Have you ever run a paid or organic media campaign where you directed people to your website but failed to hit your conversion targets?
You might have fallen into the trap of not optimising your landing page. In 99 out of 100 cases, simply presenting your product or service on your landing page is not enough to get people to take action. Consumers need a landing page that strikes the right balance between informing, persuading and signposting them about what they need to do next.
A well-designed and optimised landing page is a vital factor in driving the success of any business. It serves as the first point of contact between your company and potential customers – making it a crucial part of creating a good first impression. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at what makes a landing page great, teach you how to identify areas of improvement on your own landing pages and share some top tips to maximise your marketing ROI.
Let’s dive in!
4 minute read
8th December 2023
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of improving the performance of a landing page to increase the likelihood that your visitors will do what you want them to, whether that’s making a purchase or filling out a form.
By focusing on CRO, you can generate more leads, make more sales, and maximise your marketing ROI. In today's highly competitive online marketplace, it’s crucial to ensure that your landing pages are performing at their best to stand out and take advantage of the traffic they receive.
The conversion rate can be calculated by dividing the number of people who completed a purchase or inquiry by the total number of people who started it.
Let's look at the following examples:
1. Imagine you are selling a product/service that costs £50. If 100 people visit your website, but only 10 of them convert, your conversion rate would be 10%. In this case, the revenue you generated would be £500 (10 conversions x £50).
2. Now, consider another scenario where the conversion rate is higher. Let's say out of 100 people who visited the website, 40 of them converted. With the same product priced at £50, the conversion rate would be 40%. In this case, the revenue generated would be £2,000 (40 conversions x £50).
Scenario | Total Visitors | Conversions | Conv. Rate | Product Price | Revenue |
Example 1 | 100 | 10 | 10% | £50 | £500 |
Example 2 | 100 | 40 | 40% | £50 | £2,000 |
In this situation you’ve attracted exactly the same number of people to your site, but generated four times more revenue. That’s the power of Conversion Rate Optimization.
To optimise your conversion rate, you’ll first need to arm yourself with some data on how your visitors behave once they reach the place you want them (such as a form). You can achieve this by using Google Analytics (or any other web analytics tool of your choice – we’re not judging).
At this point, you might be wondering: okay Fabio, I'll check the analytics – but what specific parameters or filters should I be looking at to effectively analyse my audience's behaviour?
To that question, I say:
Identifying Bottlenecks
Using the data points above, you can now start to identify areas of your website that could be impacting your overall conversion rate. For example, the conversion rate of your landing page for mobile users could be way lower than desktop users. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Hypothesising & Testing
To confirm your suspicion, you can use CRO tools (like Userlytics) to watch how random users interact with your website on different devices. This will give you some deeper insight into what it is specifically on your landing page that’s actually turning people away.
Now that you've got your smoking gun, you can try some different optimisation variables and conduct a bit of A/B testing – where you show different versions of your site to different users to see what performs better – to compare the performance of your original website with the optimised version. You can now determine which version is more effective at improving our conversion rate.
Interesting, right?
Whilst you can and should make optimisations to live pages or checkout processes, there are also a number of best practices you can follow to set strong foundations for your pages as you build them and give yourself the best chance of having a high conversion rate.
I also highly recommend using multi-stage forms, rather than a static form. You might be wondering, "Okay, Fabio, what are the differences between them and why are you recommending it?".
I advise using a multiple step forms instead of static forms for two reasons:
If you’ve followed all the steps above, you’re well on your way to a stellar landing page – as well as a killer CRO! Now that your powers are growing, it’s time to start taking advantage of some of the great tools out there that can help further optimise your page.
As mentioned before, software like Userlytics, Lookback and Usertesting help us spot navigation patterns around your website and conduct usability tests to evaluate the user experience of your website or webpage at all stages of the design and development process.
They offer 2 types of tests: Unmoderated and moderated tests.
Unmoderated tests: The platform contacts individuals who fit your ideal user persona and asks them to perform a UX test on your website. After these users interact with your webpage, they provide feedback. These tests are great for their simplicity and time efficiency.
Moderated tests: Here, you will be the one instructing people in real-time to complete specific tasks on your website/webpage. These tests allow you to immediately understand if any elements on the website are causing friction.
But wait, there’s more! Nowadays, heat mapping tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity let you see the hottest webpage areas where visitors look at. The advantage of this? You can place the most relevant information of your business on these specific spots. Smart stuff.
This nifty example below shows how heatmaps can increase your ad’s effectiveness. Researchers tested two landing pages for a diaper brand – keeping the copy and creative the same, only changing the image of the baby. The tool revealed that when a person's image is used, the user's eyes follow the eye line of that image. When the baby faced the camera, the user looked at the baby, rather than the ad copy (and who can blame them). However, when the baby was shown looking at the text, so did the audience – making the side profile landing page more likely to convert.
Now it’s your turn!
Before you go, let’s recap:
To create a successful landing page that converts, you should:
Book a 30-minute call with one of our strategists to:
You’ll get actionable advice to apply right away and the chance to see if we are the right kind of agency for you. No pressure, just insights.