How to improve your Landing Page Optimization ?

In this post, I'm going to write about Landing Page Optimization (LPO) and give you advice on conversion optimization.

What is Landing Page Optimization ?

A landing page is a webpage that is displayed when a potential customer clicks on an ad or a search engine result link. This webpage typically displays content that is a relevant extension of the ad or link.

Landing page optimization (LPO) is part of conversion optimization (also known as Conversion Rate Optimization - CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.

Conversion rate is computed as the ratio between the number of people ordering the product/service and the number of people visiting the page.

LPO aims to provide page content and appearance that makes the webpage more appealing to target audiences.

LPO makes you gain customers

LPO is very important since improving it can be an easy way to gain customers.

For example, several tests led by MarketingExperiments enabled the New York Times to significantly improve the conversion rate of its Electronic edition.

First, the design of the page was optimized: the new landing page included the offer price, standard buttons were replaced by radio ones, and the call-to-action weighted more effectively. By changing the display of the offer, the customer's decision was simplified, which reduced friction.

Second, they changed the regular paid offer to a 7-day free trial offer, which resulted in reducing customer anxiety.

Image: MarketingExperiments

In the end, the LPO resulted in a dramatic increase in conversion rate (more than 1000%) and enabled the New York Times to gain more subscribers.

Emphasize your value proposition

The most effective way to improve your LPO is to emphasize your value proposition. Your value proposition is the primary reason why a suspect should buy from you. I'm not going to go into marketing details here but, in a nutshell, keep in mind you should always:

1. Differentiate your offer from the competition's;

2. Excel in at least one element of value;

3. Be the best choice for your optimum customer;

4. Address both the value proposition of your company and the value proposition of your product.

What to do for your value proposition ?

Concretely, you can do the followings things in order to optimize your landing pages:

- Tie your value proposition into the headline.

- Use short form that asks for required fields and therefore avoid long form asking for unneeded information.

- Display weighted graphic to show progress along the subscription path.

- List benefits above or next to the subscription form, so that visitor avoid scrolling down significantly.

- Use a chart of benefits (one of the most effective visual display of the value proposition).

- Re-emphasize the free-nature of the offer and the immediate benefit if appropriate.

- Place credibility indicators in close proximity to the call to action.

A simple way to test your value proposition is to create a couple of online ads with different summaries and measure their click-through rate. The one with the highest click-through rate identifies the value proposition that is the most appealing to your potential customers.

Express an effective value proposition

Now that you have a strong value proposition, let's see how to convey it through your landing pages in the clearest and most compelling way possible. Your value proposition has to be in line with two elements: congruence and continuity.

Congruence means that every element of your page either states your value proposition or support it. This can be expressed in your logos, price, design features, images, colors, etc.

Image: MarketingExperiments

Continuity means that each step of your buy process states or support your value proposition. For example, when someone searches a certain keyword, your ad should include the same keyword, as well as the header in your page. If a potential customer lands on a page which is irrelevant to its search, you have a discontinuity in addressing your value proposition.

Image: MarketingExperiments

Motivation of user

The motivation of user is also a significative factor which drives the conversion rate.

The point is to determine the motivation of user within a given channel. To do so, you can analyze the performance of the channels of traffic that generates revenue for your business (for example emailing, paid search...). Web Analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Woopra help you evaluate the cost of the traffic and the revenue generated from that traffic, and determine the channels with the highest profit.

For your top channels, it can be interesting to analyze the nature of your customer, the reason why they're buying and see how you could customize your landing pages to appeal within those channels.

Keep in mind that relevance leads to conversion: you should always combine channel relevance, creative relevance, and landing page relevance.