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Landing page review – Athletic & lifestyle footwear brands

Wednesday, 3rd June , 2009

The landing page – one of your most crucial marketing assets. A well crafted landing page can catapult the profitability of your online campaigns into the stratosphere and a poorly designed landing page can destroy your conversion rates all together. In this post we’ll take a look at five paid search landing pages for athletic and lifestyle footwear brands and present general findings, trends and takeaways that you can use in developing your online campaigns

This is the first post in a series of landing page reviews. Subscribe to our RSS feed to be notified when new landing page reviews are conducted.

Please note: In this review all of the landing pages also happened to be main pages on the website or store website. Landing pages do not always have to be an existing page on your website and many times they are not. However, because the search term used was broad (brand name) a main page is typically well suited as a landing page at least from a content standpoint.

These landing pages were generated on June 2, 2009 by searching for the keyword indicated below on Goolge.com and clicking the company’s sponsored search link.

Company: Nike
Search term: Nike
Headline: Nike Official Store
Ad copy: Find Nike shoes, gear, and online only exclusives at Nike.com.
Landing page: Store.Nike.com – homepage

Company: Reebok
Search term: Reebok
Headline: Reebok Official Site
Ad copy: Get Free Shipping on Orders of $130 & Up. Shop Reebok.com Today!
Landing page: Reebok.com/Shop

Company: Puma
Search term: Puma
Headline: Puma Online Store
Ad copy: Get the Latest PUMA Shoes and Gear at The Official PUMA Online Store!
Actual page on website: Store.Puma.com

Company: Converse
Search term: Converse
Headline: Converse Official Site
Ad copy: Converse.com – Original Cool. American Icon. Join the Movement.
Landing page: Converse.com- homepage

Company: Adidas
Search term: Adidas
Headline: adidas Official Store
Ad copy: Get Free Shipping on adidas Shoes, Apparel & Accessories. Shop Now!
Landing page: Shopadidas.com – homepage

Trends & Takeaways

Sliders and Carousels – With the exception of Adidas, all of the websites feature a prominent slider in the main content section of the landing page. Sliders allow you to present a lot of information in a small, compact area. Visitors of the website can focus their attention on one piece of content at a time but still get the benefit of being presented with multiple content blocks. For companies with a lot of offerings this is a great way to present your products.

Flash – Again with the exception of Adidas, all of the landing pages contained elements of Flash. In some cases the entire homepage was designed in flash and in others just elements of the page (sliders and carousels) used flash. While not always the SEO’s first choice, Flash allows content to be displayed in a very engaging and meaningful way to visitors – a definite plus when trying to get visitors to take an action.

Rollover elements – Nike and Converse provide additional information to products featured on the homepage with subtle rollover elements. In Nike’s case this allows you to select individual products from within a content block. I found this to be a very cool feature as it allowed you to not only select the type of product (Nike Shox) but also a specific pair (men’s black). By providing rollover elements, you offer information to the visitor when they are ready to consumer it (i.e. when they are actually rolling over the image or content block).

No more than 3 clicks – In all cases the featured products were no more than 3 clicks away from purchase, with Nike, Converse and Reebok allowing you to add items to the cart in 2 clicks. 3 clicks may not seem like a lot but consumers have a very short attention span and the easier you make the checkout process the higher your conversion rates will be.

Conclusions

Give visitors the information they need when they need it. Having a lot of content isn’t an excuse for being unorganized. Nike does a great job of presenting a ton of information on their homepage but it never feels overwhelming.

Always be testing. Test your assumptions and optimize your pages based on actual data. What effect does headline A have over headline B? How about product X vs product Z. Continually testing your landing pages will lead to higher conversion rates and increased profitability.

Keep your landing page copy tight. Remember visitors don’t read, they scan. Keep copy on the landing page tight and allow visitors to scan the page for the information they want. In almost all of the landing pages there was only headlines and subheads, no body copy.

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