How can landing pages increase conversion rates, and why should we optimise landing pages? Marketers and business owners alike who have reaped the benefits understand that optimising landing pages has the potential to turn casual visitors into loyal customers.
This article explores how to transform casual clicks into meaningful conversions by optimising landing pages.
What is Landing Page Optimisation?
Landing page optimisation involves refining and improving elements on a webpage to boost its performance in converting visitors into leads or customers. It’s a strategic process encompassing various stages to guide users seamlessly from initial attention to final action.
Key Elements of a High-Converting Landing Page
Key elements of a high-converting landing page include:
- Compelling headlines
- Clear call-to-action (CTA)
- Engaging, useful content
- Visual design and layout
- Form design
- Trust signals
Compelling headlines
Include compelling headlines in your content, to grab users’ attention and guide them through the page.
Clear call-to-action
Include clear CTAs, such as ‘Book Now’ or ‘Contact Us Today’. This helps guide the user to take a desired action, to motivate visitors and help them convert. Clear CTAs also help to provide a good impression to website visitors.
Engaging, useful content
Include engaging and useful content on a landing page, ensuring content is user-focused. Consider questions the user may have about your product or service which may be a barrier to conversion.
Visual Design and Layout
Design and layout have a large impact on user experience, and in turn, conversion rates. Ensure to implement visual design hierarchy principles to guide the user through the page.
Form design
Ensure forms are simple and user-friendly. Minimise the number of required fields to avoid discouraging users from completing the form.
Trust signals
Incorporate testimonials, reviews and security badges on to the page to help build website visitor confidence in the brand and increase credibility.
Strategies to Increase Conversion Rates
Strategies to improve landing page conversion rates include:
- A/B Testing
- Personalisation
- Mobile Optimisation
- Improve Page Speed
- Analyse User Data and Reoptimise
A/B Testing
Use A/B testing to compare different versions of a web page to determine which one performs better. Choose a variable such as a headline, CTA button or form field to test. Split traffic by assigning half your website visitors to the original version, and half to the modified version. Then analyse the results by comparing the data from both versions.
Personalisation
Consider personalising landing pages for different user segments. Personalised landing pages can be used for customer onboarding, retargeting, post-purchase upsells and even new product launches.
Identify your audience and keep them in mind when creating your landing page. Select relevant content and elements to customise including the header, greeting, content, product recommendations and calls to action.
Mobile Optimisation
Ensure your landing page is optimised for mobile. Prioritise above-the-fold content, keep content concise, compress images to avoid long loading times and use a clear call-to-action. Preview your landing page on a mobile device before publishing.
Improve Page Speed
Improve page speed by taking steps such as optimising images, reduce render blocking, use a content delivery network (CDN), reduce redirects and enable browser caching.
You can use tools like Google’s Page Speed Insights to check your landing page’s current performance and diagnose any performance issues and areas for improvement.
Analyse User Data and Reoptimise
Monitor analytics and tracking regularly to identify any issues. Look at metrics including Bounce Rate, Click-Through Rate and Average Visit Duration to check that your landing page is still meeting the user’s search intent.
Best Practices for Landing Page Optimisation
Reduce Distractions
When creating the landing page, avoid using complex menus and unnecessary links. Remove any links that could take visitors away from the desired action, i.e. the call to action or filling in the form. Reduce friction by only asking for essential information within forms.
Use High-Quality Visuals
Use high-quality visuals to capture user attention, guide website visitors as well as to communicate your product or service benefits, and elicit a response. High-quality visuals can also help to make your website content more effective and engaging.
Consider SEO
Ensure to consider SEO in your landing page creation, to make sure users can find your landing page! SEO helps increase visibility of your landing page to potential customers, and organic search traffic is free, so acquiring visitors through SEO can help to save costs. Targeting relevant keywords helps to ensure your page is served on search engines for the right audience. SEO can also help to boost your business’ credibility, as users tend to perceive pages that rank highly in search engines as trustworthy.
How to Increase Your Landing Page Conversion Rate
Let’s explore the process of landing page optimisation using the AIDA marketing model. AIDA is simply an acronym that describes the four sequential stages of the decision-making process a user undergoes within the conversion funnel.
- Attention
It’s extremely important to capture the attention of your visitors. Make sure you craft a compelling headline that sparks intrigue without sacrificing clarity, but remember, less is often more. Draw inspiration from sensationalist headlines that grab attention while aligning with your product or service.
- Interest
Incorporating multimedia elements, such as videos, significantly increases interest. Videos can boost dwell time and trust, as most people prefer to watch a video over reading written content. Adding a video on landing pages has been shown to increase conversion rate by 64 – 85%. The use of videos in the ‘interest’ stage of the AIDA method can be a game-changer, making your landing page more engaging and persuasive.
- Desire
This is the stage where we emphasise how your product or service fulfils the needs of your visitors. It’s a good idea to highlight the features or benefits of your product or service in some cleverly crafted copy that entices visitors. You’ll need to clearly state how taking the desired action will enrich their lives.
- Action
We may start to notice significant buy-in from your visitors, and can now guide them towards the final action, using a well-constructed call to action (CTA). Use trigger words that indicate the action, without hurrying the user into commitment, and highlight the benefits one last time to once again communicate the value they will gain.
Landing pages that convert
From capturing attention to inspiring desire and facilitating action, each stage of landing page optimisation plays a pivotal role in increasing conversion rates. By understanding the dynamics of the AIDA model and implementing effective strategies, businesses can transform their landing pages into powerful conversion engines.
Landing Page Optimisation FAQs
What’s a Good Landing Page Conversion Rate?
Determining a good conversion rate for a landing page can be subjective. According to our survey, opinions vary. About 23% of respondents believe a good conversion rate falls between 21-50%, while 20% think it’s between 3-5%. Web and landing page conversion rates fluctuate across industries, so benchmarking should be industry-specific.
How long does it take to see results from landing page optimisation?
The time taken can vary, but typically we’d expect to see results within a few weeks. However, this largely depends on the current amount of traffic to the page and the level of optimisations made.
Can landing page optimisation affect SEO?
Landing page optimisation can help to improve SEO, by improving page speed, keyword targeting and quality score of the page.
What tools can help with landing page optimisation?
Tools such as Unbounce can assist with landing page optimisation, helping you to add elements such as text, images and forms to build a landing page. Look for tools that offer features such as A/B testing so you can see what works best to drive conversions.
At Yellowball, we understand the importance of a well-optimised landing page! We’re a web design and development agency based in London, UK. Contact us today and find out what we can do for your online presence.
Find out more in our guide to increasing website conversion rates.
