55 cool new ways to use landing pages
Jessica Collier on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 09:00AM Are you pushing the boundaries of what you do with your landing pages? Or are you stuck in the ‘headline, sub headline, bullets, form rut’? Break out and try something wild and crazy — we’ll get you started with 55 ideas. In no particular order, there’s something for every level of landing page managers here from beginner to expert.
So dig in, and have fun!
1. Mobile landing pages.
When you’re launching a mobile campaign — from an in-app ad, to display, or anything in between — that’s a good time to make sure you are serving up a mobile-optimized page designed to work on common smart phones. Mobile traffic should get mobile pages.
Mobile-optimized landing pages created in LiveBall
2. Mobile detection & routing.
Sure, it’s easy to create a mobile page to use for traffic you know for certain will be mobile — like an in-app ad or something. But what about all that traffic from your regular campaigns that might be coming from mobile devices (especially your email campaigns!)? For key campaigns, set up logic to sense when traffic is coming to your landing page from a mobile device and automatically route the visitor over to a mobile-optimized version of the page.
3. Go global.
Build rapport and capitalize on international growth opportunities by publishing pages in your user’s native tongue.
DHL localizes pages for over 150 countries
4. Be social.
Most of your landing pages are probably designed to capture a lead or drive sales through your e-commerce engine. But what about times when you want to get more fans, followers and friends? Design content pages to entice visitors to engage with you socially, and track the social conversion as a success metric.
Overland Storage’s social contest landing page
5. Think dynamic.
Why serve up the same page content for everyone when you can serve up dynamic content that is relevant? Different headlines for different ads. Different images for different audience segments. Mobile-optimized page for mobile traffic. You can create one basic page and then extend it with dynamic content to ensure it is relevant for the audience that lands there. For pay-per-click landing pages, try dynamic content substitution for keywords where marketers populate the users search query in their landing page content. Cool stuff and often a nice conversion booster!
6. Segment.
Segmentation experiences are designed to engage and quickly move visitors into the conversion funnel. Interior pages reconfirm the offer and give audience-targeted content and messaging. Test segmentation by audience, offer, need or stage in buying cycle.
Our customers segment to engage visitors
7. Directional cues.
Try testing directional cues that visually guide the eye towards the form — these can be explicit, such as an arrow, or a slightly more subtle “implicit” directional cue, such as body positioning or direction of a person’s gaze.
8. Progressive profiling.
Use landing page forms to build lead profiles and qualification over time. Try asking a few multiple choice questions on the landing page each time a lead returns for nurture fulfillment – usually from email marketing. Over time, you’ll build up valuable profiles for your sales team to use for qualification.
9. QR code landing pages.
With QR codes we now have a way to give someone an easy, immediate call to action from anything people come into contact with (print ad, direct mail, window sticker, product insert, etc), and drive them into a relevant, mobile-optimized landing experience.
10. Multi-step lead forms.
Long form? Try dividing relevant questions into two steps or more. For example, for an insurance quote ask 1. zip code, 2. number of employees, 3. name, email & phone. With multi-step experiences, content can “pay off” the previous click and encourage visitors to continue moving through the conversion funnel.
11. Multi-step lead forms + progress bar. According to a survey from Pit Stop Media 52% of online retails use some sort of progress bar during their checkout process, and among those, 80% use some sort of sense of action or “moving forward” indicator through arrows or next page links. A/B Test your multi-step process ‘with’ and ‘without’ a progress bar to determine impact on conversion rate.
Anthem’s multi-step quoting experience with progress bar
12 & 13. Spiff up your business card or resume.
My business card links to the landing page above
Most business cards and resumes list a company’s home page URL. Why not engage with your connections in a more fun, polite, and exciting way? They took the time to visit your page, so send them to an experience that describes your company from a personal point of view. In a personalized experience, you can include your job description, white papers, favorite links, or a contact form.
14. Romance pages.
Often called “jump” or “splash” pages, these interstitial pages are intended to romance the visitor into moving further into the conversion funnel — these types of pages work especially well for subscription services.
15. “Gate” assets.
Have a library of valuable white papers and reports that are free for download by the general public? Consider creating an asset “gating” strategy designed to capture lead and increase online lead conversions from organic web traffic. Once registration is complete, don’t burden repeat visitors with having to register twice. Instead, allow those who have previously converted immediate access to assets. Not sure if gating is worth discouraging people to peruse your site? Test with and without gates to determine the cost/benefit.
16. Or dont!
Consider allowing promotional material (such as a brochure) to be downloaded without requiring personal information. Or, for high-value assets, test a “try before you buy” option, giving access to an abstract prior to displaying your lead form.
17. Have a kiosk?
Rather than have a standalone demo or cycled presentation running at your booth, try an interactive landing “experience” that captures leads for contests, giveaways, newsletter subscriptions and interactive demos.
18. Grassroots marketing.
Making a memorable, feel-good campaign means exciting the public and getting them involved. True story: while waiting in line at an event, a woman (working for Infinity) asked me to partake in a sweepstakes. Prizes were presented on the tablet she was carrying, along with a form for contest entry. I entered and immediately received a confirmation email.
19 & 20. Up-sell and cross-sell.
As you all know, the hardest sale — whether it be a free white paper or a high-ticket item — to a customer is the first one. With the first sale, you deliver on your promise and once you deliver on your promise, you establish a mutually-beneficial relationship. The customer gets what he or she wants and you get what you want. Also, once you’ve received a “yes” commitment from a customer, its easier to continue the positive pattern of continued “yeses.” Up-selling refers to when you offer an additional item or an “upgrade.” A shoe salesperson offering weather protectant for your new boots? Batteries, nail files, candy bars and gum in the checkout line? Classic up-sells! After securing a free site registration, try promoting your trial subscription on the thank you page. Or, cross-sell your email newsletter (Sign up for special offers!) while the visitor is shopping.
21 & 22. Quizzes and surveys.
Quizzes, assessments and surveys are an interesting offer that can be tested in any type of lead generation campaign. Value can be added to this offer by bundling a related white paper, report or on-demand webinar along with the quiz.
23. Online proposals.
If you sell a complex product or service, it would be especially advantageous to create individualized selling paths to send to prospects. Try creating a personalized selling experience that includes a proposal, specific content, or an important download, and then email that specific URL right away. What prospect wouldn’t be impressed with that?
24. Go virtual.
Go beyond traditional landing pages by presenting your message in more personal and innovative way — video spokespeople can help introduce your product or service, spice up your FAQ, or act as a tutor or guide.
25. Co-branding.
Co-branded landing experiences give your partners opportunities for increased market visibility. Create online case studies, press releases and co-authored white papers and articles using templates designed for plug & play co-branding.
26. DM landing pages.
In terms of bang for the buck, direct marketing can still be one of the most effective ways of reaching your potential customers. Rather than send offline traffic to a one size fits all website, bridge offline (mailers, flyers, radio/tv spots, etc.) to online with tightly message and design-matched landing experiences. Campaign or creative-specific pages allow you to easily deliver targeted messaging across different channels — and you can test and optimize based on results.
27. Onsite “ad” landing pages.
Create onsite pop-up or lightboxed “ads” offering relevant product promotions on home and top-level site pages. Offer creative should testable, trackable and managed in real-time!
“Layer” ad landing page on JWatch.org
28. Get local.
Use geo-location to detect what country, region, city or zip code a visitor is arriving from and use that to dynamically serve up localized content. A pleasure traveler searching from the great white north in the winter? Serve up images of palm trees and sand. Offer a regional service? Serve up targeted content about local branches.
29. Got chat?
If you offer customers live online support or “chat” on your website, try testing this feature on your landing pages as well. Use behavioral tracking to tag the “chat” action as a soft conversion or to measure the interest and effectiveness of the feature.
30. Conversion-focused microsites.
A website must be all things to all visitors. But a microsite can deliver a highly differentiated subset of information to a highly targeted audience. Test and optimize your microsite experiences for improved lead and transactional conversions.
31. Informational microsites.
Create multi-page, navigable user experiences to deliver rich, topic or campaign-specific content. Utilize SEO best practices to maximize your microsite’s reach. And, don’t forgot to include your contact form or lead generation offer, such as a relevant white paper or report.
The Centre’s conversion rates increased from 4% to as much as 19% by moving from single hand-coded page experiences to content-rich microsites in LiveBall.
32. Get personal.
Use subscriber information to populate landing pages from email traffic, or try substituting different forms based on conditions. For example, give returning, non-converting visitors a shorter form or pre-populating forms with known information.
33. & 34. Create and test tab landing pages in Facebook.
Did you know that testing in Facebook can be as easy and as straightforward as testing standing landing pages? Well, it can! Pulling in Facebook-sized pages via an iframe is becoming more popular as companies become increasingly “social” on the web. Maximize the impact of welcome, contest, informational and offer tabs by A/B and MVT testing within the apps.
35. A/B Testing. 
A/B Split testing in LiveBall
Have landing pages, but aren’t testing? Time to get started mining your diamonds! A/B testing requires less traffic, tests fewer variations and typically helps you find big winners and huge lifts.
Found your diamonds? Its time to polish them with multivariate testing (see #36).
36. MVT Testing.
Start polishing your diamonds with multivariate — testing variations of fixed elements to find the best “combination” of elements like headline, content and imagery.
Code-free MVT testing
37. A/B & MVT.
If you have a lot of online traffic driving to your landing pages you may want to consider running a MVT test within your A/B test. So, how does this work? Decide on an A/B that is very “apples to oranges”. For example, testing a single landing page against a multi-page experience like a microsite or a conversion path. Within each of these tests run a high impact MVT test (think headline or imagery) to find winning elements within a page. Let your landing page platform do the heavy lifting so you can focus on what’s being testing rather than how its being tested.
38. Wizard (or “assistant”).
Create multi-step, interactive user experiences designed to deliver a customized response or recommendation, based on provided answers. We’ve seen this work best with online quotes or booking offers.
39. Improve quality.
Landing pages create leads. Hot leads, cold leads, luke-warm leads….all kinds of leads. Use qualifying questions to grade and score lead value. Make sure burning hot leads are delivered.
40. Track call conversions.
There will always be people who prefer to pick up the phone and talk to you directly; usually they are “hotter” and more likely to purchase. Make sure you have call tracking in place on your landing pages so conversions are accurately attributed. Test the visibility and placement of the phone number to maximize inbounds.
41. e-Commerce “warming” landing page.
Many shopping cart experiences are sub-par and difficult to improve, however, warming pages can provide significant lift within e-commerce experiences. Pre-cart warming pages can help visitors see more value in the product and brand behind it. Try inserting a warming page between paid search ad and catalog/product pages to improve click-thorough and completed transactions.
American Greetings decreased CPA by 20% with warming pages
42. Website testing via iframe.
Website testing with LiveBall
Test entire web pages or sections of your pages within an iframe (a separate “inner” web page that can be pulled into your “outer” web page so the two appear to be one unified page) for ongoing optimization of your site content, forms, offers, etc. Real-time results gives you immediate visibility into what’s working and what’s not.
43. PURL landing pages.
Catch more conversions from your direct mail by using personalized urls (PURLs) and corresponding landing pages. Remember to pre-populate form and page content to increase relevancy and reduce workload for the visitor. Strong message-match and creative continuity is crucial.
44. Optimize for Google Instant Preview.
Review your landing pages for 5 key instant preview considerations: 1. relevancy to the searcher 2. brand visibility 3. important content above the fold 4. interesting design 5. scalability/perceived ease of use.
45. Social white papers.
You may or may not be familiar with the socialization of white papers, reports and best practice guides, but here at ion we have experimented with adding social and interactive features to documents that are typically pretty static. Social white papers allow you to measure reader engagement and connect with the reader beyond the initial conversation. In addition to being super cool, when linked to social landing pages allow for networking opportunities with other readers and the white paper author via a comments widget or “tweet this” functionality.
Social white paper and landing pages in LiveBall
46. Add (7) interactive WOW features (see 47-52)
Add rich, layered and interactive motion content to your pages to help you add the wow factor your competitors are lacking. Rather than spending exorbitant amounts of money on custom Flash or javascript, utilize a landing page platform that empowers you to make beautiful, sophisticated pages with lots of “wow” — no code or development resources needed.
47. Tabbed Content.
Try using tabbed content or an image rotator for showcasing product and service features.
48. Accordions.
Maximize space and and offer an interactive way to display and control large amounts of content (these are especially useful within mobile experiences).
49. Content rotators.
Feature testimonials and reviews using interactive rotator functionality.
50. Layered content.
Try layering content over images, without outsourcing to a designer.
51. Lightboxes.
Or, trigger forms, special offers, or additional information to be displayed in lightboxes.
52. Social widgets.
Last, but not least, add social widgets allowing visitors to ‘Like’ your page on Facebook, share on Google+ or tweet from their handle.
53. Get feedback.
Use landing pages to gather customer feedback on your product or service. Feedback collected can be used to identify strengths and improve upon weaknesses. Ask permission to use feedback to create testimonials, case studies and social proof.
54. Capitalize on access-restricted pages.
Rather than deny a visitor access to premium content, use landing pages to increase sign-ups for member-only content. If premium content is a paid offering, consider testing pricing and offer testing on these “access” landing pages.
55. Reinvent the template.
Find ways to makeover your standard templates and find new and engaging templatized experiences for your whole team to leverage.
The evolution of the template
Whew! So there you have it, 55 ideas to help reenergize your landing page testing and optimization. As we move into the 3rd week of the new year, we encourage you to stay creative, committed and inspired. Cheers to 2012!
