The internet has not just been a tool for easy communication in the modern world; it has become a place for businesses to thrive and grow. As the internet becomes available to more and more people, and they learn about the things that can be done with it, the competition gets tougher. There are millions and billions of websites out there, and you need to get people to visit yours out of this vast sea of content. Well, does not seem like a simple task does it?
Why work on Landing Page Optimization?
Your landing page is the first impression that the audience receives your website. This means that the prospect of the visitors exploring further reaches of your website is almost entirely dependent on the way the landing page is structured, designed and tailored. It is like judging a novel, where, the cover page is your landing page.
How can you optimize your Landing Page?
There is a process called Landing Page Conversion Optimization Process a.k.a. LPCO Process, which acts as a guide to improve the conversion rates of your website.
Conversions
- Requirements:
Before you actually begin to sit down and design the landing page, you must have a detailed draft of what exactly you need on the web page.
So, how can create this draft?
The draft should give a clear idea of your business goals as well as the user’s goals. For this, you first need to have clarity as to who your target audience is. Once the target audience is defined, you can add to the plan by asking questions like, “What is the target user looking for?”, “What will appeal to the target user?”, “Will the target user understand it?” and so on.
“When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere. Just ask him.” – Don Draper, Mad Men.
2)Design:
Once you have the matter written down, then the next step is to design it in the most appealing manner.
In the fast-paced world, remember the principle of “Less is more” while designing the layout.
So, there are certain specifics that you need to put in the layout, which include the following:
- Reasonable Header: The keyword here is reasonable, so do not overcrowd the top of your page with loud designs and content. Try and reserve not more than a quarter of your page for the header.
- Headline: Everything you are in five words or less.
- Subheader: An elaboration of the above in eight words or less.
- Image: People believe what they see, and besides, images attract attention.
- Call –to action: This is essential as it tells the target user what he/she needs to do to have a fuller experience of the website.
- Trustmarks: These include reviews, testimonials and space for suggestions and discussions, in order to create a bond of trust and understanding with the user.
- List of Key Points: Quick summary of everything without stalling too much on the intricate details.
- Social Proof: things like social media post, the number of shares, case studies and reviews from other users so that visitors to your site know that you are doing something socially intriguing.
- Reasonable Footer: Same as the header
3) Implementation:
Once you are done with visualizing and mapping down the above two points, you have essentially created the design of your page. This design now needs to be implemented in the online space, whereby you use the backend tools and processes to make your design come to life the exact way that you had visualized it.
4) Verification:
You need to verify the design that you implemented to make sure that everything is functioning smoothly. Go to the landing page, take the conversion – not just as yourself – but channelize and recreate the persona of several target user types, so that you see and utilize your design from their perspective. Create custom reports to analyze the success or failure of the new design.
5) Maintenance:
Based on the verification results, changes need to be made to optimize the webpage in the best possible manner, utilizing the best options from the point of view of your target audience.
Even with a successful implementation and verification, your job is far from done. The Internet is a constantly changing environment and upgrades periodically. Your web-page needs to be in tandem with these updates so that you are not left out in the mix.
A dose of insight: according to psychological terms, the Reptilian Brain or the most primitive part of the brain is responsible for making the decision to click through to your landing page or any other part of the website. Hence, it pays to be as simplistic and direct as possible when designing necessary parts of your landing page.
Optimization
In order to optimize your page to the fast-paced world of your consumer, you may find these techniques to be quite helpful:
- Pre-populate cursor: If the landing page has form fields, then one of the quickest ways to reduce frictions – facilitating a higher rate of conversions – is by pre-populating the cursor to the first field. This essentially involves the cursor blinking at exactly the place or blank that you need the visitor to fill or consider first. In this case, the cursor acts as a guide for the visitor when he/she comes onto the website. Seems simple, but actually, this slight change can cause a significant difference.
- Eye Tracking: Eye Tracking tracks the movement of eyes of the visitor when he/she comes onto the landing page. Implementation of such technology and feedbacks on the same help you decide what is working, that is, what grabs more attention and what does not. This, in turn, will help in the improvement of the page by telling you what needs to be changed or improved.
- Measurement:
This involves the testing and overall understanding of which aspects of the website work well and which do not. Some of the essential elements that can be tested and improved accordingly include the following:
- Layouts
- Language and wording
- Heading length
- Font and type size
- Amount of copy on the page
- Web Design
But these seem so minuscule and hard to measure, especially regarding how exactly this is affecting the conversion rate.
For this, you can use the A/B Test.
It is simple. You have to first create two versions of your landing page, A and B. One of the pages, say A, has the essential changes and improvements in the above-mentioned aspects, while the other page, B, does not.
Randomly, some visitors are redirected to page A and some to page B; the conversion rates from both can help decide which measurements are working for your page and which need to be discarded.
Conclusion:
LPCO shows vast scope for improvement for the majority of pages out there. Statistics speak that that landing page conversion varies by 2.4% for average pages, and by 5% for top-performing pages.
This just stands as a reminder that the degree to which you can exalt your website with regards to landing page optimization is limitless. You can be one of the first people to create optimization standards that have not been explored yet. So, what are you waiting for? Go, experiment!