Landing Page Conversion Tips for Affiliate Marketers

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Affiliate marketers are always looking for the best ways to optimize their landing page conversions. Sometimes is can seem like an uphill battle. However, there are trends that can help affiliate marketers know what is working and what isn’t. The following is a list of best practices – and what to avoid.

Landing Pages: A Quick Primer

Landing pages have many names – sales page, money page, opt-in page and squeeze page – but no matter what it might be called, a landing page has one main purpose: to create conversions. But what is a landing page exactly? Simply put, a landing page is the page your web traffic is driven to. When someone clicks on a link, they end up at your landing page.

Landing pages are critical because the more conversions you get – that is, the more traffic that turns into sales – the more money you make as an affiliate marketer.

Simple Steps

There are five simple steps affiliate marketers can take to improve landing page optimization.

1. Be compatible. Does your landing page work with Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer? If it doesn’t, you’re losing conversions. Always check to see how your landing page looks with each browser and make sure it’s compatible.
2. Be quick. In addition to compatibility, make sure you page loads in eight seconds or less. If a page takes too long to load, no one is going to stick around and wait.
3. Utilize social media. No one likes filling out forms. It takes time and is a hassle. Social media signups have changed that, making signing up and opting in a quick and easy, one-click process. Make it easy for visitors to register at your landing page by enabling social media signups.
4. Be interactive. Images and text or interactive video – which is more interesting and engaging? Interactive video makes it fun and easy to navigate a landing page. This technique is enjoying success, particularly with dating websites.
5. Be clear. While this can be applied to just about every aspect of an effective landing page, there are two extremely important places to have clarity. First, be sure that visitors to your site know where they are. Have a clear headline announcing your landing page. Second, have a clear call to action on your landing page so visitors know exactly what you want them to do – whether that’s completing a signup or purchasing a product.

Testing 1, 2, 3…

Once you’ve made changes to your landing page, how do you know if they are working? There are two main ways to check the effectiveness of your changes. The first is called multivariate testing, or MVT. MVT is done by testing multiple variations of different elements on your landing page. These tests are run simultaneously. This type of testing works best with high-traffic sites and for those marketers who have a thorough understanding of MVT interpretation. In these cases, MVT can provide clear results of what’s working on your landing page and what isn’t.

However, if you have a low-traffic site or are not familiar with MVT, there is another, much simpler way to test your landing page. This technique is called A/B split testing. Start with page A as the control page, then make a change to a single element on the page. The page with the change is now page B. Split your traffic between the two sites and see which gets more conversions. Once you have a clear winner, take down the losing page. You can then replace it with a new page with another change to test. In this way, you can experiment with everything from headlines to ad copy and get quick, reliable feedback.

Elements to test include the headline, sales copy, colors, fonts, images, their placement and just about anything else on your landing page.

What to Avoid

Not only is landing page optimization about doing what’s best to create conversions; it’s also about avoiding costly mistakes. There are fourcommon pitfalls that successful affiliate marketers avoid.

1. Inconsistency. When testing your landing pages, be sure to only change one element at a time. Changing multiple elements at the same time will render the test completely inaccurate.
2. Redundancy. To avoid wasting valuable time and repeating tests, be sure to record each change you test and track the results. Otherwise, you will find yourself needlessly repeating tests and never making progress.
3. Ineffective software. If you find yourself spending more time dealing with your landing page optimization software than actually optimizing your landing page, it’s time to make a change. Your software should be working for you, not the other way around.
4. Information overload. Only provide information that is absolutely necessary for a visitor to your landing page to make a decision and take action. Anything else is a distraction and will lower conversion rates.

The time you invest in landing page optimization now will pay off with high conversion rates later.

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