Optimization is an unavoidable evil for an online marketer.

This Article is written to stress the necessity of having well-optimized landing pages. Before I move on, let me explain to you briefly what a landing page is and how it plays a vital role in enhancing the success of any online campaign.

A landing page is a web page created to arouse or stimulate the visitor to perform the desirable action which leads to achievement of the objective and goals of that particular page. It is also a page where visitors are welcomed first from search engines or referrals.; Because of that it must be well-structured, highly presentable and clear in meaning to the audience before they skip or close it.

Following is a formula (discovered by Marketing Experiments Team, Omniture.com) that an online marketer uses for knowing the conversion probability of a particular web page:

C= 4 M + 3 V + 2 (I-F) – 2 A

Where:

C = Conversion Probability -> the chance that a particular page will prompt a visitor to reach the page’s final objective.

M = Motivation -> It is the desire that brought the visitor to your page.

V= Value Offering -> Literally, the value you ‘are offering.

I = Incentive -> The incentive that visitor will get from your main product or service.

F = Friction ->The resistance or obstacles to conversion.

A = Anxiety-> the visitor’s concerns about security, shipment, information theft, etc.

The above formula is not a mathematical formula, but a relational formula which predicts the weight of each factor for final conversion. It is obvious from the above formula that Motivation plays a huge role in conversion due to its highest weight (4), followed by Value offering. Incentive and Friction are two factors that must be balanced accurately so visitors don’t feel offended  or overly incentivized to the point that the perceived product value  is reduced.

For instance, some people believe reducing the price of an object would result in a large volume of sales. However,  in many cases, reducing the price results in the decrease of perceived value of the product. Consider the case of Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft initially launched MS-SQL Server (a database management system) with a very low price and anticipated huge sales. That approach did not have the anticipated results. When they raised their price to the competitor’s price, they found that sales increased. (Source: Overture.com)The positive sign (+) in the above formula indicates that the positive change in the variable on the right will result in a corresponding positive change in Conversion equal to the weight of the former variable.

Keeping this in mind, let us now understand what actually motivation, value offering, Incentives, friction and anxiety mean in web-context.

What is Motivation?

Let us first understand what motivation is and what the aspects of motivation are. Motivation is the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; it is the reason for the action. Therefore if we bring this understanding of the term into web-context, we can easily find the cause and effect of this term. Let us understand motivation through an example. Let’s say a person who is an avid reader of novels has been looking for good novels at bookstores, (offline) but he hasn’t been able to find novels he likes. He turns to the Internet in his search because he knows he will get a great number of choices.  He came to Google (the world’s No.1 search engine) to perform that search. He typed “Fiction Novel” in the Google search bar and found the following results:

Now Google shows the above result page at the time when I was searching for this particular term (fiction novels). The section on the left of results from the search engine page is known as the organic section, whereas the section to the right of the page is the sponsored section. The sponsored section is where results from the advertisers are shown according to keywords and other various factors.

I have highlighted something through circular and rectangular shapes in the above figure. Can you guess what these are? Will seeing this information  actually force you to click on it? If the answer is yes, then it is nothing but your motivation turning into action. Recall my previous definition of motivation: “Motivation is the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action”. This is actually what motivation is! Now turn your focus from student to businessman. The top three results have surely captured the attention of their target audience by doing audience analysis around their industry domain and then trying their best to position their website according this particular need. You can take the following example to further understand the importance of relevance in offering. Consider you’re a vegetable seller and on your shop you’re writing “Welcome to shop where you will be happy” or even worse “We sell mangoes, bananas, grapes” etc.

Now, what do you expect if you have written the first line on your shop? Tremendous sale? And what do you expect if you have written the second line considering that you only sell vegetables? Sorry to tell you, none will result in a sale. The former one is  an ambiguous message, while the latter is irrelevant and would even shatter the trust and confidence of your potential customers. Therefore, you need to first understand what you are selling and find how people are searching for that product and then shape offering according to their lingo.

Not only do we need to understand the motivation, but also the need to understand how intense that desire is. That can be revealed from various sources by knowing the number of searches in a month for a particular keyword or phrase. After knowing the desire and its intensity, we have to tailor our offering according to it. The second variable, value offering, is something that we need to understand next.

What is Value-Offering?

Value offering is a term that connotes the benefit that a buyer can derive from your product. There are numerous websites that fail to recognize this very important factor and ultimately fail to convert their potential customer into profitable and returning customers. Value offering should be very direct, clear, concise, relevant, actionable, and stimulating in its content and nature. Going back to our previous example of vegetable seller, consider that there are employees who sell the vegetables in your shop. I come to your shop and ask an employee the price of a carrot and he begins to explain the carrot’s history and how it’s grown. Would that encourage me to purchase a carrot from your shop?  No, because your employee has failed to show me the value of the product. The same applies to a website. Proper attention must be given to a website’s copy to  ensure that it is direct, clear in meaning, concise, relevant to your offering, and has a sales pitch that leads to a positive action from a visitor.

What are Incentives and Friction(s)?

Now let us understand the third and fourth variable of our equation – incentive and friction.

Incentive can be thought of in the following two ways:

Dictionary - something that incites or tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity.

Marketing – an appealing element you introduce to stimulate a desired action (discount, bonus).

In short, an incentive is the “extra” you provide visitors to encourage them to continue viewing your site or to enter the sales process.

Friction has the following two meanings, both related to resistance:

Physics – a force that resists the relative motion or tendency to such motion of two bodies in contact.

Marketing – a psychological resistance to a given element in the sales process.

It is vital to make a customer’s exploration of your site or purchasing decision clear and easy. Removing distractions or difficulties helps to increase conversions.

Friction on the landing page can be classified into two factors: length and difficulty of heading toward the actual content.

Length Example: A form with 23 fields to complete.

To get more people to complete the process, only ask for the data you need. Think quality over quantity.

Difficulty Example: A landing page with three columns of information and no clear way to proceed.

Taken from Omniture Free Whitepaper on Landing Page

The objective is to tip the balance of emotional forces from negative (exerted by friction) to positive. For instance, if you reduce friction in your lead generation or sales process, it will lighten the left side—the scale tips down on the right toward increased buying.

On the other hand, more friction means a heavier left side—the scale tips toward abandonment. You must offset that friction by adding incentives.

Work on reducing friction as much as you can; then, incorporate incentives, so the scale tips in a favorable direction as qualified new customers flow into your buying channel.

Here are three ways to optimize incentives:

»»Look for high-perceived-value products that complement the primary product or service. For instance:

»»Ink cartridges for printers (a few dollars invested but a retail value of $20-   $30)

»»Cans of compressed air for electronics

»»Anything of value to your customers that you can get at a discounted price or rate

»»Position them on the page where they are both in the primary eye path (e.g., sub-headlines) and in close proximity to the call to action (e.g., order forms, carts) right before they click

»»Test, test, test to find the right incentive (i.e., $5, $1 or free shipping); the impact on conversion will be worth it

A $25 gift card is good, but giving away a $5 item with a perceived value of $20 is better because your return on investment (ROI) on that incentive is higher. In addition, your customers may perceive discounts as a benefit, or they may associate a discount with your service having a lower perceived value.

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a psychological concern stimulated by a given element in the sales process. Visitors get to your page, examine your offer and begin to second-guess what it is.

The following are some common sources of customer anxiety:

»» Quality of service – Will they deliver on their promise?

»» Reliability of the product – Is there a warranty if it breaks?

»» Security – Is it safe to use my credit card on this site?

»» Price – competitiveness and cost/benefit – Could I get it for less elsewhere? Is it worth it?

The more information requested and the more personal that information is, the greater the anxiety. For example, asking for Social Security numbers or credit card information can generate high anxiety that needs to be combated with guarantees, security notices and instructional content.

Here are 15 ways to help overcome anxiety:

External factors (what others say about you)

»»Security seals (VeriSign)

»»Credibility indicators (BBB, Trust-e, HACKERSAFE)

»»Testimonials (categorized, sequenced and specific to cause of anxiety)

»»Third-party ratings (PriceGrabber, Yahoo! Store)

Internal factors (what you say about yourself)

»»Copy

»»Language (Spanish vs. English)

»»Tone (match tone to buying decision)

»»Personalization

»»Signatures

»»Images

»»Colors and themes (matching look and feel of site to niche)

»»Privacy policy

»»Satisfaction guarantees

»»About Us page

»»Contact phone number (reassure that the company is legitimate, talk to an actual person)

These factors impact how comfortable your customers feel on your site and in your sales process.

This Conversion Sequence can be applied to more than just landing pages. The formula can also be used for banner ads, applications and other elements to increase conversion. Apply the sequence when you are using online tools such as Google Analytics or Google Website Optimizer for even more dramatic results.

I hope the above guide was easy for you to understand and grasp the meaning of the “Landing page” and other concepts.

The formula above was discovered and invented by Marketing Experiment Team, Omniture.com and much of the help was taken from Omniture to understand particularly.

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