MarketingSherpa recently published a case study about a software company, Business Objects, that wanted to split-test its landing pages in an effort to increase conversion rates. Only problem was… it couldn’t test everything. A number of corporate and branding guidelines meant that a lot of the page and its components were off-limits.

I can relate to this because just a couple of months ago I started working with a large corporate to do the very same thing. While the company had been spending many thousands of dollars per month on both pay-per-click (PPC) and display advertising ($20,000 to $60,000 on PPC alone) it had never consistently directed such paid traffic to dedicated landing pages (it used regular internal website pages instead). And it had certainly never split-test landing pages.

Consequently, I was part of an effort to make dedicated landing pages the norm and to start split-testing alternative pages. As with Business Objects, a number of elements just couldn’t be changed for the purposes of testing. But, fortunately for us, the existing pages to which our search engine marketing (SEM) traffic was directed were so poor that it wouldn’t take much to make substantial improvements!

In fact, the first new landing page we implemented resulted in a 70 percent increase in conversions. Yes, 70 PERCENT. We used a slick, but simple new layout, ripped out all the competing “call to action” and other navigation links, and made the desired call to action much more prominent. And, trust me, we are only at the start of making radical improvements to the company’s paid search results.

Meanwhile, the Business Objects case study is instructive for clarifying three key elements that should be varied and tested where, for whatever reason - whether it’s corporate constraints or your own time constraints - you just can’t test everything:

1. Value proposition or offer.
2. Clarity of the presentation i.e. the layout and content of the headline, body copy, call to action, etc.
3. Distractions on the page e.g. navigation links, competing links, etc.

In Business Objects’ case, one of its test pages included using a much stronger call to action, which the company believes significantly contributed to its 32.5 percent increase in conversions. Moreover, by split-testing and identifying and implementing a superior approach (i.e. the more highly converting landing page) the company was also able to dramatically increase its return on investment (ROI) - by 154 percent.

This brings me to another key point about testing and improving landing pages - it reduces your cost per customer acquisition. In other words, you don’t have to pay as much on SEM to acquire a customer.

All in all, it’s certainly worth using dedicated landing pages (not just one of your usual internal website pages) and testing alternative landing pages to increase conversions, reduce your customer acquisition cost and increase your ROI. If, however, you’re limited as to what you can test, consider just focusing on the offer, the presentation of the offer, and getting rid of distractions (such as unnecessary links) on the landing page.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “Landing Page Site Redesign Passes Test: Conversions Lift 32.5%; ROI at 154%”, MarketingSherpa, September 10, 2008