Optimizing your landing page

There is no need for me to prove to you that an optimization in your website's landing page will improve your Return on Investment (ROI) and your Rate of Return (ROR). As a matter of fact it is probably one of the hardest, most over-looked, and most important parts of SEO for a website. It is merely the showcase of your business, it is a fact that most of the visitors will simply decide whether to stay or not by simply looking at your home page.
Then, what should I be doing to prevent this? I've thought of this same question, and I've came up with the following statements, check right now how well you are doing the job:
(They are not in any particular order)
- Your homepage is persuasive and it makes the visitors feel confortable:
A common mistake is writing on the go the content you display and forgetting to check for errors, the text you write on your homepage is probably the most important one, and errors on it will make you lose all your credibility. Other usual errors are the lack of images, low resolution images, unconnected images... The visual aspect is even more important, since it determines the visitor's first impression. - You provide easy navigation that focuses on the most important links
You must always show the visitor clearly what the next step should be. Brighter colors, out stand from the other links, do it however you want, but make sure that there is a path from the homepage to the result you want to achieve, whether it is to contact you, view your showcase, buy your product... - Your content resolves any possible doubt the visitor might have
People won't know what your incredible product is, so for example an "About" page is a must-have. If you are unsure on how to organize the doubt-resolving content consider building a FAQ, which provides easy access to all possible problems a visitor will encounter - Your copy has been optimized to capture visitors
The content you write is the most important part once a visitor has gone past the homepage, he has already decided that your site "looks" worth watching, now you must prove it with content. Test whenever possible what is best for your niche, long text? short text? - Your idea is clear after no more than 4 seconds of looking at your homepage
If that was not true then you have to redo it. Your main point, idea, product, basically what you are offering must be completely clear for the visitor after no more than 4 seconds. Too much information without something in common and the visitor will probably be out, visitors want to know what they will find before having to actually search for it. - You think your homepage is great
This is the most important one, Do you think your homepage is great? If you don't then don't waste your time reading this lists, delete it and start from scratch, do something you consider good, then you can bother with the tiny details.
Hope you could agree with all the statements!
This entry was posted by alex on June 12, 2008 at 4:35 pm, and is filed under SEO, Web-related. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
and don’t forget to track your visitors behavior see http://www.pagealizer.com/ Pagealizer shows how long people stay on your page, actual bounce rate, how far visitors scrolled down the page and where they clicked. Based on our algorithm you then get suggestions on how to improve your page performance. Check us out
I will give you guys a go, although I would be impressed if you could actually offer things that Google Analytics doesn’t…
Cheers for trying
Google analytics (GA) is a great service and we used it ourselves in the past. Pagealizer was not created to replace Google Analytics but to compliment it.
Pagealizer compliments Google Analytics in these areas:
- GA shows you charts and statistics but does not help you interpret it. Pagealizer runs algorithms on your tracked data and points you to weak parts of your pages regarding conversion and user behavior.
- GA gives overall site view while Pagealizer has page specific view which is more suitable for landing pages.
- Pagealizer records mouse clicks. GA can show popular links that point to other pages in your site. GA doesn’t show you popular links that link to pages outside your site. Pagealizer does.
- Pagealizer tracks how long people visit your page. GA guesses how long people visit your page based on how long it took since they visit a page till they visited another page in your site. Pagealizer tracks actual time people visit your page regardless to if they visited another page in your site, returned to where they came or closed their browser. This metric is very important for landing/sales pages and help you understand if people read your page. Knowing how long people visit your page help you get insight on your page if for example you have long copy and most people visit your page for 10 seconds you might need to add more call to action links on the top of your page.
- Pagealizer tracks how far visitors scroll down your page. If you have long pages and most people don’t scroll you might need to think how you should revise your page to catch visitors attention.
- All statistics can be downloaded to a spreadsheet if you want to do further analysis.
These are the main advantages of using Pagealizer. We hope you would give us a try and we would be very happy to hear your comments
The web is a multi-lingual environment.
By translating your landing page and conversion tunnel, you are making your company product and services accessible to customers around the globe.
FACTS ABOUT INTERNET:
1. Over 65% of Internet users speak a native language other than English
2. People are three times more likely to buy a product available to them in their native language
3. Google provides Multilingual Platforms and crawls Web Pages in more than 30 Languages
4. Online foreign language markets are growing at a faster pace than the English speaking ones.
5. More than 20% of Americans Browse and Search in the Internet using Non-English Languages