Greetje den Holder — August 4, 2017 — August 4, 2017
Landing page optimization is in a dramatic state. According to Fahad Muhammad, most marketers are still unable to grasp the one thing that makes a landing page a truly dedicated page and not just any other page on your website. Therefore, the difference between a landing page and a home page or another web page will be discussed in this blog. I hope that this blog enlightens both marketers and entrepreneurs as they are trying to find the best ways to reach their audience and convert traffic into sales.
The difference between a landing page and a home page or another web page
Most marketers think that the definition of a landing page is ‘a standalone page that a visitor arrives at after clicking an ad or a search result.’ Muhammad says that those marketers are missing something. Landing pages always have one goal: they focus on promoting a single offer.
He explains this further: your homepage is created to represent your brand and all the services that come under the umbrella of this brand. Therefore, it makes sense to promote multiple offers on your homepage and to have navigation links because people coming to your website are looking for every bit of information they can find on you.
Your landing page, however, is a dedicated page not connected to your website’s URL. It is created not to represent the entirety of services you offer but to promote single offers independently, which is why navigation links are not allowed on this page. Visitors coming to a landing page have a specific purpose in mind; a busy homepage with many navigation links is only going to distract them, resulting in fewer conversions.
A landing page requires a focused and personalized design
Ted Vrountas agrees with Muhammad that a landing page is a standalone web page, disconnected from a website’s main navigation, created for the sole purpose of convincing a visitor to take action (to sign up, download, buy, etc.). According to him, busy buyers want answers to highly specific questions, and they want them served up on a platter —via their device of choice—immediately.
Consequently, if a business wants to grow, it must be able to appease them. Ads have to entice prospects with solutions to their problems, and landing pages have to offer those solutions with a focused and personalized design, which means:
1. A landing page should have a clear message match
Your prospects will have certain expectations after clicking through your ad. On your landing page, you need to meet those expectations; otherwise your visitors will leave in an instant. After all, today’s internet users will not do extra legwork. Instead, they will simply hit the back button and click PPC ads until they find something more relevant to their search.
For a clear message match, every landing page should:
- Reflect the branding of the advertisement. Your logo and brand colors should be displayed prominently.
- Feature the same images as your ad creative.
- Include the same language as its referrer.
2. A landing page should have a conversion ratio not exceeding 1:1
When you blog or build a website, internally linking your content is a good practice. It helps SEO, lowers bounce rate, and it improves ease of navigation for your visitors. Still, it also increases distractions as every link in your navigation menu, copy, and footer presents visitors with an opportunity to abandon the current page.
Offering your visitors more than one link to click on your landing page will make them wait to choose, make them choose poorly, and make them less satisfied with their final decision. That is why the “conversion ratio” of your landing page—the ratio of links to conversion goals—should be 1:1. That means providing all the information your visitors need to evaluate your offer and removing distractions to keep them focused on converting.
According to Muhammad, the bottom line is that navigation links cost you money. Getting your PPC ad clicked by prospects costs you money and when you include a navigation menu on a landing page connected to that PPC ad, you give people a reason not to convert on the page, essentially costing money.
Facts and figures about landing pages and conversion rates
We now know what a landing page truly is and what it requires. If you are thinking about conversion rate optimization (CRO) on your landing page, Mary Lister has five categories of stats and facts about conversion rates and landing pages that will help you eke out a few more conversions:
Landing page optimization statistics
- Only fifty-two percent of companies and agencies that use landing pages also test them to find ways to improve conversions.
- Long landing pages can generate up to 220% more leads than landing pages with above-the-fold CTAs. Still, make sure to test to see what works for you!
- Sixty-one percent of companies run five or fewer landing page tests per month.
- Forty-eight percent of landing pages contain multiple offers.
- Forty-two percent of offer-related graphics on landing pages are not linked.
- Roughly seventy-five percent of businesses have problems finding suitable expertise for optimizing their landing page copy.
- The average number of form fields is eleven but reducing the number of form fields from eleven to four can result in a 120% increase in conversions.
- The optimal number of form fields for the most conversions from your landing pages is three.
- When landing pages do not ask for age, the conversion rate is higher.
- Forty-eight percent of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign.
- Only sixteen percent of landing pages do not have navigation bars but removing the navigation menu can increase conversions by a hundred percent!
Conversion rate statistics: the who
- CRO tools have an average ROI of 223%.
- Customer journey analysis to improve conversion rate is in the game plan of sixty percent of online marketers.
- Forty-four percent of companies use split testing software.
- 5% of respondents to a 2016 survey by ConversionXL said they were planning to increase their CRO budget.
- In 2011, Google ran more than seven thousand A/B tests.
Conversion rate statistics: the what
- A/B testing is the most popular form of CRO, with fifty-six percent of marketers using this method.
- Seven in ten marketers using CRO look to results to inform other marketing initiatives.
- Only about twenty-two percent of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.
- A typical website conversion rate is about 2.35% on average. But the top ten percent of companies are seeing three to five times higher conversion rates than average.
- The average conversion rate of a Facebook ad is 9.21%.
Conversion rate statistics landing pages: the what
- Conversion rates typically range from one to three percent.
- Even just a one-second delay in page load time can result in a seven percent reduction in conversions.
- Forty-four percent of clicks generated by B2B companies direct to the homepage instead of a landing page.
Conversion rate statistics: the how
- Using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by eighty-six percent.
- Companies whose conversion rates improved last year are performing, on average, fifty percent more tests and using forty-seven percent more methods to improve conversion.
- Businesses with over forty landing pages generated a whopping twelve times more leads than those with one to five landing pages.
- Companies see a fifty-five percent increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from ten to fifteen.
- Over ninety percent of visitors who reported reading headlines also read CTA copy.
- More than twenty percent of businesses have reported that they do not have an effective strategy for landing page testing.
Landing page optimization for beginners
If the information above is too difficult for you, it might be a good idea to go back to basics with my blog ‘Landing Page Optimization for Beginners.’ Here, I give the basics of landing page optimization: I explain what a landing page is, present a simple guide to landing page optimization, and list essential landing page elements and landing page optimization tips. Hope that helps!
If you need your content in more than one language, please contact me! I am a translator, so I might be able to help.
Thanks for reading my blog and please do not forget to share!
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