Susan Delz will be speaking about “Conversion Optimization” at SearchFest 2012, which will be held February 24, 2012 at The Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living?
I’ve been working with clients in the online and traditional marketing space for over 12 years, and I’ve specialized in conversion optimization for search, display and email marketing for the past five years. My current focus is helping organizations develop measurable, high-ROI online marketing programs. As the Director of Account Development at ion interactive , I’m responsible for client development & retention programs for companies like Intuit, General Mills, Dell and more.
2) What are some of the common landing page mistakes people make and what are some easy fixes for them?
There are a few really big mistakes we see over and over when talking to companies about their landing page programs. One of the biggest ones we see is marketers not thinking of their landing pages as extensions of the search query, ad or creative that drove the respondents click. By not tying these together to be tightly matched, from the message to the offer, there is a big disconnect for the user that results in high bounce rates and low conversions. Keeping your landing pages relevant and message matched seems pretty simple and obvious, but it is often overlooked because of time, budget or lack of resources. Taking the time to focus on delivering relevant, message-matched landing pages can be sure fix to a big conversion problem. Another big, and easy to fix mistake, is not looking at your pages from your users perspective. How easy is it for your user to convert? To find the information they need to convert? Is your page providing information overload? Viewing your landing pages through the respondents lens leads to great usability and higher conversions.
3) What tips can you offer someone who wants to adapt / create their landing page for the mobile environment?
My personal motto for 2012 is extending relevance beyond the message, offer and audience to the device. While all important to a solid CRO program, your ability to be device specific in 2012, and how elegantly you deploy your mobile pages, will start to correlate directly with your conversion rates. Being device specific doesn’t just mean publishing a mobile version of your website. It means creating message specific mobile pages, removing barriers to conversion like captchas or "extra" form fields that serve your purposes, but not your users. It means creating tight, multi-step experiences that spoon-feed your value proposition to your audience, are easy to navigate and easy to convert. It means keeping things simple, a less is more mentality when it comes to your content. It also means leveraging tools and platforms that make will make it easier for you as a marketer to create traditional and mobile landing pages , identify your mobile users, and seamlessly deliver them to your high-converting mobile pages.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.