3 Ways to Turbo-boost Your Landing Pages

December 14, 2020 Stan

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Depending on who you believe, either Oscar Wilde, Will Rogers, or some advertising agency first coined the phrase. Regardless of the providence, the sentiment is true, particularly in digital marketing: you only get one chance to get a prospect to convert. Consider the following factoids:

From the Nielsen Norman Group (A UX research consultancy with a super-awesome newsletter you should subscribe to):

“Users often leave Web pages in 10–20 seconds”

From the 2020 Unbounce Landing Page Conversion Report:

“The Median conversion rate across all landing pages analyzed was 3.2% (or, expressed as an average, 9.7%). But the top-performers do much better: they impressed us with a median conversion rate of 25% (based on the top 25th percentile).”

So you can see that chance is not only fleeting but small. Luckily, you can also see there’s a huge room for improvement. A 681% room from improvement, in fact. So what can you do to get some extra conversion love? Here are a few suggestions:

Focus your pages

More is not always better. Most of us are a little less focused nowadays and can be easily distracted or bored. Because of this, you need to make sure your landing pages are tight by:

Removing all unnecessary elements from your page: For example, that top navigation that looks like your main website? Remove it. You want people to fill in your form, not wander off around your site.
Quickly getting to the point: People only read what’s above the fold and usually only the first third of your copy. If people need to scroll around or have to read too much to get to your offer and call-to-action, people are going to leave because TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read.)
Simplifying your language: Active sentences are those where the subject performs the action. For example, my dog ate my shoe. People can read active sentences with simple copy much easier than passive sentences, so make sure your copy closely follows this principle.

Reduce Friction

Thanks to seamless online shopping experiences, I’m like most people: If I have to work too hard to get what I want, I’m going to go elsewhere. Make your landing pages as frictionless as possible by:

Not asking for more information than you need: It’s tempting to try to get as much information as possible from your prospects; however the more info you ask for, the more likely someone will leave without filling in your form. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than 5-7 fields on your form.
Using the data you have: If you already have partial data from the customer, don’t ask for it again. Use form pre-population or progressive profiling so you only ask for the data you don’t have. Bonus: If you use progressive profiling, you’ll be able to get more data from the customer the next time they come around.
Making your call-to-action bold and beautiful: If I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. The corollary of this is that if I can’t see your CTA, then your landing page may as well not exist. It’s wonderful to have a fancy landing page with moving parts and lots of graphics, but UX and aesthetics are not always the same thing.

Test, Test, and Test Some More

I can’t stress this enough: Make time to test. While one can make educated guesses about what will improve conversion rates, what actually works is often counter-intuitive. GuessTheTest.com provides examples every week of tests that defy logic, so don’t leave it up to chance.

To effectively test, you need to have a well-thought out plan and be methodical in its execution. Having a testing calendar with a testing plan will help. Here’s a couple of great Relationship One blog posts on how to craft both of these elements:

One of the hardest parts of testing is the time you need to create different test variants, monitor them, and then measure the results. If you want to make your life easier, or if you want to super-charge your tests, Conversion Optimization Tools like Oracle Maxymiser provide sophisticated testing capabilities through user-friendly interfaces. If you’re serious about optimizing your landing pages, then you should investigate this option.

If you need any help with landing page testing, including investigating Oracle Maxymiser, feel free to reach out to us.

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