Step 3: Test templates for general effectiveness

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Now you're ready to test variables within the landing page to further improve conversions. Because "category" landing pages can be difficult to optimize successfully, I'll talk about testing based on those types of pages-- but similar tests can be done for offer-based landing pages and home page-like landing pages, as well.

As I mentioned, with category pages you'll want to encourage visitors to self-select and define for you just what they're hoping to accomplish. Consider testing these four basic elements: 

• Element 1. Key product
  Since you can't tell their goal, try testing a single key product or key offer. Guess what a visitor might be looking for, then test it.
  For example, you might test a hero shot of your best product (The Sharper Image might show the Ionic Breeze), an image that entices a visitor to click more deeply into the site (a happy couple playing with a child and a golden retriever), and a value proposition ("lowest rates guaranteed!")
• Element 2. Depth of offering
  Whether you have thousands of products or only two or three main offerings, you want to convince your visitor to give you a little more information on what they're seeking. Showing them the depth of your offerings is a good way to get them to self-select. You might include traditional tabs with categories and subcategories, a gift finder, "Staff picks," "Most purchased," or "Most viewed." You might also include editorial-based product merchandising like comparison tables or product/service reviews. Use of these devices says to the visitor, "I have more things to offer than I can actually show on the page." You're enticing them to make another click to get them to the next level of interaction.
• Element 3. General branding and treatment
  Remember, a visitor coming from search is arriving from a whole different experience, on a page that you didn't control. No matter how excited they are to land on your page, the experience can be jarring, because you will likely have a different mode of interaction than the site from which they arrived. If you're trying to persuade them to do something with you, each step calls for a different nature of interactivity. You need to make an impact not only about your brand experience, but also about how they're interacting with you. The goal here is to make the experience seem continuous while letting them know that they're at the next step of interaction. It's a tricky balance. You might try testing: whether you're very spare like Google or dense with content like Yahoo! Whether it looks more designed and branded like a home page or more utilitarian like a general category page, and whether you use very interactive elements or traditional, static ones.
• Element 4. Off-navigation
  Do you want to offer content as targeted as possible in hopes you'll funnel the prospect right to the sale, or do you want to show more categories in hopes of snagging their interest in another area? This is a simple, relatively straight-forward element to test.

Then What?
Now that you know the most effective elements in your category landing page template, simply switch content out for new landing pages, depending on the keyword group (remove all content relevant to books and swap in content relevant to CDs, for example). You'll find that you have created a simple and effective way to increase conversions and average order value by sending visitors to targeted landing pages -- pages that behave as though they know just what the visitor is seeking -- without having to create those landing pages from scratch for each and every keyword group.

Jamie Roche is CEO of OTTO Digital, and president of Offermatica. Read full bio.