Digital Marketing Blog

How Catalog Retailers Can Increase Landing Page Conversions

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For years, digital marketers have labored over mastering the science of landing page conversion.  Just as a farmer toils over his crop, experienced digital marketing agencies have learned that crafting a landing page capable of producing a bountiful harvest of online orders requires not only time but nurturing and attention by the shovel-full.  With access to more tools than ever to track and analyze a web visitor’s digital behavior, the science behind landing page conversion is rapidly evolving. 

Catalog retailers in particular cannot afford to ignore what marketers around the world are learning and effectively implementing within this field. 

Know and Own Your Upstream Traffic Sources

There are many methods for driving visitors to a landing page, from email marketing and PPC advertising, to social media and search engine optimization. However, understanding who your audience is and by what means they are finding your landing page is a key factor in increasing conversion rates.  Building unique landing pages for each of these sources is fundamental in delivering effective and resonant offers and communications, as well as gleaning actionable insights into what methods are converting visitors and which ones are not.  Furthermore, this segmented approach allows select pages and campaigns to be refined without shaking up what is already working.  How much easier would your marketing budget allocations be if each channel’s return on investment was justified and rooted in fact?

Having refined your targets and your upstream traffic sources the questions remains; are you converting or diverting YOUR web traffic?

Split Testing

Split Testing is imperative for understanding what elements of your landing page are delivering results and which ones your impeding its effectiveness.  While testing a landing page’s offer and headline is a fairly standard practice, the results derived from tweaking a few less obvious variables could surprise you.  Here are a few elements and concepts to consider including:

• Offer Location
• Text Color, Size and Length
• Adding Directional Cues (arrows, photos of people looking at your call to action)
• Lead Generation Form Length and Location
• Button Size, Color, Text and Location
• Product Pictures, Video and Audio
• Shopping Cart Location

For a great example of how little changes can make a big difference, take a look at these two images provided by WhichTestWon.com.

Aesthetically, “Version A” and “Version B” of the landing page don’t appear to be a whole lot different.  However, once tested, “Version B” proved to convert at a significantly higher rate, but why? 

Through rigorous testing it was shown that customers were more likely to order when not confronted with the shipping charge, however low that may be.   Additionally, the longer order form which included shipping details pushed the instructional video further down the page which led to fewer viewers.  

What are Big Catalog Leaders Doing?

Using the search term, “flannel shirts,” Google brought up paid advertisements from some well-known catalog retailers; Cabela’s,Patagoniaand J. Crew to name a few.  Upon clicking on each of their ads a few similar design elements were evident.  The most obvious was that each of these pages displayed a prominent running header with a compelling offer written plain text. “$20 off orders..,” “Free shipping…,” “30% off…” From a consumer’s perspective the bargains are the eye-catching focal point of the site and help in clearly communicating the ‘what” and the “why” of the page. 

While these ads led to websites not landing pages, there was little emphasis on the site’s navigation bar or any outside links.  Instead visitors are greeted with a clean and efficient design, a simple call to action and a manageable amount of relevant product suggestions.  No confusion, little friction.

Landing Page Conversion as a Science

Many of the experts in landing page conversion have made it into a science.  Companies like MarketingExperiments have broken it down into formulas whereby conversion equals a mix of motivation, clarity of value proposition, incentive to take action, friction and anxiety.

Many of the methods larger catalog retailers are implementing to receive higher conversion rates coincide with this conversion sequence.  According to this school of thought, the holy grail of maximizing a landing page’s effectiveness is in building a clean landing page that can clearly communicate trust and security, exude the simplicity of the transaction process and deliver a valuable and motivational call to action that is strong enough to compel a visitor to initiate this process.

Keeping these tried and true tactics in mind, you will be well on your way in transforming a once stale landing page strategy- filled with digital tire-kickers to a well-oiled and finely-tuned conversion machine.

Happy Converting!