Landing Page Testing & Tuning - SES London 2009

Myers explained there are 2 key components:

1. Relevancy
Advertising relevancy: A good landing page improves the quality scores.

2. Sales optimised
Basic optimisation principles must be followed:
- Deep linking
- Trust
- Offer driven; Make the reason to stay compelling.
- Easy navigation; Can I get to where I need to be?
- Sales focus; Where do I buy?

According to Myers, we certainly may not forget to test outside of the tool:
- Perform usability testing
- Try hotspot testing (like crazyegg.com)
- Speak to the user

At the end of his session, Myers took a leap into the the Future. What's the new Landing Page? GOOGLE! Using Google as your landing page, can really increase the traffic to your site.

The second speaker was Anders Hjorth. He was responsible for the service offering of Relevant Traffic and managing a team of webmarketing experts across Europe. Recently he joined GroupM as the CEO of Outrider EMEA. Hjorth shared some interesting opinons and tips.

Site hierarchy:
- Match your landing page to your site.

Design principles:
- Consistency and repetition is important.

Design principles applied to paid search:
- The best scenario: 1 landing page for 1 keyword.

Costs and benefits:
- The key to succes is Enough volume and Homegeneous traffic sources.

Detailed landing page design steps:

1. Define measureable and actionable objectives
2. Define target persona (one target one page)
3. Graphic elements, lay-out and action-mode
4. Copywriting
5. Build-outs and site integration
6. Test scenarios

To conclude the session, Hjorth gave us 6 interesting tips:

1. Structure: remove most on navigation
2. Personalize: repeat elements from refering page
3. Contents: simplify and keep only essential information
4. Image: work on the hero image
5. Usability: try to avoid scroll
6. Testing: A/B split testing or multivariate

Last speaker at this session was John Marshall, CTO for Market Motive. Marchall is a Netscape alumnus and a seasoned technologist, with roots in programming high-speed algorithms and statistical analysis. He shared us some general insigths about testing:

AB Testing (2 or more versions of a page)

Marshall started with a brief introduction how to perform AB testing with Google website optimizer:
- Create addition versions of your page at distinct URL's
- Add GWO JavaScript to control the page:
> randomises users and sets cookie
> redirects to page B, C, D, etc.
- Add JavaScript to test pages
- Add JavaScript to goal page

Multivariate testing (MVT, substitute elements within the same page)
The more combinations you test, the more information you will recieve. This could help to make better decisions.

How does MVT works?
- Java executes within the page on the client (no server coding needed)
- Each page has unique script that identifies the elements to be placed

According to Marshall, we must be aware of some common MVT problems:
- MVT is NOT necessarily better than AB. In most cases it's always better to start with AB testing.
- The code can be fragile: test your tests.
- Beware testing products who talk about Taguchi, secret sauce, etc.
- Knowing what to test is the key!

All our stories on Search Engine Strategies London:

• Measuring Success in a 2.0 World
• Universal & Blended Search
• SEO : Where to next?
• Online video update – The next wave
• Link Building Basics
• SEO through Blogs & Feeds
• Organics Listings Forum
• Brand & Reputation Management
• Landing Page Testing & Tuning
• Social Media Optimization
• Local Search Marketing Tactics
• SES London Day 1 in pictures
• SES London Day 2 in pictures