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Landing Page Tests to Produce Better Qualified Leads

Written by: Karen Scharf

Article Overview: I have a client who is a realtor (we'll call him Don), and as you can imagine, with the state of the U.S. economy, his business has been less than stellar. Before the downturn in the real estate market, we had created an on-line lead generation program that had been working quite well. But lately, he had been feeling as if his business was in serious trouble, his agents hadn't been getting enough good leads, and it was time for an intervention.

Landing Page Tests to Produce Better Qualified Leads

I have a client who is a realtor (we'll call him Don), and as you can imagine, with the state of the U.S. economy, his business has been less than stellar. Before the downturn in the real estate market, we had created an on-line lead generation program that had been working quite well. But lately, he had been feeling as if his business was in serious trouble, his agents hadn't been getting enough good leads, and it was time for an intervention.

He contacted me to see what I could do for him, and we decided to revamp his on-line lead generator. Here are the steps we took and the results we achieved:

We tested the form length.

Now don't jump to conclusions here, it might not be what you're thinking. Your immediate reaction probably was, "of course, they made the form shorter." And in a way, you would be correct. But our testing didn't stop there, so read on...

In one phase of the testing, I actually did test a shorter form. And, as you may have guessed, the shorter form had a higher conversion rate. But, in the end, I decided to go with the longer form.

You see, one of my concerns was the mental state of Don's agents. Don shared with me that over the past few months, the morale of the office was horrible, his agents had been feeling frustrated, they were starting to feel desperate and they were fielding buy offers that were extremely low. He was worried that this outlook was contagious and pretty soon his entire office would be infected.

So, even though the shorter form produced more conversions, the leads were actually less qualified. Chasing after unqualified leads only added to the frustration level of the real estate agents. It helped convince them that no one was available to buy or sell a house and it made them feel desperate.

By adding more fields to the registration form, we decreased the conversion rate, but fed better qualified leads to the agents. Now the agents spend their time more productively, they are working with prospects who are actually in a position to buy or sell a home, and, according to Don, the office morale has improved dramatically.

We tested the images.

Since real estate is basically a service business, and in a service business you are basically selling "you", the images we had originally used were photos of Don and his agents and their beautiful office. The photos were appealing and professional and they did a great job of branding Don's business.

But I figured if the morale in Don's office was low, it was probably low in the market place, too. People who needed to buy or sell a home might be feeling desperate. They might be afraid of getting a bad deal. They might be worried that there will be another downturn in the housing market.

So, rather than trying to brand Don, I decided to ease the minds of his prospects and highlight the benefits of home ownership. I replaced the photos of Don's office with pictures of smiling, happy families enjoying a wonderful life in a beautiful home. I used photos of children playing in a well-manicured yard, a large family playing board games in a well-lit kitchen and a young couple romantically snuggling up by a fire place. I moved the photos of Don and his agents to the "About Us" page that was displayed after the form was submitted.

Using the "benefit-laden" photos did have a minor impact on the conversion rate. While it wasn't a huge difference - approximately 2% - it was an easy enough change to make it well worth the effort.

We tested the page copy.

In Don's market, there are many realtors to choose from, so our original site included information on Don's office and "sales copy" explaining why the prospect should choose Don over all the other realtors. Before the market turned, we thought this was good information to include on the site.

But now we decided that the number one main goal of the site had to be lead generation. I eliminated all other distractions (links to other pages, email addresses, advertisements) from the landing page and moved them all behind the form. In other words, once the visitor submitted the registration form, he would be taken to a thank you page that included links to the About Us page, additional site pages, the email addresses, the advertisements, etc.

The results for this test were mixed. While the conversion rate was higher on the less-copy page, the time each visitor spent on the site was reduced. My theory is that once the visitor submitted the form, he felt as if his job were done and he left the site rather than reading the additional pages that were available behind the form.

We're in the process now of testing the sales cycle for these pages. We've separated the leads based on whether they came from the less-copy page or more-copy page. The agents are tracking the results they achieve with each type of lead - which leads do they spend more time with, which leads are easier to "close", which leads provide better referrals, etc.

Since buying and/or selling a house can often take several months, we are currently splitting the less-copy and more-copy pages 50/50 until the agents have a better idea of which page produces better qualified leads.

So there you have it, three landing page tests to produce better qualified leads. Now don't say "But I'm not a realtor, so this doesn't apply to me." The point is to take these case study ideas and adapt them to your particular business, your particular web site and your particular prospects.

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Article Tags: conversions, web design, website design



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