Landing Page Optimization is an essential component of good web design. It is the process of improving a visitor's perception of a website by optimizing its content and appearance in order to make the pages more appealing to the target audiences, as measured by target goals such as conversion rate. What does that really mean? Basically, it means you need to make individual pages on your blog or website so simple and compelling that visitors WANT to contact you. And, isn't that what we all want... people to contact you through your website?

So, how do you optimize the layout, calls to actions and content of your real estate agent blog or website to get more conversion?

1. Identify mission critical parts of your website and their true economic value

Your only answer should be "my conversion forms." As a Realtor, your conversion forms should be one or more of the following:

• Contact form
• Search for properties registration form
• CMA/House Value form
• Market report form
• Special Offer/Newsletter form

These forms are the most important pages on your site because they are where conversion from visitor to contact takes place. Therefore, each of these forms has to be clearly identified, visible on each and every page of your real estate blog and incite people to want to click them.

Read also: Let's Talk Landing Page Optimization by SEOmoz

2. Define important visitor classes and key conversion tasks

This one is easy, real estate blogs typically have 3-4 qualified visitor types with the following conversion motivations and conversion points

Tip: See how the Jove Team of Rancho Cucamonga is using a content call to action to build conversion traffic for their brand new real estate site.

Read also: What Pamela Anderson can teach you about calling readers to action

Resource: Copywriting Maven's Landing Page Makeover Clinic #11

3. Gain insight on customer decision-making and make your page friction-free.

This one is simple - literally- make the page simple and the call to actions explicit. A simple design is the most important thing you can do for your real estate blog. The design should feel simple, easy to navigate with your most important tools (lead generators) towards the top of the page with explicit calls to action.

A Lesson in Simplicity from Google: Ever consider why Google owns search when Yahoo! Was the predominate search engine throughout the 90's? The reason is simplicity. When Yahoo and MSN turned themselves into portal sites, Google, did one thing... search and they did it well. As people were just learning how to navigate complex pages, Google, decided to simply answer one single question for users "How do I find what I am looking for on the Internet." Google's home page reflected that. All that you could do there was search and because of that Google WON search in less than 5 years.

Your home page needs to be "Google Simple." That means, make your call to actions explicit and identifiable. Put them at the top of EVERY page, make sure they have compelling copy and images that represent the function.

Read also: Get more real estate leads with killer call to actions on your blog and website

Read also: Steal these buttons: free real estate call to action buttons

Bonus tip: Place Lead Generators in Easy to Find Locations: Always start with a solid layout that directs visitors to your lead generators and includes the following:

• Your phone number and/or address on each page of your site
• An easy to find contact form
• An easy to find lead generating CMA and Property Search tool

Read also: Real estate blog rookie mistakes

4. Uncover problems with your page and decide which elements to test and how to test

USE TOOLS that let you graphically track clicks on your pages. One of the most important things you can ever track is where people are clicking on your homepage. It will show you if your lead generators and call to action content is working. For example, I use a tool that allows me to graphically track page clicks as seen below.

As you can see (this click traffic is from a 1 hour window) my best call to action is the win a blog icon with my second best being the join a webinar button followed by the buy a blog icon. The most import thing this traffic pattern shows me is that my calls to action work. I get plenty of clicks per hour which is exactly what I want to see.

You can track this metric by using VisiStat's Touch Mapping heat map tool which will show you what area of your site get clicked the most. VisiStat's Touch Mapping overlay report is one of the fastest, most accurate ways to see exactly what links, products and information your visitors are interested in. I recommend VisitStat because it is cheap (around $20/mo) and gives you some great tools to not only track traffic but conversion so you can use it to optimize your landing pages.

Resource: Emotional Motivators in lkanding Page Optimization

Resource:

I highly recommend purchasing the following book. It will teach you everything you need to know about how to optimize your pages for the best possible conversion rates. Since using the tips and tricks I learned in this book on the RSS Pieces site, we improved our convertable traffic by more than 720% in under 3 weeks.

Best Book on the Subject: Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

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