The biggest problem with Landing Page Optimisation (LPO) is probably that it does not fit into an organisational chart. It requires a truly diverse set of knowledge and perspectives in order to be effective.

Among other topics, you need to be familiar with web design, human psychology, interaction design, copy writing, statistics, team building, project management and all relevant scientific methods.

We define a landing page as any page a visitor lands on as a result of your traffic acquisition efforts. It is often the page that will get exactly 0.5 seconds to convince the visitor to stay or click away. Needless to say that landing pages are absolutely critical for online success.

Landing pages generally come in 3 main flavours:

• Main site Landing Pages

  These pages generally have the same lay-out, navigation and framework as all other pages on your site. A specific landing page may be on the home page or buried several layers deep within your site structure.

• Micro-site

  The landing page is part of a micro-site specifically created for a single audience or audience. A micro-site usually has one specific call-to-action and should funnel all traffic towards a single conversion action. A micro-site may contain a few pages with related information that allow the visitor to make an informed decision and request further information or buy something. They should have no distracting navigation which often means they sit outside the general organisational main site framework. Micro-sites can be branded as part of your main brand , or often can have their own stand-alone brand.

• Stand-Alone Landing Pages

  Some web pages are specifically designed for a particular campaign. Such pages usually contain specific information related only to the offer or action you set out for visitors to take. There should be a clear call-to-action and ideally two ways to achieve the conversion: either through direct conversion or through the use of rebound techniques (pop-up, leave e-mail, subscribe...). In that respect stand-alone landing pages are very similar in structure to direct marketing letters, and so they should be.

Landing page optimization is the art and science of tuning online pages to increase conversions. For example, if you currently convert 1 percent visitors to your online properties and you tune any of these properties so 1.5 percent of your visitors convert, you've increased the size of your business by 50 percent.

Organisations need to be concerned about landing page optimization because it can multiply the impact of your search marketing campaigns. For example, if you can increase the value per visitor to a site, you should be in a position to increase your bids in PPC (define) campaigns. That increases the business you do from these campaigns.

Once you embrace these realities, you should get really excited because now you're getting some idea as to how much opportunity there is to increase your results via constant testing and optimisation.

5 Questions You Should Be Asking Yourself

• Who is your audience?
• Where do they come from?
• Where on your web site or pages does the interaction occur?
• When do your visitors make their decision?
• What is it exactly your content is asking them to do?

It is very easy to get it wrong. After conducting hundreds of usability tests for a wide range of clients, Larry Marine, expert and founder of Intuitive Design & Research, reminds us of the difficult task we face as the viewpoint of a single person can never fully capture the perspective of others.

Here is the sobering reality:

• Everything you think you know about the user is probably wrong
• Your users aren't who you think they are
• They do things differently than you think
• They have different reasons for needing your products than you think

The good news however is that once users move online, a lot of these questions can be answered by using the right analytical methods. Grid14 can help you in making sense of the numbers and turning them into a strategic advantage for the entire organisation...

The behavior users display online often offers valuable insights in how you can expect them to behave off-line.

Some of the methods we use for Landing Page Optimisation consist of Multivariate Testing, Copy Writing, Behavioural Analytics and Interaction Design. It is often a clever combination of these methods that guarantees the most impressive conversion optimisation results.