How to customize Landing Page Headlines from search query

I just stumbled on this gem this morning over at Search Engine Roundtable about dynamically creating your landing page with actual search keywords. See Passing Query Phrase into Document Landing Page, which provides a brief commentary and link to a related thread over at the Search Engine Watch forums.

This is definitely something that would be worth testing for 90% of people out there. In most cases, my guess is it would increase conversion rates for many.

Time your tests to get best results

Every time you run a test, think about things you can do to reduce noise- or uncontrollable effects on your data. One thing that is often overlooked is fluctuations caused by the day of the week. Think about it. Many sites enjoy significantly more traffic and more sales on weekdays, while others perform best on the weekends.

Web site visitors tend to be very different on the weekends and evening, than mid day during the work week. I have seen a lot of activity and responses come from senior management of very large companies. Rarely during the day. Weekends are when these time-stressed executives get to surf.

Say you run a test starting on Monday. By Thursday, you could have a substantial amount of data, pointing to a clear "winner." The inexperienced tester would begin celebrating prematurely. Along comes the weekend, and what you thought was the winner could end up falling behind.

How to avoid this? Always run your tests by the calendar week. This essentially removes the weekday/weekend fluctuations from affecting your end results.

Testing Idea 1004: Internal marketing elements

This weeks idea is really more than just a simple idea, but an often overlooked element of the complete online marketing equation, something we call "internal site marketing." Web marketing strategies like search engine optimization get people to your site, but internal marketing tactics get people signed up for your newsletter, registered for your whitepapers, and attending your webinars- or maybe purchasing your affiliate products.

How these different items are promoted on your site is something that should be tested and optimized. Whether your site uses clever banner ads, product images, or simple signup forms, getting the most out of them should be a top goal. This particular example is one that is currently in use on the Vertster Site. In the coming months, we plan to launch and optimize more internal marketing offers, promoting a free demo, webinars, and more.

Things we could and will test include: layout, headline, use of the word free, inclusion of an image of the item, or inclusion of a "lifestyle" image. There are obviously many more ideas you could use as well. But the point is, get testing!

Conversion Rate Optimization blogroll added!

I get my blog news through a nifty service called Bloglines, which was just bought by Ask Jeeves. Bloglines allows you to aggregate all the blogs you like to read in one place, and even notifies you when they have updated information.

Bloglines also allows you to export a list of all the blogs you read for inclusion on your website. This makes perfect sense. It would stand to reason that anyone reading my blog is likely interested in some, if not MOST of what I like to read.

You can view the list when you enter the blog section of the Conversion Rate Marketing and Split Testing Resources Conversion Rate Marketing Resource Center. This will be constantly updated with the best Conversion rate and marketing blogs out there. If you think I may have missed one, please send me an email at scott@vertster.com.

Something you might not know about Conversion Rate Optimization

If you are reading this, you're probably excited about the possibilities of increasing your sales or lead conversion rate, and overall profitability. I'm excited too, this is an amazing new area of web marketing and the surface has barely been scratched.

Unfortunately, a common tendency is to complete one test and call it "good." This is a rookie mistake. A true optimization campaign is made up of a battery of tests, some designed to determine best overall creative direction, some to fine tune, and some to provide confirmation.

You should only rarely make conclusions based on a single test. Even if you have a clear winner, it is smart to run at least one identical confirmation test following your first one. This is particularly true if your activity is low (IE low confidence,) or if you know you have some uncontrollable noise factors.

Landing Page Resouce Section Live

I am excited to announce a new section of our split test/ conversion rate marketing resource center on Landing Page Design. In this section, you will be able to learn all about designing and optimizing effective landing pages.

A Unique Landing Page Idea

Give your customers a chance to connect with you on a personal level- through your handwriting! With the Fontifier tool, you can turn your own handwriting into a usable font on your system. They say you can learn a lot about a person through their handwriting- and if you are selling an honest good product, using bits of your own handwriting on your landing page should only help your conversion rate!

Testing Idea 1003- Page Colors

An often overlooked element of landing page success is the color scheme used. In brick and mortar retailing, the color blue has been theorized to increase sales. You can see this being used in many stores, from Wal-Mart to Best Buy among others. Does blue actually make a difference? Some marketing folks (especially the ones that came up with the research) seem to think so. But without testing, how can you be sure that it is the best color for YOUR product, offer or brand?

Online, color is arguably more important than in the real world. Online everything is presented in two dimensions, on a small screen. The colors you choose will likely have an even greater effect on the customers mood and actions. Here are a few of the things you can test:

• Background color


• Text color- although black on white or a similar light color is probably best for the sake of readability


• Headline color


• Accent colors


• Bullet colors

There are plenty more ideas, but this will get you started. What is the best color for your site, your product and your offer? Only you can figure that out, and only by testing different ideas.

Why testing with Google Adwords yields flawed results

Almost since the Adwords program went online savvy marketers realized it had a hidden power... Direct marketing testing could easily be conducted and superior results achieved. In fact, it seems as though Google has embraced this practice, encouraging advertisers to test variations of text ad creatives. With millions of searches per hour, it doesn't take long to reach a large enough traffic volume to attain high confidence conclusions.

To verify your own tests, feel free to use my free Google Adwords Statistical Validity Checker

Using Adwords as a "poor man's" testing tool for landing pages has also been advocated by people who think they know more than they really do. In fact, if you peruse the marketing forums, you'll often see this discussed, along with haphazard guesses at how much activity denotes statistically valid results.

When you use Google to split traffic between two or more landing pages, you are inadvertently adding a HUGE random noise factor. This WILL screw up your analysis and could cost you MASSIVE amounts of lost sales and advertising dollars. DON'T DO IT.

Basically it goes like this. Google counts a view every time someone clicks on your ad. Even if they come back 4 days in the next ten before buying (and coming back through the same paid link is common.) When this happens guess what it does to your apparent conversion rate. It goes down. In fact, for this guy that converted... he is only showing a 25% Conversion Rate (CR). The next guy buys on the first visit, but from one of your other landing pages. Well guess what, that one just scored a 100% CR for that customer. If this happens a few times, you'll start thinking that this other creative is better. Bad Idea. Who KNOWS if it really is?

There is no way to be sure, and no amount of volume is going to provide enough confidence to make this test "trustworthy." The only way to tell for sure is to only count the view once... On the first time a prospect is exposed to your offer. The vast majority of conversion tracking tools out there are flawed- counting all views against all conversions. So be careful. Testing incorrectly is worse than not testing at all- because it takes just as much work, and yields data which will never verify in the bank account.