A good landing page delights visitors, and a bad one disappoints.So, decide which one you would like to offer your target audience.If you have chosen the former (I know you have!), this post is for you!Today’s post is about how to optimize your landing page. It has the best tips, reasons behind a low-performing landing page, and many examples. So, without any delay, let’s dive right in!
What Does Landing Page Optimization Exactly Mean?
Landing Page Optimization refers to improving and enhancing the landing page elements to boost conversions.It can be defined as a subset of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and involves methods like A/B testing, multivariate testing, etc. These landing page CRO methods help companies improve and achieve their landing pages' conversion goals. 5 Reasons Why Your Landing Page Isn’t Performing WellA landing’s page end goal is to maximize conversions. But what if you aren’t seeing any increase in your conversion rate? Well, that would mean your landing page isn’t performing well, and you must consider optimizing it. To optimize your landing page, identify the reasons behind its poor performance. Here are the top 5 reasons👇 that usually lead to a low-performing landing page.
1. You aren’t catching the visitor’s interest.
A landing page must be concise, clear, and direct. As soon as visitors visit your website, they must know what you offer. Being upfront about your product or service is of utmost importance. The goal of the landing page is to ensure that the readers understand how you can address their pain points. So, crafting;
- compelling headlines,
- a clear and concise introduction, and
- strong opening paragraphs
can keep the readers hooked to your landing page. Codecademy has a clear, straightforward landing page that directly introduces visitors to their product/ service.
2. Your Call To Action (CTA) buttons aren’t prominent and optimized.
You may think CTAs are the simplest of all landing page elements, but they are very important. A good CTA is critical for increasing your landing page conversions. Hence, it must be optimized and strategically placed with proper color schemes that grab attention. While your landing page offers visitors relevant and compelling information, a strategically placed and prominent CTA prompts the visitor to take action. Here are a few tips for a good CTA button.
- Make them stand out from the rest of the landing page.
- Use specific color buttons that incite reactions (and actions!)
- Use precise wording that prompts visitors to act.
- Place the buttons strategically throughout your landing page – above the fold, below the fold, and in-between informative content.
RevenueHero has a good CTA button that’s different from the rest of the page, eye-catching, and strategically placed.
3. Your product/ service benefits aren’t clear.
The most potent elements when creating a compelling landing page are the product/ service features. Besides creating a captivating CTA, clearly outline the product or service you intend to offer.Make your content customer-oriented. Think about what they will get out of the deal. Once you communicate the benefits, customers can decide faster whether they are up for the product or not. Follow these tips to keep your point across clearly:
- Use proper sub-heads, bullets, and separate paragraphs. It makes your content easy to read and improves SEO.
- Employ the correct font. It must increase readability, improve trustworthiness, and ultimately conversions.
- Format the content well to retain the reader’s attention. From font style to size, paragraphs, lists, etc. Keep an eye on the spacing as well.
Uber’s landing page clearly stated its services clean and straightforward way. Take a look👇Source
4. You’ve given too much information.
Remember that your landing page is not the end goal. It is the means to an end (sign-up or purchase).Providing too much content isn’t going to serve your goal. On the contrary, you would risk losing the interest of your readers. So, ensure focusing on concise content, showcase benefits, keep it minimal, and let your CTA do the work and help you increase your conversions. So, overall, keep everything short and sweet. Let the readers consume valuable info in lesser time. Uber is the best example of such landing page content.
5. You haven’t used enough media.
So far, I have told you about the text content. Now, let’s talk about the other content options that you have. Video content can drastically trigger your conversion rates. Statistics say that 30% of the top landing pages use video content. In fact, embedded video content can increase conversions by 86%.So, to break the walls of text, you can embed video in your landing pages. It engages the visitor, increases their understanding of the brand, and makes the landing page visit more interesting. Besides videos, images can also be a good element for your landing page. Engaging, creative, artistic images can grab attention and hook the reader to your website.For example, Rebump uses an email marketing related (their product) video on their landing page. Source I think Wix has a stunning, artistic, and unique landing page. The website has a background image that runs throughout the page. Source
What is the good conversion rate for a landing page?
Coming to a good conversion rate for landing pages, WordStream says that the average landing page conversion rate is 2.35% across industries, with the top 25th percentile of landing pages hitting 5.31% or higher.To calculate your landing page conversion rate, use the following formula:Number of conversions generated by your landing page/ number of people visiting the page.Don’t be disheartened if your landing page conversion rate is not close to the average rate. It is not easy to reach these percentages. Optimize your landing page if you want to nail the average conversion rate. Though it may be challenging at first, you must put dedicated efforts into enhancing the page for better conversions. Also, remember that there’s no ‘right way’ to design a landing page. So, the experimentation will continue. You must try out different strategies and see what works well for you. Need some help optimizing your landing pages? Just scroll to the next section for a handful of tips to optimize a landing page!
17 Tips to Optimize Your Landing Pages to Get More Conversions
To improve the website conversion rate, it is significant to optimize landing pages. When you start your landing page optimization, start with the best tips and solid data. Consider optimizing your landing page as building a product. You cannot achieve perfection on your first attempt. Instead, you may have to create 100 prototypes before getting the perfect one. Landing pages work in the same way. You need to create several before you can achieve perfection – the landing page that is appealing, compelling, and meets the expectations of your target audience.So, to get you started with your landing page optimization, here are 17 tips to follow.
1. Make a clear offer.
As I have already mentioned, keep your landing page content customer-oriented. A wise thing to do is to make the customers feel appreciated, intelligent, inspired, and excited. When you plan your landing page optimization strategy, think about ways to make your visitors feel positive. Consider your customer’s pain points or end goals and convert these into your landing page headlines. Curology does it well. The brand has a loud, direct, and clear offering that new visitors can easily understand. Source
2. Pick contrasting colors.
An eye-catching color palette can be game-changing. The best landing pages I have come across are minimalistic with a contrasting color scheme. SEMrush does it well. Check out 👇SEMrush has a stark color contrast on its landing page. But the brand ensures clarity. The purple gradient background makes the headline and the CTA more pronounced. Plus, there’s ample spacing between the words and the lines.
3. Place the significant part above the fold.
‘Above the fold’ comes from the first page of the newspaper layout. This place had the most trending and enticing stories, so the headlines of these stories were visible above the newspaper fold. Hence, customers would want to buy it. Though your landing page cannot be folded, visitors first notice the content above the fold. Then they scroll to get the information. So, your ‘above the fold’ content is crucial. Make it concise, compelling, and transparent. Convey your brand message through the headline and the brief, followed by the CTA.The best example here would be SquareSpace👇
4. Keep it simple
Simplicity attracts visitors. The best kind is a minimalistic and clean landing page that communicates the brand message well. So, get rid of the visual clutter. Too many images and videos can take away attention from the critical content. I found Shopify’s landing page to be simple yet attractive. It has the right color contrast, a clean interface, and concise content. The landing page speaks it all without wasting too many words. Source
5. Add social proof.
Customer testimonials on landing pages are for those prospects who are a little confused about whether to buy the product or not. Like many other consumers, I rely a lot on social proof. I always look at the ‘other clients’ of the business, their experiences after using the product or service, and their success stories. Placing testimonials on the landing page is the best way to create trust with the prospects. The customer success stories will ensure that the prospect trusts you and clicks on the CTA.Quotes, brand logos, long-story-short reviews, etc., work well for landing pages. Look at how MarketerHire does it.
6. Maintain consistency.
While you convey the brand message on the landing page in the best possible way, visual consistency also matters. It contributes a lot to boosting landing page conversions. Say you place a click-through ad on Facebook that redirects people to your landing page. Now, you must keep the text, visuals, and other elements of the landing page corresponding to the ad. That is, your ad elements must be reflected on your landing page. In other words, your ad and your landing page visuals must look similar. If not, visitors may be annoyed 😫
7. Experiment with headlines and copy.
As I have said, you cannot achieve perfection on the first go. You must keep your experiments going, especially with the headlines and the landing page copy. Though people are interested in videos, reels, and images, texts matter too. People must read to understand what the brand has to offer. So, text content sure resonates with your audience.Run A/B testing on your landing page headlines. Makes body content changes and try A/B testing to see how well the elements perform.
8. Use straightforward CTA buttons.
A CTA is the piece of content that triggers action. So, ensure that your CTA does not confuse the reader or stress them out. Make it clear and concise. A few examples of simple and effective CTAs are
- Download now
- Try for free
- Click here
- Read more
- Request a Quote
- Schedule Now
- How It Works
9. Add contact
The must-add element in your landing page is contact information. It must be easy for prospects to contact your team. There are different ways to convey your contact info on your website. You can place your contact number and email id on the landing page or use a contact form. Further, several companies also add links to help centers and FAQs to contact the team. By now, customers know where to find the company’s contact. Bills.com places its contact on its landing page for ease of access. Source
10. Implement the scarcity principle
The scarcity principle says that rare or limited objects, info, and ideas hold greater value. You must have come across phrases like ‘Offer valid for two days. Hurry!’. 👈This is a classic example of the scarcity technique in action. So, now you know why the ‘limited time’ and ‘limited quantity’ phrases are used in marketing 💡You can implement the scarcity technique on your landing page headline, design scarcity-focused CTA (like, grab now!), a countdown timer, or use scarcity content in pricing, or landing page copy. Check out how successfully DesignCuts.com uses FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) to make customers buy their products. Source
11. Continue A/B Testing
The more A/B tests your run, the more you can optimize your landing page elements. A/B testing makes your landing page data more accurate. However, remember that each A/B test should include a single variant change. For instance, your CTA. If changes are made to multiple variants, you won’t understand the impact of the changes on your landing page conversions. Once you have the data and know your audience, you can use the info to redesign your landing page. Also, you can verify the improvements through A/B testing.
12. Experiment with different form lengths.
Several companies use short forms, while several others use long forms. Though marketers may think email addresses are enough, it is not always true. A longer form can be more effective if you want to qualify a lead for a premium product. Nauto has a medium to long length form on its landing page. Source On the other hand, Wag has a short form on its landing page. Source: Depending on your product type and other requirements, you can experiment with the length of your web form.
13. Optimize landing page for SEO
When people Google things using different search terms, they find landing pages via organic search. One of your landing pages can be your home page which people land on when they click a link from their search results. Hence, ensure that your home page is optimized for SEO. Rank for industry-related keywords. For instance, say you are a lead management software company. If your home page is SEO optimized, someone searching for ‘lead management tools’ will get your home page in the search results.
14. Try out an exit popup.
An exit popup appears when a visitor attempts to leave the page. It is definitely less annoying than the popups that appear as soon as a visitor enters the website or when they are navigating. For exit popups, try using compelling visuals and CTA, or even you can incentivize the popup with a special offer. ActiveCampaign offers resources in its exit popup. Similarly, you can offer discounts, newsletter subscription popups, free trials, sign-up, etc. Source
15. Reduce page loading time
Page speed plays a vital role in optimization. So, to optimize your landing page, ensure that your pages load faster. Since most people browse from their smartphones, you must also ensure that the website works seamlessly from any device. If pages are pretty slow to load, customers may lose their patience resulting in high bounce rates and low conversions.
16. Make your landing page design responsive
People mostly use their tablets or mobile phones for surfing instead of their laptops. So, ensure that your landing page is responsive from any device. Make the content readable, provide high-quality images, keep the size and font of the copy appropriate, and place the CTA buttons in the right place. This will ensure that the audience can easily access your website from any device. Improve all of the above-mentioned aspects makes the landing page mobile-responsive. Plus, it makes a massive difference to your landing page conversions.
17. Refresh and update your landing page
Customers may often get bored with the same landing page design. So you can update and refresh to optimize your landing page. It will help you avoid campaign fatigue. You can do so by updating the headlines, inserting the latest data, adding quality images, changing copies, creating new ad copy, adding videos, etc.As mentioned above, update the landing page and run A/B testing to know what’s working well and what’s not. Further, track the significant metrics that communicate whether or not your landing page elements are working well. But what are these metrics? Check them out in the next section!
Important metrics to check in a landing page
After you have made changes and optimized your landing page, you must track a few significant metrics. These metrics help you understand if the optimization worked. So, while you optimize your landing pages, keep a check on these metrics too.
Conversion rate
The most critical metric that tells you if landing page optimization has made a difference or not. The primary goal behind optimizing landing pages is to increase conversion rates. Calculate the conversion rate by dividing the total number of visitors by the number of conversions. Then, multiply the result by 100 to get the conversion rate.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors exiting the page only after viewing a single page only. To get more landing page conversions, ensure reducing the bounce rate. A high bounce rate indicates that the landing page has not met the target audience’s expectations. So, optimize the landing page to keep your audiences hooked.
Page views
This metric allows you to measure the success of your landing page. The page view metrics indicate the number of people viewing your page. With this metric, you can also find out which pages of your website are getting the most views and the ones with the least views. You can get insights about high-performing pages, like what triggers customers to view specific pages. You can also improve the rest of your website pages with these insights.
Average time spent on page
How long does a visitor stay on a landing page? This metric is your answer to the question.If visitors spend a long time on your landing page, it indicates higher engagement and a high-performing landing page.On the other hand, if visitors spend a shorter time, it shows that your landing page is not performing well. Hence, ensure that your landing page has sufficient information about your product that keeps the visitors engaged.
Cost per conversion
While the other metrics convey insights about the landing page performance; this metric tells you how much you spend on acquiring each new prospect.Tracking this metric is also significant because as much as you want to boost your landing page conversions, you do not want to increase your costs.
Form abandonment
The form abandonment metric indicates the number of visitors who began filling out the web form but left mid-way. Users may leave the web form mid-way due to several reasons. For instance, asking for sensitive details, time-consuming processes, lengthy forms, etc. When trying to optimize your landing page, try different form lengths to see what works for your target audience.
5 Tools to Optimize Your Landing Pages
As landing pages can lure customers with their appeal, offers, and CTAs, you must keep them optimized. Check out these tools 👇 you can use to optimize your landing page.
1. Optimizely
The Optimizely platform provides you with a complete set of optimization technologies. The software helps optimize digital experiences and includes must-have features like A/B testing, Multivariate testing, server-side testing, AI-powered personalization, and experimentation. The key features of Optimizely include
- Cart abandonment messages and alerts
- AI Personalization
- Custom product recommendations,
- Customer profiles segmentation
2. Unbounce
Unbounce is your building tool. The platform helps to build conversion-ready landing pages quickly with its drag-and-drop visual editor. The software is really easy-to-use and requires no technical or special coding skills. The key features of Unbounce include
- Drag-and-drop landing page builder
- Pre-built design templates
- Analytics and reporting
- Opt-in forms and popups with triggers
- Advanced customization options.
3. Hotjar
Hotjar is one of the most popular landing page optimization tools. It offers users with an intuitive and flexible experience of building landing pages. The software is affordable. Plus, it is easy to connect Hotjar to your website using a tracking code.The key features of Hotjar include
- Heatmaps
- Tracking visitor clicks and mouse movement
- Data quantification and segmentation
- Session replays and recordings
- Surveys and feedback
4. Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)
This landing page optimization tool is also one of the best, and it works similar to Optimizely. One of the best tools for newbies, VWO requires you to create an account and set landing page optimization goals. The platform helps to understand what users want and bring back lost visitors.The key features of VWO include
- A/B testing
- Multivariate testing
- Split URL testing
- Cross-domain testing
- Visual and code editor
- Cookies-based tracking and geo-targeting.
5. Olark
Olark is a live chat solution that can maximize your landing page conversions. The chat widget on a landing page can quickly respond to visitor queries in a personalized way. Also, with live chat widgets, customers find products easily, provide information about what they want, and get product recommendations. The key features of Olark include
- Live chat insights and transcript.
- Live Custom chat-box forms.
- Other software integrations
- Track team’s performance feature
- Chat distribution
Wrapping Up
Your landing page is a potential gold mine filled with conversion opportunities. All you need is to analyze your landing page and design it in a way that meets the audience’s expectations. I hope my tips will help you optimize your landing page and boost your landing page conversions. Also, don’t forget to use the right tools to optimize your landing page and ensure that everything works seamlessly. Tools like RevenueHero can help you schedule lead meetings faster and capture leads directly from web forms. Explore the platform to learn more.
