According to independent research by Compete, there is no faster, more efficient way to improve your return on digital advertising spend than by improving your landing pages. In fact, it is possible that your competitors could be generating five times the ROI as you are with comparable messaging and spending. The only difference? The post-click experience.
Okay, so I sold you, right? Landing page optimization is important. Once you have the right tactics and strategy down (take our Conversion Optimization Crash Course with Brian Massey for that), consider adding these great tools for landing page optimization to your marketing arsenal. Are there any other ones you would include? Leave a comment below.
1. CrazyEgg
Landing Page Analytics
We use CrazyEgg here at OMI, and I love geeking out over the eye tracking reports. I can easily see which parts of our website visitors are engaging with, and which parts just fall flat. We've used this data to improve our navigation, layout, copy, and more. Sure, a lot of this data is also in Google Analytics, but the visual format really changes the way we look at and interpret the data. Instead of simply presenting numbers or graphs, the eye tracking reports clearly tie metrics back to content and design, so you can better see and understand what is happening on your website, and hopefully figure out why. Because remember—it's not the size of the data, it's how you use (and interpret) it.
2. PPC Advisor: Landing Pages and Leads by Wordstream
Landing Page Creation
The brilliant team over at Wordstream just released their new tool for landing page creation. It's a smart move, as your landing pages can make or break your PPC results. While I haven't had a chance to test drive it yet, I have used Wordstream's keyword tools before, and they're very intuitive and smart. As far as I can tell, it's the only platform that enables you to manage your PPC efforts and create landing pages, all in one complete solution. Definitely add this tool to your list to check out.
3. the ion landing page platform
Landing Page Creation, Analytics, Testing
I was lucky enough to be an ion customer when I was Online Marketing Manager in a previous role. We used the ion platform (also known as LiveBall, for those in the know) to create and test landing pages across different business units and teams, including paid membership, sponsorships (lead generation), and in-person events. The platform enabled us to quickly create effective AND beautiful landing pages in just minutes, with some converting at over 50%, depending on the stream of traffic (read the case study here). Since analytics, creation, and testing are all part of the interface, you can quickly launch campaigns in the morning and monitor your results throughout the day. Now, if you're like me and always strive to knock each campaign out of the park, definitely check out the ion platform. It makes achieving big wins a daily occurrence. And really, there's no better feeling as a marketer than achieving something great... every single day.
4. Unbounce
Landing Page Creation and Testing
So if you like to achieve big wins but your budget is small, Unbounce might be the perfect solution for you. It comes ready-baked with dozens of pre-designed landing page templates. (And yes, I inquired—you can create your own templates, too.) Plus, it integrates with popular tools like HubSpot and MailChimp, so you can create a page, launch a test, and push all the new leads you captured right into your email marketing solution.
5. Google Analytics and Content Experiments
Landing Page Analytics and Testing
I love Google Analytics. I can easily spend hours creating custom reports and segments, slicing and dicing data, until I know exactly how many days it took transaction 5234 to finally convert after she typed in "email marketing best practices" into Google from her iPhone in Washington state, landed on a course topics page, navigated to a class page on "Email Marketing Copy", followed us on Twitter, clicked a link from our Twitter account, and came back to our website (again).
Okay, so that's getting a bit into the minutia. But if you haven't already set up conversion tracking and goals for your landing pages, get on that, ASAP. We all know that you can't improve what you don't measure, and even if you have a specialized tool for landing page analytics, you should still set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics to get a holistic view of your marketing performance.
RELATED CLASS: Strategic Framework for a Great Web Analytics Strategy—The ZMOT Google Perspective
As far as their testing solution, I like how Google integrated Website Optimizer (now Content Experiments) into Google Analytics, but it still requires development resources to launch tests, and you have to create separate URLs for the pages you want to test against each other. Given the time and resources required to launch a landing page test with Content Experiments, I'd recommend one of the paid testing solutions, instead.
6. Visual Website Optimizer
Landing Page Testing
Unlike Google Content Experiments, Visual Website Optimizer enables you to launch A/B tests on your landing pages and website without any coding or development resources (awesome!). It starts at about $49 a month, so if you save even 10 minutes a month on your landing page testing (vs. using Google Content Experiments), the solution pays for itself—and that's not even taking into account conversion lift!
7. Optimizely
Landing Page Testing
Optimizely was co-founded by Dan Siroker, who was Director of Analytics for the 2008 Obama campaign. Testing was a big part of the Obama Campaign's digital strategy—they continuously tested emails, landing pages, etc. to find out which ones drove the highest donations and open rates. Remember all those emails from Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama with the subject line, "hey."? We have Dan to thank.
Anyways, I haven't used the tool myself, but it's similar to Visual Website Optimizer, with plans starting at $17 a month. Both Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely have free trials, so I'll let you decide which testing platform makes the most sense for you.
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