The landing pages on your website – the places where you want visitors to take a specific action – can never get too much attention.
You want to measure these pages to death:
- Know your biggest referral sources
- Know the keywords people use to get there
- Know if the bounce rate is increasing or decreasing
- Know exit paths
- Know what your most visited pages are overall
- Know your conversion rates (donations / email subscribers)
- Know how fast your page loads
- Bonus point if you make a heat map
You get the point
Five ways to simplify your landing pages
One way to improve these measurements – and by extension, your landing page results – is to simplify the page.
Simplifying a page simply means removing all obstacles between the visitor and the action you want them to take.
Below are five ways you can simplify your landing pages today (not next week):
- Get rid of links to your social media sites. Put them on the page they’re directed to after they donate or join your mailing list.
- Get rid of any polls, ads or news announcements. They have nothing to do with the single action you want them to take.
- Get rid of any links going to external websites. The very last thing you want them to do is leave your site.
- Reduce the amount of links going to other pages within your website. If you want them to make a donation, why would you have a huge “Volunteer New” button?
- Eliminate sidebars that contain widgets, calendars, blog posts, or any other unrelated content.
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If you don’t get the keywords right..then you might as well don’t try. You must be on the right track to finding great keywords.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Simplification is the best tip for landing pages. Too often non-profits and businesses alike over complicate, decreasing actions taken by default. Great tips John.
Maria – thanks! A good rule I’ve heard is: One goal per page.
Non-Profits can use Google Analytics to track most of what you recommended. Using Reinvigorate gives you a good interface to see heatmaps and other similar data too.
-Rob, CauseVox
Rob – Thanks for the tips!
Super easy improvement for your online fundraising…
Here’s a quick and shockingly easy way to improve your online fundraising, from John Haydon’s blog: Five ways to simplify landing pages on your nonprofit’s website. It all boils down to removing barriers from your landing pages: Get rid of links to …
Hey John,
Good stuff… I think the only challenge here is that you want different things from different visitors. If you’re speaking to the actual ‘make a gift’ page, I think your comments are spot-on. However, in reference to the organization’s/institution’s general homepage, I think it has to be about more than just making the gift.
Just to be clear – I’m not suggesting that you try to achieve 48 different objectives on your landing page, but you pick the 4 or 5 that are most critical to what you’re trying to achieve. For many these are likely things like Impact, Why Give, Make A Gift, Take Action, etc.
Cheers,
Devin
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[...] Ditch the sidebars. Unless the information in the sidebar contributes to the landing page, get rid of them! [...]
[...] John Hayden: Five Ways to Simplify your Landing Page (John offers a fabulous newsletter) [...]
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[...] a sidebars. Unless a information in a sidebar contributes to a alighting page,get rid of [...]
[...] a sidebars. Unless a information in a sidebar contributes to a alighting page,get rid of [...]
[...] a sidebars. Unless a information in a sidebar contributes to a alighting page,get rid of [...]