Landing pages are critical to internet marketing campaigns.  Successful marketers know that optimizing landing pages is equally important as the offer itself.  Finding the balance between the amount of content, creative design, and form length are the key.

Design, content, and strategy all play a large role in the success of form fulfillment.  Keep in mind these five key optimization tips to improve your next marketing campaign.

1. Design for your audience.
   Over the past several months, I have paid special attention to the landing page differences between b2b and b2c companies.  Flash and oversized images are just a few items typical of b2c pages.  While this may entice some consumer categories to act on a promotion, the often times overwhelming design would not have the same impact on a business prospect.  In fact, I’m sure you can agree that when it comes to b2b marketing, it’s always best to keep it simple.  Business people want to know the value added [and they want to know and see it quickly]!
2. Offer multiple call-to-actions.
   It is important to offer multiple call-to-actions to provide viewers the opportunity to “act” from different areas of a promotion.  Certain audiences will click on the link that appears first (even before reading the content entirely).  Others will read through the entire offer and then click on the call-to-action.  Having a link at the top, bottom, and even possibly in the middle of the promotion generates multiple chances to convert a lead. For b2b landing pages, most businesses will outline the promotion and place a form alongside the offer.  This method can be successful as well.  Please note, however, the strategy behind form formulation (as illustrated in the fourth optimizing tip).
3. Experiment with registration forms.
   When creating landing pages, you must be cognizant of what you are asking of your audience.  If you are just trying to get someone to sign up for a newsletter, a contact name, company name, and email address is sufficient.  If your promotion is more granular and specific to a service provided by your company, ask a question (or two, tops) that is relevant to the offer to help qualify your lead.  DO NOT ask anything more than what is absolutely needed.  Lengthy forms become cumbersome and may discourage the viewer from completing the form.
4. Create and test several landing pages.
   Marketers test everything, right?  Why not run a test using two different landing pages for your next campaign? Experiment with different subject headers, form fields, and the length of your content.  Although I suggest you keep copy short, you may find that some viewers will not commit to filling out a form without additional information.  Running this test will shed some light on your target audiences’ behavior.
5. Don’t forget to say “Thank You”…and more!
   What happens after your audience fills out a form on your landing page?  Creating a “Thank You” page to appear should be step one.  Keep in mind that this is a great opportunity to up-sell or direct the viewer to another page of your website.  You have their attention and interest.  Make an effort to further their engagement.

Who said data kills?  This is the question I repeatedly ask after discovering the vast number of businesses that fail to drive decisions based on data.  In the online marketing world, data is arguably the most important resource for marketers.  Data not only helps formulate marketing strategies, but it also becomes a guide to determine how businesses should best utilize their resources. 

At MoreVisibility, Google Analytics is used to track client’s traffic, formulate marketing strategies, drive business decisions, and ultimately increase the bottom line.  Simple, right? No, merely using data to guide best practices is only half of the struggle.  Businesses must not only collect data, but monitor analytics consistently to gain a macroscopic understanding of what is truly happening on a day to day basis. 

In essence, data can and should be used to determine any anomalies occurring on your website.  Constantly examining analytics in this way allows you to dive into mishaps in real time, in the event that a link has been broken or is not tracking correctly through Google Analytics.  Often, businesses won’t realize until months later that data is not being tracked when the anomaly is identified.  The unfortunate part is that crucial information is being lost each time businesses fail to use preventative check and balance tools to minimize human error.

• Here are some simple ways to help you better utilize analytics data:
• Set weekly alerts on Google Analytics to monitor all campaigns and links
• Enter annotations when there are reasons for traffic spikes and/or dips
• Conduct frequent website audits to validate coding
• Use “include files” as part of a template whenever adding pages to a site
   

With the exponential growth of internet users, data collection and monitoring is paramount for business growth and development.  Be sure to use some of these helpful tips to maximize the benefits of data collection and analysis for your business. 

Have you ever stepped back and looked at your website from a user’s perspective? You only get one first impression, so make sure it’s a lasting one. Good design and functionality is critical in giving a great user experience and is essential in building trust and relationships with your visitors. It is best to think about the experience from your visitor’s perspective, since you really wouldn’t be much without them.

Your website is your face to prospective consumers, and as a result can heavily impact your bond with them. Every interaction a user has on your site directly impacts the relationship they have with you and how they will portray your site to others. Poor design, content errors and confusion can take away from your credibility. A well-designed site, with simple navigation, good content and clear calls to action will impact your business favorably.

Streamline the funnel you want visitors to venture down. Let users know what you want them to do in a clear and concise manner. Don’t confuse or overwhelm the reader with an abundant amount of content and calls to action. Don’t cause frustration or reasons for them to want to leave the site with error messages and pop-ups.

Be sure to enable an analytics tracking system, such as Google Analytics, so you can better assess your users and their experiences on your site. Most analytics platforms allow you to dive deeper into how your traffic has arrived, how much time they spent on a page, if they ventured further into other pages of your site, or if they exited at a certain page, and didn’t venture any further. Analytics can supply you with the ability to monitor trends and patterns with your user’s engagement. Stats can reveal what pages are causing more problems than others. Knowing how your visitors are interacting with your site and what your site’s pain points are, will help to assist you in achieving the best user experience possible. Enabling an analytics platform can help to determine who your target market is, what their likes and dislike are and achieve a higher grade of user engagement.

Always keep in mind that your users are the reason that you can continue to stay in business, so making them happy should remain your main mission. You should consider your users as the main focus behind your design and development efforts and decisions.