Chris Warden — August 28, 2017 Landing pages are the engine of online advertising, playing a huge role in campaigns from nearly any channel. Every landing page should be laser-targeted to a specific segment of the market. A lot of attention is paid to headlines, copy, and the general layout of landing pages without giving the proper attention to the core tenants of web design. You can have the greatest copy in the world, but if your visitors are confused by the layout of your page you’ll have a hard time converting them into customers.
As you begin to take stock of your landing pages and find ways to improve them, keep these tips to improve conversion rates in mind:
Embrace and Optimize for Mobile
By 2020, nearly 90% of people in the United States will own a smartphone. Already, more than 50% of all internet traffic comes from users on a mobile device. If you aren’t taking mobile users into account when designing your landing pages, you are leaving money on the table. Mobile devices can be difficult to design for since there are many different sizes of screens, resolution, and software to account for. Ensuring that your landing pages use responsive tech is a good starting point.
Make sure that you are using testing software to see how your website looks when loaded on a variety of mobile operating systems. While you should focus on the latest versions of both iOS and Android — it is important to remember that most people are slow to upgrade. A page that loads improperly is almost always a lost conversion.
Use Heatmaps to Eliminate Distractions
Heatmaps are tools that allow you to track mouse movements on your landing pages. It can give you a good idea of what portions of your landing pages are working, and which portions are not. Most users mirror their eye movements with their mouse pointer, providing insight into the areas of your page that your users are looking at most frequently.
It’s common sense that you should place important call to actions and page elements where your visitors are looking. But, few recommend using heatmaps to spot distractions. What phrases, pictures, or text is causing them to look away from the most important parts of your copy? Are users becoming distracted by specific parts of your pages? Most use heatmap images to show them where to place things, but using heatmaps to spot the parts of your pages that are distracting to users is just as useful.
Don’t Ask for Too Much
One of the biggest factors in your ability to capture a lead or complete a sale is the amount of information that you ask for from users. Asking for a name and email is usually something that most visitors are willing to do. But, asking for an address, phone number, or other personal information can quickly dissuade users from joining your mailing list. Limit the amount of information that you ask your users to submit, and you’ll see immediate improvements in conversion rates. A good example of this comes from Eligibility, who doesn’t even ask for a name — just a state and email in their form.
When you call a visitor to action within your copy, the easier that you can make that action the more likely they are to complete it. If someone asked you to take out the trash, you would probably say “sure,” and go do it. But, if someone asked you to help them remodel their home, you might be a little taken aback. The same principle applies to your customers. Asking too much of them is more likely to drive them away.
Use Video and Images to Complement Copy
They say that half of people are “visual learners,” meaning that they retain more information when it is presented to them visually, rather than in text. That’s a lot of people that you are forgetting about if you aren’t reinforcing your copy with images or video that conveys the important messaging.
Too often the pictures on landing pages are chosen because they look good on the page. These pictures inhabit valuable screen real estate that would be better used to deliver marketing messaging and drive home the most important aspects of your copy.
Videos are an excellent way to use a small amount of screen real estate to deliver a lot of information. No matter how long your video is it always take up the same amount of space on the screen. So the next time that you are thinking of putting that stock photo on your landing page, consider whether the investment in something more visual would be worth your time.
Get Personal with Testimonials
Testimonials are often one of the most important sections on your landing page. The nature of testimonials is personal and social proof is powerful. Seeing a trusted name recommending your product or services can go a long way toward convincing someone to buy. But, far too often companies hide the person giving their testimonial behind logos. Instead, ask for permission to use their picture. If you really want to go the extra mile, a video testimonial is perhaps the most impactful type of testimonial you can include on a landing page.
There are a lot of advanced strategies that you can use to optimize landing pages. Marketing blogs write about them all the time. However, too many companies adopt advanced strategies without having their basics covered. Simple things like ditching stock photos for visual marketing materials or going the extra mile with your testimonials can have a huge effect on conversion rates.
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