My company has decided to redesign our portal page. One of our developers mentioned that we can program the landing page such that it will pick up on certain keywords related to our different products and give them more screen real estate. For instance, if someone typed in "red widgets" in Google, and clicked on our site they would see "RED WIDGETS" taking up most of the screen, with details about our red widgets, where to buy them, etc. Then there will be a list of green, yellow, and blue widgets below. If their search term does not contain colors, then they will see a list of colors for our widgets and some general info about our widgets/company. If they use "blue widgets" they will see blue widgets displayed most prominently, and the others listed below, etc. I am wondering if anyone has ever tried this kind of dynamic landing page strategy and if it worked for you? Our aim is to reduce bounce rates and encourage click-through into the different widget sections. Any information is appreciated, as I am trying to find some case studies to use as a deciding factor in the vote.
I have done this in the past in specific circumstances with some success. The secret is to firstly split test the landing pages and monitor the results to see if it is working positively or negatively for you, testing and changing all the time until you have maximised the conversion rate. Secondly keep all the dynamic landing pages out of the search engines with a well crafted robots.txt. - Michael
I'm glad you brought that up, since the SEO is my responsibility I have already taken into account the damage control for massive page changes, dynamic content, etc, but I will also need to keep an eye on the dev's use of the robots file, thank you. As far as increasing your click-through and conversion, did you notice a difference between the static content and the dynamic content? For instance, right now we see about a 90/10 split between product 1 and 2, with a 7% exit rate (none of which takes into account people who bounce right away). Were there any noticeable patterns which set visitors apart? The theory is that a majority of the people who bounce off might actually need one of our products, but are put off by the appearance of product 1 on the page, when they are looking for product 2.
Yes but sometimes in a split test a particular dynamic page would have a higher conversion than the static and sometimes the reverse was true. That is why testing and evaluation must be built into the system. Yes but this was related to the search terms which should just be considered as a series of constants as far as the evaluation is concerned and will be specific to your sector. The variables are the 100's of different dynamic pages you split test and these are what you refine to maximise your conversion. This is possible but with split testing you can know for sure. - Michael
Thanks for all of your input, I fully intend to split test all of our potential redesigns. We are starting with a marketing survey to determine what visual characteristics our customers like and then I'll be using AdWords to do some strict A/B on the landing page. I guess what I was hoping for here was someone posting their own story, or a link to a case study or article about rearranging the page based on the keyword a user comes in on. Although I intuitively feel that dynamic pages will increase revenue, there are still some doubters in the group who would like to stay with the current (static) portal.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire (1694 - 1778) Just tell them it is an experiment and if they are right you will buy them a beer - Michael
We're doing this very thing on several sites using various tools including an A/B testing system. Basically we set up separate landing page campaigns for keyword groups, and then within those campaigns we test different versions of the landing page (as well as individual elements within the page.) I think this is the best of both worlds - landing page "customization" per SE keyword, and then fine-tuning using controlled A/B and multivariate testing. For certain keywords, conversion rates have increased by double digits, and in at least one case about 110%. HTH LC88