Landing Page Quality -- A close look Part #1

Digging through Google's advice to webmaster you will find many useful suggestions and reminders.

In doing this one will come upon a definition for the three main components of a high quality website:

1. Relevant, original, (and authentic) content
2. Transparency
3. Navigability.

Along with the definition for these three main components, Google offers a covenant "Maintaining a positive user experience in these areas will help improve your site's landing page quality."

Strong words. Google is very invested in the promotion of quality websites that give users a positive user experience. In fact, they put their money where their mouth is. When bidding with adwords for position in the SERP (search engine results page) the higher the quality of your landing page the less you have to pay for top position. That's right. You pay less per click for the best spot if your page is higher quality than the competition. More about this later. For the moment just take it as read that they are very invested in promoting quality websites with quality user experience.

So what are these three things they consider the main components of high quality websites.

1. Relevant, Original, (and Authentic) Content

This speaks to the content of your page. The actual stuff you are presenting. You know the words and images that present something other than navigation and branding. This may come as a surprise to those that figured the internet was just a place to lay purchasing traps in the hopes of capturing customers and making thereby making money. Long ago, during the first few days of the internet, all you could find was relevant and original content. Posting content in those days was no easy task. Thus, anyone that was making the effort to present content was doing so for something they believed in. Granted some folks were highly invested and believed in content that made me wonder about the possible future of the human race. Even so, it was evident from their web pages that they believed in what they were doing. Unfortunately it did not take long before the invention of the banner ad and the new paradigm -- a web page became an excuse for housing as many banner ads as one could stuff on it.

If you are using adwords to promote your web page then you MUST be making money from viewership. You have to. If you are paying $$ per click you have to make enough $$ per visit to feed the fund that pays for the clicks. Or, perhaps you have a mysterious advertising budget which is funding the promotional campaign. This could be to generate branding, new product roll-out, or any number of valid reasons. Advertising budgets independent of web page ROI (return on investment) are a special topic we can discuss at another time. For the moment, let's take it as given that for most of us, any time we use adwords to bring readership to our website we have to generate enough $$ to pay for the click-throughs. This means we must be selling something on the landing page. This something can be a product or a "make a donation." But there must be something, otherwise adwords becomes a black-hole into which we throw money.


This is all by way of saying that in addition to the presentation of relevant and original content you will also need to be making a sales pitch. More about this another time. I just wanted to mention what I consider the elephant in the room when it comes to discussion of page content. It is all well and good to get high and mighty about content, but the reality for anyone driving traffic to a website is: the landing page must pay for itself.

Relevance

Relevance is related specifically to the ad that drove the traffic to your landing page. That is where the phrase  "landing page" comes from. They are landing on your page after clicking on an ad.

If the first thought that enters the mind of a visitor coming to your web page from an ad is "Hmmm, is this the right page? Or, did I click on the wrong button?" then you fail. Put your ad side by side with your web page. Can the average Joe on the street see the relationship? If not you fail.

Another form of fail is advertising a single product then linking to a page with multiple products. If you advertise a specific product it is wrong to make the visitor hunt through a collection of products to locate the one that motivated them to click on the ad in the first place. This will cause confusion. This is a fail. If you want to suggest other alternatives, put them below the fold. The fold is the imaginary line that represents the bottom of your page as viewed in the browser. This means the visitor will need to scroll before seeing the content below the fold. The value to the fold is that you can have content on the page (no click required to find it) without that content confusing the visitor during those most important first three seconds.

Relevance basically comes down to "say what you mean and mean what you say."

Originality

Original is easy to understand. If the content is new, fresh, inventive, or novel it is original. If the content is a copy and paste from somewhere else then it is not original. Ideally your content should be unique -- can't be found on any other website. Well, with billions of web pages "can't be found on another site" is bound to become pretty darn difficult. So in practical terms what does original mean?

To start with, copy and paste pretty much guarantees the content is not original. There are many reasons that you could find yourself using copy and paste to generate content on a landing page.

One reason you could find yourself using copy and paste to generate a landing page is: the product's parent company requested you to do this. In their effort to encourage the creation of quality pages that properly reflect the nature of their product they can encourage you to reuse their marketing pitches and their marketing graphics.

If your page is the same (or nearly the same) as a page on another website then the pages are considered to be mirrors of each other. This is bad. Pages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site are said to mirror the parent page. Don't do this.

Another reason that you could find yourself using copy and paste is to take advantage of the success of another reseller. "Hey, their page is making them a ton of money. I think I will copy their page so I can make a ton of money." This creates a mirror page. This is bad. It is bad because you are stealing. It is also bad because you will be caught.

Authentic

Google did not suggest authentic as a descriptor. This is my own invention to cover the special case of bridge (or redirect) pages. A bridge page can be relevant. A bridge page can be original. But they still fail because they are not authentic. There is no real intention to give the visitor anything. A bridge page is just a bridge, a connection, between your ad and the true landing page on the affiliate website. The whole purpose of the bridge page is to grab visitors from an SERP have them visit your page so that you can then re-link to the affiliate website after including your affiliate identification code as part of the link.

Redirect pages are another form of bridge page. The same type of page with a name that may be more familiar to some. A redirect page's sole purpose is to redirect traffic to a parent (affiliate) company.

Bridge pages are the worst. A bridge page is not really even a page.

In Part 2 of this article we shall address Transparency.
In the Part #3 of this article we discuss the effect of navigation on the quality of a visitor's experience.

Landing Page Quality -- A close look Part #2

In Part #1 of this article we discussed the contribution of "relevant, original, (and authentic) content" to the quality of a landing page. In this (the second part) we shall address the role of transparency.

2. Transparency

This is a totally different type of consideration. Now we move past consideration of content into considerations of relationship. You have a relationship with your visitor. This relationship may be brief. This relationship is long-distance. But you have a relationship. And as will all relationships transparency is important.

Anyone that you relate to wants to know three basic things:

1. Who are you?
2. What if anything are you doing to me?
3. What will you do with any personal information I give you?

In terms of a business interaction through a web page these basic concerns are phrased differently:

1. What is the nature of your business
2. Does your site do anything to a visitor's computer
3. How does the site intend to use a visitor's personal information

Below are some hints on how to maximize your transparency in regard to the above mentioned points.

Who are you? -- the nature of your business

Don't pretend to be anything other than you are. If you are a reseller of a product be open and clear about that. In fact, you can use this as a gimmick to create relevant and original content on your web page. If you are a user of the product, discuss that -- give your perspective and recommendation as a fellow user. If you are not a user of the product but are a reseller with unique information gathered from selling and serving customers that do use the product, discuss that -- give your perspective and recommendation based on your experience with others that have used the product. Whoever, or whatever, you are embrace that and use it as your foundation for establishing a successful relationship with a new visitor.

We all know that not all the content on our web pages is ours. Be open and honest about that -- i.e. be transparent. If you have sponsored links on your page, present them in such a fashion that visitors can tell the difference between what is yours and what is not. If you are using rss feeds or other widgets to embed content on your website be open and honest about that. Basically if you did not cook the corn bread don't accept the praise as if it was your dish.

Another place where transparency is very important is in pricing and delivery. Do not try to get all cagey when it comes to the "Buy Now" button. Be clear, open, and honest about what the cost will be, what the customer will receive, and when they will receive it -- should they happen to click the "buy it now" button. You can get as tricky as you like -- but don't expect a high quality rating for the such a page.

Something that I personally strongly object to is deceptive (non-transparent) insertion of recurring (subscription) billing. Twice I have found myself in the situation where the money I was paying in Paypal turned out to not be a one-time-only payment. Instead I found an agreement page for scheduling a subscription service. I instantly canceled the transaction and put the company on the "don't visit those scum sucking s.o.b.s ever again" list. Was this true trickier on their part, an oversight in content, or shear incompetence? I will never know because I have no plans of ever visiting that website again.

If a site does offer products that require recurrent billing or subscriptions that is okay. This is a valid type of product. Just be clear, open and honest. Put the necessary information in an obvious location on the page where a typical visitor will find it and be sure to include this information inline with the purchase form.

Another form of open and honest falls under the category of "opt-in". If the visitor is opting in to any kind of mailing list or other form of participation as an adjunct to getting a product you must use a clearly obvious opt-in checkbox on the form.

What if anything are you doing to me? -- Your site's interaction with a visitor's computer.

This consideration is pretty simple and is not actually relevant to normal honest webmasters. If you don't know what this is about, you probably are not and cannot do whatever it is I'm referring to here. In order to do stuff to a visitor's computer you must do it intentionally. What kind of stuff? Well, how about inserting a virus in their computer for one. There are websites that infect visitors with a virus. This is bad and google will give them a bad page ranking. I suppose websites that intentionally infect computers with viruses are not much concerned about page rankings. Not the best example, but it is the category of behavior we are talking about.

A less obvious form of intrusion is something like changing a visitor's home page to become your website. Or, perhaps automatically inserting a bookmark for your web page on the visitor's computer. These are not as bad as infesting their computer with a virus -- but they are still a form of intrusion.

There are other forms of intrusion (such as changing a visitor's back button behavior) that rely upon javascript. If you do not know what javascript is, don't worry about accidentally doing any of this. If you do program in javascript, then it would be a good idea to consider every now and then about what, if any, changers you are making to the visitor's computer or browser settings.

What will you do with any personal information I give you? -- how you intend to use a visitor's personal information

Let's start by following the personal information golden rule: only request the personal information required to fulfill whatever service you are providing.

This means that if you do not need to ship a product to a visitor, then you do not need their mailing address.

This means that if you do not need to be able to phone a visitor, then you do not need their phone number.

Do you start to see the pattern? If you do not need the info do not request it. Any other reason for requesting additional information would be for data mining.

There are occasions where data mining can be important. For example, you may be very interested in how a customer was referred to your product. If this is the case, feel free to ask "How did you hear about our product?" in whatever contact form you wish. However,... however, be very clear in your privacy policy statement exactly how you intend to use this information. For example, do you intend to store the referral information as part of the customer's record -- tagged to the customer. Or, do you plan on just keeping a running count of referral sources. Whatever you do be transparent -- be clear, be open, be honest.

With the advent of such services as Facebook, it has become increasing necessary to give visitors (members) clear and easy methods to control how their information is used and shared. Recently Facebook was forced to provide more detailed access to information sharing -- so that some information could be shared while protecting other information. This is a growing area of concern for many.

In the Part #3 of this article we discuss the effect of navigation on the quality of a visitor's experience.

Landing Page Quality -- A close look Part #3

In Part #1 of this article we discussed the contribution of "relevant, original, (and authentic) content" to the quality of a landing page.

In Part #2 of this article we discussed the contribution of "transparency" to the quality of a landing page. In this (the third part) we shall address the role of navigation .

3. Navigability

Why does navigability enter into the calculation of page ranking?  Or in other words, how does navigability enter into the question of page quality?

The answer to this lies in the question of "quality of experience" for the visitor. If a website has bad navigation, then a visitor's experience of that website will be diminished. Remember all of this stems from Google's interest in the quality of experience for visitors to their SERP (search engine results page). If clicking on an ad leads to a page which makes the visitor regret clicking on the ad in the first place, that reflects badly on Google. And more importantly, if visitors have a bad experience clicking on ad buttons they will be less likely to click on future ad buttons. And, dear reader, is Google being paid per view or per click?

I'm really not as cynical as the above may sound. I am more of a realist. A cynic has an attitude attached to the observation. I'm just making the observation. Good experience leads to repetition of that action that lead to that experience. Bad experience leads to avoidance of whatever action lead to the experience. Google wants people to click on ads, so they want the landing pages those ads lead to to yield a good experience for the visitors. Simple math.

In this case we are looking at the role of navigation in the creation of a positive user experience.

Why is navigation so important? Why does it have so much impact? The reason is simple once you think about it: navigation is typically the only means the visitor has to actively interact with your website.

Think about it, what is available for the visit to do on your website. They can look, read, scroll, and click things. Scrolling gives the reader some sense of control and interaction with your website. But, scrolling is something that is usually handled automatically by the browser. So mostly you are safe in this regard. But heed my warning, if you find some new way to mess around with the natural order of things and change how your page scrolls you can enter into whole new worlds of visitor dissatisfaction.

So basically clicking on links is pretty much the only means that your average visitor can interact with the average web page.

Do you like feeling out of control, at a loss, helpless, confused, and at the mercy of a heartless or idiotic system? No. We get enough of that at home, work, and from our government. So when we are browsing it would be nice to have a navigation experience that doesn't lead to the above mentioned (less than ideal) experience.

So what can you do to help provide a quality user experience when it comes to navigation of your website.

• Provide a short and easy path.
• Make sure that whenever a user clicks on a link that click action leads to fast response -- in this case quick load of the web page.

Provide a short and easy path.

No body likes to click and click and click in order to drive down a page hierarchy on an endless hunt for the final destination page. K.I.S.S. -- Keep it simple, stupid.

Optimize Load Time

Load time effect user experience in several ways. First of all there is the obvious aspect of not wanting to wait for a page to load. No one likes this. A second and less obvious aspect of load time involves the communication cycle between the user and the computer/internet. Click and load is the basis of a simple communication cycle between a user and the internet. I click something happens. But when does that something happen. If the time delay between click and something happening is too long -- I am not happy.  Or, in other words, the longer the delay between click and load the lower the quality of my experience.

There is more than one delay in this click and load thing.

1. Confirmation that my click is doing something.
2. Start of page load.
3. Mostly loaded.
4. Page load finished.

Confirmation that my click is doing something

When I click I want to see an instantaneous response that tells me the click did something. Unless you use javascript, this part is almost always instantaneous. If you use javascript it is possible to create a situation in which a click leads either to no response or to delayed response (while the javascript is thinking.) This is bad.

Start of page load

Start is page load is defined (by me) as the moment that some words first appear on the browser screen.

Mostly loaded

Mostly loaded to me is defined as that moment when the text content has been loaded and the style sheet cosmetic arrangement of the page has occurred.  At this point the only remaining elements to download should be images and other multimedia.

Page load finished

This is the moment when all of the graphics are available for viewing and the visitor can start scrolling and poking around the page. Ideally you want the page to finish loading as quickly as possible. This after all is the end result the visitor is looking for.

The following elements contribute to the above mentioned delays. I shall address this in a separate article (or series of articles.)

• State of the internet
• User connectivity.
• Database load
• Layout
• Javascript
• Widgets and feeds
• Image sizes