“The most striking conclusions this research produced are that simple, inexpensive tests can have profound impacts and that radical, creative ideas tend to really boost designs to the next level of effectiveness,” said Tim McAtee, Senior Analyst for MarketingSherpa. “Without testing, there’s just no good low-risk way to find that out. We tried our best to provide marketers with the information they need to both justify and implement the research and design necessary to get the most of their landing pages.”

Among the highlights found in the 273-page Landing Page Handbook:
• The marketers behind landing pages understand how testing is vital to conversion rates. The top three tactics for testing landing page effectiveness are: optimizing PPC campaigns, adjusting registration forms, and tweaking creative elements.

• Many marketers believe the outbound campaign is responsible for most of the conversions, but MarketingSherpa data shows that the landing page is actually more responsible for the conversions.

• Most B-to-B marketers optimize and test PPC campaigns and don’t pay attention to organic traffic. MarketingSherpa data show organic traffic can convert as well or better than PPC traffic.

• The best landing pages are fully optimized and contain relevant headlines with the searched for keyword. The point is to hold onto consumers’ microscopic attention span and take full advantage of it before they click away.

• To get around internal resource challenges posed by management or the IT department, building landing pages outside official production channels has proven to be a useful way to verify these pages in an otherwise overwhelming situation.

For the Landing Page Handbook, MarketingSherpa conducted new original research with over 5,000 marketers. To purchase copies of the Landing Page Handbook, please visit: http://www.SherpaStore.com/LandingPageHandbook.html.

About MarketingSherpa
MarketingSherpa (http://www.marketingsherpa.com) is a research firm publishing practical case studies and benchmark guides for its 237,000 weekly readers in the marketing profession. Topics covered include practical how-to and exclusive data and proven tactics in business-to-business marketing, ecommerce marketing, email marketing, search marketing, telemarketing, media relations, landing page design, marketing measurement and online subscription marketing. The firm also operates six annual summits attended by thousands of marketers. Founded in March 2000, the firm has been a member of the MECLABS Group of research firms since November 2006.

Contacts:
Jamie O’Donnell
SEO-PR for MarketingSherpa
415.643.8947
Jamie.ODonnell@SEO-PR.com

Tim McAtee
MarketingSherpa
212.203.6992
TimM@MarketingSherpa.com