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3 Ways to Design a Landing Page to be Conversion Focused

Landing pages often count for a lot more than they’re given credit for. First, they’re far more than a just a page. ‘Landing pages’ are actually groups of 3-25 pages of targeted content focused on a segment of traffic (and can be known as landing pages, land and jumps, microsites and conversion paths).

So, how can we design conversion-focused landing pages?

1. Choose Wisely

Choose the right kind of landing experience for the task. It’s mostly dependent on two factors: the source and specificity of the traffic being driven and the nature of the product being sold. For example, if you have very specific traffic, a landing page might be the best option, whereas if you have more vague traffic a conversion path might be more suitable to provide varied content to visitors without resorting to long, and poor-converting pages.

2. Be Easy

First impressions are without a doubt highly important as no visitor is going to expend much effort to decide whether your landing page contains the information they want. When they don’t see what they think they are looking for, they bounce.

Four point design checklist:

* Does the page load in three seconds or less? That includes Flash content. Page load time affects your visitors, but equally importantly it also affects search engine quality scores of the page in question. Google in particular will really penalize your score, resulting in higher cost-per-click for your client and lower rankings.

* Is everything important visible without scrolling above the fold?  Your dominant visual, headline and call to action all need to be above the scroll line.  Make sure that everything important is high up on the page, so that visitors can scan and get what they want with very little effort.

*Is your headline explicitly in line with whatever they clicked on to get to this page in the first place? In other words, does the message of your external content’s (whatever it was that drove the user to your landing page) call to action match the message of your page headline?  The tighter the visual and message relationship is between that and the page itself, the more effective your page will be. You can almost instantly judge this by looking at the bounce rate (and time spent) on the first page of your landing experience.

* Is your text as clear and legible as possible? Forcing a visitor to read small text or long blocks of barely legible fonts will most likely lead to a low-conversion rate. The majority of highly successful landing pages don’t have a huge amount of text on them. And the text that is there is at least 12px in size, with well-proportioned line spacing to make it easy to understand.

3. Embrace testing

The best design for your landing page will be the one with the highest conversion rate. You should test by using a random group of visitors and giving them alternative experiences. The one with the highest conversion rate produces the most business and is therefore the winner.

Google Analytics Announces Weighted Sorting

Google Analytics has announced a new sorting algorithm called weighted sort which weights the sort by the number of data points, getting rid of all those annoying 1 visit = 100% bounce rate visits.  Not only is this useless and frustrating, but it obscures the real data points that you care about behind pages of garbage.

Now when you sort on a computed metric, you can weight that sort by the number of data points, bringing you the most interesting and actionable rows first.

Google give a couple of examples on their blog:

Here, weighted sort will weight the computed value bounce rate by the number of visits.

Here data is sorted by descending value on bounce rate. Notice how all these rows have 1 visit each for a bounce rate of 100%, which is pretty useless. Now by turning on weighted sort, we can take into consideration the number of visits for each row bringing to the forefront the items we actually care about:

Keep in mind that because weighted sort is no longer a strict sort, there will be values that don’t strictly follow the order you would assume. 

Weighted sort is also available on other popular computed metrics, including goal conversion rate, % new visits etc.

Here is a demo to help you learn how to use weighted sorting.

Source: Google Analytics Blog

Absolute Unique and Unique Visitors in Google Analytics

A brief explanation of the frequently asked question : what’s the difference between Absolute Unique and Unique Visitors in Google Analytics? For many, these two distinct measures are used interchangeablely; a dangerous practice. In fact, largely different results can be produced by both measures when analyzing the same site in the same time frame.

Most simply put, Absolute Unique Visitors are first time visitors to the site, whilst ‘Unique Visitors’ are first time visitors to the site within the selected date range.

In more detail, Absolute Unique measurements take into account whether or not the user has been to the site prior to the start of the set time period as defined in the date range box. The Absolute Unique Visitor report counts visitors to your website (counting each visitor only once in the selected date range) and is fairly limited: you can’t use Advanced Segments on this report (one of the few where you can’t). Visitors who have returned are still only counted once.

Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.

The two metrics do differ in the way they measure visitors, so the numbers won’t match up exactly. In fact, Unique Visitors is actually more accurate than Absolute Unique Visitors, even though the name suggests otherwise. Unique Visitors will usually show a slightly greater number (usually around 5-20%). Since Unique Visitors is the more accurate and flexible metric, Absolute Unique Visitors is slowly becoming obsolete.

6 web analytics KPIs you could measure - a basic overview

One thing to remember : A KPI is a metric, but a metric is not always a KPI. When we use the term metric we are referring to a direct numerical measure that represents a piece of business data in the relationship of one or more dimensions. A KPI is simply a metric that is tied to a target. More often than not, a KPI represents how far a metric is above or below a pre-determined target. KPI’s are normally shown as a ratio of (actual : target) and are designed to instantly inform a user if they are on track with their plan, without the end user having to specifically focus on the metrics being represented.

So what are some of the web analytics KPIs you might want to measure?  There are literally hundreds of them to choose from, but we’ll just briefly go through a few of the important ones.

1. Conversion rate

Perhaps the most obvious thing to measure, this is all about knowing your websites’ goals and objectives. It forces you to ask why your website exists.  The conversion rate could be anything from sign up forms to whitepaper downloads.

2. Visits and unique visitors

Although it is less accurate than Unique Authenticated Visitor, Unique Visitor does not require a logon and so has much wider applicability than its counterpart. Note that Unique Authenticated Visitor should be used in place of Unique Visitor when it is possible to do so because of this reason.

3. Abandonment rate

Whenever you see high values for this metric, you immediately want to examine that page inside-out to see where your customers are leaving, so you can make improvements to your site.

4. Average order value

By itself the Average Order Value will not be the most productive KPI. Always seek context - for example compare it with conversion and revenue rates in mind; don’t just take it as a raw number.

5. Customer loyalty

This type of KPI allows you to measure if people visit your site repeatedly.  Loyalty can also be a great way to understand effectiveness of campaign, and whether you are driving people back to your site again and again.

6. Search share

A key measure of success is how you are doing against your competition.  From measuring your share of search against your competitors, you can externally validate your success.

What web analytics KPIs do you measure?

9 resources explaining when to use segmentation or filters in Google Analytics

So you’ve heard all about the benefits of segmentation and filters in Google Analytics, and most likely tested them out, but do you often find yourself asking: which one should I use in this particular situation?  Although advanced segments and filters function in similar ways, there are a few key differences to note before using either one for your profile or report.

We’ve pulled together a list of resources that should help you make that decision.

1. The guys over at Lunametrics have written a nice post comparing and contrasting using Advanced Segments and profiles and filters to get a different view of the same site.  There’s also a nice little short summary of the differences between the two approaches.  You can access the post here.

 
2. This Google help article briefly explains the key differences to note before choosing one or the other to apply.

What’s the difference between advanced segments and filters?

3. Atracks provides training and mentoring in web analytics.  Their blog contains a short piece about Segments and filters in Google Analytics. 

4. From the official blog for the book Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Clifton, How to choose between Advanced Segments versus Profile Filters in Google Analytics does exactly what it says on the tin. 

5. Complete with a simple example, Shelby Thayer explains why if you are only looking at your data in aggregate, without segmenting it, you can be making decisions based on misleading information.  Find out her rule of thumb here.

6. Blue Snapper’s post entitled Avoiding a Brick Wall in Google Analytics talks about why it is sometimes better to use profiles and filters, as even advanced segments have their limitations.  A useful post which also details when advanced segments are disabled by Google Analytics.

7. Clubnet Search Marketing briefly explains how both segments and filters serve different purposes.  Short and sweet. Should I use Filters or Advanced Segments in Google Analytics?

8. Using the example of tracking social networks sites, this post takes you through the technicalities of exactly how to create your filter or segment.  2 easy ways to track social networks in Google Analytics.

9.  Justin Cutroni includes both filters and segmentation in his article evaluating 6 different ways to segment your data in Google Analytics.  He includes the pros and cons of each.  Read Segmentation Options in Google Analytics .