Conversion rates are one of the most critical KPIs of any marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter whether your company is B2B or B2C, what products or services you offer, or how long your sales cycle is – you want a website that converts visitors into leads. One of the most successful methods for increasing conversion on your website is having landing pages.
Just having any landing page is likely a good start in improving conversion rates, but to really see meaningful results, you need a great landing page. Keep reading for a quick overview of the purpose of landing pages, and 5 tips on how to optimize them for better conversion.
What’s the Purpose of a Landing Page?
In simple terms, a landing page is a website page dedicated to getting a visitor to become a lead. While the rest of your website should be dedicated to educating the customer on your product, service, or solution as well as providing them with useful resources, your landing pages are dedicated to collecting potential customer information.
There are a lot of different “conversion actions” you might be attempting to get a visitor to do on a landing page. These can include:
- Signing Up for a Demo
- Booking a Consultation
- Scheduling a Meeting
- Requesting a Quote
- Asking for More Information
- Downloading a Resource (ebook, case study, whitepaper)
- Actually Purchasing the Product or Service
- Lots More
Whatever it is you’re trying to get your visitors to sign up to do, you can increase the number of people who do it by following a few optimization tactics.
How to Improve Conversion on Landing Pages: 5 Essential Tips
1: Optimize Your Form/CTAs
The form is the main point of a Landing Page. It’s how conversion actually happens. The Call to Action (CTA) that goes along with the form is important as well, as it is the final button visitors will click to become a lead.
In general, here are some tips for optimizing your Form and CTA:
- Have the form above the fold (visible to visitors before they have to scroll down).
- Make sure the form is readable and functional. Check your font, text colour, required fields, etc. to make sure everything is simple
- Check your form and page on mobile devices as well as different operating systems (Mac vs PC).
- Make the button text intriguing. Ditch the simple Submit button in favour of something more exciting like Sign Me Up!
2: Reduce the Barriers to Conversion
The key to a high-converting landing page is having a low barrier to conversion. That means making sure that visitors who come to your landing page will find it quick and simple to fill in the form and sign up for whatever you’re asking them to do.
What typically causes a high barrier to conversion? Complex or long forms. Take out all the bells and whistles from your form. Have as few required text input fields as possible. And, perhaps the most important: reduce the number of form fields. Seriously. Just ask for less information.
But – I need all that information!
We know. The sales process is much easier for you if you have a whole bunch of info about a lead before you even talk to them. But the truth is, but having too many (we’re talking more than 5 or so) form fields on your landing page, you’re probably losing out on a significant number of potential leads.
If you really want to collect that additional information, try having additional (not required) fields on a second form on a second page after the lead clicks to submit the first form. Or try sending all leads who fill in a form an email a few days later asking them to provide more info.
3: Focus on Pain Points in Content
Just like with the rest of an Inbound website, you can encourage your visitors to convert on your landing pages by speaking directly to their pain points. Rather than using a landing page to talk all about the benefits of your product/service, write headings that directly address the issue your target customer is facing that lead them to your landing page.
Related: Write Better Content. Talk to People
For example, if you’re selling facility management software you might have a heading that says “Book a Demo of our Award-Winning Facility Management Software.” But you could get more conversions if you switched it up to “Reduce Unwanted Downtime. Be More Efficient. Improve Your ROI.”
4: Get Rid of Distractions
You know all the elements and buttons on your website, so it’s easy for you to look past everything but the form/CTA on a landing page. But for visitors who don’t know your site additional links, popups and other elements can be a big distraction from filling in the form.
By removing all possible distractions you can really improve the conversion rate on a landing page. Here are some things you should do to reduce distractions:
- Remove your top navigation so there are no other pages to go to
- Remove all links to other pages from the footer
- Don’t have any pop-ups or slide-ins
- Unless it’s built specifically for that landing page only, remove your chat bot
- Don’t include links to other pages in the content (you can put those on the Thank You page or in the Thank You email)
5: Be Specific and Targeted
Typically, the more specific your landing page is the higher conversion rate it will have. What that means is, you should attempt to personalize your landing pages based on where they are accessed from, who will be viewing them, and whether the visitor is a re-conversion or first-timer. This is not only helpful because it makes the offer seem more direct personalized, but also because it allows for easier tracking of metrics.
For example, if you have a Facebook ad that leads to a landing page asking someone to register for a webinar, you could include something like “thanks for checking us out on Facebook!” on the page. Then do the same for LinkedIn ads. By setting up a duplicate (though slightly different) landing page per source, you can easily track which sources lead to higher conversions and focus on those in the future.
Have more questions about landing pages? Submit them (anonymously) to our monthly advice column, Dear Flawless, to see our team’s answers. Or if you’re looking for a more in-depth conversation, feel free to reach out today! We can’t wait to hear from you.
