In the previous article "How to Effectively Optimize Reference Landing Page" possible methodologies of optimizing reference landing page(s) was introduced. This article will discuss possible methodologies of transactional landing page optimization.

1. What is the essence of optimizing transactional landing page(s)?

It is to navigate the buyer to go through the transaction steps to the end that are usually the same as making transaction offline at stores etc., minimizing operational errors and/or doing things over again. This is quite natural because completion of online transaction to maximize conversion rate is the objective of the page(s), as explained in the previous article Vol.14 - What is Landing Page and Its Optimization?. Transactional landing page is the last part of the persuasion scenario, the conversion point of the funnel, as explained in the previous article Vol.13 - How is Landing Page Optimization Related to Persuasion Scenario? For the buyer to have reached this point means that much effort have been made by the web owner as well as the buyer, and it is quite natural that the both parties surely would like to conclude the transaction.

But in reality, it is surprising that many buyers leave the landing page(s) before completing the transaction and there are many reasons. Some attributes to the transaction itself (e.g. the buyer is dissatisfied with price, quality, requirements etc. of the products/services and finally decided not to "buy". But some others all attributes to failure of optimizing the transactional landing page(s).

Whether the reason for clicking goodbye is the former of the latter, it is business opportunity loss, and it is crucial to optimize the transactional landing page to maximize the conversion rate and minimize loss in business opportunity.

2. What are possible methodologies of transactional landing page optimization for maximized conversion rate?

From the author's experience, possible methodologies of optimizing transactional landing page(s) are as below.

1) Make clear call to action(s) and focus on transaction.

Making clear call to action(s) and focusing on transaction can be achieved by the following.

(1) Confirm that the buyer would like to "buy" then move to conversion point by navigating the buyer to the transaction landing page and make the buyer that he/she is entering a transaction.

(2) Tell the buyer clearly what he/she needs to do to make a transaction.

(3) Make the transaction landing page a separate area in the total website. It is better to have minimum (or no) links to the main website pages; if such links are to be made, take care so that the buyer would now such links are not for making transaction.

In addition, it is better to make use multiple call to actions in many cases. This is because it is difficult to pinpoint one specific offering that appeals to a specific person (buyer). An example is in a BtoB world might be a free trial, white paper and price quote all in a transactional landing page.

2) Design the series of transactional landing pages in a way that the buyer goes through the online transaction step by step similarly to offline transaction.

Series of transaction pages need to be designed going through transaction processes of offline transaction. The essence of online and offline transaction should be the same and in theory the buyer should be going through the same transaction step whether it is online of offline, or at least the same offline transaction processes is what the buyer (and the seller = web owner) is used to so the processes should go smoother if kept same with that of offline.

Such steps (procedures) include filling forms of the buyer information, selecting/filling what he/she would like to buy, how many/much he/she would like to buy, where does the buyer want it to be delivered and when, how the buyer want to pay etc.

3) Design landing pages that truly help the buyer smoothly go through transaction processes.

KFS (Key Factors for Success) to develop landing pages that buyers can smoothly go through transaction processes are: transaction overview; clear, simple and convincing procedure/operation; confirmation and solicitude, which can be achieved by the following.

(1) Specify the overview of the transaction procedure together with where currently the buyer is.

(2) Before starting the transaction, specify important information such as terms of use and reasons for the buyer providing his/her private information, and make sure that the buyer agrees.

(3) Ask for minimum information and operation to minimize burden of the buyer. This can be done by:-

- Retrieving data already exist from the DB etc. (e.g. customer name etc if the buyer is already a member, province/prefecture and city from zip code)
- Allowing the buyer to select instead of input (e.g. pull down menu, selecting to tick).

Minimum operation leads to minimum human error and contributing to response rate improvement. This is because the buyer is likely to abandon the forms if he/she is asked to input so much data and/or he/she needs to correct the input data again, leading to reduction in response rate. Also, from privacy perspective, it is far better to ask them for minimum information.

(4) Clarify what the buyer needs to do to. This includes:-

- Clear indication: copy, link button, input box, how and what the buyer needs to input and/or click/select
- Clear distinction between required items and optional items
- Clear instruction on how to input: For numbers, must be half-width or full-width also acceptable. For phone number, hyphen needed or not. For date, order of year, month and day, how to input the numbers (e.g. 1 or 01)

(5) When all data has been input, allow the buyer to confirm and ask the buyer if he/her do want to buy i.e. to complete the transaction and make him/her click "yes" if he/she does want to buy.

(6) If the buyer wants to change the data (e.g. number of products, how to pay), let him/her make changes with ease and confirm again.

(7) Clarity the completion of the transaction. Display the confirmation message and/or send an e-mail to address the completion of the transaction.

4) Make sure to follow up.

Possible follow-ups include the following.

(1) After effective call to action and leads are to come in, follow up with responses in a timely manner.

(2) Let the buyer know the status of delivery of the transaction(s) (e.g. notify when the product is sent, online payment transaction is complete).

(3) Clearly let know how the buyer can change the transaction in some cases (e.g. subscribe or unsubscribe, making change in personal information and settings).This can be done by clarifying the URL of the page to make changes and how.

(4) Let the buyer see the history of the past transactions.

The author would like to add that maximizing the use of the past transactions as effective CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is extremely important as well. This may well lead to one-on-one personalized offering to buyers meaning higher buyer/customer satisfaction and more possibilities of upcoming transactions, thus higher ROI and customer equity. Amazon is probably the best example of this. Customer equity and customer life time value is one of the topics that deserve further discussion so the author would like to focus on this in one of the upcoming article.

The author now has completed explaining how to plan and develop website/web contents, driving prospects to the web content and navigating them to go through the persuasion scenario to complete the transaction.
Next, the author would like to discuss the PR/newsrooms in the web 2.0 online world as a follow-up of the previous article Vol.7 - The New Rules of Marketing, PR and IR in Web 2.0 Online World because it is one of the fields that are going through drastic changes with Internet and web 2.0 technologies.