Review of Conversion Optimization Minidegree Program (Pt. 6)
What it comes to mind when you hear the word(s) Landing pages?
You will agree that confusing and boring are not part of that list (hopefully).
The truth is, landing pages are a great tool for businesses.
The issue is whether they use it right and how they optimize it.
In reality, most businesses see their landing page and think: “Well, this is not performing as it used to lately. Let’s run some A/B testing.”
The problem with that is you’re jumping to step 6… the last step in the right process to optimize and create more wins with your landing page.
That’s why in this week, I’m going to share with you my takeaways from CXL Institute Program… where I learned how to properly optimize a landing page (in 6 steps).
So let’s jump right in.
First, let’s quickly define what a landing page is (just to be on the same page).
A landing page is a page users “land on” that it usually is the first page users see after clicking an ad source. It’s a page that works independently of the entire site or app and has a clear conversion goal.
So you want people to request a quote from your services? Make sure your landing page focuses just on that.
Looking for people to sign up for a webinar o a waitlist? Everything should be focused on that goal.
The true beauty is that landing pages shorten the journey from click to conversion.
But what happens when it’s not converting as expected, or when they start to decrease?
Most marketers will go and immediately come up with different angles, headlines or CTAs.
Don’t get me wrong. They have their place and they can certainly increase clicks and some sales, but…
have you considered that the issue can be somewhere else?
And by somewhere else, I mean in the page they land after they click a button in your landing page. Maybe there’s a message-market mismatch.
or maybe it’s just that the traffic that’s coming to the website is not the right one for the offer.
Yet, most marketers focus on the landing page per se.
That’s why it’s important to know that the problem could be in other placer than the landing page per se.
But let’s say you know that, so what are the 6 steps to optimize a landing page?
Here’s a quick glance at these steps:
- Conduct research
- Form/validate hypotheses
- Create treatment
- Conduct experiment (where most businesses and marketers focus on)
- Analyze and experiment data
- Conduct follow-up experiments
As a rule, don’t forget that you should NOT make prospects think at any moment in time with their System 2.
In case you are not familiar, System 1 and System 2 are part of how we process information. A discovery made by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
So you always want to create your landing pages for the System 1, which is known as fast thinking. Said in another way, it doesn’t require any effort to go through your landing page and prospects can easily know what to do and what you’re about.
Once you know this, you have to first be aware of 2 concepts: Wireframing and Information hierarchy.
These are important concepts as they will help you determine the structure of your landing page, the length of it and what information to put (and in what order).
For these concepts (especially information hierarchy), you should keep in mind the market awareness level of your prospects plus the goal of your landing page.
But, how do you get actual insights on the landing page?
That’s where you turn into quantitative research… and like most businesses, using Google Analytics.
When doing this, think of it as answering questions you want to know.
Here are some of the question you might want to have an answer:
- What devices are they using in your landing page?
- Where are they coming from? (What traffic source?)
- What browser are they using?
- Who are they? (demographic and psychographic).
You are going to want to do this for each step of your funnel. This is known as a step-drop analysis.
From all the knowledge you get, then you turn into more of a qualitative research.
In this step is where processes like heuristic analysis can help you. But if you don’t know how to do it, then in addition using the common option like surveys, usability testing, interviews and reviews should guide you in the right direction.
Once you have all these pieces in place, you can start thinking of the copy that’s going to be on the site.
By keeping in mind everything I’ve laid down so far you’re going to be able to know what to say so that your viewers feel that what you have is exactly what they need.
And before I forget, there’ something you should be aware of.
Copy and design go hand in hand…
Don’t ever sacrifice or prioritize design over copy. Your copy should be as long as it needs to get the job done. From there, design will help you make it appealing as well as help stand out what needs to stand out.
Lastly, but definitely not least… it’s your form design.
And I learned an interesting way of seeing it and you’re going to see it’s a good way to look at it.
You have to consider your form as a landing page inside your landing page.
This means it has to make total sense on its own and be clear on what do you want your visitor to do.
And with these plus all the 6 steps (embedded in this article) I shared, you’re going to be able to optimize your landing page.
It’s just after you’re testing a page that you can start using tools like A/B testin, but…
you need to have high amount of traffic to be able to do so.
In case you’re wondering how you can know this, CXL has it’s own calculator you are free to check it out.
So if you were to ask me what I think of this course about landing page optimization, I’d say… it’s a really good course.
It lays down the principles on how to optimize based on repeatable principles, and the steps are more than clear and simple to grasp that you can start putting into practice as soon as you need.
That wraps up this week’s article.
Next, I’m going to dive into the Conversion Research process a little bit more. No worries, I’m still going to share with you what are the main points I learned from it.
Till then, hope you got something out of value today.
Ivan
