It doesn’t matter how cool your product is. You need to promote, promote, promote. And landing pages are ideal to showcase and advertise a specific service you offer. Or to feature one of your products to attract more buyers.
But if you want your landing pages to perform well—and to convert better, you need to do your best to optimize them. Just like you’d do it with your other regular website pages.
In this blog post I’m sharing with you my best tips on landing page optimization. Let’s jump in!
Optimize your landing page for speed
The quicker your landing page loads, the better first impression you make on your visitor. There’s no big secret here. And every second counts. Especially if they land on your landing page on their mobile devices.
Mobile devices are not only used for browsing but also for purchasing. And as the latest generation of smart phones are capable of 5G, 4G, 3G and LTE, you might think, your page is fast enough.
But not all of your customers may have access to high speed data connection all the time. If they are in a bad reception zone, and your landing page takes ages to load—chances are they will just leave and won’t go back to check out your landing page later.
And while we’re talking about mobile devices…
Thrive for a flawless mobile experience
Majority of searches on Google happen now on mobile devices so it’s important to get this right. You probably have your phone almost 24/7 with you, and use it when you want to quickly look up something on the internet. Your ideal customers and clients are the same.
So if your landing page is not mobile compatible, your conversions won’t do well.
When I talk about mobile compatibility I don’t mean that you have to create a mobile specific landing page. Though if your business has the budget for it, that’s an excellent opportunity!
It’s enough if your landing page is mobile responsive. This way you only need to build one page that resizes based on the viewers device. My number one website tool Elementor let’s you build beautiful responsive landing pages with ease.
Also depending on your audience’s device preferences, if you see a high volume of traffic in Google Analytics coming from tablets, make sure to test how the landing page gets displayed on an iPad. Just in case.
Adapt your landing page to your audience
You know well that for a landing page to convert best you should sell only one product or one service. But depending on from where your visitors come to your landing page, you may need to sell differently.
And it may mean different landing pages customized for each main traffic source.
What does it mean in plain English?
If someone comes to your landing page as they were searching for specific keywords in Google, they are in a different stage of the buyer’s journey than someone coming there from your Facebook ad.
What can you do?
Be specific with your landing page for that specific audience. Put your mind inside the head of the traffic source, aka your potential client.
For example—if they search on Google, they most likely started with typing in some keywords to their problem. Therefore your landing page for this traffic source should be focused on how to solve that problem.
The keywords they used to find your landing page can help you formulate their potential questions. And the landing page should be the perfect/ideal solution to their problems.
On the other hand, when you run ads on Facebook or Instagram to drive traffic to your landing page, those Facebook and Instagram members were probably just browsing through their feed, looking at pictures and posts of their family and friends. And may have clicked on your ad out of curiosity. Because you used eye-catching visuals or an enticing ad copy.
But in general they were not right then and there looking for a solution for their problem. For this type of audience your landing page should be more broad. Try telling them a story, give more context to convert them.
Give a KISS to your landing page
Now that they are on your landing page—whether via Google search or social media promotions and ads—you need to get their attention and keep them on your page.
You probably heard gazillion times that the human attention span is less than the nine-second attention span of your average goldfish. It may or may not be true. But the bottom line is that you don’t want to test your visitors’ limits on your landing page. Or your conversion will suffer.
What kind of distractions do I have in mind?
Well, don’t distract people with unnecessary things on your landing page. Be very specific and focus your visitors attention to the one goal you want to accomplish with your landing page. Whether it’s selling, or growing your email list let’s say with Flodesk, my favorite email marketing platform.
First of all, you don’t need to show tons of navigational options. If at all your navigation should be only anchor links jumping to certain sections on your landing page. Although studies shows increased conversions if there’s no navigational item at all on the landing page.
Secondly, you definitely don’t need a full header section. Nor a heavy footer.
To minimize distraction it’s best to bin the chat options, the pop-ups, the quizzes and alike on your landing page. And don’t use too many colour schemes on the landing page either.
Instead give it a KISS – keep it stupid simple.
Simplify the landing page process
Keeping the landing page simple not only means its length, or the number of images and videos—less is more! But also the process.
If your lead form on the landing page has 30+ form fields, you gonna lose most people. Consider every form field that you plan to add and ask yourself if it’s absolutely necessary. Bin the rest. Your conversion rate will thank you for it.
But this is not just relevant for lead generation type of landing pages and forms. If your landing page is a commerce page, ask only for mandatory information at the checkout process that is required by law to complete a purchase transaction.
If they need to sign up on the landing page or create an account, could they perhaps authenticate themselves via Google or Facebook if they’re already coming from those pages? Like login with Google or login with Facebook?
The more convenient the process is for the user, the higher the chances they will convert.
Keep your promise
If you’re running ads and promotions to drive people to your landing page, make sure to only promise something that you will deliver on. Otherwise you can say good-bye to conversions.
What about an example? Here you go!
Someone’s doing a Google search and they type in ‘high converting landing page design for small business’. Let’s assume that you were bidding on the term, and based on the search results page they went to your landing page. But you don’t even have the term ‘high converting landing page design for small business’ on there. Nor do you have any pictures that would suggest the landing page is about this service.
Yeah—you guessed correctly. This way they’ll abandon your page.
Make sure to match your ad or promotion copy text and visuals to those on the landing page.
Address buyer concerns on your landing page
A conversion optimized landing page always takes buyer concerns into account. It can be many things:
- What if I don’t like this product or service?
- Is there a money back guarantee?
- Do they offer a free trial?
- What do other people think about this product?
- Are there any reviews, video testimonials, or case studies?
- How does the product or service look?
Keep the landing page as long as it needs to be to address people’s objections and to eliminate hesitation. This increases the chances that they convert. And it can boost their willingness to buy.
Optimize CTA placement on your landing page
Where to add the call to actions on a landing page? Above the fold or below the fold?
Above the fold refers to all content that is visible on the page before your visitor would need to start scrolling down.
Below the fold is all content that appears after they start scrolling.
And the fold varies per device. On a smart phone the fold is going to be different than on a desktop computer, and that’s going to be different than on an iPad or a laptop.
Where you place the call to action (CTA) can have a huge impact on conversion.
Content, including CTA above the fold performs in general better.
Now sometimes you may want to put your CTA below the fold. In this case you don’t want to have too much content above the fold, because that’s how you can get more and more people to scroll down to see more of your offer.
You see, there’s no one solution fits all when it comes to call to action placement on a landing page. The best advice I have for you is don’t be afraid to A/B test with your call to actions, and make sure it’s optimized for user experience.
And place more than one call to action on a page. Sometimes having 2-3-4 is better.
In conclusion, if you focus on the things that I mentioned above you’re much more likely to convert your landing page visitors into customers.
