Landing Page Optimization

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A landing page is an entrance page. A page user “land on” first. It works independently of the site and is focused on a clear conversion goal.

Characteristics of an effective landing page:

  • It shortens the journey from click to conversion.

  • Follows up on “promises” made in ad source.

  • Speaks to user motivation and addresses barriers.

  • It answers important questions and creates clarity.

  • It creates a clear path to the conversion goal.

Optimizing a landing Page:

Optimizing a landing page is not just about fixing the landing page and making it look good. It involves a wholistic approach that takes into consideration the Pre-Landing page and Post-Landing page journey and experiences of the user.

Below is a list of factors that influence the landing page experience:

  1. Psychology: Motivation, barriers, concerns, anxiety, brain chemicals.

  2. Users: age, gender, location, expectations, questions.

  3. Context, user journey, funnel steps, ad source

  4. Device, browser, operating system.

  5. Copy, design, ux.

The Optimization process at a glance involves:

  • Conducting Research.

  • Form/validate hypotheses.

  • Create treatment.

  • Conduct experiment.

  • Analyze experiment data.

  • Conduct follow-up experiment.

Michael Aagaard of CXL Institute considers the above steps as steps mainly for A/B testing. He recommends that focus should be given to User research and then one can test that.

The Elements one needs to look at when optimizing a landing page are:

  • The landing page copy.

  • The design.

  • The visual design

  • Form design

Lets look at each element:
 Landing Page Copywriting:
When you do copywriting for your landing page you should:

  • Deliver on what you promised in your ad.

  • Use similar statement on your banner Ad and the Value Proposition on your LP.

  • Be clear and specific. Avoid generic copy.

  • Consider the design in your copy. Copy and design must complement each other.

 Include the 5 most important Landing page copy elements:

  1. Headline: Use it to match message on ad, capture attention and trigger dopamine.

  2. Benefits/Features: Present important info, emphasize value of your offer, trigger dopamine.

  3. Credibility: Make content trustworthy, answer questions, mitigate cortisol.

  4. Expectation manager: ensure users know what to expect, mitigate ambiguity, increase clarity.

  5. Call-to-action: Make users click. Give a clear idea of what happens when you click. Be relevant to your conversion goal.

 Landing Page Design:
The 6 most important Design elements are the:

  • Headline

  • Images / Video

  • Features / Benefits

  • Credibility

  • Expectation manager.

  • Call – to- Action.

Visual Hierarchy:
The 5 most important elements of visual hierarchy are:

  • Size

  • Space

  • Font

  • Color and Contrast

  • Direction.

 Form Design:
 Forms are important in any lead generation LP.

The form has to make sense on it’s own independent of the rest of the landing page.

Elements of a form include:

  • Headline

  • Expectation Manager

  • Address barrier

  • Call-to-action.

 The best Steps to follow in Optimizing a Landing page according to Aargard are:

  1. Conducting research.

  2. Audit.

  3. Wireframe.

  4. Copy/design.

  5. Implement.

  6. Test and Optimize.

 Conducting Research:
 The rough research process outline is:

  • A heuristic walkthrough– this requires empathy and understanding. It involves understanding and going through the customer journey ( funnel).

    • Quantitive research- this requires digging into analytics. “what?” and “where?”

  • Qualitative research- Why?

 
Tools and strategies to carry out Research:
 Hotjar implemented on page: start running heat maps and recordings.
 Heuristic walkthrough: write down URLs
 Custom report: Go through all tabs in the report, establish baseline and do a step-drop analysis.
 5 second test of original: Do a 5 second test either via usability.com or a similar tool.
 Interview with sales and customer support: Get a deeper understanding of questions, motivations and barriers and how to address them.
 Read reviews: Go through custom reviews and get a deeper understanding of positive and negative aspects.
 Interview with audience. Get a deeper understanding of decision making process and customer experience.
 Implement feedback polls: Information from interviews with spark new question. Set up feedback polls to get answers.
 Do the who where and what exercise: Establish “baseline” for what info you need to include and how much.
 
Audit:
 Ensure that the: Funnel and IP experience are great, the information and visual hierarchy flows, the copy is clear and concise and the design has no friction of any kind.
 
Wireframe:
Start building your new LP wireframe.
Write rough copy outline
Start building visual hierarchy
 Work on rough design elements.
 Implement, test and optimize:
This are the final steps and are mainly used in A/B testing which we shall not look at here.
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