State of the Landing Page Union

At the beginning of every year the president of the United States broadcasts the current state of the union and where we need to be heading. Yes, I am a little late with my timing, but this same concept is useful for looking back on the landing page best practices of the previous year, and determine how we should be moving forward to further optimize our landing page design.  

Let’s take a look at what worked great last year, and what we need to think about going forward in 2010. From my vantage point, I see these as mandatory if you want to work on increasing your conversions…how do you measure up?

1. Message match - You must match your ad copy to your landing page message. This was important last year, is important this year, and will be important in years to come. 
2. Real time testing - Testing is no longer optional. Real-time, continuous testing should be standard operating procedure.  With real time testing you will be in a better position to maintain or lower your media costs while growing your conversion rate.
3. Marketer-managed pages - now is the time for landing page management to come out of IT and into the hands of marketers. A marketer should be able to go from landing page concept to landing page concept without any hurdles, see real-time results and make adjustments on the fly in order to positively impact the outcome of the campaign. Speed and agility are key here.
4. Real time metrics - there is no reason to not know your conversion rates, lead scores, engagement rates, and so forth. Put your finger on the pulse!

These four are no longer ‘optional’ or ‘nice to have’—they should be Standard Operating Procedure. Once these are in place you can focus on kicking your results up a notch by thinking big for 2010. And now I think 2010 is officially 2 months underway, so if you haven’t already started…what are you waiting for?