Excel, Sheets and Landing Page Optimization for budding marketers.

Marketing has evolved as a competitive arena over the years. As of today, if you experiment and get your strategies right, your product acquires success. When it comes to marketing or growth marketing, the information and knowledge that one should acquire regarding the user and the product are huge. Along with knowing your users and products, it is also important to know how to use the data that you collect and how to optimize according to the requirements expected by users from the product. Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are some of the best tools to evaluate your growth metrics, but it is also necessary to understand what is the role of Excel, Sheets and Landing page in marketing. Let’s dive right in.

Excel and sheets are not a hard nut to crack. Let me walk you through some of the basic things you need to know to use excel and sheets. Most of the queries and formulas in excel and sheets are identical. There are only very small differences between them. Excel and sheets are the best tools that you can rely on to arrange your data for better evaluation and understanding. First of all, what we need to do is to download the data that you would want to sort and filter directly to the excel sheets and then just go for it. Once you get to know the basics of excel and sheets, it’s just a matter of time.

Sort and Filter

Sorting and Filtering your data is fun to play with in excel and sheets. With just the right navigation, the exact data that you need will be ready.

To sort, right-click on any column that you would like to sort and select the option to sort the data however you want( A-Z or Z-A). Otherwise, goto data ->sort->add your sort level.

To filter,

Goto -> data -> create a filter → select the page or data you need to filter out by value (check or uncheck the values)

Sum and Variations

The sum commands are very useful when it comes to knowing the total of a set of values. It makes your work much easier. The sum commands are :

1. SUM — sums everything

Ex, SUM(A: A)

2. SUMIF (sums based on one condition)

Ex, SUMIF (Country, “USA”, impressions”)

3. SUMIFS (sums based on multiple conditions)

Ex formula, SUMIFS (sum_range,criteria_range1,Criteria_1,[criteria_range2,…])

Variations — COUNT

The COUNT command is used to count the number of values. The count commands are:

1. COUNTA(counts the number of text items)
2. COUNTIF(counts based on one condition)
3. COUNTIFS(counts based on multiple conditions)

Tables

Pivot tables are life savers when it comes to arranging and getting the specific data you need. It is a statistical table that summarizes the data of a more extensive table.

To create a pivot table in sheets,

Data->pivot table->create ( add rows, columns and filters as required).

To create a pivot table in excel,

Insert →Pivot table -> select new sheet → use filters as required

Another object that is typically used in the pivot table is the Slicer. This object is another way of filtering out your data. You can go to Analyze- >Slicer->sort the whole table by the elements.

In sheets, goto Data->slicer->select what element you need in the slicer

Some of the other features that seem to be really interesting in excel and sheets are conditional formatting, string functions, Xlookup, Vlookup, Error Trapping and locking the spreadsheets.

Conditional formatting in excel and sheets changes the appearance of the cells based on the conditions you provide. You can also add more than one condition here.

In sheets, goto format ->conditional formatting-> you’ll be able to see the options that you would like to add to the sheet.

String functions — Strings are basically texts. There are a number of functions in excel to address these strings. These functions are identical in sheets as well. The functions are:

1. LEN()
2. SUBSTITUTE()
3. FIND()
4. SEARCH()
5. MID()
6. LEFT()
7. RIGHT()

Add the column value in between the parenthesis and you’ll see the results. For ex, LEN(c3).

Xlookup and Vlookup are two of the most loved functions in the excel even though the formula might look a bit complicated. Vlookup is used in sheets whereas Xlookup is used in excel. Vlookup is a function to lookup data in a table organized vertically. Basically, this function helps you find specific data in a table that matches the corresponding column. Xlookup addresses all of the weaknesses of Vlookup.

Error trapping is a method to avoid errors in excel and sheets. The function that is used to avoid errors(#NA) is IFERROR.

Locking the spreadsheets is really easy. In excel, Just right-click anywhere on the sheet or the cells that you need and select,

Format cells ->protection->check the lock

Now, review ->protect worksheet->add your password

In sheets, select the column →data -> protect sheets →add range ->select the sheet

Thus, we get a brief idea and basic information to access and use excel and sheets to organize and store data. This is one of the important topics to go through in the course offered by the CXL Institute to get a brief understanding of how it works. Now, let’s see what’s the role of landing page optimization in marketing. Most of the marketers would be aware of the importance but let’s dive into the basics of LPO and user psychology.

The role of landing page optimization in product reach

A landing page is nothing but a page where users land on, page users see right after clicking an ad source. This page is clearly designed or created for a conversion goal of a product. But, an effective landing page does not mean that it’s about what’s going on that page itself. There are so many other factors that influence conversion optimization. Basically, a landing page shortens the journey from click to conversion, understands the important questions and creates clarity for the users about the product. Check out a usual landing page cycle here:

Search -> PPC ad -> Landing page ->Form → Confirmation

This is the funnel that leads to conversion. And, in this process, there are so many criteria that affect the conversion and that’s when we need to follow an optimization process. So, a valuable optimization process includes research, a hypothesis, a treatment, an experience, analysis of the experiment and a follow up of the experiment.

A rough research process includes:

1. Heuristics walkthrough — empathy and understanding
2. Quantitative research — What and where
3. Qualitative research — why

In order to follow the process of optimization and have in-depth knowledge of how everything works together and to understand your user, user psychology also plays an important role. Understanding how the human brain works and how humans make decisions is also a key ingredient in creating a good landing page. That’s where the role of Neuroscience jumps in.

There is something called the law of effort which states that human beings are always inclined to do or choose things that seem to be easier. This is why most of the landing pages with too much content on it and that seems to be complicated does not really work well at certain points. Asking users their sensitive information is also a factor that can make a landing page look complicated.

Gathering quantitative data is also a very important step in Landing page optimization( data collected from Google Analytics). This insight gives you an overview of what users are doing and where things are going wrong. This is one of the best ways to find out where the drop-offs are happening. Thus, we can come to a conclusion that creating a good landing page or optimizing a landing page after you realize what the user requirements are and what do you want the users to know, plays a very important role when it comes to the success or conversion of your product.

Bonus Tips:

1. Build an information hierarchy where you can find your target audience, goal and source.
2. Create a wireframe for your landing page as a visual guide that represents the framework of a page.