The Chatterbox

Jus' Testin'

A couple of really interesting things that has come out of my recent kick of helping some friends with their sites. The first was a question someone raised, quite innocently. It was such a simple question too. The question was:

What are the first things you do when you look at a page you're going to start conversion testing?

Well, here's what I do first.

When I look at the page I first try to determine what the true objective of the page is supposed to be. Is the page supposed to get me to sign up for a free newsletter? Am I supposed to click on a Buy button to purchase something? Am I supposed to click on an affiliate link leading me to someone else's site? Am I supposed to click on an Adsense ad or other paid advertisment? Am I supposed to absorb some information and move on to another page in the sales funnel?

It may sound simplistic, but I've found time and time again that many if not most times either the webmaster doesn't know what the true objective of a landing page is, or isn't focusing users on the objective very well.

As an aside, I know everybody calls them landing pages and I do too, but for conversion testing purposes it's really a misnomer. You see, Landing Page creates a mental image that it's some kind of destination. Landing pages aren't a destination for our purposes. In fact they're just the opposite, they're a beginning.

So anyway, that's where you need to start. What is the objective of your landing page. Without knowing the objective you can never construct a good test.

Now, the follow-on question that my friend didn't ask by I answered anyway is what exactly should a good landing page do?

Well, that answer comes back to your visitors. Doesn't it always? ;)

What I mean by this is you need to understand that every visitor to every landing page subconsciously ask themselves three questions. It's always the same three questions and it's absolutely vital you answer all three within the first 5 seconds or so of their hitting the page. In my experience if you don't address them quickly, you've already lost a prospective customer.

These three questions, along with some explanation, are:

Where am I?

People need to understand where they are, including orientation within a site. This is especially true when you're talking about a landing page where the visitor is going to be deposited on a new-to-them site by clicking on a link in a search engine listing or a link from another site.

This isn't something you need to do with your text necessarily. It can be done with your branding efforts many times, by the header graphics you use to identify your site. If you're talking about an internal page being your landing page, this is where it's important to either have a prominent "Home" link and/or use breadcrumb navigation towards the top of your page to help users see where they are and where they can go.

What can I do here?

This leads us right back into why it's important to understand the true objective of your landing page. You can't possibly answer this question, one every visitor automatically asks, without knowing the answer yourself!

Conversely, since you know the answer all you need to make sure you do is make it apparent to your site visitors. This doesn't mean you have to slap a garish Buy button right in front of them. But you should at least start leading them down the path so that if they want what you sell they can easily figure out how purchase it.

Why should I do it?

Obviously you're not going to completely answer this question in the first 5 seconds. However you can start answering it enough to get visitors to read on. Heck, you can address these last two right in your headline many times!

This one comes down to how you structure your call to action and how you deal with building trust and handling objections and trust issues.

So those are the four things I look at when I first review a landing page prior to setting up some conversion testing.

The other interesting thing that came to light recently I'll write about another day. Hopefully tomorrow if I can manage to find a few moments to pop by.

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