Affiliate Marketing Using PPC: The Importance of Testing Your Landing Page

by PPC Bully on March 16, 2009

Once you have completed a landing page it is important to continually test and analyze the results to ensure the page is producing optimal conversion rates.  We call this process landing page optimization which will significantly increase your conversion to sales ratio when done correctly.

Assuming you have done your keyword research and gotten to know your audience, let’s take a look at some of the ways that you can test your landing page to obtain the high conversion rates you are seeking from your marketing campaign.

Design Multiple Pages

When you design a landing page, you will already have a pretty good idea of who your audience will be, what they like, what they do not like, and what will convert traffic to sales.  However, if you design multiple landing pages that you can continually test and tweak, you will learn a lot more specifics about your audience, as well as what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to converting traffic to sales.

By designing more than one page for your affiliate product you can test and tweak by changing one element at a time and tracking the results with your website analytics tool.

Changing Headlines: Try changing the headline you are using to grab the reader’s attention then track the conversion rates with the website analytics tool.

Long Copy and Short Copy: There is a lot of debate among Internet marketers with regard to long copy and short copy.  Try designing one landing page with a long copy and another with a short copy.  The results you get may vary depending upon the product or service you are offering as well as how the copy is designed and worded.

Change the Location of the Opt-In: Typically, the opt-in should be located ‘above the fold’ which is the part of the web page that your prospect will see immediately after arrival and before scrolling down to see the remainder of the page.  You can test the opt-in by moving it to different locations on the page or changing the wording you are using to attract visitors to the offer.

Test the Call to Action: Try offering the call to action as the last item on one of the test landing pages.  Offer the call to action in several different parts of another landing page to see which one performs better.  Some readers prefer to read the entire offer while others only want to read what is of interest to them before making a decision.  Make sure you place these ‘above the fold’ as well as at every scroll plus one-half of screen space.

Change the Wording: When you design your landing page, you will have a pretty good idea of what your prospect is seeking, however, changing the wording of your offer will tell you a lot more specifics about the problem they are trying to solve or how they view your product or service as improving their life.  You can do this by offering your product or service in a slightly different way on one landing page than on another test landing page.

Change Color Scheme: Sometimes higher conversion rates can mean something as simple as changing the color scheme of your page.  The color scheme should depend upon the age group and tastes of your audience.  As a general rule, your page should always be easy to read and friendly to the eye.  This means also keeping it free of animations and all of the other bells and whistles that will distract your reader.

Add Security Assurance: Most prospects want to know that their order will be processed in a secure environment and that their email will not be sold to other mailing list distributors.  Provide a clause on your page that adds security assurance and try testing the location where the clause is placed on the web page.

These are a few suggestions for testing and tweaking your landing page for optimum conversion rates.  You will find that testing and tweaking is an ongoing process that will require patience and perseverance, as well as a willingness to continually learn new ways to increase the conversion rates on your landing page.

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Affiliate Marketing Using PPC: Tips on Designing an Effective Landing Page

by PPC Bully on March 10, 2009

When you are affiliate marketing using PPC, the landing page plays a very important role in the success of the pay per click campaign.  Even if you write a successful pay-per-click advertisement that produces a lot of click-throughs, the quality of the advertisement will not make any difference on your sales conversion ratio if your landing page is lacking in a few key elements.

Since you are paying for the prospects that click through to your landing page you will want to follow a few key elements for your landing page design that will help to maximize your pay-per-click campaign.

Key Elements of Landing Pages

• Align the Landing Page to the PPC Advertisement: Make certain that the landing page delivers the promise you made in the pay-per-click advertisement. For example, if you offered a free report to entice people to click on the ad, make certain that the visitor sees the free offer as soon as they reach your landing page.The landing page should stay focused on the offer and contain clear instructions as to exactly what you want your visitor to do.  If the pay-per-click advertisement refers to a certain product or service, do not send your visitors to the home page of your website.  If you do this the visitor will have to search for the offer and it is highly likely they will get frustrated and leave for good.  Instead lead them directly to the landing page and design the page to focus on the offer.

• Stay Focused on the Offer: Design the landing page so it focuses on the offer that was mentioned in the pay-per-click advertisement.  Stay focused on discussing your product or service.  Do not place other distractions on the landing page such as links to other pages, which will cause your visitors to wander away from the page.  Design the offer so it leads your prospect to complete the desired action that you seek.

• Scannable by the Reader: Design the offer on the landing page so it can be easily scanned by the reader.  People who surf the web tend to be impatient and want to get to the points as quickly as possible.  Design the offer so the important points can easily be spotted by the reader and then add the details under the point.  This way the reader can easily read about the points to your offer that pertains to their interest.

• Place Key Elements Above the Fold: ‘Above the fold’ means the part of the web page that a visitor sees firsthand before using the scrolling feature to move the page down.  Be sure to include elements from the pay-per-click advertisement on this part of the web page so the visitor sees them immediately after arriving on the web page.The elements that you want to include ‘above the fold’ are the statement you are going to use to grab the readers attention, some of the benefits to your offer, and your opt-in list, to name a few.

• Provide Quality Information: Providing quality information is essential in gaining the trust of your potential prospect.  Include important benefits, accurate information, and testimonials that are true followed by a call to action.

• Keep It Simple: Make sure your landing page design stays simple.  Your prospect cannot concentrate on what you are offering when the page is cluttered with other distractions.  Get to the point, show that a clear decision needs to be made, and then clearly lead the prospect to the call of action.

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