Landing page conversion optimization

A landing page is the page on your site that a visitor “lands” on after they click on an ad banner, search request or link in an email. The purpose of the page is to get the visitor to take a specific action required to reach a conversion goal. This could be filling in a form to request info or gain access to a restricted area, registering for a webinar or newsletter or making an order.

Landing pages are set up specifically designed to connect with the ad used to attract visitors to your site. These pages are also unique (customized for particular ad messages for example) and are separate from a company home page. They are often one of the prime areas that are used for extensive optimization through tests, mostly because of the direct conversion: It usually takes only one step, one action to reach a successful goal on a landing page.

Landing page optimization

Because of the often large number of unique pages, testing for landing page optimization can be laborious but at the same time very rewarding. The problem with landing pages is that to get the best results straight from the start you need to consider a number of factors, such as the channel on which an ad is published, the type of product, service or registration you’re trying to “sell” and the exact message used in the ad. Therefore, if you achieve good results with your landing pages for Product A it doesn’t mean it’ll give you sweet conversion rates when used for Product B, for example.

Web marketers may often focus mostly on the ad, targeting the right audience with the right message and thinking that their pre-sell is so good it doesn’t matter on what page they land because they’ll make that purchase anyway. Wrong. The only thing the ad did was get a prospect to click on the link, which asks for much less effort from prospects than whatever action you want them to take on your landing page! That click on the ad was just a spur of the moment, split-second decision.

On average, landing page conversion rates are pretty low depending on what the offer is. For landing pages that require visitors to actually pay for something conversion rates are often as low as 1-2%. Even though online offers require less effort from prospects than offline campaigns, landing pages require a lot of thought to present visitors with what they’re looking for. What’s funny is that every single visitor your ad managed to attract wants your landing page to convert, to offer them what they were looking for.

Landing page conversions

A successful landing page conversion takes two things: 1. Your visitors need to know straight away that the ad they followed gave them the information they requested by clicking and 2. Your visitors are attracted to your offer and are persuaded to take action.

Step 1 may well see you lose 50% of your visitors, part of whom will have dropped off for reasons you don’t have control over (e.g. accidental ad clicks, misread the ad) but the largest part may be deterred by the first impression they get.

A few examples of page elements that can directly impact the decision to exit or stick around on your landing page (Step 1):

• Long registration forms asking for (too many) details
• The way you worded the title of your landing page – Does it connect to the ad? Does the format give a wrong impression?
• The graphics that are used – images that are relevant to your offer and help persuade vs. general “feel good” photos of a couple of guys in suits having a meeting
• The overall length and formatting of your copy – An overload of text, long paragraphs, no subheadings
• Overall design and “feel” of the landing page – Does this page look like something I should take seriously or do the tacky images indicate that this is not what I’m looking for?
• Valuable content such as testimonials, review snippets, award logos, presentations
• Available information on the offer – Do visitors get enough details to make a sound decision
• The quality of your competitor’s landing pages – Visitors will often click on multiple ads at the same time (esp. PPC) and will be able to directly compare offers

A few examples of page elements that can directly affect whether or not your visitors take the action you want them to:

• Required fields in forms for private information – in particular Phone number
• Missing or insufficient pricing, order and/or shipping information
• No privacy reassurance next to the email form field
• No alternative channels of communication (email, phone, IM)
• Preparation and design of landing pages

There are a number of basic rules you should stick to when setting up landing pages:

• One conversion per page. Do not try to fit in, for example, a shopping cart to buy a particular product and add a registration form for a newsletter sign up on the landing page
• Think ahead in terms of maintenance. If you expect to be using hundreds of individual landing pages because of the number of products, services etc. you offer you will definitely need a system based on templates.
• Create a profile of your ideal converter. Develop personas based on the ad and/or marketing channel you’re linking your landing page to. As with all sorts of online optimization testing: If you don’t know your test subjects you will just be guessing about what might work, rather than having a structured set of test variables based on the personas you develop of your visitors.
• Don’t create landing pages that you think will appeal to a broad visitor audience – Such pages will probably not appeal to “any” of your visitors. The more you customize the bigger the potential reward is my experience.
• Be careful with images – Do not use images that are not relevant to your offer and do not use images that your visitors do not need. Unnecessary images cause unnecessary distraction and you will waste the little time you have to convince your visitors they want to stick around and find out more about your offer.
• Don’t use the whole width of the page, but use a column of text for easier reading (not more than for example 100 characters per line)
• Use short paragraphs of 2-3 sentences
• Test formats using bulleted features, or bolding the most important phrases for your offering
• The most important rule: Think about your copywriting and format your content well:
  Write appropriate headlines that refer directly to the ad visitors clicked on. This is usually one of the first items they notice and greatly affects their decision-making process.

Most commonly made mistakes

These are a number of commonly made landing page mistakes which you should definitely avoid:

• Using hard to read fonts/font sizes – No one reads text that is formatted in a font size lower than 10 points for regular copy
• Using a navigation bar from your regular website – If your provide your visitors with links to click, they instinctively will. If they end up on your regular corporate website they’re likely to completely miss your offer. Even if they don’t click they’ll probably look at it, get distracted and you’ve wasted precious decision-making time
• Do not create intermediate “Click here to continue” steps – The more hurdles you give your visitors to leap over the fewer of them will convert
• Registration form don’ts – Do not ask for too much information (Ask yourself: Do I really need them to fill in the city they live in if I already asked them for their zip code?). Do provide a “We value your privacy” reassurance when you ask for an email address – let them know what you’ll do and not do with the information they submit
• As mentioned before (but too important not to repeat): Using images or other design elements that are not relevant to your offer – Unnecessary distraction means unnecessary loss of potential converters.

Google Analytics reports

The following Google Analytics reports are of particular interest for landing page optimization:

• Content reports > Overview > Navigation summary
• Goals reports > Goal verification

More information

Follow the Googlelytics blog and discover more through concrete examples of landing page optimization.