Landing Page Optimisation and its true place in web strategy

Like the landing lights at an airport; Landing Page Optimisation is there to ensure that your visitors know exactly what they need to do on your site and then actually do it. But where does Landing Page Optimisation/Website Optimisation fit into your online strategy?

Web strategies are only as good as the page that your visitor lands on. Quite simply put, this means that website optimisation needs to form part of the very core of your website strategy. In fact, landing page optimisation is only one small aspect of a far greater picture that many marketers have not yet started thinking of as holistically as they should.

Looking at it laterally, landing page optimisation forms part of the user experience which is a very long chain, that has your specific landing pages as only one aspect of this value chain. Every part of your website strategy needs to be tested and optimised to ensure that the user experience remains at a high level throughout.

From the very first time a consumer interacts with your brand right through to after sale and repeat business. The experience that they have with your brand is incredibly important to how they will perceive your brand and then promote it.

From when you initially start putting together your web strategy ad indeed your overall marketing strategy; your user experience always needs to be part of your thinking. The user experience design methodology, in its simplest form, is made up of three main components: context, content and users.

Each of these components combine to form how a user will experience any and all interactions they have with your brand.

A user has their own paradigm and personal bias, which means that they are going to think and see things in a certain light. The content that you write needs to be compelling enough to ensure that you are giving viable and credible reasons to evoke an emotional, or rational response as to why a user must take action. If not, at the very least your content needs to take cognizance of your brand’s existence.

Lastly, the context of where your brand is being showcased will combine with the aforementioned and lend its own weight to whether or not you are further entrenching your brand, or distancing it from favour. Yes, while your content adds to your brand, the context of where your brand is being featured also has an effect; it further entrenches or distances your brand from customer favour.

Google Website Optimiser is a perfect tool for AB Testing — which is creating two versions of the same page for different groups of users — and Multivariate Testing — when more than one component of your website is tested in a live environment — your landing pages. However, I feel that user experience starts and ends very far away from your landing page. Attention needs to be paid at each and every point along the value chain where your brand is touched by a consumer.

To finish off the metaphor. If landing pages are the landing lights to guide a purchase; then air traffic control and radio beacons are adverts and marketing; and baggage claim your after sales service.