Conversion Optimization Tips
Top 11 Landing Page Optimization Strategies For Maximum Results
Video Transcript - Top 11 Landing Page Optimization Strategies
In this tutorial, we will share with you 11 landing page optimization strategies to help you turn more clicks into leads and buyers.
But before getting into the details, we want to clarify the landing page optimization lingo that we will use and that you will hear from all sorts of marketers talking about landing pages.
We want to clear this up because before we get into the actual strategies that we will share with you here today, we want to make sure you understand what the heck we are talking about when we use these terms.
Landing Page Lingo
Home Page
When building a website, a home page is one of the first things built. The home page is typically the front door of the website.
Not everyone accessing the website enters from the home page. Customers and users can enter the website through any number of pages or landing pages.
Landing Page
People enter a website through an entry point known as the landing page. It is the first page they see.
First Fold
Arguably, the most critical part of your website and landing page.
It is the piece of the page that someone immediately sees. It will determine if they are interested in scrolling down further to see additional content.
If they do not like the first fold, they lose interest. The first fold is where first impressions are made.
Below The Fold
Once they become interested in the first fold, they will explore the content below the fold.
So now we hope you will understand when you hear marketers and web developers talk about the landing pages, first folds, below the fold.
Next, let us discuss the 11 conversion optimization strategies to help drive your business, increase results, and convert clicks into leads and buyers.
Landing Page Optimization Strategies
Strategy #1 - Keep It Simple
The first conversion optimization strategy beginning with the basics is to KEEP IT SIMPLE.
When creating a landing page, you want to get the maximum results, so you need to keep it simple.
This is probably the most messed up biggest mistake we see all of the time.
Keep it simple and have as few offers as possible.
If you can have a landing page that focuses on one single offer or one goal, that will probably get you the highest result.
Now, if you are in e-commerce with multiple offers or multiple goals, this may not always apply.
But, even in e-commerce, if you have numerous different products or categories, ask yourself, what is the goal? How do I make the decision-making process when somebody lands on a landing page as easy as possible.
Ask yourself, how do I create a path as simple as possible to help them reach our goal, whether it is opt-in or purchasing? One of the fastest ways to accomplish this is to eliminate options.
If you ever went to a restaurant, opened their menu, and seen pages and pages, hundreds of options, and you are like, I do not know what I want because there are too many options.
The same thing happens when people enter your landing page and they have too many options. Keep it focused, one offer, one call to action, or as few as possible.
Once you have narrowed it down, look at your landing page.
Ask yourself, are there distractions that do not need to be there, or am I linking off to other things from my landing page that might be a distraction. You will see lots of landing pages that are sub-pages on a website that do not even have a navigation bar.
You want people to focus.
Again, look at your landing pages and remove any distractions you see. Focus on your offers.
Make sure you are getting as many people to take that offer as possible rather than clicking on all of these random things that do not support your business goals.
This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.
Landing Page Optimization Strategy #2 - Compelling Headline
The headline is one element that is more important than any other element in the first fold that convinces people to stay, read more, and engage with the website.
The headline should be front and center on your landing page.
The headline is the very first thing someone's eyeballs should magnetically be drawn to when accessing a landing page.
The headline has one and only one purpose; it must answer the question: WHAT IS IN IT FOR ME? (WIIFM)
When people surf the internet, they are searching for something. They need something.
The headline needs to communicate in as few words as possible to help people find what they are looking for here.
Write a compelling, benefit-driven headline in as few words as possible, letting people know, here is what you are going to get, here is how your life will improve, and here is the problem we are going to solve for you if you stay on this landing page and read more.
It hooks the people opening your landing page.
The HEADLINE is the essential part of your first fold, and honestly, the headline is the most critical part of the website.
If the headline is wrong, it will not matter if you have the best product, the best pricing, the best ad copy, the best guarantee because people will not stick around long enough to read about it.
Go back and ask yourself, do I have a good headline?
If you have a headline that you have used since starting the website, start testing new headlines.
Writing a better headline is one of the fastest ways to increase results on your landing pages and get more people to stick and more people to read.
If there is anything you should test right away, you should try a new headline. Just this minor change will potentially get you better results immediately.
Strategy #3 - Complementary & Contrasting Color Palette
Colors, here is the problem and the mistake we see all of the time.
People take their ad copy and everything ready for the landing page and give it to their designer.
Designers like to use complementary colors.
They make the websites, and the landing pages look pretty, really nice, but pretty and nice does not always mean practical.
They end up using complementary colors that hide the message rather than making the key points, the headlines, and the calls to action stand out loud; they kind of blend it in.
So if you want your landing page to be as effective as possible, you need to use COMPLEMENTARY BUT CONTRASTING color palettes.
With the main text, we recommend dark text and light background.
The best is black on white for sure; for your main body, if you have a lot of text, or a longer sales piece, try black on white; you can not beat it.
But if you want to use color on color, make sure it contrasts.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when we see a website with a light purple background with a darker purple text. That is the same color. It is not contrasting.
So it is hard for the eye to read because it does not contrast as well.
It is not that someone can not read the text; it slows down our reading, and when you slow down people's reading, you slow down their comprehension.
What happens is people get bored, and when they get bored, they leave.
So GET YOUR COLORS RIGHT.
When it comes to your call to action, make sure that you have bright contrasting colors.
Make sure to reserve the bright contrasting color for your call-to-action links.
If we had a website with many red colors, we probably would not use a red call to action.
But, if we were primarily using blues and grays, maybe we would use red just for the call to action.
Why?
Because it would stand out like a sore thumb.
Your call to attention would be so different that it would get people's attention.
Use complementary and contrasting color palettes.
This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy #4.
Landing Page Optimization Strategy #4 - Simple and Obvious Call-to-Action
Keep your call to action
a) SIMPLE, and
b) OBVIOUS
Your call to action should never be a series of multiple steps.
Go here, then go here, then do this, and then do this.
No, it should be; click here to sign up.
Click here to order.
Click here to register.
One of our rules we recommend when writing calls to action and creating buttons is to avoid words like buy and purchase.
Because that has the feeling like hey, I am trying to get money from people.
Instead, we would use more gentle positive words like Join now – Download today – Register now – Sign-up – Get yours – Add to cart, rather than buy or purchase.
Now, the other rule is to use big, bright, and bold buttons.
When you are trying to get peoples attention, you want to make it loud and in their faces.
So there is no way they can miss it.
We can tell you right now that the designers are going to cringe.
They are not necessarily going to like that, but you want it to stand out.
We have tested many different scenarios, and we are not sure what it is about red, but it is hard to beat a bright red button.
We have tested red against yellows, red against blues, red against purples, and when we use a red button, it gets more clicks.
We have even seen in screen recordings where there have been bright red graphics, and you can see people click on it. It is something about the red.
People just get drawn to it, and they click on it. That tells us that our buttons probably should be red.
This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.
Strategy #5 - Social Proof
Sometimes people come to a website, and they do not know you; they may feel like they are the first to invest in your product or service.
The best way to take away that uncertainty and the most powerful selling tools you have to convince people to trust you is not you telling people to trust you, but rather it is showing examples of other people who have already put their trust in you.
Now, when we say social proof, a lot of people think about testimonials.
But, there are so many different ways you can show social proof on your landing pages.
Of course, you can use written and video testimonials from past customers who have benefited from your offers.
Those are super powerful. We would highly recommend those.
Other ways to display social proof are to show 3rd party ratings and reviews like Google Reviews, Amazon Reviews, and Trust Pilot.
For instance, take a screen capture of great Google reviews like 4.5 stars on Google or 5 Stars on Google and over a thousand reviews on Amazon.
Screen capture that review and put it in your marketing on your landing pages to show people that you have your reviews.
Trust pilot is a company who have built their entire company around these reviews. When you use Trust Pilot, and people review you there, you can insert their widget to show real-time reviews that you have had on Trust Pilot.
Also, on top of that, there are other tools like UseProof.com, which is a real-time social proof service.
UseProof.com uses a little live pop-up at the bottom of the screen, telling people who enter your site where and how long ago purchases have happened.
For example, the pop-up displays that so and so from California purchased ten minutes ago. Or so and so from Vancouver, Canada purchased 5 minutes ago. And so and so from where ever purchased two hours ago.
And all that is constant social proof saying to people, Hey, do not worry other people have invested here too.
The bottom line is, SOCIAL PROOF is not purely testimonials.
It is ratings.
It is reviews.
Check out my website for my podcast, "The Project Ignite", where I set-up a ton of social-proofs.
And, it is screen captures of comments people have made on other social media platforms turned into images on that website.
It is widgets showing that other people are buying your product or service. These are all powerful tools to support the sales message on your landing pages.
Landing Page Optimization Strategy #6 - Make It Scannable
SCANNABILITY is an old direct response ad copy strategy.
Using old text formatting tools like BOLD, ITALICS, or HIGHLIGHTS, draw out key messages and benefits throughout your landing page.
So if you have three paragraphs of text on a landing page, you would have the regular text, and then you use rich text formatting to actually draw out key benefits and messages.
We ask that you avoid using underlines because people may confuse this with a hyperlink.
Studies show that, using an eye-tracking test to watch how people interact with landing pages, they quickly scan the first fold, and with a good headline that captures their attention and convinces them to stay, most people will not read from top to bottom.
Instead, they grab the scroll bar and scroll down while looking for other indicators, which let them know that, yes, this is what I want.
So the headline hooks them, but now they are scanning.
You want to use the rich text formatting tools to pull out key messages and benefits that support the headline, convincing people that, yes, this is something that interests them.
And you might notice that a lot of people will scan and immediately take action.
Additionally, many people will go back and read the content in more detail because your headline and RICH TEXT FORMATTING got their attention and convinced them that this is something they want.
If the rich text formatting of bold, italics, or highlights do not appear, then when they are scanning, they scan over all of it and miss the key benefits and messages.
Make sure your landing page is scannable.
This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.
Strategy #7 - Credibility
Do anything you can on your landing page to enhance and increase your CREDIBILITY.
This means to display any and all relevant certifications, associations, or awards.
Add any security and safe shopping seals.
There are tons of them out there that you can use on your website that, hey, I am legitimate, my website is secure, you can trust me, even if the people are not examining them, they are seeing them out of their periphery while scanning.
Subconsciously it is enhancing and building your credibility.
Display any as seen on or as seen in media logos.
For example, display any interviews you have conducted or featured in any media or website with authority.
Your credibility is enhanced and built when logos are displayed.
Remember, when people come to your website for the very first time, they probably do not know you, and if they do not know you, you need to build trust, you need to build authority, and you need to build credibility on top of the message that is the bulk of the page.
How do we do that?
We do that by using all of the other elements that we can add, and you see this is used all of the time.
If you go to our website, you will see as seen on, as seen in, because we have been published and featured in many different places, and we leverage those high authorities and well-known brands to help build our credibility to those people who may not know us.
That is a compelling strategy.
Landing Page Optimization Strategy #8 - Scarcity & Urgency
It would be best if you gave people a reason why they need to act.
You need to create scarcity.
You need to create urgency.
If you do not tell people why they need to buy today, register now, subscribe today, they will think, no worries, this looks great, I will come back later.
But they will not.
If ten people say to you that they will be back, nine of them will not return.
It is just the nature of sales. It is the nature of marketing online.
It is not that they do not want your product or service; they do, but once they have left, they are not coming back, or very few will.
The way around this is to create scarcity and urgency.
Create a Limited-time offer – Limited time bonus – Limited quantity offer.
Display urgency with count down timers and using dates.
However you do it, you need to give people a reason why they need to act now.
Then it would be best if you reinforced that because the more you can reinforce that, the better the result you are going to get.
The more urgency you create, the better the result you are going to get.
FULL STOP.
If there is no URGENCY on your landing page right now on your key offers, if there is no SCARCITY, create it, and your results will go up.
This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.
Strategy #9 - Speed
SPEED IS CRITICAL.
The most crucial piece of your landing page optimization, which has to be fast, is the first fold.
Your first-fold needs to load in a few seconds or less because people have no patience.
Think about it now, when you go to a webpage, and the loading page icon goes around and around spinning, what do you do?
You hit back, hit refresh, or think, oh, it is not working, it must be down, and you leave.
Your landing pages have to be super optimized. They have to load quickly.
The biggest culprit for slow loading landing pages these days is too many graphics.
That is why you will see that the quickest landing pages are very sparse on graphics—no large images.
The images they do have, are super compressed and super well optimized.
If you are going to have video images on your landing pages, avoid preloading those.
Have the landing page load and then have a placeholder load, but when they hit play, the video loads because big loading videos in the background can destroy your conversion because people on slow connections are sitting there waiting for a video load.
DO NOT DO THAT!
The best way to avoid a slow-loading landing page is to use lazy load plug-ins.
If you use Google or WordPress, search lazy load plug-ins. You will find that plug-ins will fix your webpage so that certain assets will not load until they are actually needed.
Using lazy load plug-ins will dramatically speed up your webpage.
We recommend that you use a content delivery network or caching to help speed up your website rapidly.
Because, if it is slow loading, if your landing page is taking five seconds before people can see what your webpage is about, you are actively losing people.
FULL STOP. No question.
Landing Page Optimization Strategy #10 - Remove The Risk
When you have any offer that requires people to invest their money, and these are people that do not know you and have not done business with you, and it is the first purchase, and they do not know what the quality of your product or service is like, you have to use guarantees.
Always remove the risk with a guarantee.
MONEY-BACK GUARANTEES REMOVE THE RISK.
Some people might ask, won’t that drive up our refunds.
Yes, you will have refunds, and that is OK.
A great money-back guarantee will always outweigh potential refunds and the gains you get by having a money-back guarantee.
This brings us to our final and last landing page optimization strategy, strategy # 11.
Strategy #11 - Contact Information
Think about it, when people land on a landing page on your website, and they do not know you, we have already talked about all of these elements you can use to build trust and credibility.
Still, the fact of the matter is that people are not going to purchase if they do not feel like somebody behind the website can be contacted or that there is someone they can reach out to if they have questions or a problem.
But we live in a world where many people get into an online business because they do not want to talk to people.
Or they think that because it is an online business, they do not have to speak with people.
Now, we know no matter how many times we say this, some people will never have a phone number on their website.
Heck, there are certain websites we do not have phone numbers on.
Why?
Because we do not have anyone to answer that phone.
But in all of my big businesses, I have a phone number, and we have people that will answer that phone.
Here is the reality, even if you do not have someone answering the phone, that is OK because you have a phone number that goes to a voice mail that says you have reached XYZ business; if you have a question, please leave a message, and we will call you back promptly.
If you would like to, you can also e-mail @ blah, and they can leave a message, and you can call them back at your own time and convenience.
But the fact is, the more ways people can contact you, the more trust you are going to create.
It is not that everybody will contact you, but having your contact information on the website will build the trust and confidence they will need to invest in your business.
In order, phone numbers build the most trust but, live chat is a very close second.
Live chat is a fantastic way to interact with people on your website without having someone staffing a phone number.
Finally, e-mail.
Have an e-mail obviously that people can reach out to you.
But the more options people have to CONTACT YOU, the more trust and confidence you will build.
Conclusion
There you have it – 11 conversion optimization strategies for your landing page.
If you are not doing all of these?
Even if you are doing ten out of eleven, take the one you are not doing and do it.
You will start to begin to see the results go up.
Write all of these down and then look at your landing page and check off all of the strategies you have.
What are the ones you do not have?
What is your score?
Did you get an 11 out of 11?
If you did, great.
If you got an 11 out of 11 and you are still not getting the results, now you have to go back and ask yourself, do I have the right offer? Is my offer good?
Or am I driving the wrong traffic to this landing page, and do I need to change my traffic strategy?
If you only have a few of these, and you have got a lot of room to improve, we guarantee you that if you start implementing these and testing these strategies, you will see the results increase.
But, we should warn you, do not make the mistake of changing ten things at once on your landing page.
If you already have a landing page that is getting results, if you change five things, right now, if your sales go up or your sales go down, or your results go up, or your results go down, you will never know why.
So, take one thing, change it. Monitor the results.
If they go up, fantastic! If they go down, revert to what you had and then make the following change.
This is how you systematically, step by step, improve your landing page.
If you want, you get into A/B split testing, and there are lots of tools; Google creates some.
There are some like optimize that can help you do split testing. But, the best way to get started is to take and make one change and monitor the results.
If they go up, you have got a winner. Keep it and make the next change.
So now we hope you have a few ideas to help you improve the conversion rates on your landing pages.