Landing pages are crucial for any business’ success. A landing page is a place where you communicate the value of your products or services, build trust, and start communication with your potential clients. The main function of landing pages, however, is to convert leads into customers. Almost all businesses have landing pages, but not all of them see the desired results. Your landing page must be effective, and many marketers struggle to evaluate their landing pages’ performance.
How should your landing page convert? What conversion rate can be considered good? Of course, everything depends on your niche and the type of your business. However, some statistical data enables us to evaluate the general situation. It turns out that the median landing page conversion rate is about 3-5%, depending on the industry. Only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. Therefore, if you feel that your landing page could perform better, you’re not alone. In fact, designing and optimization of landing pages are among the top five challenges B2B marketers have to deal with.
Increasing conversions is a complex task because it requires you to optimize your landing page on a regular basis. There is a vast variety of landing page optimization strategies that are aimed to improve different elements of your page. The optimization process also relies on A/B testing that helps evaluate the effectiveness of changes and find areas for improvement. Understanding what exactly you should change is probably the main challenge associated with optimization. According to statistics, most companies use various conversion optimization tactics but are dissatisfied with the results.
In this article, we will consider some proven practices that can be used by companies from different industries. Beginners often don’t know where to start their optimization efforts so we will address some of the most common issues. But first, let’s consider the main goals of landing page optimization and think of what this process is all about.
What Landing Page Optimization Is
Landing page optimization refers to a process of improving the layout, design, messaging, navigation, and imagery of a landing page. On the one hand, landing page optimization is aimed to make your landing page more attractive for visitors. On the other hand, you should also make it attractive for search engines because otherwise, you won’t be able to get enough traffic. Companies monitor visitors’ behavior, use surveys, and analyze data to determine what components of a landing page can perform better and how to optimize them.
You can increase conversions in different ways. For instance, high-converting landing pages usually have strong calls to action (CTAs). They are simple and easy to navigate. They also have short, straightforward, and impressive headlines. There are many factors you should take into account when designing an effective landing page, and the reason is that a landing page should fulfill a variety of purposes. Here are the main things you should keep in mind.
● Functionality
First of all, your landing page must be functional. Any technical difficulty or inconvenience will directly impact your conversion rates. You should put as much effort as you can into ensuring a seamless user experience for every visitor.
● Accessibility
Accessibility refers to how accessible your landing page is for potential visitors. They should be able to quickly find it on the internet, and this is where you need to use SEO. You need to optimize your landing page for search engines, and you should also use other practices, including PPC and social media marketing. To increase accessibility, you should also make sure that your landing page is equally effective, no matter what device your visitors use.
● Usability
If your landing page meets the previous two requirements, you should also make sure that it’s usable. It must be easy to read and to scroll. It should also be clean and free of any clutter that could distract your visitors from CTAs and other important elements. Smooth navigation will increase the effectiveness of your landing page significantly.
● Persuasiveness
You should also make sure that your landing page copy is persuasive. You need to persuade leads to become your customers and brand advocates.
● Intuitive design
Visitors should be able to get the main idea of your landing page immediately. They must intuitively navigate through different sections.
5 Tips for Landing Page Optimization
One of the most common questions is, which is a best practice for optimizing a landing page for Google Ads? There is no universal answer to this question that would work equally well for any company from any industry. However, there are some general tips that will help anyone improve landing page conversions.
1. Improve your headlines
The first thing your visitors see is the headline of your landing page so you should make sure that your headline is catchy, clear, and memorable. It should also be concise. This factor is especially important because internet users’ attention span is extremely short, and you only have 8 seconds to create a compelling headline.
Keep in mind that the purpose of your headline is not to sell something but to simply establish a connection between your brand and the audience. If you fail to establish a connection, you won’t be able to convert your visitors into customers. Not only should you optimize the main headline but also sub-headlines, as well.
2. Use consistent messaging
Your messaging should be consistent throughout all your marketing campaigns, and it should perfectly match your landing page. Even though it may seem obvious, many marketers fail to ensure consistency in their messaging so their landing pages don’t deliver what their ads promise.
Your landing page must be predictable. When people click on links in your ads and visit your landing page, they should see exactly what they thought about when reading your ad copy. We recommend that you also use similar imagery and design to make their visual experience consistent and seamless.
3. Make it mobile-friendly
The main reason why mobile ads are so effective is that they enable consumers to buy something immediately. People use mobile phones and tablets all the time so if you want to increase conversions, you should make sure that your landing page is optimized for mobile devices. There are many tools that can help you create mobile-responsive landing pages. For instance, you can use Unbounce, which includes a simple visual editor.
We recommend that you pay particular attention to online forms. They should be perfectly visible and easy to complete when using mobile devices. We also recommend that you only include the necessary fields in your mobile forms. Of course, you may want to collect more information about your customers, but simplicity and usability are most important for your visitors. Tools like Leadformly enable you to use customizable templates to create effective and easy to use forms that integrate with different platforms.
4. Improve your copy
You should also make sure that you have a great copy that is concise, clear, and straightforward. According to statistics, 90% of people who’ve read a landing page headline also read the CTA copy. Your copy should be informative so that visitors can quickly learn all the necessary information about your products but it should also be concise. Therefore, we recommend that you use bullet points to highlight the main features of your product.
Besides, your copy should be SEO-optimized and include relevant keywords that will make your landing page more visible.
Writing an effective copy is a complex task, and many brands have difficulties with optimizing their copy because it’s not easy to find professional copywriters. Fortunately, there are many online writing services, but not all of them offer great quality.
5. Include social proof
You can include social proof in the form of testimonials. This way, you’ll be able to increase the credibility of your brand so that your visitors will more likely want to try your products or services. However, it’s important to choose the right testimonials. We recommend that you choose testimonials that correspond to your buyer’s persona.
Think of the target audience of your landing page and make sure to include social proof from people who match your buyer’s image. For instance, if your landing page is aimed towards decision-makers, we recommend that you include testimonials from managers.
Final Thoughts
Your landing page is extremely important for conversions so we suggest that you consider some of our tips and think of how you can optimize it. Most businesses are dissatisfied with their conversion rates, and the reason is that many companies don’t know what exactly they can improve to make their landing pages more effective.
Although you may choose different tactics depending on your niche and the type of your business, there are some universal tips that will help you focus on the most important aspects of landing page optimization. If you want to super-optimize your landing page, follow our simple advice, and don’t forget about A/B testing.
Landing page optimization is a continuous process so you should understand that there is always some room for improvement. Experiment with different approaches, analyze your data, and make sure that your landing page fulfills its specific purposes. If you manage to optimize your landing page, you will be impressed by the difference in your conversions.
