We have looked at how to structure and design your landing pages for a Google Adwords campaign; now we need to look at how to optimize them to get the most conversions possible. This is called A/B testing.
It is a very simple concept – create two landing pages (you can create more than two different pages but we recommend head-to-head testing so you can really see which one performs better), divide the traffic driven from your ads between the two pages, and see which one converts better. The better the conversion rate, the better this is for a low-cost marketing strategy. Once you see the results, then you can take the better performing page and continue to tweak items on the page until you reach maximum optimization. Let go over some of the items you can tweak to implement A/B testing.
Ideas Of What To Tweak
The Color of your Landing Page
Color is very important in guiding people around a web page. Try making your call-to-action buttons different colors to see if one produces more clicks. Or, try making the overall color scheme completely different. Don’t worry if the colors are different from your website; these are landing pages designed specifically for conversion. Your brand can withstand them looking differently because people are not intended to return to these pages once they have converted.
The Images you use
Some images speak more to people than others. Try testing different images to see if you achieve different results. You can even try testing images that might seem odd or slightly unrelated to your product but are visually interesting. Remember, you are trying to keep someone’s brain engaged on the page – this is the fun of testing!
Related: Low Cost Marketing Solutions – Working with Google Adwords
Page Structure
Move things around on the page to see if changes in flow make a difference in conversions. Put the call-to-action button in the middle of the page, or right at the top. Put the pertinent information to the right and then the left.
Required Steps
Test out just how many actual steps you need for a person to complete to convert them. If it takes six steps for someone to convert, see if you can bring that number down to increase conversions.
Copy
Use different words! Try out different headlines and different calls-to-action; try out new descriptions and different marketing copy. You probably have a bunch of fun thoughts of how to market your product – this is your chance to use them all to see which one converts.
Special Offers
This is a fun one. See if offering something special on one landing page, like a free e-book with purchase or 10% off, changes the conversion rate. This can get a little complicated depending on the sales platform you are using so be careful. However, this is a really useful test not only for conversion rates but also to understand customer behavior and the viability of your original offer as well.
As you can see, there are many, many ways to tweak pages for A/B testing. Just remember that your goal is to test for conversion increases. Don’t test too many variables at once. Make sure that you can pinpoint what works and what doesn’t and then test away!
