It wasn’t long ago we launched a landing page campaign for the Heart Research Institute (HRI).
The simple objective was to collect basic user data for lead generation.
We drove traffic to this landing page using a combination of channels including natural search, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media. We offered a FREE brochure that included information on the causes of heart disease along with an overview of the amazing scientific advances in heart research.
Now, anyone who arrives at a page about heart disease would want to know more about heart disease right? Surely they’d want to know more about the amazing technological advances in treating something so awful. Surely, they’d want the brochure. It’s FREE. Easy win right?
Wrong.
Lukewarm Results
At the beginning, the landing page statistics showed a conversion rate of only 2.8%. Not an awful number, but nothing to rave about either. Truth be told, we were hoping for a conversion rate way above that.
If people didn’t want to know more about heart disease, fair enough. People can’t be forced to give their details away and download. But maybe we missed something.
We went back to the analytics, specifically the “search query” report in Google AdWords (check out the screen grab below) and noticed the traffic arriving at our page was a result of users searching for “heart disease cause” related information. A good portion of those users hitting our general “heart disease info” page actually wanted to know more about the causes of heart disease.
Address User Needs Directly
In the landing page we launched, the headline was “Heart Disease Information Pack.” This could mean anything. The headline was broad, general and nonspecific. Indeed, some of the visitors wanted this type of broad scope information so the page is still live, but….
The headline didn’t tell users they could find out more about the causes of heart disease in the downloadable content. Ultimately, it didn’t directly address the needs of the user.
The solution was simple. We made another landing page DIRECTLY addressing the search term used by the user. Check out the grabs below and spot the difference!
Did you spot the difference?
Rather than using the generic headline Heart Disease Information Pack it now reads “How is Heart Disease Caused?“
Skyrocketing Conversion
So what happened?
The conversion rate skyrocketed from a mediocre 2.8% to a whopping 20%.
The lesson? By addressing your users concerns directly, there’s no need to spend a boat load of money on expensive A/B testing suites (although these are well worth the investment), analytics programs or fanciful design and coding.
It’s possible to squeeze out increases in conversion through simple techniques.
