Why use a landing page platform?
One of the key reasons is templates offer the ability to quickly scale up landing page campaigns with no need for web development resources or any advance knowledge of CSS or HTML. One of the best platforms on the market that I have used is the Performable landing page platform. One continuous issue is always limitations on both web development budgets and web development resources so I have found the best work around is to use a CMS platform to create all my landing pages. The other benefit of using dedicated landing page platforms is that elements such A/B testing can be automatically performed until a test reaches a statistical significance and you don’t have to guess which landing page design works best.
Landing Page Options
I advise to use the standard templates as they are fairly decent and quick to customise, but if required you can create your own custom template or import an existing page URL into performable to match your existing website design.
How to host the landing page?
While it’s typically an better long term idea to setup a dedicated domain or subdomain for your landing pages, you can also embed your pages within a current website file or subdirectory which keeps most decision makers happier. So if you need to keep the new landing pages within your standard site structure you are given 3 different options
- Javascript version (recommended by them)
- iFrame version (gets around ASP.net nested issues)
- Full HTML page (standalone file)
What about reliability?
It’s no surprise that very few companies have the same hosting resources as platforms like Performable who can offer both maximum speed and very fast page load times served via 2 Content Distribution networks. One of the big points that large retailers like Amazon have made is that page load time impacts on conversion rate but it also can affect your AdWords quality score, so the money you save with a better quality score and conversion rate should easily cover any costs associated with the performable platform.
One of the recent issues experience was when a site went down due to a Denial of Service attack this would not have been such an issue if we were running all ppc campaigns on performable. The issue is when your own website goes down your PPC will deliver traffic until it’s paused which may cost your thousands before you are notified by your hosting company. Money was wasted on PPC traffic and valuable leads were lost due to the DOS attack that can be the difference between a successful ppc campaign and failure.
Why not automate your Leads?
One of the key elements of any successful campaign is the ability to reduce human errors by automating as much of the tedious processes as possible and make it scalable to attract more leads via PPC and Social Media and have the forms sent direct to relevant departments/managers direct from the platform. It’s fairly common to see staff having to cut and paste details gathered in the backend CMS of their website and pasting into an email before forwarding it onto the relevant department/manager, this is not efficient way to distribute enquiries and leads to possible mistakes and missed opportunities.
Using landing page platforms you can with a simple click of a box you can ensure elements such as email confirmation messages are sent to customers after they submit a form but also reducing duplicate submissions if the user submits the form multiple times. Another cool little feature to speed up the process of gathering customer details for future marketing campaigns you can easily begin passing form data via the following:
- WebHook “HTTP callback”
- MailChimp
- Constant Contact
- SugarCRM
- SilverPop
Automate Tasks based on User Behaviour
Typically it has been both expensive and time consuming to try and match back user behaviour based on if they have or have not completed certain goals or interacted with various parts of your website. If the visitor signs up to shop online but then leaves items in their shopping cart you can email them immediately if they leave the site or wait the average time to purchase period and send them a reminder email to come back and finish their order.
Performable Automated Email Process
- Name the Process
- Starting condition (event)
- Send via ESP or Webhook
- Add another step OR add a delay
To send automated emails platforms like Performable can integrate with your email service provider such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor or via Webhook, but the automated email feature typically work best when you have fully enabled it’s identity capture features.
Understanding user behaviour
While a number of marketers currently measure their success by the number of form submissions they limit their true impact and are not measuring all they should be. One of the growing areas that are being tracked are how visits to particular URLs and what on-site button clicks can be attributed to driving user form submission.
You can begin to understand what items on your site have a posistive influence on users and encourage them to complete an event. Also it’s a sign on how easy your website is to use as you can begin to measure how long it takes for users to complete an event such as a purchase or form submission.
Dynamic landing page elements
It is possible to easily run geo-targeted campaigns and customise small elements of your landing page for each visitor based on:
- Country
- Region
- City
- IP Address
Another feature that will lift conversion rates is to gather information from URL parameters using Query.param variables, so a search for rental properties that leads to a contact form will change the landing page message to the suburb or city they searched for based on the referring URL. But for more advanced users the performable template language allows for some cool advanced programming with Python to set custom variables, logic and loops.
So why do I need it?
If your current website fails to convert PPC visitors or you don’t have the budget to refresh your whole website, landing pages are the perfect solution and reduce the resource drain on your IT department and just sign up for a free trial and test how using landing pages can uplift your conversion rates.
