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BRAINSTORM: The Effects of Social Media on Landing Page Conversion

By Oli Gardner, February 18th, 2010 in Conversion Rate Optimization | View Comments
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I want to try something different for this post by making it more of an informal online brainstorm. I’ll pose a topic and a few primary questions, then open it up to comments.

The more people that interact with their opinions, the better the post will become and I’ll re-incorporate them into the post as we go.

Strap on your clever-hats for a quick brainstorm on social media and landing pages
Strap on your clever-hats for a quick brainstorm on social media and landing pages.

How Does/Will Social Media Affect Landing Page Conversion rates?

Social media is no longer the next big thing, it’s just simply an interaction medium that proliferates all aspects of online life. As such, it will naturally begin to infiltrate the discipline of internet marketing. How this happens is yet to be determined. There seem to be a few toes being dipped in the water, but it’s a little early to get a clear picture of where it’s headed and what’s been successful thus far.

And so, I have some questions:

Brainstorm Questions

If you have any opinions/answers, please comment below.

In what ways can you incorporate social media into a landing page?

There are a whole bunch of social media widgets that can be inserted into a landing page:

  • Twitter streams
  • Facebook updates
  • Flickr photostreams
  • Blog RSS
  • YouTube Video?
  • Etc.

What other examples are there?
What are the uses of each type?

Is there an exception to be made re: the single goal of a landing page?

Typically a landing page should be highly focused on a single goal. However, I believe there is value in using a secondary “Safety Net” call to action (CTA) that captures the people who are not quite ready to convert. An example of this would be “Follow me on Twitter”. This allows you to maintain a post-bounce connection with the visitor, and lets them commit to something less intimidating than the Buy Now button.

What do you think about this concept?
What other examples are there when applied to different social media interactions?

What benefits are there to be gained from social media integration?

What strikes me initially is that social media integration can improve your landing pages in the following ways:

  1. Increased trust: social proof factors (e.g. a large following) can make you more credible
  2. A modern mindset: depending on your demographic and campaign topic it could enhance the appeal of your landing page
  3. The primary goal: If your primary goal is to grow your social network then inclusion of social interaction points is clearly relevant

What other benefits are there?

Please share your thoughts and experiences below.

Cheers

– Oli Gardner

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  • 1. Facebook Like Recommendations ala http://store.levi.com/
    2. Twitter Favourites stream that highlights positive tweets about your brand / product / service.
    3. Safety Net: Agreed. Either / Or option is better than a Yes / No option.
    4. Social proof: A large following and positive SM mentions. It's the evolution of bizrate.
  • In cases where a social network is the source of a prospect, the landing page can also be native to that social network. The most obvious example is a Facebook newsstream update clicking through to a custom FBML page on your Facebook Page.
  • Great brainstorm. I definitely believe in incorporating "less" intimidating calls-to-actions. If a Social Networking invitation is less intimidating while allowing you to evangelize/socialize your concept further, then I think it is beneficial to add it as a second possible key performance indicator.

    Similarly, letting people take another less intrusive path still works.... e.g. white paper downloads, email newsletters, contest entries etc.

    The strategy that I would use to still maintain focus on a singular CTA would be to perhaps offer the secondary actions as contextual links, thus reducing the possibility of additional buttons straying focus from main LP Goal.
  • Would SEO Rankings, be a primary goal in Benefits?
  • oligardner
    With a focus on Social Media - SEO rankings would be of secondary benefit or not really part of the scope of the plan.

    However, enhanced rankings are always an underlying goal and success metric.

    Do you have any ideas about how SM inclusion in a page could benefit from an SEO perspective?
  • I agree that social media is a lot more trustworthy of your prospects then just a website by itself.

    Thanks for the info.
  • Ho ,
    Twitter works!
    It got me here...
    I love the idea of a retweet on the download or Thank you page!
    Awesome...Great use of wasted real estate.
    Put it there to click & they will click!
    Thanks again.
    Kindest
    Poppie
  • The social proof idea on a landing page is possibly best deployed by a widget of what your customers are saying about you(or product) rather than what you are saying about your product.

    So, simply put I´m talking about a twitter widget of a search of @ replies to you and not just your profile widget.

    Like a dynamic authentic testimonial.

    Of course, you have to really oil the wheels of SM to ensure it´s going to be worthy of inclusion and relevance to those landing visitors.
  • Hey Oli, thanks for bringing this conversation up. I think we can use social media to get converted visitors to provide social proof for other visitors viewing the landing page.

    I've seen several sites that have a button that tweets a pre-determined message if you click it. You could put it on the thank you page to encourage converted visitors to share the offer with their friends.

    Back on the offer page, we could include a Twitter widget of visitors who have posted that tweet. This would provide social proof no?

    Please compile the responses from this brainstorm into another post, that would be bookmark-worthy :)
  • oligardner
    Thanks David,

    Totally agree regarding social proof. And on the basic end of the scale it doesn't need to be interactive - just a badge that shows of your ability to have created a valuable network.

    Having a live feed specifically designed to show the responses and tweets on this particular campaign is very impressive live campaign tool.
  • oligardner
    And yes, I will tie this all in to a longer, more complete post once I've grabbed some more insight from people.

    Thanks for joining in.
  • Just came across this post that is relevant to this conversation:

    http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-types-of-...
  • Oli, as you know, I’m a strict believer in one message, one CTA, however you have managed to open my mind to this concept since we started Unbounce.

    I would be curious if adding secondary social media CTAs would lower my conversion rate of those who were interested in buying in the first place but got distracted, or lower my bounce rate as those who were not going to participate took the secondary call to action.

    Would really like to see this tested or hear the opinions of others that have tested it.
  • oligardner
    A great question only really figured out via an A/B test right? :)

    Your point is bang on though and I think (via the beautiful medium that is "the brainstorm") I answered this above when answering Indie_preneur.

    The trick is to either make them very secondary - use a familiar logo so the intent is clear, but don't thrust it too much in their faces.

    Better than that (on lead-gen) is the "next steps" placement on the confirmation page.

    Look out for that in an upcoming Unbounce feature release. (The dev team cringes).
  • This also depends on the type of conversion. If it's just a simple 'Join our newsletter,' then pushing social connections harder make a lot of sense.

    If it's trying to get someone to buy a product, I'd like to say that have them muted a lot (or only after converting) would help the conversion, but as we all know testing is the only way.

    Any examples of modal pop-ups on bounce that offer secondary CTAs? Would this piss you off as a consumer?
  • Great topic. There are *so* many uses for social media. I would love to see social media being used to enable referrals. It's just such a natural extension. I'm always sharing things I find that I think others might be interested in, so it would be fairly natural to hit a landing page for a product or service, and be able to easily recommend it to friends who I think might be interested. Note that this is really different from the typical carpet-bombing approach of putting it in my Facebook news feed, say. If you tied it into a referral program, it could really fly.
  • oligardner
    Yes indeed. A simple "share this with some specific people from your Twitter account".

    Obviously there is already the standard sharing mechanisms (Re-Tweet etc.), but like you say, mashing this up with the more standard "refer a friend" to produce a "Refer your Twitter Friends" or "Refer your Facebook Friends" would be good if done in a seamless way.

    Adding a social widget to a landing page would be a great A/B test subject - but you'd need to make sure you can find a way to track both the primary conversion goal and the secondary one (and a combination of the two).
  • Interesting ideas here. I definitely agree with the first point that it can help to increase trust. Especially if the target audience is active in social media, but if not it at least shows them you are, and you (semi) into transparency. However, I'd only say that you'd need to be careful in how you get them to 'follow' your social presence, as this could drive them away from your focused page.


    No one really likes them, but perhaps adding a modal pop-up (on bounce or exit) asking if they want to interact further with you. Also, you could remind them of future offers / benefits to doing this.
  • oligardner
    Interesting that you bring up the modal pop-up. Love 'em or hate 'em (I'm generally in the latter camp) they can bring increased conversions, but at what cost?

    I have another post in the queue dealing with this idea specifically - so it'll be great to debate the pros and cons when I get that one out.

    What I think is important is for new innovative ways of secondary engagement. For example, on the confirmation page of a lead gen landing page, you can present a series of recommended next steps - one of which could be to "Follow Me".
  • Quasianonymous
    Pop-ups? Hate 'em enough to avoid doing business with those who use them.
  • oligardner
    Just to add to that point. By engaging them on a confirmation page you remove the need to have it be a distraction on the main page.
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