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Within the online marketing space, a standard rule I have heard about landing pages is to limit choice. Ideally you have one page, with your sales pitch and they can either take your desired action or leave.

Sometimes this is a stripped down subpage of a site:

http://www.sherpastore.com/EmailMKTReport2010.html

Or sometimes just a squeeze page:

http://www.internetmarketingmind.com/pics/squeezepage/dydsqueezepage.jpg

Of course these pages often are not the prettiest but people supposedly in the know claim that they work better than anything else when you are using PPC adverting and don't care about things like SEO.

In the startup space and B-to-B space however, I don't see landing pages like this. I see multipage sites. Usually they look something like 37signals site: http://basecamphq.com/ with lots of ways to navigate around the site.

If I'm going to be building a landing page for a product I'm selling to SMB should i try to do the primarily one page option or the mulitpage option.

I found that startuptodo.com is an interesting example, where its all one page, but has a couple link to about us and such at the bottom.

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Example of long wins: Among other variations, consumer lead generation marketer PhoneHog tested landing pages requiring links for more information vs. a page that contained everything in one place. The all-in-one was by far the winner for conversions with a 55% higher conversion rate than some of the non-winning pages. (from marketing sherpa) – DogOn Nov 5 '09 at 22:30
What is SMB? Thanks. – Joseph Turian Nov 19 '09 at 2:27

6 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Let me offer some insight as someone who was "brought up" in the information marketing industry.

Ultimately, as the others have said, you're going to need to test (never stop!). However, let me offer some guidelines you might consider, so you can shortcut your path to success.

On the topic of multi-page versus one long page, the long page almost always wins. Every time you make the user click, you're going to have a percentage of them drop out of your funnel. You can feel free to test it, but I am pretty confident the long page will win. This has been proven time after time after time, even though people always tell me they'd never read it. You know who wants to read your info in an uninterrupted fashion? The most interested prospects - the people who are going to buy from you. If the info is important enough to affect their buying decision, get it on that page.

On the topic of simple vs rich page, as Jason said, in B2B you're still selling to another human. No different than selling to a consumer, no matter what "they" will have you think. As such, don't let useless graphics and designery get in the way of your sales message. It took years for that doubleyourdating.com page to get beaten by a different design, and I'm pretty certain they changed it due to Google quality score meddling, rather than conversion issues.

Additionally, the landing is really just a piece of the overall funnel. It's the front door to your sales funnel, and the good info marketers are pros at what happens once someone steps inside. The quickest way to get conceptually up to speed with what to do next is read "Influence" by Cialdini, then think how you can apply his 8 psychological triggers in your follow up sales.

I see a lot of software companies miss the mark because they never follow up with any sales messages once you sign up. If you subscribe to the idea that you will maximize sales only by letting us use your software, then you'll be missing your potential.

In the end, I'm assuming you want to maximize signups or sales, so you'd do best by making that the only option. Eliminate any other distractions. Focus on what the prospect would need to learn to feel a fire under their ass to sign up.

There is more, but I don't want to blow hot air without knowing more about the situation. Hope this helps!

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up vote 3 down vote

Excellent question!

I'll start out by saying that nearly all cases are different, and the most effective way to optimize your site/page for conversions is going to be testing. I've run many of these campaigns and have found that there's no clear answer. It all depends on the user base, what you are promoting, what the call to action is, and what perceived benefit there is to the user for converting. How you drive traffic to the site can have a huge impact to, so make sure if you're driving traffic from different sources that you look at each one individually.

That said, to answer your question I've found that in most cases multiple pages don't hurt you as long as you have a clear call-to-action on each page, preferably shown in a consistent manner. Conventional thinking would tell us that we don't want users to get distracted, so it's best to steer them down a predefined path. I disagree with this, I think the web users today are savvy enough to know how to navigate. In addition, different users might want different information, and forcing a user down a path where they see information that they don't find relevant can be harmful.

But it's all going to depend on your users, so run a series of A/B and multivariate tests to find what works the best in your case.

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Thanks for the insight Nathan! – Adam Nov 5 '09 at 20:28
Testing is, of course, the perfect answer, but building 2 versions of a landing page/ site has a cost associated with it as does sending enough users through to test those pages. I gotten some feedback that the single page lander can be seen in a negative light, due to all those get rich quick style offers. That was the main reason I was looking at multi-page. – Adam Nov 5 '09 at 20:33
up vote 2 down vote

I used to think like you did about the difference with B2B -- that you need a richer landing page and not just a squeeze.

However at Smart Bear when we put up a squeeze page for downloading a trial from a Google Ad, conversions went up 500% !

So in the end I agree with Nathan -- test, and absolutely test the usual squeeze cases because they can indeed work in B2B.

(Remember, just because you're selling "to a business" doesn't mean you're not still selling to humans.)

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is it a squeeze page to grab your book? Or a free trail sign up? – Adam Nov 6 '09 at 13:04
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Free trial download. – Jason Nov 6 '09 at 20:11
up vote 2 down vote

Nathan's answer a good one for it covers all the basics: Every audience is different and the only way to know for sure is testing.

I'd just like to add a possible rule-of-thumb: It depends on your product.

Startuptodo, Sherpa's Email Report, and also the "Double your Dating" guide are all information products.

But there's a special economic problem with information, as I already mentioned it in a different post: Your willingness-to-pay for information drops to (nearly) zero as soon as you got it. That's Arrow's information paradox.

Additionally, info products are so-called "experience" goods, for you can't determine the value (or utility) of the product before the purchase. In general, consumers are risk-averse, thus they are reluctant to buy experience goods. The usual way to overcome this is by providing a demo, a free trial, a test drive, etc.

But info products can't do this, for their customers would simply read it and then not purchase. After all, they already would have gotten the main benefit -- namely the wanted information.

BaseCamp, on the other hand, is no info product. It's also an experience good, yes, but they can simply offer a 30-day free trial to overcome any objection.

In other words: Info products operate in a rather critical economic "environment", if I may say so. Then, there are some additional point to consider.

But if your product is a typical web app -- ie, rather high frequenzy of need, the possibility to establish a brand and offer a demo or trial, etc. -- , use the multipage option.

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Thanks for answering. Isn't the issue of a trial and the issue of multipage vs 1 page two different things. Startuptodo for instance uses a single page lander to push a free trial for a web app, where as basecamp uses a multipage site. – Adam Nov 6 '09 at 13:08
Adam, good point. I didn't see the trial offer. Still I'd say, your product's qualities are a relevant factor. Startuptodo seems to be subscription service. People will use it repetitively (view new info products each month). That gives them the opportunity for free trials (and some branding). Note also that the copy in all your examples have a lot in common! Basecamp's home page is full with social proof. All their additional pages either address potential objections or display additional benefits. So, here's another product quality that suggests multipage sites: its need for explanations. – Claus Schwarm Nov 6 '09 at 15:25
Hi Claus - StartupToDo.com is definitely a subscription service - I'm hoping that by letting members add their [positive] comments about the service to their Profiles and having those comments on a rotator at the bottom of the page, that will help keep it fresh, but most members deal with that page once and then login from then on and go to their Overview page. – Bob Walsh Nov 17 '09 at 19:38
up vote 0 down vote

I believe Google Analytics allows A/B type testing of pages. This would be worth a look...

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I think they call the A/B tester "Google Website Optimizer" -- though it does have some integration with Google Analytics. It also offers multivariate test capability. – bstpierre Nov 6 '09 at 13:29
up vote 0 down vote

It's not about B2B, but I wrote about http://www.ashmaurya.com/2009/11/from-minimum-viable-product-to-landing-pages/ at http://www.47hats.com/2009/11/a-tale-of-disappointment-betrayal-and-ultimate-vindication/ because it was an extremely well documented account of how to do A/B testing right, with some surprises along the way.

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