Every marketer knows that testing things out and optimizing landing pages is one of the best ways to secure higher conversion rates. Many newbies discount the effect that changing the smallest elements on a landing page can have on conversion rates, but even colors of your buttons can be a big difference maker. That’s why you should take the time to test every element on your page to find the page that converts the best. But should you try adding Adsense or social media buttons to your landing pages as well?

We have addressed the issue of Adsense on landing pages in the past. It’s really up to the marketer to test various units and compare conversion rates between pages that do have Adsense and those that do not. Most top marketers leave their Adsense units at the bottom of their landing pages. They figure if the visitors are going to leave, they may as well leave by clicking on an Adsense unit. Things are a bit more complicated if you think about social media buttons. Social media can be a bit distracting for your visitors, and you could lose the attention of your visitors when they are in the process of submitting your website to Facebook and other top sites. Besides, not all landing pages provide enough value for your visitors for them to take the time to share them on social networking sites such as Facebook. There are too many social networking websites available these days, but not all of them can be great traffic drivers for your website. StumbleUpon, Delicious, Facebook, and Twitter seem to be the most effective ones these days. Delicious can slowly build lots of traffic to your website. StumbleUpon is a bit faster and gives you the ability to advertise your pages as well. Facebook and Twitter don’t need any introduction. Leveraging these sites to drive traffic to your landing page can bring down your CPAs. At the same time, you don’t want your buttons to be intrusive or too distracting for your visitors. Your traffic level is not going to matter if your conversion rates drop sharply.

You do want to make sure that your social media buttons open a new page for your visitors to submit your pages to social networks. You don’t want your visitors to completely leave your website, but of course you can test that aspect of your landing page as well. In order to get real value out of your social media buttons, you need to have a compelling offer or an interesting landing page. Having a compelling product does help as well. At the end of the day, it’s all about testing your pages.