15 Simple Landing Page Optimization Tips to Improve Your Conversions

This post was originally published on Espresso Digital Blog

Are Your Website Visitors Not Converting?

The main purpose of any business website is to attract visitors, tell them how awesome your business is, and persuade them to take action. This is called the "Journey of Conversion." A key element of that strategy are website landing pages. But simply having landing pages on your website is not enough; you need to optimize landing page conversions if you want to really succeed. These simple landing page optimization tips will show you what to do.

But landing page optimization doesn’t happen overnight, and it is not a one-time effort. If you want better landing pages, focus on collecting data. You should design and optimize your landing pages based on what you already know about your audience. But that alone is not enough. You must collect even more information as more people visit your website.

Converting that data into informed decisions about your marketing funnel can produce more leads and sales. To help you do better I want to share a few basic tips and tricks that will help you attract a bigger target audience and convert more online consumers. It all starts with understanding why your landing page optimization efforts are falling short.

Why Is My Landing Page Not Converting?

Landing pages fail to convert for lots of reasons. Most often this is because a business or product brand has no or little concept of what the prospect wants. If you don’t clearly understand the needs, expectations, or desires of your target audience you will never design a successful landing page. It really is that simple.

Here are some other common landing page optimization errors you better avoid:

• Not focusing on mobile-first web design
• Ineffective headlines
• Unrecognizable or confusing calls to action (CTAs)
• Distracting visitors from your primary objective

I’ll explore each of in depth later on but understand that you won’t know why your landing page doesn’t convert until you start collecting data. I’ll show you how in a minute.

What Is a Good Landing Page Conversion Rate?

The best landing pages convert at rates of up to 27.4 percent. But not many landing pages actually fall into that category. It is much more common for most businesses and product brands to have actual conversion rates anywhere between 2 to 6%. And yes, there are many landing pages that don’t even convert at that level. Ouch!

And landing page conversion rates may not be the best measure of their effectiveness as they may not tell you the whole story. A much better measure of your success is improvement. If your conversion rates stay flat, or decline, you’re not collecting data and using it to improve your landing pages.

There should be a strong correlation between your web traffic and your conversion rates. If your web traffic grows, you should convert more visitors. Of course, it doesn’t always happen that way. What if you’re getting high-quality traffic from Google search, but you’re still not seeing conversions?

A negative correlation between traffic and conversions means something is wrong with your landing page, your offer, your product, or any combination of these.

• Landing page: The design, framework, imagery, or other qualities of your landing page turns off readers for some reason.
• Offer: The “hook” you’re using to get readers to convert doesn’t resonate with your audience.
• Product: The product you’re selling isn’t sufficiently desirable to convince people to buy.

Figuring out what the problem is will help with your landing page optimization.

What Exactly Is Landing Page Optimization?

Landing page optimization is the process of optimizing or improving each element on your landing page to increase conversions. Instead of redesigning the entire page based solely on a hunch, you use data and anecdotal evidence.

The best part? You can collect information before your landing page ever goes live. Surveying your audience, for instance, will help you better understand what they expect and like. One of my preferred survey tools is SurveyMonkey. Of course, you can also use a form builder like Paperform to create your own online surveys.

However, you are not going to create the perfect landing page from the start. Instead, you design and launch your landing page. After that you track its performance and make tweaks as you analyze the data and observe your conversion rate.

Identifying Potential Problems

Unfortunately, many people are using the wrong landing page optimization strategies. All they know is something isn’t working. Therefore, they decide to change everything. And that is the wrong approach to landing page optimization. A much better strategy is to identify specific problems that contribute to low conversion rates so you can change those.

The easiest way of doing that is by using a heat map. Here is one of my favorite heat map tools. A heat map will show you where website visitors are clicking on your landing page. Are they ignoring your call to action? Do your visitors focus on unimportant elements, such as a stock photo? Are they simply scanning down the page without finding what they are looking for?

Tracking Website Visitor Behavior

Heat maps aren’t the only visual data reports that can prove effective for landing page optimization. Scroll maps, confetti maps, overlay reports, and list reports all provide valuable information. And don’t forget that Google Analytics can also provide helpful insights into visitor behavior.

Constant Improvement Over Time

If you want to improve your website conversion rates, approach landing page optimization using best practices and strong data. The process starts the minute you begin designing the page, but it lasts long after the page goes live.

I keep reminding our clients that you don’t create just one landing page. Landing page optimization involves building many different types of landing pages and modify them to meet the expectations of your specific target audience.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all landing page. What works for a fine dining establishment is not going to work equally well for a software company.

But there are a few common landing page optimization strategies and components that are very effective across virtually any product or service offering.

15 Simple Landing Page Optimization Tips

1. Make Your Offer Clear

When you first start planning your optimization strategy, think about how you can make the customer experience positive emotions. You want them to feel smart, appreciated, inspired, and excited. Start by thinking about your customer’s specific goal and turn that goal into a headline.

2. Keep it Simple

A very simple landing page might seem counterintuitive, but it gets rid of the visual clutter. You want your website visitors to focus on the prize: your call to action.

Dropbox is consistently one of my favorite examples. The company creates awesome landing pages that communicate volumes without many words.

3. Be Consistent

Visual consistency can also make a huge difference in conversion rates. Ideally your landing pages should be similar in look and feel to the other pages on your website or e-commerce store. Otherwise potential consumers will be confused or irritated to the point of leaving your site.

This also extends to your other digital profiles. If you market your product or service on LinkedIn or Facebook, for instance, make sure your landing pages on those platforms are as close as possible to the landing pages on your website.

4. Focus on Essentials First

Unless you have a very small landing page your visitors will only see a small portion of it when they first arrive. This is especially true for mobile consumers viewing your site on a smartphone. Therefor an absolutely essential landing page optimization tip is to place your key message where visitors are sure to see it right away!

Make it absolutely clear to your landing page visitors what you are offering, and how that benefits them. You can fill in more relevant details further down the page. But don’t expect impatient mobile visitors to do much scrolling around before they leave!

5. Optimize for SEO

People find landing pages via organic search all the time. Maybe one of your landing pages is your home page, for instance, which means that it should — at the very least — come up if someone searches for your company’s name. You can also rank for industry-related keywords.

6. Use Urgency

There’s a reason why “limited time” and “limited quantities” are among the most common marketing phrases. Scarcity compels your landing page visitors to act now because they know they might miss out if they wait.

7. Use Effective CTAs

A call-to-action button shouldn’t stress out or confuse the reader. Make your offer clear, concise, and obvious. Effective landing page optimization means staying away from fancy language or complex offers. Try something like these:

• Download Here
• Try for Free
• Join Now
• Learn More

Simple, right? And very effective.

8. Add Contact Info

You can provide your website visitors with contact information in lots of different ways. You can put your phone number or email address on your landing page, or you can use a contact form. Other companies, such as Shopify, include links to their help centers.

Customers know by now that they can find contact information, answers to frequently asked questions, and tutorials in help centers.

9. Focus on High Quality Visuals

If you want your message to pop, and your service or product to really stand out, avoid using stock images. Instead hire a professional photographer to shoot high quality images that clearly communicate your brand value and mission.

Likewise, avoid using cheap clip art or templates. Chances are your target audience has seen them before, so your message will simply become part of the digital background noise.

10. Add Testimonials

You need your target audience to know that other businesses have used your products and services. Not only that, but you want to communicate that you have helped your existing customers achieve the same results your target consumers expect.

Testimonials are among the best ways to do this. If you can convince your customers to create a video testimonial, you’ll have an edge on the competition. Quotes work well, too, as long as you use the customer’s full name and business, and potentially their image. In my experience the latter is usually the sticking point, so don’t push this.

11. Try Different Forms

Some marketers believe that only incredibly short forms work well. Only ask for essential info. Personally, I am more likely to fill out essential bits only than providing a lot of info, especially at the beginning of my journey of conversion.

But it all depends on the product or service you are trying to sell. If you want to qualify leads for an expensive product or service, a longer form can prove to be more effective. You might get fewer leads, but those leads will be more qualified.

For instance, asking about the potential customer’s budget for a web design business can save you tons of time. A customer looking for a $500 basic starter site probably won’t utilize your service if your minimum package starts at $20,000.

12. Use Contrasting Elements

A very effective landing page optimization strategy is the use of contrasting elements. Utilize large text and bold fonts to make your headlines stand out from the body text. Vibrant colors automatically direct visitors to essential elements. Another tactic is to use black and white images on colored backgrounds.

13. Try an Exit Popup

An exit popup appears on your landing page screen if a visitor attempts to leave the page. This is another opportunity to create a conversion. Exit popups are less intrusive than popups that appear as soon as a visitor arrives, or simply while he or she is looking around.

Use a combination of compelling visual imagery, a strong headline and CTA text to get users to click. Try incentivizing the exit popup with a special discount or other offer. But don’t come across as too pushy, or desperate!

Using a popup tool like Tidio, you can not only create exit popups for individual pages on your site, but also A/B test variants, and even benefit from AI. You’ll get lots of useful data as well as a way to snag visitors who decide to hang around because of your well-timed offer.

14. Test Everything

A fairly simply landing page optimization method is A/B testing. Unfortunately, it is also one that is frequently overlooked. Basically, you create two different versions of your landing page, headline, call-to-action, or any combination thereof, and test them to see which version provides better results.

The more A/B tests you run, the more accurate your data becomes. Each A/B test should include a single change to one variant, such as your CTA. But be sure to only change one element at a time! If you change multiple elements, you won’t know which one actually worked best.

After you’ve collected data and gotten to know your audience, you can apply what you learned to a redesign and verify that it improved your conversion rate via A/B testing. And so on…

15. Remember Sex Sells

Never underestimate the power of sex to market your product or service. This does not mean that anything lewd or crass should be party of your landing page optimization efforts. But passion and desire are very effective motivators.

Learn to use that to your advantage. By carefully selecting just the right images and tweaking your ad copy you can make your product or service simply irresistible to your target audience.

Optimizing Your Landing Pages

If you’re just getting started with landing page optimization, you’ll improve your chances of converting more visitors by following this guide. But keep in mind that landing page optimization works different for each business or product brand. In order to achieve the best possible results yourself you may need to tweak our basic strategies and recommendations a bit.

To recap, here are 15 strategies that will help you boost your conversion rate:

1.    Make Your Offer Clear

2.    Keep it Simple

3.    Be Consistent

4.    Focus on Essentials

5.    Optimize for SEO

6.    Use Urgency

7.    Use Effective CTAs

8.    Add Contact Info

9.    Use High Quality Visuals

10. Add Testimonials

11. Try Different Forms

12. Use Contrasting Elements

13. Try an Exit Popup

14. Test Everything

15. Remember Sex Sells

By implementing some or all of these landing page optimization strategies you will meet the expectations of your target audience and convert them into consumers and even advocates of your product or service.

Don’t forget that by basing your website and landing page design changes on real user data you can improve your conversion rates even more. Use visual data reports and recordings whenever possible to collect more information about your website visitors.

With those strategies in place, you’re well positioned to conquer your competition. I am here to help.

By Gregor Schmidt 

Gregor is Co-Founder and CXO at PixoLabo, a multilingual WordPress web design studio based in Tokyo and Sendai, Japan, and co-founder and senior editor of the Espresso Digital Blog. With over 20 years of experience in web, UX and information design he directs the information and UX strategy at PixoLabo. As an experienced digital strategist, blockchain designer, and mobile-first web design advocate Gregor frequently consults and mentors startups in Asia and the US, and is an adjunct professor of design and user experience. When he is not working, he enjoys travel, gardening, and sampling new street food. You can connect with Gregor on LinkedIn or Twitter