so that you can actually have a clean bounce rate and see how many people are just bouncing straight out.
|
| [00:23:30] | Now, you, obviously, look at a lot of landing pages. What are the common mistakes that you see? What are the big things that make you go, “No. This is terrible”?
|
| Arnout H.: | Ooh. Well, in the conversion, basically loads of websites convert or people that work in optimising websites, we all agree and we’ve done loads of tests that sliders should not be used on landing pages. [crosstalk 00:24:00].
|
| [00:24:00]
Kate Toon: |
Oh, I hate them. I’m so glad you said that. No sliders. Kill the slider.
|
| Arnout H.:
[00:24:30] |
Yeah. Exactly. Main thing is that it just takes away the attention off where you want it to be. That’s a big one. The second one is speed. I often see pages being loaded that are like five, six, seven MB or even more. Then the third one, we already touched on it, is no clear call to actions. They don’t stand out. They have the same colour as the navigation. It’s completely unclear what, where people should click. I think those are the three most common mistakes I bump into.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:25:00] |
Okay. Well, I’ve got a few of my own, so I’m going to share mine, although I agree with all of yours. I think there’s a big trend at the moment for gigantic images that take up the entire page. I have a huge, huge screen, and they push everything down below the fold. There’s no text on those images. It’s just like an image of a girl in a puddle, and it’s like, it doesn’t explain anything. It’s obviously the designer has gone crazy.
|
|
[00:25:30] |
I also see a lot of inconsistency of … Because I’m a copywriter, and this is what I look at sometimes. Inconsistency of fonts and case. You’ve got caps case, then sentence case, then lower case. You’ve got San Serif and Serif font. You’ve got different coloured fonts, italics, bolded. What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to make things stand out, but because there’s so much noise going on, nothing stands out.
|
|
[00:26:00] |
Finally, I think for me, it’s being … Trying to cram everything in. Don’t be afraid of having a bit of space and movement in your page. People will scroll if they’re engaged. Leave some space and gaps so that people can take a breather. Digesting a long sales page, when you’re keen to buy, it’s an effort. There’s a lot there to understand, to take in. Break the page up with images and logos and space. Use colour banding to break up sections, and just let the reader’s eye rest a little bit in between reading copy.
|
| That leads into my next question very nicely, which is why do really long landing pages seem to perform better?
|
|
| [00:26:30]
Arnout H.:
[00:27:00] |
Well, in my opinion, that’s because they answer … They tick all the boxes of … A well-designed long form landing page ticks all the boxes what plays in the head of a customer. Basically, they go like, “How are you doing this, and why do I have to pay this? How does that work?” I think ticking all those boxes, that really helps the customer. If you are already helping the customer in your landing page … Ooh, wow … then they are far more happy to convert than if you don’t. That’s one of-
|
| Kate Toon: | I totally agree.
|
| Arnout H.:
[00:27:30]
[00:28:00] |
That’s one of the big things. The other thing, and that’s more on SEO perspective, is what I’ve seen is consolidating multiple pages into a one long form well-made article with graphs and with all kinds of things really helps your ranking as well, because you will start ranking in terms of a kind of a topical relevancy. You start ranking on multiple keywords, at least that’s my experience. You might not rank for all of those keywords immediately, but in the end, you will, and you’ll get all of those people with those likewise questions landing on your page organically.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:28:30] |
Yeah, I agree. I think another thing is, especially if someone has begun to engage in your page, what they’re looking for is reassurance. They’re tempted to buy, and they’re looking for reassurance. They want to be reassured in lots of different ways. We’ve talked about it. They want to understand what the product is, how it works, how it’s going to benefit them. They want to see people like them who have used the product and had good results, or the service. They want to see the results. They want to see the pricing, and then they want to see all of it all over again.
|
|
[00:29:00] |
I think, especially here in Australia, we’re not a fan. It’s a very American thing in our minds, to have these super long scrolly pages, and people are reluctant to do it, because it feels too much. But I can absolutely say … Again, this is anecdotal … the more stuff I add to my long sales page for my course, the better it performed, because it’s a high cost investment. Again, I think it sometimes depends, but if you’re buying a two dollar thing, you don’t need a massive landing page for that. It’s a split decision. But if you’re investing in a $2,000 course, I want to know all the stuff. I want my FAQs. I want everything. You’re right. You are ticking all the boxes. So important.
|
|
[00:29:30] |
Okay. Next question. We’ve got a few to get through, so I’m going to whiz on a little bit. If, as with SEO, every page is a landing page, how can an eCommerce store ensure that every product page is doing the best that it can? Obviously, if an eCommerce store is doing well, then its actual product page is rather in the category of a home page. It will be coming up in the search. A bit of a segue, but how do they ensure that their product landing pages do well?
|
| Arnout H.:
[00:30:00] |
In this case, it depends on the product. Great photography will definitely help. Unique descriptions will help. Clear call to actions, but also when people scroll through the product, then the last photo, make that put in basket or order now might also help.
|
|
[00:30:30] |
Another one that I think testing is … Put a little form within the page, so another chat bot or anything, but just a little form in the page saying, “Do you have a question about this product?” Not a lot of people will fill it in, but the ones that take the effort to fill it in, you immediately know what you’re missing on that page, what you need to add.
|
| Kate Toon:
[00:31:00] |
That’s a great idea. What I’ve been experimenting with is adding little videos onto product pages. You might think, “It’s a boring blue widget. Why would anybody want a video?” But seeing the objects or the piece of clothing or whatever it may be handled and moved around gives you a much better sense of how big it is, how it looks. I think often, flat photos just do not sell the product very well. Even if you’re a small eCommerce store, you can easily set up a little light box, have the product in, and make a short … It doesn’t even need to be long … 60-second video that just shows the item being rotated or played with.
|
| [00:31:30] | There’s a brand over here called Appliances Online, and they sell vacuum cleaners and washing machines. They’ve added videos to nearly every product. Even if you’re just buying a pan or something really basic, like a kettle, I always watch the video, because I want to see how big is it really? What does it really look like? So video is helpful.
|
|
[00:32:00] |
Another thing I’d say is, from an SEO perspective, is to turn on your comments. Have comments and reviews on your product pages, because again, then you get that what Arnout was talking about with those latent semantic indexing. You get all those other keywords that you might never have thought of in your page, but also as you said, you can use that content as proof on the page. People talking about your product. Of course … Oh, gosh. Listen to the birds. The birds are going crazy. They agree with me. Turn your reviews on as well.
|
| [00:32:30] | We’ve got a couple more questions. This one is from Paul at Cordare Studios. He says, “If he has a standard landing page, what kind of conversion rate should we expect, and how does this change by industry?” I know what you’re going to say. I’m going to guess. You’re going to say, “It depends.”
|
| Arnout H.:
[00:33:00] |
Yes, it depends. I will say that a great way of doing this is … It depends on loads of things, but if you fire well-targeted traffic to your website and with the right intent, your conversion rate will be a lot better. If you just blow it out there and just broad match AdWords campaigns and all kinds of stuff, your conversion rate will go down, because it’s session based.
|
| [00:33:30]
[00:34:00] |
There is a deck from me on SlideShare talking about how … Because I see loads of things like inflated GA sessions, because it’s all session based. Internal UTM tagging creates new sessions, and thus your conversion rate goes down. First, get the measurement right, and you should feel comfortable with the conversion rate. What I often say is a car dealership, how many people walk in and buy a car in their first visit? An ice cream shop. How many people walk in in their first visit and buy an ice cream? One is near 100%. The other one might be one or two percent.
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| Kate Toon: | I like that analogy. You went into jargon land there a little bit, Arnout. You talked about UTM tagging. For all our newbie listeners, what is UTM tagging?
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| Arnout H.:
[00:34:30] |
With UTM tagging, it’s the Urchin tracking method, or something like that. You just Google UTM tagging. What you basically can do that way is create a new traffic source in Google Analytics. If you do paid ads in Facebook, you don’t want to show every visit from Facebook, but you want to know which ones you paid for and which ones you didn’t pay for.
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| Kate Toon: | Yeah. Okay. We might cover that in a future episode.
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| Arnout H.: | Sorry about that.
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| Kate Toon:
[00:35:00]
[00:35:30] |
No, that’s okay. We do like to keep things pretty straightforward on this podcast. I do think it’s impossible to say. People talk about from email lists, having a one to three to five percent conversion rate, but it’s just going to be impossible to say. I think we’ll talk about this towards the end of the podcast. It’s all about testing. You’ve got to experiment. You’ve got to try different landing pages. You’ve got to see which headline performed better, which call to action performed better. What difference did it make when you added a results panel or a video or you took time to optimise the page so it loaded just half a second faster? What difference did that make? Sorry, Paul, we can’t give you a definitive answer. There are, however, lots and lots of blogs about this online, so I’ll include links to a few of them in the show notes so you can see some stats and things.
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| Now, again, if we’re thinking about conversion rate, do you think that we need to wait until we’ve had a certain amount of visitors before we can even start judging it? Do we need to wait until we’ve had 1,000 visitors until we can start considering metrics?
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| [00:36:00]
Arnout H.:
[00:36:30] |
Yes, indeed, because otherwise, it becomes [inaudible 00:36:01]. If you get 10 visitors on one converts, and over time, they become 200 visitors and there is still one conversion, then you go from … Yeah. It’s completely different conversion rate, and I’ve seen this, where in a past job, where I was in a company. I set up … I was doing lead generation for mortgages, and I got two leads in on the first day. Everybody said, “Wow, this is huge.” Then for a week, nothing happened.
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| Kate Toon: | Yes, and they thought they were going to fire you.
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| Arnout H.: | Well, I don’t know if they were going to fire me, but the mood within the company changed.
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| Kate Toon:
[00:37:00] |
Yes. Well, I often see it, too, because obviously, I work with a lot of small businesses. They set up a landing page, and at first, they’re marketing it to the people who know them well, people who have been following them on Facebook for ages, people who get on their email list, their friends, their family. Then like, boom, boom. 10 people converted, and I only had 100 people visit. Once you start widening your circle to complete strangers, then that conversion rate drops, because … That’s when you have to work harder with the proof and the trust building and the authority.
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| Arnout H.: | Yes.
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| [00:37:30]
Kate Toon:
[00:38:00] |
Honestly, in my opinion, yes, landing pages need to be optimised as much as they can, but it’s everything you do before they see the landing page that matters. I don’t necessarily think that for my big SEO course I have the most perfect landing page, but it’s the fact that all the effort and the content marketing and the authority building that I’ve done before means that by the time that they get to the landing pages, they’re just wanting to know literally exactly what they’re going to get and a few little bits of proof, but I’m not starting from nothing. I don’t think even the best optimised landing pages can work in a vacuum. I’m obsessed with vacuums this episode. I don’t think it can work on its own, no matter how great it is. You need to do all the other stuff, too.
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| Let’s finish off with some final tips. Consider I’ve done all these things that you’ve mentioned, and I’m now a bit of a landing page pro. What would be some of the more advanced tips that you might recommend to people?
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|
| [00:38:30]
Arnout H.:
[00:39:00]
[00:39:30] |
One of them … Yeah. Start doing more tests. Start testing with different colours, different visuals. But also, in a lot of cases, customer service, your customer service has so many things popping up of real customers, and start implementing those things. When you’ve got the basics right, just do more and deeper research in why do companies buy from me, or why do people buy from me, but what keeps them from doing this, prevents them from doing this? I think customer contact, so touching base with actual customers or people that have submitted questions through your company. That is the next step if you’ve got the basics right.
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| Arnout H.:
[00:40:00] |
Trying to cater it even more. Is that an advanced item? I don’t think necessarily it’s advanced, but it’s something I don’t see a lot of people doing. They’re just thinking inside out, and not outside in. They have to really talk to the customers or talk to customer service or read their customer service emails. Just start reading them. There’s so much gems in there that you can use.
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| Kate Toon:
[00:40:30] |
I totally agree. It’s that customer insight. A couple of little ways that you can do this, a couple of things that I have done myself is after I’ve run a campaign, I then send an email out to everybody who didn’t sign up. I ask them, “Why didn’t you sign up?” Of course, not everybody answers it, but a lot of people do answer it, and they gave me their concerns. Maybe … This is a while back, but maybe, “The price wasn’t right,” or, “I didn’t feel I could see any results,” or, “It didn’t look right for me.” Then that meant I could go away and change the pricing, add results, and include more testimonials that look like different people.
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| I think A/B testing is so important. When we’re testing landing pages, you just need to change one thing and have the A and the B. Does the headline make a difference? Don’t have seven different landing pages that are all completely different, or you won’t really know which was the thing, that change that works?
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| [00:41:00]
[00:41:30] |
One other final tip, which has got nothing to do with SEO or optimization, but has to do with your point on customer service, is adding a little live chat function and having that live chat manned, especially if it’s a short term campaign. For my course, it’s only open for a week, and it usually sells out within a day or two. Having a little chat bot there just helps ease people over the line. “I’m not quite sure which option to choose. Are you sure it’s right for me?” They can talk direct to me or someone on my team, and I can answer that question right there.
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|
[00:42:00] |
One other thing I wanted to talk about just quickly before we finish. One thing that I think is a real no no, which I meant to mention earlier, is the whole false scarcity thing. I see this a lot on landing pages. “A limited time. Buy today before the price changes,” and then the next day, you go back, and it says, “Limited time. Buy today before the price changes.” It’s like it’s a lie. There is no limit on the number of people you’re accepting. The price is never changing. You do something like that, and people see through it, and that trust is broken. So don’t try and make your offer more exciting than it is. If you have to resort to that kind of thing, then maybe you need to look at what you’re selling and how you’re pricing it. Do you agree?
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| Arnout H.: | Yes.
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| Kate Toon:
[00:42:30] |
Look, I think we provided some excellent tips there, and all imminently doable by small businesses and bigger businesses. Arnout, I’m so grateful for you taking the time, getting up super early, to talk to us. Thank you so much for your time.
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| Arnout H.: | I’m glad. Thanks for having me. Really, really enjoyed it.
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| Kate Toon:
[00:43:00] |
It’s been great. I’ll include links to all Arnout’s social media bits and bobs, and also to that SlideShare that you mentioned back, because that sounds smashing. I want to check the out. That’s the end of this week’s show, and as you know, before I finish up, I like to give a shout out to one of my lovely listeners. This week’s review comes from Ashley Portus from Diamond Port. He sells amazing diamond engagement rings if you want to check that out. He says, “Kate really knows her stuff. Kate is my SEO guru. I can’t recommend Kate, her SEO course, and her services highly enough.” I just like reading these out, because they make my ego get even bigger. Thank you very much, Ashley.
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|
[00:43:30] |
If you like the show, don’t forget to leave a five star rating and review on iTunes and Stitcher or wherever you heard this podcast. Your review will help others find the show and learn more about the lovely world of search engine optimization. You’ll also get a shout out on the show. Don’t forget to check out the show notes for this episode at www.therecipeforseosuccess.com, where you can learn more about Arnout, check out the useful links, and leave a comment about the show.
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[00:44:00] |
Finally, before you go, don’t forget to tune in to my two … Yes, I now have two … other podcasts. The Hot Copy podcast, a podcast for copywriters all about copywriting, hosted with the lovely Belinda Weaver, and the brand new, launched today, whenever this podcast was recorded, The Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur podcast, which is all about the journey of running your own business, dealing with the struggles, and being successful on your own terms.
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| That’s it for this week. Until next time, happy SEOing. Boom. And we’re done.
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