For eCommerce sites participating in online advertising campaigns
Attracting, interesting and engaging a pre-qualified target audience is no longer enough in the noisy advertising medium that is the internet of 2007. Many companies struggle to understand why effective PPC ads or email ads generating high click-through rates are not converting into high sales, and thus resulting in a correspondingly high ROI. The big questions are: Why aren’t people converting? And more importantly, why aren’t people staying on the corporate site? The simple answer is that very often a vital element of the online marketing mix is over-looked: Post-click marketing.
What is Post-click marketing?
Post-click marketing can be likened to an in-store experience. You’ve got the customer through the door, now where’s the staff? Where’s the personal interaction? Where’s the personal service? Where is the staff member who should be able to determine the customer’s need, provide an appropriate product solution in a quick, efficient way, and then guide them gently to the check-out? This scenario is not possible in the online environment, but what is possible is the ability to improve the site visitor’s experience by utilizing a set of best practice techniques. The goals of Post-click Marketing are two-fold: 1) to increase conversion rates, and 2) to gather market specific analytics on user behavior to further optimize post-click marketing capabilities.
PCM – 10 Best Practice Techniques
Focus on your Landing page: Optimize your Conversion Path
Firstly, to accurately define an effective landing page it is necessary to mention that a landing page is not so much a single ‘page’ as a refined, alternative web marketing path, or more specifically, a conversion path.
It may consist of more than one page, with a few refining alternatives, routing a visitor gently to a conversion via segmentation, need identification, and focused presentation, while allowing for a one-click option providing the ability to go to the main corporate pages at any time (subtle proof of authenticity and reliability well outside of the golden triangle), or to make a purchase at any time.
All navigational elements that do not contribute towards the conversion process should be removed. The only choices the landing page should offer a user should be to move forward through the conversion process, or leave. The conversion path needs to provide the bare minimum allowing for retention and understanding of information, while simultaneously providing value.
The following is a list of 10 general best practice techniques to apply to conversion path development, bearing in mind that there is no substitute for measurable testing:
1. The headline is the single most important piece of copy on the page and should correspond exactly to your primary ad title/caption/header. Online-ad generated visitors are clicking through to a page with a specific need. They have expressed this need via their search query language. Their specific use of keywords for which an ad appears indicates their search query intent. The ad delivered has responded to this query, matched the intent, and resulted in a click-through. In order to engage the visitor on click-through (first principle of PCM), the first text they should see on the landing page should be as direct a match to this intent/need as possible; exact matching is optimal, hence the need for alternative conversion paths for different ads. Driving traffic to the corporate home page for non-branded terms or for specific product or service enquiries and forcing people to navigate their way to what they want is a strategy for failure.
2. Personalize the primary conversion path page (the actual landing page). Make sure that contact details are included in a clear and obvious manner. While the PCM goal is, ideally, to convert a visitor online, the overall business objective is to increase revenue. They have found the website. They are progressing through the website. If they want to speak to a real person, enable them to do so.
3. Ensure that the visitor’s query intent about the product or service offering is answered in a clear, concise manner. Landing pages are not the pages on which to focus brand message and insert flowery copy. Visitors have a need. They are interested. They need to be met as efficiently as possible, and this entails providing them with the information they want. E-commerce landing pages need to be highly targeted, highly relevant, and highly focused on providing a clear, simple message. Design in a single column where possible. Multiple columns, extraneous navigations, extensive graphics, and unrelated copy all act as momentum killers. Keep all important images on the left, and apply F-Pattern Eye-Tracking Research Principle to all pages.
4. If it is necessary to gather information prior to a conversion, a landing page should not offer more than three choices, it should not utilize drop down boxes, it should not require any other interaction than a tick-click, and the visitor’s interaction should result in an automatic web-response. Requiring visitors to ’submit’ the information requested is a waste of their time. If they, on the other hand, are routed through to the next page in a seamless manner which requires minimum input from their side, they are one step closer to converting. They have one less point at which to pull out. The ideal is to minimize all required interactions and refrain from requesting any information that is extraneous to the two primary objectives of the conversion path.
5. All copy needs to be written to appeal to the visitor; therefore, the best practice is to write in the second person. Visitors want to achieve something on a website. The fact that they have chosen your ad out of 1,450,211 results is a bonus. They are not particularly interested in when a company was founded, who the CEO is, or what award they won last May. Yes, this is great information to include in a website, but not on a page dedicated to converting traffic. Write about what ‘You need…’ instead of ‘We can….’ Focus on attributes and benefits in the initial pages, and only on specific features in the deeper information pages. Also, many visitors will scan the entire page before they read the copy, so landing pages should be designed with scanners in mind. To this end, ensure that the headlines and sub-headers on the landing page are compelling and tell the full story. Sub-headers should be included for every major information point to break up the copy, and the copy under each sub-header should mirror the major points. Bullet-point lists are an ideal way to break up long sentences and to train the eye down through the copy. Ensure that button copy is compelling and that it tells users exactly what will happen when they click it; e.g. ‘Download White paper’ or ‘Buy Now,’ as opposed to ‘Click here’ and ‘Submit.’
6. Keep the visitor engaged and interested without distracting them from their objective. Therefore, pages need to be kept clean, copy needs to remain focused throughout, the visitor’s direct need should remain the target, and up-selling or cross-selling should be avoided. There should always be a clear call to action or to a further engagement goal. The place for visitors to explore and find out about the latest news release, acquisition, or ZX3000-laser-just-released-copy-machine-on-the-third-floor-which-will-cut-purchase-processing-admin-time-by-13% is within the corporate pages. This rambling search style and random data has its place within the overall marketing approach, but it forestalls progress in the early stages of advertising-led, conversion-based customer engagement. If a visitor is distracted, and if they digress from their initial path of intent, it is highly probable that the conversion will be lost.
7. Segmenting choices should be kept to a minimum, and should be kept on the primary landing page (first stage of the conversion path). The copy should be short, exact, and motivating. Bullet-points should be utilized, and the points of interaction should be kept to a minimum. The primary message should be included within the first 2 lines of copy – and those first 2 lines should be the first paragraph in its entirety. The deeper the visitors goes, the more information they are seeking, the more information it is suitable to provide, while still keeping it focused and targeted at answering their information need.
8. During the first two phases or stages of the conversion path, it is vital that the entire message lies above the fold. Research shows that if a visitor is not convinced of the value and relevance of a web page to their need within goal-appropriate time frames, they will leave. To that end, the following habits are of interest:
- Buyers have low patience
- Buyers in the price comparison phase have the least patience and need to be convinced within the first 7-10 seconds
- Buyers in the research and comparison phase have a little patience but are easily frustrated and experience significant internet noise
- Researchers have the most time and are more inclined to click-through navigatinoptions, read more, and click text links.
For all groups, while the time available to engage them may differ incrementally, what they see must convince them and give them a reason to stay. As the visitor progresses to the product/service-specific information page and therefore ‘requests’ more detailed data, extending copy below the fold if required is more feasible.
9. Test and analyze all PCM efforts as with any other campaign. In order to make advancements on conversion rates and to improve ROI without increasing ad spend, it is imperative that advertisers determine what works and what doesn’t in terms of post-click marketing.
The beauty of multivariate testing is that it allows for the determination of the optimal combination of elements. The primary elements of a conversion path that require constant testing and adjustment, and which individually and collectively combine to impact significantly on conversion rates, include:
- Headline copy
- Sub-headings / caption copy
- Page design and length
- Graphics
- Calls to action
- Button copy
- Body copy optimizer testing allows for full reporting on what conversion paths are performing best to baseline. (Sample report below)
10. Post-click marketing has three distinct precincts:
- traffic sources (banner ads, paid search ads, email campaigns, etc);
- audience segmentation; and
- conversion path alternatives. It is important that all three receive attention during PCM campaigns.
Post-click marketing is not something new; it is simply an overlooked factor of online marketing, which is finally beginning to receive the attention it deserves. Applying data gleaned from customer attitudes and experiences is easily and efficiently applied to an implemented in the development of conversion paths.
* I would like to add that I had already written the initial version of this prior to the excellent article by adgeek entitled ‘INCREASE LANDING PAGE CONVERSION RATES,’ which can be found here https://moz.com/ugc/increase-landing-page-conversion-rates and once I read it, I found a few points I had overlooked, and I have unashamedly included them in this article. Please read the linked article by adgeek – it’s excellent. Adgeek, thank you for your insights.
