8 Quick Tips to Help Increase Your Landing Page Conversion Rate

Ryan Lynch
Ryan Lynch

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Your business can always benefit from high converting landing pages. Higher conversion rates means more customers, and more customers means more profit potential. The purpose of your landing page is to capture leads and warm them up before sending them further down your sales funnel. Think of your landing page as a work of art.

Every detail of your page should have a deeper purpose for being there other than a need to fill up space. From the size and color of your call-to-action button to the length of your copy, every choice you make should have a strategic reasoning behind it. Once you have a foundation for your page, it’s time to test it. Again. And again. And again.

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Damien Newman, a previous IDEO design analyst and current CEO of the transformation consulting firm Central, came up with an image that illustrates the design process.

squiggle

His model, “The Squiggle”, essentially breaks down the design process into two stages: when you don’t know where you’re going with an idea, and when you do. The first half of the model, referred to as the “fuzzy end”, relates to the early stages of creating your landing page. At this stage, you still don’t know what is going to work and what isn’t.

The “fuzzy end” embodies all your formatting changes, copy edits, headline adjustments, color changes, image placements, etc. This is the stage where you are expected to be all over the place. But, as the image depicts, your path of direction gets more narrow as you funnel out what is effective from what isn’t. Eventually, the path will straighten and the single, crystal-clear purpose that you have been trying to convey all along will gradually become more visible.

Don’t be one of the businesses that lets the “fuzzy end” overwhelm and devastate them from reaching their purpose. To keep you on the right path, we have come up with a list of 8 tips to improve your landing page’s conversion rate:

1) Be Consistent

Consistency can refer to two things. The first is consistency in the information you present. Any inconsistency in the facts you present will be a huge red flag for potential clients. For instance, if your site says you’ve helped 300+ clients on your landing page, but says 250+ clients on your actual site, your credibility will immediately shrink.

No one is going to pursue which number is right. What they are going to do is “X” out of the page. Put time and effort into your copy to ensure your facts and numbers are consistent.

The second is consistency in your user’s experience. New does not mean better for everyone. Consistency entails a sense of comfortability for those visiting your landing page.

While it is important to continue innovating and improving the elements of your landing page, too many changes at once can overwhelm your visitors and cause drop-offs that decrease your conversion rates. The next point provides a solution to this problem.

2) Make Incremental Changes

Sometimes businesses are so focused on revamping their landing page that they forget to think from a client’s perspective. Complete landing page redesigns can lead to confusion and stress for clients who previously felt comfortable and confident when visiting your page.

In some cases, a complete redesign has caused up to a 20% drop in conversion rates. Instead of letting this happen, ease them into the process with gradual improvements that excite and educate them one step at a time.

Additionally, incremental changes allow you to monitor precisely which changes triggered an increase or decrease in conversion rates, rather than just guessing which features of your complete revamp had the greatest effect.

By gathering data and using that data to make incremental changes to your landing page, you will know more precisely what the cause of a drop off was and then reverse it.

3) Narrow Your Focus

Your landing page should have one, and only one, intended action in mind. More calls-to-action means more confusion for the prospect, so make it as clear as possible for your prospects what it is that you want them to do. Try cutting your copy in half to ensure that everything you say is relevant to the one product or service you are trying to sell. Try limiting your value proposition to two lines in order to keep your content clear and concise. Get rid of excess distractions by providing as few images, copy, and forms as possible.

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Additionally, the only form fields that you should be asking for should be those that are most valuable to your company and do not cause any friction. You also shouldn’t have any links on your landing page leading somewhere else or you may possibly lose the potential prospect. This will make it immediately clear for potential clients what you offer and what they should do next.

4) Test Different Phrasing and Formatting

The way you phrase your call-to-action, value proposition, and headline can make or break your landing page’s conversion rate. When presenting a call-to-action, make sure you don’t jump the gun. Instead of “Create an account now”, try “Sign me up!” or “Get me started!”. The first one sounds selfish, implying that them creating an account will benefit you, whereas the latter reminds them of the benefits that are being provided to them.

Keep your value proposition simple and clear by limiting it to what your business is offering and how it will benefit your client in two short sentences. Always make sure that you are proposing a unique solution that your client would not find anywhere else. For instance, a value proposition might promise to deliver “fast results”. This is an ambiguous promise that would be much more effective quantified, such as a promise to deliver results “in 2 days or less”.

When phrasing headlines, the most successful are those that use emotional triggers that insight empathy, humor, or any other comforting feeling. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) expert, Oli Gardner, expressed that a strong headline and copy can compensate for a poor design. Our previous article, “4 Steps to Headlines that Make Your Readership Skyrocket” offers more tips on creating effective headlines.

In addition to phrasing, test out different graphic elements on your page. Enlarge the button, change the color of it, move which side of the page it is on. All of these are elements of conversion psychology that can make significant impact on whether or not your visitors click the button. Do this as part of your incremental changes and run tests to measure the impact each change has on conversion rates.

The color of your button should be different from everything else on the site in order to attract attention to it. For instance, the color red typically denotes a sense of urgency. This could either lead to an impulse buy or stress that turns the client away. Testing is the only way to decipher these effects. This concept of using urgency as a tool is expanded on more in our next tip.

5) Create Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency or scarcity is an effective approach that can be implemented into your landing page. For instance, “Limited Time Offers” compel visitors to act quickly.

For instance, if your call-to-action includes a free e-book or webinar in exchange for signing up for your email list, you can create a sense of urgency by saying that only the first hundred to sign up will be given access to the free ebook. This induces the visitor to act quickly and take your intended action.

6) Use Directional Cues

Since you can’t always be physically present for potential clients visiting your site, try the next best thing for directing their attention to what’s important: directional cues.

wordstream-5

Landing pages are not read like a book, which is why directional cues are essential for showing the visitor how to read it. Directional cues can range from arrows blatantly pointing towards the information you want the visitor to see, to more subtle ones such as the person in the image looking at the call-to-action button. Previous studies have shown focus levels more than doubled when directional cues were used on a landing page.

7) Credibility Indicators

Use previous client testimonials to supplement the point you are trying to convince your potential clients of. In general, potential clients are going to trust other clients more than they are going to trust you.

Implement positive testimonials on your landing page and include a picture of that person next to it to enhance credibility. Skip the cliche “They were great!” or “Highly recommend” testimonials, and use the personable ones that truly represent what your business did for previous clients.

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8) Relevance

Does the copy on your landing page match the content that was in your ad? If your ad makes a promise, make sure that your landing page immediately assures the reader that they will still find that promise after clicking.

The ad should be as identical as possible to the landing page’s graphics, header, and information. The chart below from “The Smart Marketer’s Landing Page Conversion Course”, demonstrates these necessary parallels.

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Have you had experience with creating effective landing pages? Let me know by commenting below!

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