Sunday, July 1, 2012

5 Ways to Turn Every Page into a Landing Page

Landing pages are like a middle child. They’re highly scrutinized. They never live up to the expectations we set for them. They are constantly belittled, demeaned and made fun of by other webpages. They believe the standards set for them are too high and they feel like everything they do is mercilessly picked apart. Such is the life of a landing page.

Well, today my plea is to start treating every page on your site like a landing page. Hold every page accountable for converting. Start scrutinizing every page, not just your landing pages. Because guess what will happen if you do start treating every page like a landing page? Your website will convert more. We did it, and it works.

Here are 5 ways to get started.
1) Calls to Action – To treat your entire website like a landing page you need calls-to-action on every page. Include call to action buttons and even short forms on every page of your website. For example, websites like LogMyCalls, Marketo and Hubspot have ‘Request a Demo’ buttons and ‘Free Trial’ buttons on nearly every single page. You think these pages convert? Absolutely.

2) Set up Google Analytics Goals for Pages – Most marketers just set up goals for their landing pages. But you are smarter than that. You are going to set up goals for every single page you want to convert. These are the pages you want to hold accountable. Don’t be afraid to set up funnels for 10 or 15 pages.

3) Keep Track of Metrics – Most marketers know what their conversion rate is for their landing pages, but what’s your home page’s conversion rate? What’s the conversion rate for your blog? What’s the conversion rate for your Products and Features pages? You should know what percentage of visitors to these pages are heeding the calls-to-action that you’ve provided.

4) Include Phone Numbers – This is critical. BIA/Kelsey recently released a report that provided this statistic: 61% of companies say incoming phone calls are their best lead source. That’s important. That means you should specifically try to get customers to call you (in most businesses). You can do this by putting phone numbers on every page possible. These phone numbers should be tracking phone numbers so you can track how many calls each page produces (that will impact your conversion rate). FWIW, you should already be incorporating phone call conversion rates into your landing page conversion rates.

5) Optimize – Just like you test and optimize a landing page, you should test and optimize other pages. Play around with buttons, forms, placements, colors and calls-to-action. You want a higher conversion rate for every page, not just your landing pages.

Get Started
Here’s the point: make every page convert. Instead of thinking ‘we need to get them to a landing page from the home page,’ think, ‘let’s turn the home page into a landing page.’ Just put calls-to-action like buttons and short forms everywhere and you’ll start to see your website convert like a landing page.If you follow these steps your website will convert more. 

Let’s give the middle-child landing page a break and start holding other pages accountable too. 

Jason Wells 

Jason Wells is the CEO of ContactPoint. Their new product, LogMyCalls, represents the next generation of intelligent call tracking and marketing automation. Prior to joining ContactPoint, Jason served as the Senior Vice President of Sony International, where he led the creation and international expansion of Sony’s mobile business line from London. 

Jason has spoken on marketing topics at SES New York, SES Toronto, Ad Tech, Digital Hollywood, Nokia World, CTIA and elsewhere. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. To read Jason’s work please add LogMyCalls to your Google+ circles and follow them on Twitter.


 

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