Yesterday I was at the TCD in Utrecht. This is an event of three days about al aspects of marketing (offline/online).

At the Marketing Success Squarre I visited a keynote of Rob Steenbrink about landingpages. Rob told an interesting story about what the benifits are of landingpages and how to organize a test environment.

A landingpage is a special page on your website, arranged for a specific target group and targeted information. The landingpage can only be found via one way (bannerclick, advertorial link and so on) which makes your landingpage measureable. The main target is to create a higher conversion on that specific target group. And a landingpage is a proces of changing and trying and testing, not an end product.

Another important thing is that your landingpage does not nessicarily need to be in the look-and-feel of the rest of your site. There is not a lot of information on the site and this information is short and action oriented. Another character of a landingpage is that you can test its functionality with the AIDA formula (attraction, interest, desire, action).

As the internet is about speed, the page needs to be simple and the action must be easy to do. A landingpage should be designed in the current standard resolution (at this moment 1024×768px). Scrolling on a landingpage is an absolute NO-DO!!

I mentioned it before: a landingpage is a proces. It is a proces of testing. What photo works the best, what font, what fontsize, what header, colours, etc etc. By monitoring the score in different settings you can improve your conversion in a spectacular way (tens of procents).

Don’ts
- to much text. the visitor won’t read it
- not scanable. use a large font 10pnts is the absolute minimum (also depends on your target group)
- to much steps (your targetgroup will quit!)
- difficult forms with too many questions

Do’s
- photo’s with an important message right below (people scan photo’s first and a short message below will be read)
- photo’s with real people or fragments (eyes!, hands, feet, mouth)
- try to gain trust by quote a trustable party and use their logo!! it is stupid, but it works!
- test test test

What to test and how to start?
1. your proposition. test different propositions and see which one works best. use the proposition that works best, to design your landingpage
2. landingpage, test different approaches of the ‘do’s’ I mentioned above.
3. make reliable testreports. Use enough data to create a result (500 testers per test)
4. take into account that a typical procedure takes a few months
5. use the best setup for a while and keep monitoring

If I can find the time somewhere this week, I will blog the keynote by Wim van der Mark (trainee at dialoogtrainers.nl), too!

On one of the best video-presentation sites TED.com you can read:

“In clear, nontechnical language, string theorist Brian Greene explains how our understanding of the universe has evolved from Einstein’s notions of gravity and space-time to superstring theory, where minuscule strands of energy vibrating in 11 dimensions create every particle and force in the universe. (This mind-bending theory may soon be put to the test at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.) (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, California. Duration: 19:06.)”

If you like the ‘What the Bleep’ serie and all publications around this science? This video is a definite Do! 

to watch this video, please follow this link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/251