Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Landing Page Optimization Tips




In marketing terms, it's a specialized page that visitors are directed to once they've clicked on a link, usually from an outside source such as a Pay Per Click ad. The page is usually tightly focused on a particular product or service with the aim of getting the visitor to buy or take some form of action rapidly that will ultimately lead to a sale.

A different view on landing pages

Many site owners believe that the way the visit to sale process works is this:

Client arrives on their home page

Client selects an option from a menu or an offer on the page

Client arrives on the page with the offer/product

Client purchases.

The basics of developing landing pages

There a few questions to ask yourself when creating a landing page:

What are you offering?
Who do you wish to appeal to?
Why would they be interested in your offer?
What do they need to do to participate/purchase?

Before Creating a Landing Page you should KNOW…

Business Objectives

The business objective of the campaign and in particular the page. What problem are you trying to solve?

Know Your Audience

Understand the goals and motivations of the users who will be arriving at your landing page. What are the main questions that a potential visitor will have? Knowing this will allow you to design an experience that answers these questions in priority sequence on the page.

Visitor Action

The desired action of the visitor (primary CTA). Sounds simple, but if you don’t have a very specific idea in mind, your page can lose focus.

Entry Points

Take note of all campaign entry points (email, organic, PPC, social media) and any existing collateral materials to ensure you maintain a consistent brand experience and design. If your landing page doesnʼt match the aesthetic of the banner ad then people will often rightfully assume they are in the wrong place and leave.

Technical limitations of your target audience

Are they iPhone users? Are they business people with laptops that still view everything on 1024×780? Or are they designers with big 24” iMacs?

Creative brief

Ideally there will be a well defined concept that ties business and user goals together into a simple and implementable idea. This will help you to design something that doesnʼt stray from the core goals of the campaign. If you are a small business or entrepreneur then this might seem like a bit of a luxury (or an extreme waste of time). If you’ve never used a brief before, try searching for some examples or templates – it can be really useful to go through the process of creating a simple half page brief just to get the idea down on paper before you commit it to digital realm.

Tips For Landing Pge Optimization


Clean & clear headline: Crisp is how the landing page headlines should be. Language used should be exact. This way you keep your visitor oriented and engaged.

Straight forward Call to Action: Tell the visitors what they need to do. Use buttons or well-linked text or you can use both. We can use a minimum of 2 call to action in a short landing page while 3-5 in a long LP (usually long LP is not preferred, but if there’s no way out because of the number of products, need to use them).

Emphasize benefits: Why will someone care about your company/product/service until it benefits him/her. The benefits are to be brought out in the content. This will help the visitor to quickly act accordingly.

Persuasive message: The message conveyed has to be persuasive. The features, products/services & the benefits can always be put forward in an urge manner which helps the visitor to make a decision.

Tight copy: Too much of content is always boring for someone who needs info quickly. Lack of clutter, clear & specific detailed content will help any visitor clicking the ad. Readers will read long landing page copy as long as you keep building a strong, motivating case for him/her to act. However, remember 2 things which are critical with respect to landing page copy.

Mention offers clearly: Keep your body copy in line with the offer. There has to be a logical progression from your headline to the landing page offers.

Highlight key info in bulleted points: Most of the viewers usually browse through & not read the content. Information is needed quickly. Make sure that they get everything required without having them to slow down.

Contact, Certificates & Testimonials check: Ensure that the contact details are mentioned appropriately in the landing page, so that the visitors can reach you easily (either on Phone/ Email). Certificates and testimonials builds trust in the minds of the visitors about your company & services.

The form has to be visible on the upper fold: Ask not for too much but the necessary info to complete the desired action (sale/lead). Be judicious & confidential in the given information. To be placed in the upper fold so that the visitor can access it easily.

Simple clean images: Images are always the eye-catchers. The landing page images used have to be a supportive medium for the content in the landing page. If the offering is a service, then you can show an image which explains the offering.

Social Media Branding tips for an E commerce website



  • Your website is about your business,
  • Facebook promotes your brand,
  • LinkedIn is about you,
  • Twitter targets your niche /specialty,
  • Your blog is your message
  • YouTube is your voice.


If you aren’t discovering which in social networking channels your customers spend time and include them in your ecommerce marketing mix, you’re probably missing out on building relationships, community and increasing new customer acquisition through online word of mouth.

1. Go Where Your Customers Are

Very few things in life promise endless options – digital and social media marketing being one exception. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to YouTube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking channels available for your business to leverage. Key to successful social media marketing for ecommerce is choosing the right channels to reach customers.

Find out where your customers are congregating by:

Asking them: Sounds overly simplistic, but sending a formal survey to customers or more informally polling them on your website can provide a wealth of knowledge.



Monitoring social sites: Use a free tool like Social Mention or Tracker. For something far more robust use tools like Radian6 to discover how and where customers are talking about your brand, your competitors or target keywords.

Leveraging the stats: Some sites like Facebook are transparent when it comes to user statistics. Or leverage research conducted by third-party firms like eMarketer.

Review back links, news announcements and keyword rankings of competitors on a regular basis to get a glimpse into their online marketing health.

2. Monitor What Your Competitors Are Doing

Whether your ecommerce business is new to social media marketing, or just need to take your efforts up a notch, competitive intelligence can be very useful. Spend some time by conducting a competitive audit of your top five competitors on the social web. Include:

The social sites in which they are active
The type of content they publish on the social web
The number of followers/fans/views they have on each site
How they promote specific products, programs or events via social media.

3. Promote Exclusive Offers through Social Media

In order for your ecommerce business to gain a following on whatever social channel you choose, entice customers with something they can’t get anywhere else.

For example, promote a contest via social media.

Alternately, offer an exclusive item to social media followers or fans, such as free shipping or a weekly coupon. You can also offer “breaking news” that does not appear anywhere else, like pre-product release announcements or an inside look at your company’s inter-workings.

4. Don’t Just Push Products and Promotions

The primary goal of your ecommerce site may be to sell products, but your social media marketing strategy should encompass a wider range of tactics that simply promoting offerings. With too much product pushing and not enough engagement, you’re unlikely to experience optimal success.

Incorporate some of these ideas into your ecommerce social media marketing strategy:

Share messages or news stories from external sources
Create a blog on your website and feed blog content to your social accounts
Ask questions, participate in discussions or poll your customers via social media
Post pictures from company events or videos from your CEO’s speaking engagements.

5. Sell Products through Social Networks

Many ecommerce sites leverage social channels to make it even simpler for customers to purchase their products. Ecommerce sites large and small can still indirectly sell products through their social profiles. For example, highlight new products or best-sellers and provide a link to the order page on your website. It may not be quite as simple as purchasing directly from the social profile, but it can be just as effective.

6. Find unique places for sharing buttons

Instead of using a generic sharing widget in the same place across all your sites, try putting sharing features in prominent placements in different places in your site’s design.

For example, after a customer creates a review of a product, give them an easy way to share the review with Facebook friends or Twitter followers. They’ve already shown they’re in sharing mood by filling out a review, why not capitalize on the good vibes? You could create a simple link that sends the url of the page to their Twitter account to send, or use a Facebook share button.

Here are some other unique places on your site that you might put sharing links or widgets:

The thank you page, after making the order.
sale confirmation email
mailing list email templates

7. Add product videos

Videos are great sales tools. People like seeing a product in action, so video is an excellent way to improve sales

But aside from the improved sales, adding product videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites adds another social factor. People like sharing videos, and they’re more likely to embed the videos other sites. Videos are a great way to add a viral factor to your product pages.

8. Engage customers

It’s one thing to just create a Facebook page or Twitter account, but it’s another thing to actually engage with followers. Social media takes work, you have to daily interact with followers to be successful. Easy to say, much harder to do.

Figure out who’s talking about your brand (or your competitors) and open a dialog.

Social media is a great tool to help promote products away from your ecommerce site. You can get people to your site with social media, and once they’re on your site you make the sale.

9. Add exclusivity

Make a strong call to action for your visitors as to why they should follow your brand on Twitter, Facebook, or any other network. Include special offers, coupons, tips, and other things that customers wouldn’t get unless they were following you on social media sites.

10. Don’t stay in “sell mode”

Companies often only post things related to selling on their social media profiles. But that doesn’t provide much benefit to your followers, does it? People want more from social media than just a constant stream of sales pitches.

Use your social media profiles to tell customer stories, stats, news, and other things related to your business.

what if you shared one of your competitor’s deals? You’d show that your brand is interested in helping your followers, not just making money from them. It would be insanely useful to your fans, and it would add trust and loyalty to your brand.

11. Integrate your customer service strategy with your social media strategy

People are already talking about your brand on social networks, and odds are a few of them are venting frustration about something. Instead of waiting for them to call or email you, diffuse the situation by reaching out to them.

There are plenty of success stories of major brands reaching out to unhappy customers and diffusing situations quickly with social media.

12. Track what people click on social media sites

Url shorteners like bit.ly give excellent click analytics. When you share links on social networks, you can track and see how many people are actually clicking the link.

Knowing what gets people to actually click a link means that you can tailor your messages to get the most impact from your social media efforts. For example, you might find that your followers click a lot more on links to coupons versus links to product updates.

You could even drill down how effective types of links are across different social media sites. You might find that your Facebook followers like to click on coupons, and your Twitter followers like breaking news.

The more you know about your followers and what they like, the more useful you can be to them.

13. Give back

Giving back creates trust, which is crucial for your brand. Think of ways that you can be useful to your followers. Share news and tips that they’ll find helpful. Ask their opinions. Give them coupons. Interact with them.

The important thing is that you’re openly trying to be helpful to them. The more useful you are to your following, the more loyal they’ll be to your brand.

Importance Of Social Media Marketing




Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels. Marketing is essential to any business and is generally referred to as the most important aspect of any business strategy.

Any business becomes profitable only if the end product promised by the company or the entrepreneur is really as good as advertised and produces customer satisfaction. There is no sure-shot formula for success using marketing since it only gives more visibility to the business and the end sales depend only on the efficiency of the product. However, social media marketing is an important tool that, when properly used is a highly beneficial and promising enterprise.

Social media marketing includes a lot of things such as blogs, video sharing, community and many more. If you give a look at internet then you will get millions of Social media marketing but you have to choose the top ranked sites in which more visitors are coming. Linkedin, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are the most famous focal point for marketing. Sponsoring your company using these social media sites is a very smart business proposal since they provide a huge amount of constant traffic everyday. In recent days, social networking is really successful and the marketing through these sites are very essential to a trade because millions of people are accessing these sites regularly.

 The most important benefit of Social Media Marketing is the fact that – especially considering the number of users of networks such as Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter – the possibilities for exposure and growth are limitless. Moreover, one cannot ignore the speed and ease with which news is able to spread among users of social networking sites and beyond.

When considering how to first approach a Social Media Marketing strategy, it is of the utmost importance to understand your audience and the kinds of products/services that they are interested in. For instance, if your customers are the type to readily participate in online social networks, it may be beneficial to add a blog to your company website. In addition, you may request that interested employees add information/blog articles to your company site to generate interest – never forgetting to add the company logo and other features which will identify your brand into these entries.

Another way to use the popularity of social networking to the advantage of your corporation is to perhaps join one or more of the most popular social networking sites and begin discussions, groups, etc. around your relevant products and services.

Major Importance OF Social Media Marketing
  • 1) Branding
  • 2) Lead Generation
  • 3) Engage with its customers
  • 4) Generate Relevant Traffic
  • 5) Improve ROI
  • 6) Getting Customer Feedbacks
  • 7) Announcing New products or services
  • 8) Know more About Customer Preferences
  • 9) Influence on Search Engine Rankings
  • 10)Enhance Customer Relationship Management