Rational Landing Page Strategy

Using landing pages as an effective internet marketing tool is about creating the right experiences to lead targeted visitors to a specific compelling call to action that converts into a sale. At first glance, a rational and logical approach to optimizing landing pages would be to directly craft one persona-based experience (layout, design, message) and present the most effective request for the prospect to take some action that converts to a lead or sale. The simplest way to accomplish this would seem to be to have only one option for the targeted persona to choose from, and you end up with a neat ratio of one landing page to one call to action. However, there is an inherent error in this logic:

All landing pages have at least two distinct and
obvious calls to action

Even Google’s home page, often praised for its simplicity, has an astounding 19 calls to action in its sparse design (20 on days when Google Doodle links somewhere, and more than 30 if you expand the “more” option). That’s a lot of ways to not run a search.

More than 20 calls to action

I want to examine what Google did to test and improve this as a landing page, and why it works. But first we should learn a little about predictable irrationality.

The truth about relativity

In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely describes the importance of relativity in decision behaviour using numerous examples, including the introduction of bread maker appliances at William-Sonoma. When the first bread maker was introduced in the store, it was not as successful as expected. Customers did not seem to know why they needed a bread maker, as compared to one of many other options of home appliances (coffee makers, toasters, mixers, etc.).

Each call to action, such as the action to purchase a bread maker, always has an option to not take the action. The no-action option is very safe and comforting for the prospect because they are already familiar with the consequences of that decision. It is easy to understand what life will be like without a bread maker because that is how you already live.

All landing pages come with this no-action option: the Back button.  The visitor decides between  your call to action and taking just about any other action. The Back button is the loudest call to action on your landing page.

The Decoy Effect and landing pages

Back to William-Sonoma. The store did want to sell bread makers, but how?  The problem was solved, by clever marketers of course, by introducing a much larger, fancier, and more expensive bread machine. Now customers bought the cheaper bread maker.

Good, Better, Best marketers might be disappointed that the newly introduced model was not the big seller. However, customers now have the choices of no bread machine, a compact bread machine, and a large, expensive bread machine. This change of context makes it much easier for customers to understand why they should select a less expensive bread machine that fits on their counter.

Before the introduction of the second bread maker, the choice is symmetrical: buy or don’t buy. This choice heavily favors the familiar don’t-buy option (also known as the no-action option). When the second bread maker is introduced, the conceptual proximity of the two buy options dominates the decision behaviour by providing one option for the don’t-buy side versus two options for the buy side. Even though the buyer is much more familiar with the don’t-buy option, the focus is unbalanced toward deciding which is the better buy option given the new context. Landing page designers can irrationally promote one of their options by pairing a new obvious strong and weak choice to create an asymmetrical dominating set, what Ariely calls the Decoy Effect.

I’m feeling lucky

So, what was Google’s decoy bread maker? It is the I’m Feeling Lucky button. This button has been a part of the Google page design from its beginning, and remains just as prominent now. In December 2009, Google implemented a very unusual and revealing update to the home page.

The Decoy Effect

On the official Google blog, Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product and User Experience, explains how the fade in feature was designed and tested to focus on calls to action that promote search versus the other Google product options:

…the “fade in” is an elegant solution that provides options to those who want them, but removes distractions for the user intent on searching.

In the minimalistic first presentation of the Google search, there are only two calls to action: Google Search and I’m Feeling Lucky. It could have been just the Google Search button, but I’m Feeling Lucky has be retained all these years. However, I think Google have wisely kept the I’m Feeling Lucky button not just for nostalgia or consistency but as a proper decoy. Online you have many search engines to choose from, but here Google presents two options within its own search: the seemingly infinite pages of ranked results and the I’m Feeling Lucky single result, which acts as a nice decoy.