Trust is the cornerstone of long-distance relationships.

Without the proximity of in-person purchases in brick-and-mortar stores, trust becomes vital in your connection to your online customers.

Luckily, you can manage and convey trust on your site, as one of the dynamics of the Conversion Framework. Our Framework is built around the potential customer’s needs, interest, motivations, and objections.

The need to feel secure and trust the product’s seller is fundamental for a visitor. Every visitor to your online or offline store comes to you with specific intimidations and fears. They do not want to be cheated, sold at, or ripped off somehow; they wish to have an enjoyable, simple shopping or browsing experience.

Visitors come with a purpose, and your primary goal should be to ease the conversion process as much as possible. If you are able to establish trust with your customers successfully, you build their confidence in your company. The more confidence a customer has in your company, the more likely it is they will do business with you again. Even though getting a conversion from a first-time customer is essential, repeat customers are more valuable. The conversion value is multiplied if you are able to gain customer loyalty.

JanSport has an Instagram gallery with pictures of customers carrying their bags.
Achieving trust with the skeptical buyer is not always an easy matter.
The more financial investment a product or service requires, the more difficult it is to gain trust because the level of skepticism increases as the price tag and investment rises.

Stores that sell jewelry online report less than 0.5% average conversion rate. Does that number reflect only the lack of trust a visitor may have? Not necessarily, but trust plays a central role when guiding the user’s decision. Consider buying an engagement ring for your fiancée from an online store. You cannot see the ring up close, nor touch it, feel it, or try it on. You may wonder if the site is trustworthy, whether they are honest, and if the item will arrive with the quality you expect.How confident will you feel about the ring? Making sure you choose the right ring can be quite a challenge offline, so you can only imagine the feelings of attempting to purchase it online. Nonetheless, many online stores are successful at selling high-priced items and are able to establish enough confidence with their visitors to convert.These stores have mastered the keys to enhancing trust and confidence in site visitors.

If you have perfunctory website as the one below, how come do you expect your customers to trust you? Brand recognition lends credibility to larger companies, but many online stores do not have the luxury of having a recognizable name. Trust elements become crucial for these stores.

Keep in mind that trust is an essential part of the selling process offline as well.

Consider this: would you trust a poorly kept storefront in a bad area of town?

In this chapter, we explain about the four stages of “The Trust Circle”: awareness, knowledge, liking, and trust. We present the concepts of value proposition, continuity, and congruency, along with a list of questions to help you improve all three of these elements in your website. We also introduce social proof techniques you can use to enhance visitors’ trust in your site.

The Trust Circle

“The Trust Circle” refers to the phases of establishing trust with customers and enhancing their confidence in your company. From an online selling perspective, the four stages below unfold in a matter of seconds:

1. Awareness: This is an initial getting-to-know stage. Potential customers run across an ad, or you pop up in search results. They have now become “aware” of you, which is an opportunity in itself.

2. Knowledge: Awareness drive them to you, but you have just a couple of seconds to explain what you are all about. This is where the value proposition is essential, so crafting and designing the right one is crucial.

3. Liking: If you give them the knowledge they need to stick around, and they browse the site more and more, they have entered the “liking stage.” During the liking stage, you should address visitors’ questions such as: do I know enough about what this company does or has to offer? Can’t I go to a more well-known established name and get these products or services? If you succeed in moving visitors through the liking stage, you have gained them as a customer, at least once.

4. Trust Stage: Your visitor just made a purchase. Congratulations! This visitor trusts you. Of course,it is now essential to ensure he has a pleasant experience when receiving the product and services. As this customer trusted you enough to make the purchase, confirm the reliance with a successful post-purchase experience. Up to the point of having the product in their hands, visitors are still anxious about the purchase they just made. Assure them a satisfying experience by shipping in a timely manner, ensuring that the product is in pristine condition, and making an exchange or return as seamless as possible.

Here is an overview of areas you can focus on to better establish trust with your site visitor:

• Value Proposition for the company, products or services
• Continuity
• Congruency
• Social Proof:
  • Expert Status
  • Celebrity Endorsement
  • Membership/Professional Organization or Affiliation

Value Proposition

A value proposition is both a promise and a value.It defines the problem you solve for your clients and clarifies the reasons why you stand out from competitors.

A compelling value proposition appeals to the customers’ strongest decision drivers. Identifying the right value proposition and translating it on your website is one of the most valuable activities on doing conversion optimization. Ask yourself:

• How do you distinguish yourself in a very busy marketplace?
• How do you differentiate yourself from the competition?
• Why would people choose to buy from you rather than from the competition?
• How do you define your value proposition?

The first step to creating a compelling value proposition is to learn more about other companies in your field.Make sure you are offering something different in value as compared to your competitors. Your value proposition should be unique, so you can stand out from rest of the crowd and get noticed.

Newer sites rely more on the value proposition, as it provides a way to conquer the initial online anonymity. Well-known companies do not need to introduce themselves to visitors, but they still benefit from maintaining relevance and alluding to the value proposition throughout the website.

Once users identify who you are, what you provide, what you can do for them, and why you are better than the rest, they overcome their first set of confidence issues.

Every element on your website, from the homepage to product pages to site navigation, should support your value proposition. More than a message you want your visitors to read, your value proposition should be an experience you offer throughout your site.

At MeUndies’s website, their value proposition is ‘the world’s most comfortable underwear for men.’ Any man who visits MeUndies knows that whatever they order is going to be the best for them.

Continuity

Understanding visitors’ motivation or “intent,” can help you address trust and confidence issues on your site. A good way to hone in on intent is by looking at the keywords and ads that inspired visitors to click through to your site in the first place.

Keywords are often loaded with meanings and particular motivations, so researching them helps in understanding your customers and better addressing their needs on the website.

Analyze the relevancy of your landing page to the keyword visitors used.Some companies employ a single, general landing page for a variety of paid campaigns. However, optimized pages that show up inorganic search do not help address visitors’ questions. Funneling all sorts of personas, with varying motivations and at different stages of the buying process, through a single common page usually results in low conversion rates. The challenge is to cater the message and the unique selling proposition to satisfy various visitors’ intents.

“Continuity,” an essential component of trust, is addressed by answering the following questions:

• What brought visitors to your site in the first place?
• How did they get there?
• Where did they land?
• What did they see?
• Was there relevance to what brought them there in the first place?

Continuity refers to maintaining relevance and scent at every touch point that visitors have with your website or campaign. Relevance and scent reflect a continuous theme such as look, feel, offers, and copy.

Continuity becomes especially important when you control the ad that leads to the landing page.

Let’s look at a good example which maintains scent and relevance.

Image source: Thinkific

The ad display and the landing page perfectly match in terms of the offer (create your own website), ad copy and the value proposition. The ad states that visitors only need 5 min. to create their website. It is written in a way that makes people think: “Of course I have 5 min. to create my own website.” On the landing page, they justify this proposal with testimonials, step-by-step explanation with pictures, and special features (as world-class support).

In another example, we can see that there is a significant difference between the ad display and the website. This is a pretty bad example of maintaining scent and relevance.

Image source: Digital Marketer

What happened to the $769 offer in the ad? You can see on the website the cheapest option is $899 per family of 4.  What about the 30% off? No matter how big or small your company are, you should be careful about giving the exact information your visitors are seeking for.

Both scent and relevance must work together to increase users trust by ensuring them they have landed on the right page and confirming your page is relevant to their inquiries. But it does not stop there. As visitors navigate through your website, the same themes should continue from one section to the next.

Congruency

Up to this point, we focused on providing visitors with scent and relevance by maintaining continuity from an ad or search result to the landing page.Now, you should check:

• How harmonious are the different elements on the landing page itself?
• Is there a congruent theme and message throughout the page and on every page throughout the site?

Visitors move to the knowledge stage of building trust the minute they land on your website.If your landing page does not address their particular questions, you have not succeeded in building trust. Congruency is the idea of maintaining a single harmonious message within the same page while answering questions of various personas.

For the value proposition to transcend to the visitors,the elements on a single page have to support that value. Very often you find sites with many competing messages on one page.You can also find sites where the copy, images, and elements do not work together to fulfill the value proposition.

The lack of congruency increases visitors’ anxieties and leads to more friction. Friction results when two forces collide. Online, the two forces colliding are the visitors’ anxieties and your landing page elements. The more friction results from the collision, the more likely visitors will abandon the site. It is impossible to eliminate friction completely;every transaction will have some degree of it.However, your job is to reduce it. Any page on your site should serve two purposes:

• Support the overall value proposition of the site.
• Move visitors towards the primary conversion goal for that particular page.

When elements of the page work harmoniously together to accomplish these objectives, you achieve congruency. As you evaluate different pages on your website, you should ask the following questions:

• What is the primary conversion goal for the page?
• Do the page elements (copy, images, and design) support the primary conversion goal as well as the value proposition of the site?
• What page elements are distracting visitors from the primary goal or the value proposition?
• Do all different elements present a single congruent message?
• Are the elements relevant to each other?

Let’s see the example of Breather.The site displays an instant CTA to select a workspace. There is a location service for you to determine where you are and how to get the options close to your point. At the homepage, above-the-fold, you can also select the type of meeting room you need.

You can see how each element supports the primary goal of the page and the value proposition of the website.

Social Proof

In many cases, your website visitors will evaluate your business based on how other people behave towards you.Find below some social proof techniques you can utilize on your website.

If you drive by two restaurants, one that is buzzing and one that is almost empty, which one would you like to try? Few would give the latter a chance and try it out. The majority would rely on the social proof that “a lot of people must love this place, and I want to experience that too.”

The majority of us, caring personas in particular,have humanistic aspects to our behavior.This is why social proof is critical. If you have many clients or customers, list the exact numbers on your website and see the difference that makes.

                                                                      ( Source:  Fabletics)

Many companies encourage customers to log in via social media accounts and share posts on social media channels. However, still some companies avoid to let customers share products, events or commercials on those channels. The statistics below show that people do take into account social media shares of friends, when making a specific decision about a specific company:

• 75% of internet users use social media to research products

•  71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family
•  49% of consumers claim that they depend on influencer recommendations on social media to inform their purchasing decision
• Consumers are six times more likely to make a purchase from a product page that includes pictures from social media (hint: don’t neglect UGC).
• Social media users overwhelmingly trust other users as their “preferred” form of influencer, most likely to buy from them based on a product recommendation (37%) versus celebrities (7%).

Adagio Teas uses reviews to influence prospective buyers, with the idea that “If others like this tea, then maybe I’ll like it as well.”

Expert Status

For most industries, publishing researcher speaking at conferences gives your visitors a boost in confidence in what you have to offer.

First and foremost, speaking on a specific work-related topic automatically coins you as an expert. In the business world, whatever your specific vertical may be, this means a lot.

Media Mentions

How many times have you read, on an ad or website,the expression “As Seen In”? If your company has been mentioned on CNN, the Times, or any other industry related or reputable media outlet, definitely remark your media presence on your website. It is excellent social proof, and it will gain you the trust of your visitors and future customers.

For instance,this is what Glossier has on their homepage:

Here’s another example from Casper’s website.

You may not have appeared in the press yet. However,even some blog mentions displayed on your homepage can help you. If you have been included as a guest writer on a popular blog, or have been mentioned by them,this also helps you to gain trust from your visitors.

Celebrity Endorsements

Any product that wants to make a big splash needs to get notorious personalities to try and endorse it. People desire to resemble celebrities. If they see a famous person using and enjoying your product or service,you can be sure that you have gained their trust and confidence. Influencer marketing has become a buzzword, with Google searches rising 69% since May 2015.

A study conducted by the collaboration of Experticity,Keller Fay Group and Dr. Jonah Berger assessed the impact of participants’ recommendations. In the study, 6,022 U.S. individuals answered about the“likelihood to follow recommendations and perceived credibility of source (Influencers vs. average customers).”The recommendations by influencers outperformed recommendations by average customers:

Image source: Marketing Sherpa

See this example of Selena Gomez using her celebrity status to promote her brand Rarebeauty;

Drawing a conclusion

If you want to increase your conversion rate, answer to yourself, “Why a customer should trust you in the long run?” Use a compelling value proposition to answer this question, and search for supporting elements to gain your visitors’ trust, to complete continuity, congruency, and social proof of your page.

Resources You’ll Love

Effective website navigation (even if you’re not a usability expert)

A Step By Step Guide To Turn Your Homepage Into High Conversion Machine

10 Most Common Trust Related Problems Affecting the Conversion Rate of Your Website

How To Increase Your Conversion Rate Using Persuasion At Every Stage In The E-commerce Conversion Funnel

Optimizing your sales funnel into a marketing funnel

References

• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/social-proof-ux/
• https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/how-likely-are-consumers-to-follow-recommendations
• https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/social-proof-can-increase-conversions/

The post Optimizing Your Website for Trust: How to Create a High-Converting Website appeared first on Invesp.

Your website hosts an astonishing number of factors that could make your users leave after just a couple of seconds. Fears, uncertainties and doubts, or simply FUDs, group a big portion of these factors.

FUDs are certain elements that cause bad user experience and deflate user confidence. These elements raise doubts on your website visitors, as whether your product or service is the right choice for them. Ultimately, FUDs result in a complete loss of trust and/or abandonment of your site.

As part of our Conversion Framework, FUDs are web-centric factors that you can address to increase the conversion rates of your website.

In this chapter, you will learn about the top ten FUDs-causing issues. We also will explain how to reduce FUDs by predicting users’ behavior on your website through cognitive progression. You will discover how to detect and analyze the bounce around effect of the disoriented visitors on your site and you will find out how to use FUDs as a part of your marketing strategy.

How FUDs and Trust Relate to Each Other?

Trust is an essential element of the conversion process. Keep in mind that visitors won’t provide you with any personal information or buy from you, if they don’t trust you in the first place.

In our book “Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Prospects to Customers,” we point:

“As you are able to successfully establish trust with your customers, you will build their confidence with your company. The more confidence a customer has in your store, the more likely s/he will purchase from you, often coming back for more or even recommending you to others”.

However, no matter how many trust aiding features or elements you’ll include, they wouldn’t do you any good if there are loading errors, wrong information, security breaches, or even poor design. You should address these fundamental, FUD-causing problems first, before you start building trust and confidence.

Thus, FUDs are holes that cause visitors to bounce, exit and abandon a website without even reaching consideration phase.

We found out that the closer a user gets to typing in their personal information on a website, be it a name, an email for subscription, or credit card information for a purchase, FUDs go into overdrive. Anything that is off-putting will lead to an abandonment.

Image Source: Optimizing your sales funnel into a marketing funnel

Do both site and cart abandonment relate to FUDs? Of course not. Nothing is quite that simple when it comes to visitor’s behavior online compared to offline. However, our research has indicated that reducing FUDs throughout the website experience, on average, leads to a 34% increase in conversions and reduction in abandonment rates.

To better understand how to deal with FUDs, let’s break the acronym down:

• “Fears” relate primarily to security and privacy concerns and the overall of site errors;
• “Uncertainties”, on the other hand, relate mostly to the usability of the site. That is to say; the less user-friendly your site is, the more uncertain your visitors become throughout the navigation process;
• As for “Doubts”, they relate mainly to users’ questions and concerns about the product or service they are planning on purchasing.

Causes of FUDs

Image Source: Unsplash

Every visitor experiences some level of friction on a website. The greater the friction, the higher the chances of the user leaving the site.

You’ll find below the elements that could be the main source of FUDs on your website:

• Pop-ups: They are hated by most visitors. However, they are effective. So, our advice on pop-ups is use them sparingly. That is to say, make popups brief and give visitors good reasons and incentives to fill them. Also, you’d better have an excellent plan in hand on how to use the leads you collect from pop-ups.

• Long forms: Companies go to great lengths to get the user to checkout, or to a sign-up on their website. But that once the visitors see that form, they leave. Why? Most of visitors consider long forms to be intrusive especially when the form has too many unnecessary fields. It is crucial then to take a hard look at your forms, minimize the number of fields and determine what you can do for the greater chance of getting people to fill it.

Image source: Invesp

• Non-persistent carts: You do not see it much nowadays, but it happens often enough. Do not lose a visitor who shops around, leaves the site because of some distraction, only to return a few days later to the site and see an empty cart. Giving your visitors the opportunity to find what they have selected before reduces skepticism and FUDs.

Image source: Walmart

The above screenshots are examples of a persistent cart; I can see the elements I selected previously on my shopping cart which makes it easier for me to add or delete or proceed to check out, I don’t have to go through the process of shopping again which is time saving and does not frustrate the visitors.

• Error messages: This occurs a lot. You go to a form, type in the information needed, but forget a field or two (or enter something wrong). You have made an error, but do you know it? Do you know where you made the mistake on the form? Too many times, a poorly designed system makes it unclear that there is an error and where it occurred. To avoid misinterpretations, Under Armour’s site, for example displays a page with the same design of the site and preserves the top menu and search bar. To help visitors, search tips and contact information are provided, along with an additional search bar.

Image source: Invesp

• Load time: Servers slowing you down? Visitors are not very patient. If your page takes a few more seconds to render, especially on mobile, people will leave your site without hesitation.

Image source: Web Performance Today

• 404 errors: Make sure your site is inspected daily to confirm that all pages are working properly. Test your contact form or checkout to ensure users will not face unanticipated issues with not working links.
• Unnoticeable CTAs: A well-designed website always clearly indicates the CTA to the visitor. On every page, your CTAs should be clear and prominent. They should make the visitor flow from one page to another seamless.
• Unsecured checkout: With fraud and identity theft on the rise, anything which requires a visitor to enter sensitive information must be secured. Adding security information like the security seal and credit card logos can beat FUDs and make your website a trustworthy one. Another issue to consider here: for checkout or payment purposes, some visitors may find suspicious if your site redirects them to a third party website.

Image source: Baymard

• Mandatory signup at checkout: Visitors love options and the feeling of having control over their choices. Do not force your visitors to sign up to your site. Give them the option of checking out anonymously.

Image Source: kissmetrics

• Browser incompatibility: The data provided by Net Market Share shows that as of February 2017, Google Chrome had 58,53% of the browser market, the share of the Internet Explorer was only 19,27% while only 11.68% use Firefox installed on their devices. So, you should make sure that your site is compatible with the main browser types. To make your website experience flawless, you should also know the preferences of your audience. And the way to do that is through analytics; your analytics provides you with a wealth of information, including the browsers visitors are using to get to your website. Why this is important? Let’s say the audience of your website is mostly 40+ women. Obviously, in most of the cases they will not update their browsers regularly. Even if they use Chrome or Internet Explorer, it will be some old version. This could result in them abandoning your website only because it is not rendered properly on their devices. That’s why you need to check how your design looks on different versions of different browsers. Fixing these problems will for sure decrease the FUDs for your site visitors.

Cognitive Progression and FUDs

When developing or optimizing a website, you can anticipate visitors’ behavior based solely on the price, the investment, and value of the product or service you are offering.

This correlation allows marketers to determine how to reduce certain FUDs right off the bat. This science is called “Cognitive Progression”: predicting a visitor’s expected mental process regarding your product or service.

The importance of cognitive progression is embedded in taking you back to the basics and eventually leads you to making assumptions about the mental process your buyer personas will end up having before converting.

Naturally, visitors at the knowledge stage are considering the perceived risks of buying your product or doing business with your company. At this stage, visitors are curious about the value you are offering. They usually make some conclusions about value of your service or product in few seconds. Depending on that they will leave or stick around your website.

So, if you’ll manage to pre-empt some of the risks by predicting visitors’ primary concerns about price, investment, and value, you automatically reduce the FUDs that the user may experience as a result of your offering. By addressing the buyers’ worries through design and content, you get more conversions.

Price

Price is at the core of your business, however; you should bear in mind that the higher the price is, the greater the FUDs are. In this case, opting for an adequate pricing strategy as well as countering some of the price-related concerns with incentives gives your visitors additional reasons to trust you.

As a matter of fact, for one of our clients we reduced FUDs on cart page and added some trust elements which eventually increased conversion rate by 6.89%.

Investment

Usually, under investment we understand a combination of several factors: time, effort, complexity of decision making process, resources and price. All these factors are considered by the user when buying your product or service. The higher the investment, the greater the FUDs.

You may have a low-price product, but buying this product will involve a lot of people to participate in decision making process and the product will require a lot of resources to maintain it. In this case the investment from the user is anyway high and he will have plenty of FUDs.

A company we assisted with increasing conversion rates was offering a low-price service; however, the service required lots of time and effort from the user. By anticipating through cognitive progression, we concluded that visitors had high FUDs because of inflated checkout process with no to little explanation of the steps. After we optimized checkout process, conversion rates soared.

Value

The higher the value of the product or service, the lower the FUDs.

When something is of a great value as a product or service, and users recognize that value, they overlook many aspects of the website.

Surprisingly, to be valuable for the customer, your product or service may not have any outstanding qualities. It should just function as well as, or a bit better than competitors.

But how your website visitors perceive the value of your product or service? Through the content and usability of your website. If you do not present the right info, with the right usability, the right incentives, the right guarantees, visitors will not stick around your website.

The Bounce Around Effect

The bounce around effect assesses how many of your visitors seem disoriented and unable to locate the page that they are looking for, on a given navigational path on your site.

A typical linear navigational path may include home page, category page, product page, and, finally, checkout. Of course, people do not navigate around your website in a linear fashion. You can, however, expect the majority of visitors to follow general paths, if they find the information they are looking for.

Image Source: Invesp

Users that are impacted by the bounce around effect find themselves going back and forth between pages on the site for a better sense of “what to do next,” and “where to go from here” in nonlinear paths (as displayed in the figure below).  Considering this metric can help you determine the reactions of your site users. If visitors get confused, you can be certain their levels of FUDs increase and they will soon abandon the site, likely, never to return.

Usually you can see users bounce around by setting up funnels in analytics. For instance, it may be the case that 40% of your website visitors suddenly go back to cart page and then only 20% goes again to checkout? What is the reason for that? Maybe your checkout doesn’t have a proper order summary and they have to go to cart again to make sure that they ordered the right products.

FUDs as a Marketing Strategy

Everything we have discussed has centered around countering FUDs because they lead to visitors’ abandonment of the site. However, sometimes FUDs can also be used to push visitors to make a certain decision.

For example, a company that sells scuba equipment offered their top gear at $130 while a generic competitor gear was also sold at their location but for a tremendously lower price of $30. How could the company persuade a visitor that, although the $30 had passed all the safety regulations, the $130 was still a better option? Well, the number of accidents that had happened with the $30 gear was a bit higher, so the company used this information for their advantage and created a marketing campaign from it.

The campaign’s concept centered on the dollar amount of the visitor’s life, $30 or 1$30? Now, this creates a lot of anxiety and fear for the visitor, but it is the fear and anxiety the company needed to get more people to purchase their in-house $130 product.

Political campaigns also use FUDs to discredit their opponents. Watching some of the political ads, you can come to the conclusion that the opposing candidate is the scum of earth because of all the negative messaging and fears these ads carry. By making you fear the opponent, they are hoping to gain you as a voter.

Ultimately, FUDs are a double-edged sword. You have an ethical responsibility to present your visitor with honest information. Certainly, reducing FUDs from your site with the information in this chapter will help you gain a significant advantage over competitors as well as decrease the risk of losing potential converters in the future.

The post Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts: Reducing Visitor Anxieties to Increase Conversions appeared first on Invesp.

Users’ engagement comes from your ability to continue peak visitors’ interest on your website.

Stores with daily changes in their inventory continually engage customers by providing expectation on new product arrivals. Companies that run frequent sales are also engaging clients and putting their store on the radar for things to look out for.

With so many websites to visit, it becomes challenging to sustain users’ interest in your offering.

How can you peak potential customers’ interest?

In your site, start with setting specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)and metrics to measure user’s engagement.

A quick note on this: We notice that many marketers and business owners confuse the terms Key Performance Indicators and metrics. These terms are sometimes used interchangeably.

However, they are not the same thing.

You use metrics to measure different elements on your website. These metrics may or may not have a business impact. A clear example is the bounce rate for most websites. What does it mean if your bounce rate goes up 10% or drops by 20%? In most cases, it is difficult to build a direct business impact for the changes in bounce rate.

KPIs, on the other hand, have a direct business impact. A good example is the website conversion rate or average order value.

Measuring the return on engagement activities might be difficult.The nature of these activities is hard to measure and some of them take place outside of your website, in media you have little control over.Nonetheless, you can track these results.

In this chapter, you will learn about the internal and external metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of visitors’ engagement. To help you involve customers’ in your content, we describe in the last section of the chapter proven ways to focus on visitors’ interests.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Engagement

Some metrics to measure visitors’ engagement are internal to your website.These are straightforward to use. Others require visitors’ engagement on other platforms.

Internal metrics

The following metrics measure visitors’ interaction on your website and are reported by your analytics program:

Average time on site

The longer visitors stay on your site, the more likely it is that they will buy from you since they are “engaged” and invested. While this is true in general, you must review your analytics and conduct usability studies to ensure that time spent on the site is a genuine reflection of engagement as opposed to visitor confusion.

Google Analytics provide wonderful statistics to evaluate the performance of site visitors and whether they are engaged your website. However, in some cases the results may mislead you. Here is how:

The formula for Average Time on Page: Time on Page / (Pageviews-Exits)

Although there is a certain formula to achieve accurate results within high Confidence Interval you need to consider these:

• Time on page: The time is accurate if the page is not the last page in the visit.
• If you have a high exit rate, that means you will not achieve healthy “Average time on page” result. In other words, you should have low exit rate to rely on your average time on page data. Google Analytics consider total number of users when calculating average time spent on a particular page.

You can see how some of the exit rates are over 50% in some pages. That means you are doing something wrong.

The above example belongs to an e-commerce company which has around 50 locations in the middle east. Their website has neither high nor low exit rate.Despite some confusion about the confidence level, we can see that their Average Time on Page is almost stable, day by day. They are receiving a tremendous number of pageviews and visitors spend around 2 minutes on a particular page. For this company, we can say that their average time spending per page is reliable.

Pages per visit

The number of website pages which visitors navigate to during a visit to your website could be a good indicator of how engaged they are with your site. This metric varies considerably based on the type of site you run. We find that pages per visit generally increase in e-commerce sites as conversion rate increases. Some of our customers report an average of 9 to 13 pages per visit. Content based websites report even greater thrive on numerous page views.

Onsite social interaction

In many instances,websites provide mechanisms for visitors to share content on social networks. Remember to track the effectiveness of these social sharing tools in generating additional traffic to your website.

One of the first things you should do is to embed social buttons in your webpages. By using social interaction analytics you can measure the number of times users click on the social buttons. For example, you might measure a Facebook “Like” or a Twitter “Tweet.”

While event tracking measures general user-interactions, Social Analytics record social interactions by offering a dependable framework. Thisallows a set of reports to make a consistent social network interactions comparison across multiple networks.

If you still have not strengthened your social media channels, take a look at these statistics below.This brand new research conducted by eMarketer proves people do buy from websites that they follow on social media channels.

Around 70% of Gen Xers, 60% of millennials and 51% of baby boomers state that they would like to purchase something from a brand that they follow on a social media platform.

According to EntrepreneurCountry Global, 10 ways to optimize on-site social interactions are:

• Utilize the Big Three Networks
• Don’t forget about the other networks
• Blogging
• Customer Interaction
• Forums
• Vary your content
• Rewards
• Reviews
• Social Login
• Overall Interaction

Mike Stelzner (CEO of Social Media Examiner) points out it is important if people share your content rather than just clicking a link. The person who shares your link shows that s/he engaged with your content. In addition, when people share your content the possibility of the article to be shared by the others increase.

External metrics to track external engagement

The following are some of the metrics you can use to track external engagement:

Links are the currency of the web. The more quality links point to your site, the more authority you build. Links are also a good indicator of how much a person engaged in your website. People link to content that moves them, in positive or negative ways. Just make sure you create content that is relevant to the site it is linked on; give importance to the relevancy and consistency of your inbound links. These steps ensure you minimize risks with Google penalizing your site.Several tools can be used to track inbound links, such as Open Site Explorer (offers free version), SEMRush, and Majestic SEO.

The Number of External Mentions

With the advent of social media, a lot of the interaction and discussion around your business can happen away from your website. It is important to track these discussions and engage them.

How To Increase User Engagement On Your Website

Many entrepreneurs and growing companies focus on gaining new customers rather than retaining existing ones. However, every companies, including top ones, should be aware that their existing website visitors are diamonds.

Customer retention plays a crucial role for a business to reach a healthy bottom line. According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention increases a company’s profitability by 75%.

If you find these numbers are not convincing, consider the results of a survey conducted by Gartner. According to the survey,80% of the company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of existing customers.

In another surprising statistics Lee Resource Inc. states that “attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer.”

So far, we covered the importance of retaining customers, next step is to dig deeper to come up with tangible solutions.

1. Share Your Knowledge

Many companies and experts hesitate to share their knowledge online. They want to keep it to themselves. However, concealing knowledge is not a wise strategy. Think of how many cooking books are there. Does that mean people do not go to restaurants? There is a vast difference between making knowledge readily available to everyone to consume and people becoming experts in the field.

The more you share your knowledge online, the more you will be rewarded. Several online communities have flourished because someone decided to share knowledge and experience with website visitors. These visitors keep coming back, sending links to the website and sharing its content on social media. Ultimately, these visitors become a tribe that markets the website.

If you run a lead generation website, demonstrating your knowledge through guides and e-books increases your authority amongst your visitors. If you have an e-commerce website, and you take the time to put out custom product reviews, people will come to you both for advice and for buying products.

2. Minimize Page Loading Time

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of evaluating your website load time. It does not matter what your developer tells you, keep this very simple rule in mind: your page load time should be less than four seconds. We recommend running different pages of your website using this tool: http://www.webpagetest.org/

Pay close attention to the First Byte load time.This is how much time it takes your server to respond to the request. Try to minimize it as much as possible.

3. Keep Content Readable

Keep your content in easy-to-read, scannable format. Use white space to keep visitors comfortable with reading. Sometimes websites have a lot of great content but displayed in small fonts, which makes it challenging to read. If visitors cannot read your content, they are not engaged in it.

4. Create Engaging Web Copy

Some web copy is dull, and boring and manages to put visitors asleep very quickly. Other webcopy is engaging, uses a tone that captures visitors interest and keeps them engaged. Which type is yours? Finding the right balance when creating copy is not easy. That is the reason good copywriters are paid a lot of money. Examine your website copy carefully, is it focused on your company or on your visitors?

5. Use Pictures

Product pictures with zoom functionality are essential for e-commerce websites. But you can always go beyond them.How about pictures of people interacting with the product? How about allowing people to post images of themselves using the product on social networks? In a traditional company website, how about using images of your own staff and office instead of stock images?

6. Use Videos

Pictures are powerful, videos,on most occasions, are even better. You can post demos or create a series of educational videos that relate to your field. You can use videos to answer customer questions. How about asking customers to post videos of themselves using the product? For a lead generation website, how about staff videos?

7. Display Customer Reviews

The power of selling through the testimony of other customers is unrivaled. Customer reviews are considered an engagement tool because of their effectiveness in “keeping the customer online.” Depending on the product, they can help persuade visitors to move forward with the purchase. Amazon.com is known for its customer reviews on the majority of products on their site.

8. Suggest Related Items

As customers navigate through your website, always make sure to provide them with extra content related to the item they are viewing. On a blog,display previous posts similar to the one the visitor is reading. On an e-commerce website, display products associated to the one the visitor is viewing. You can use cross-selling and upselling to keep visitors engaged.

On the Amazon website you can see customized content appears on the homepage. This modifies the main content based on how the user has interacted with the product search feature:

9. Communicate Via Email

Do you capture visitor emails? Do you communicate with them via email regularly? Email remains one of the most useful channels to communicate with potential customers.

As you create emails, think of the following items:

• How frequently should you send emails?
• What type of content should you share?
• What type of language should you use in your emails?

10. Provide Live Chat

Live chat is another great way of engaging visitors, who can promptly ask questions as they come up. You can choose from many available live-chat companies. Testing data for live chat generally show a positive increase in conversion rates. As you consider live chat, think about the following points:

• What hours is the live chat going to be available?
• Do you have a staff capable of responding to visitor questions?
• Do you have a process to get back to visitors if the live chat attendant does not know the answer to a question?

11. Personalize

A personalized website experience engages your visitors. You can provide your customers a customized experience by:

• Using technology to determine what products you should display to visitors.
• Using website design to help visitor determine the right product or offer for their needs.
• Showing visitors options of offers/products which similar visitors have interacted with.

• Clicking the “Fix this recommendation” links to a window that explains why this item is recommended that gives the shopper the option to change it.

12. Think Mobile

What percentage of your website visitors are coming using their mobile devices? Google data reveals that more searches are done on mobile devices compared to desktops. In 2015, e-commerce websites in North America reported upwards of 30% of their conversions happening on mobile devices. In Europe, e-commerce websites reported upwards of 50% of their conversions happening on mobile devices. At a minimum, your website design should be responsive. But you should go beyond. Look at what are the absolute must-have features for your website on mobile devices to keep visitors engaged.

13. Host Events

Events are an excellent way for visitors to interact with your company. You can do either virtual or physical events. The goal is to have an interaction with your potential customers. These events could be webinars,Google Hangouts, a special product display, or a get-together.

14. Conduct A Usability Test

User feedback is one of the best ways to understand how visitors engage in your content and website. Do they find it boring? Are they engaged? As you conduct a usability test, ask participants to evaluate and rate all aspects of the site in terms of engagement.

Final Thoughts

To conclude, the best solution to keep visitors engaged is bringing different elements together: analyze your visitors’ behaviors using analytics software; reach out for customers with social media tools; back up your analytics results with online programs. Meanwhile, you should be bold and persistent in your content strategy to retain first-time and returning visitors.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1006253?hl=enhttps://www.google.com.tr/search?q=google+analytics+average+time+on+site&rlz=1C5AVSZ_enTR683TR684&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRqubEv_vSAhWDshQKHWhWAN4Q_AUIBigB&biw=1440&bih=826#imgrc=3CMC9UJSwOFdZM:http://help.analyticsedge.com/googleanalytics/misunderstood-metrics-time-on-page-session-duration/http://www.entrepreneurcountryglobal.com/zoo/item/10-ways-to-optimise-on-site-social-interactionhttps://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexlawrence/2012/11/01/five-customer-retention-tips-for-entrepreneurs/#71787b095e8dhttp://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/1590.htmlhttp://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/10/an-analysis-of-the-amazon-shopping-experience/https://www.slideshare.net/addthiscom/personalize-your-website-email-marketing-for-better-results?qid=3bf93ede-465a-4c5d-a4e3-6ffa177e0f9e&v=&b=&from_search=1https://www.slideshare.net/addthiscom/personalize-your-website-email-marketing-for-better-results?qid=3bf93ede-465a-4c5d-a4e3-6ffa177e0f9e&v=&b=&from_search=1

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Before we start talking about what to do when your landing pages are underperforming, let’s start talking about the average landing page conversion rate.

Recent studies have shown that an average landing page conversion rate should fall around 2.35%. So, if your landing page conversion rate is below that number, then it is definitely underperforming.

But some top landing pages convert way above 2.35%. This indicates that there’s a possibility for your landing page to do more than well.

One thing to note here is that conversion rates are always subjective, What is considered to be good for one business may be below average for another.

Think of a good conversion rate as the one that is always improving. 

Having said that, now let’s take a look at things you can do to improve the performance of your landing pages.

Clear Value Proposition

When visitors get to your landing pages, why should they keep scrolling or click your CTA button? What’s in it for them?

You probably know the answer to this question, but is the answer clear enough to your visitors? Is it convincing enough? Do they get it the exact way you’d want them to?

It doesn’t matter how good your offer or landing page design is, if your value proposition is not articulated well, your visitors are more likely to go to move on to your competitor.

The best way to create a killer landing page value prop? Start by asking yourself the following questions:

• How does your brand or your product solve your target customers’ pain points?
• What tangible benefits are associated with your offer?
• What makes your brand different from other competitors?

The answers to the above questions will give you directions on how you can then craft that value proposition statement on your landing page.

Strong Call to Action

When people visit your landing page, there must be directional signs telling them where to go and what to do.

This is where CTAs come in.

Your landing page CTAs have to communicate with your visitors and help them move toward achieving a goal of that particular page.

That means the message on the CTA buttons has to be short,  obvious, clear, and easy to understand. Here are some of the CTAs message/copy examples:

• Buy Now
• Download
• Subscribe
• Request A Demo
• Download the eBook
• Buy It Here
• Save My Spot

Take a look at the CTA on Shopify’s landing page:

The CTA is clear and easy to understand: Start free trial. Looking at that CTA, visitors know what to do and how to take the next steps to do it.

Most people despise the idea of testing CTA colors. But, we can’t deny the fact that visual hierarchy matters even when it comes to CTAs. One thing to remember here is that your CTA button’s color doesn’t work in isolation.

It would be wrong to suggest that orange is better than green or black is better than white. The CTA color depends on where you will position it and the background of the page is also a determining factor.

To pick the right color of your CTA button, here’s what you have to remember:

• High contrasting colors attract users’ attention. For instance, the Shopify CTA stands out because of the CTA color.
• CTAs should have a consistent palette. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to create a rainbow on your landing page.
• 8% of the male population in the United States is color blind, so, think about their experience as you design your CTAs.
• Always remember to have a CTA button above the fold. When users land on your page, before they even scroll, you want to answer the question in their minds: “where should I click?”
• Multiple CTAs are better than one – especially on longer pages. It has to be the same CTA placed on different areas of the landing page. The idea here is to make it easy for visitors to take the next step.
• You can use tools like FigPii heat maps to see where people are clicking and how far they are scrolling in order to determine where to place your CTAs.

Expert Tip: To build brand awareness and improve engagement, stick to your brand’s color for the primary CTA button on your landing page.

Remove Navigation

When users visit your landing page, it simply means that you now have their attention. All you have to do here is to make sure that your landing page keeps them on track and focused on what you want them to do.

Now the question here is, how do you do that?

Well, you give them landing page experience, not a full-scale website experience. This often means removing elements like navigation. Having navigation on your landing page will dilute their attention and they end up focusing on something other than what you intend them to do on your page.

Another thing to remember here is that every element – copy, visuals, CTAs, social proof, etc. –  you add on this page has to propel visitors towards taking the action you want them to do.

Going back to that Shopify example, you’d see that the page is navigation free and every element placed on that page is designed to make convince visitors to start a free trial.

Images, Videos, and GIFs are your friends

Visuals bring more than just aesthetics to your landing pages.

They set the emotional foundation for your landing pages – meaning images, videos, and even GIFs have the power to make your landing page visitors feel convinced, informed, or reassured.

In the example below, you see a sad dog. The image is unique enough to capture the attention of visitors. And the look in the dog’s face aligns with the sadness emotion:

Original images such as the one above can easily capture the attention of visitors before they even process your content, thus helping improve the landing page experience.

One other thing to remember when it comes to landing pages visuals is to avoid using stock photos. Why? They make your landing page appear generic, untrustworthy and that kills conversions.

When you intend to show your product on your landing page, here are some ways you can go about it:

• Show the product in use (you can use user-generated content)
• Show the product by itself

The idea here is to show visitors how the product looks from different angles and how it works.

Related Article: How To Optimize Product Pages On A Shopify Website

Social Proof

Nowadays, just talking about how great your product is doesn’t cut it anymore. You have to start showing it.

Enter social proof.

Think about the last time you were considering trying a new restaurant. What made you choose one over all the others?

If you’re like most people, your decision was likely based at least in part on what others had to say. Social proof is one of the oldest and most powerful persuasion techniques out there, and it is something that you can also incorporate on your landing pages today.

The strategy of injecting social proof on landing pages is to prove to potential customers or visitors that your product is worth their money. And it is extremely important if you want to:

• Build trust
• Increase credibility
• Guide the customer’s buying decision

Potential customers are motivated to take them a step forward if they are convinced that your product has been used by others to solve similar problems to theirs.

If your landing page is for a specific product, it makes sense to showcase specific customer reviews about that product. Casper does this well on their landing page:

Here are smart ways you can use to show social proof on your landing page:

• Number of downloads
• Testimonials
• Trust badges
• Case Studies
• Expert social proof
• Celebrity social proof

Page Speed

The length of time it takes for your landing page to display content is something you should take seriously. If a site takes more than 3 seconds to load, then it likely has usability issues that should be addressed right away.

50% of users expect websites to load and show all the content on a page in less than 2 seconds. The longer it takes for a landing page to load, the higher the bounce rate. And if your landing speed is slow, that will also affect your rankings on search engines.

. At some point, Walmart discovered that for every second of improvement in load time, their website conversion rate increased by 2%.

Don’t know how fast your landing page is? Use tools like WebPageTest, YSlow, Uptime, Google Chrome DevTools, Uptime, GTmetrix, Website Audit, etc.

About Forms

If you don’t need a landing page form, just don’t use it. If you only need a visitor’s email address, don’t add any other unnecessary fields. People like to separate First Name and Last Name fields on their fields, instead of just combining the two fields into Full Name.

If your product is pricey, it makes sense to have a long-form. But you can also make a multi-step form so that it doesn’t look daunting to fill out. Here’s an example of a multi-step form:

And if you are adding a long-form to your landing page, make the benefit and rewards of filling out the form very clear. And we always recommend placing the form above the fold just like what Marketo does:

Check your Ad Campaigns Messaging

One of the things that can affect your landing page conversions is the disconnect between the page itself and the ad campaign you’re using.

All I’m saying here is that your ad campaign messaging has to be aligned with that of your targeted landing pages. If the messaging or the offers used on the ad campaign and landing page are different, this will cause some credibility issues.

Mobile Experience

If 51% of shoppers purchase products using mobile devices, then you can’t afford to ignore the mobile experience of your users.

One good practice to keep in mind when designing a landing page is to do quality assurance on different browsers and devices to make sure that it’s working the way you want it. That is a must-do before you publish your landing pages.

Another thing to keep in mind is to make sure that your landing page or web page appears to have a single-column layout. This is important considering that mobile devices do not have room for multiple columns. The official Alaska state website used to have the same look on their desktop and mobile devices, and this made it difficult for mobile users to use the website:

Every landing page elements you include in your desktop version of your landing page has to be optimized for mobile devices. This means that you should avoid using images that take up a lot of space, make sure that the form loads fast, and implement drop-down menus where it is necessary.

Final words… Get in the Habit A/B testing

Landing page optimization is tricky. What works for one business may not work for another. This is why we recommend that you get in the habit of A/B testing. Test all of the above-mentioned elements to see which helps boost your conversion rate. You can also use landing page optimization tools like Figpii to launch heat maps, session recordings and get better insights into how your website visitors are interacting with your page.

The post Landing Page Optimization Checklist: What to do When your Landing Pages are Underperforming appeared first on Invesp.

​But it’s not because of your offer. Or the jaw-dropping design of your landing page.

​It’s because your readers don’t know yet who you are or why they should believe what you’re telling them.

​The real key to getting ice-cold readers to convert?

​It’s in creating a deep connection with them in the first few seconds they land on your page. And then holding that connection all the way through until they convert.

​But the way to establish this deep connection isn’t just with an eye-catching design… but by using the core messages at the right time.

​And this is exactly what this live session is about! 

Our CEO, Khalid Saleh, is joined by Green Light Copy’s expert conversion copywriter Eden Bidani to show you how to write landing pages that catch your readers’ attention and forge a deep bond with them in seconds.

This is not another live session filled with fluffy “tips” that sound great but you can’t actually apply yourself.​ Nop. We know you will enjoy it just as much as other brave marketers who attended the session did: 

Now. We know there are tons of blog posts, podcasts, and videos out there that talk about writing effective landing pages.

​But here’s what makes this live session different:

​For the first time ever, Eden reveals her battle-tested, repeatable master landing page framework and shows you how to use it for landing pages that convert. This framework is specifically designed to help convert ice-cold traffic (so that you get more conversions out of every buck in ad spend).

​​So if:

• ​You’re struggling to capture readers’ attention and drive conversions from cold traffic
• ​You don’t want fluffy “tips,” you want a repeatable framework you can implement (even by yourself)
• ​You want actionable, expert advice on how to improve your landing pages

​— then this session is 100% for you.

​If you liked this session and you’d like to attend 3 more live sessions lined up for this quarter, then please join this community of smart marketers and stay updated.

The post How To Write Landing Pages That Convert Cold Traffic appeared first on Invesp.

• If you do a quick google search, you will see 1000s of results that show articles that discuss how to optimize your landing page.
• As much as it might have been spoken about a lot, we seem to forget to mention one important aspect of landing page optimization. Which is optimizing based on where visitors are coming from.
• A website visitor from social media and a visitor from organic search doesn’t have the same need and shouldn’t be shown the same landing page.
• Landing page optimization is about a seamless and flawless user experience on all browsers, devices, and sources.

The Golden Rule Of Every Landing Page

• Good persuasive copy isn’t written in an overly “sales-focused” manner. But it is written in a way that truly speaks to a visitor as an individual – no matter where the visitor is coming from. 
• Most brands fail to do this on their landing page because all they do is talk about themselves or use company-centric language to explain what they are all about. 
• If you’re not even able to speak your audience’s language, your landing page tells them that you don’t care about them and just want their money.

Visitors Coming From Social Media

• Sending traffic from your ad to your homepage is one of the deadly sins of landing page optimization.
• When visitors click through your ad, they expect to see more of what they saw in the ad.
• A disconnect between your landing page copy and the design of your ad will make you lose important conversions.

Visitors Coming From  A Podcast You Appeared On

• Most people make the mistake of sending traffic from their podcast appearance to their site’s homepage.
• If you want high conversion rates from that particular traffic, then you need to create a customized landing page designed specifically for the traffic arriving on your landing page.

First-time vs. Old visitors

• As you optimize your landing pages for different traffic sources, you might also need to consider that traffic in terms of first-time visitors versus old visitors. 
• There is always a significant difference between what works for first-time visitors and those who have visited your page two to three times in the previous 8 weeks.
• Whether the visitor is new or old, your landing page should act as the brand representative.

Here’s a longer and more detailed version of the article

Landing page optimization is not something new. 

If you do a quick google search, you will see 1000s of results that show articles that discuss how to optimize your landing page.

Some of these articles date back to the days before popular social networks such as Whatsapp, Twitter, and Instagram were created. 

That’s really an indication of how old this topic is. 

But the conversation about landing page optimization is far from being over. 

As much as it might have been spoken about a lot, we seem to forget to mention one important aspect of landing page optimization.

Which is optimizing based on where visitors are coming from.

Just step back and think about this for a minute: 

Does a visitor who comes from social media have the same needs as someone coming from a guest post you wrote? Does she need the same type of information? Are the same CTAs going to work for both groups? 

Clearly, the answer is no. Even if you’re showing the same product/service but the way you should approach these visitors should be different. 

Most of the visitors coming from social media usually don’t have an intent to buy (top of the funnel). So you should approach them differently from those coming from organic or the guest post you wrote.  

You are more likely to lose potential customers if you are using one landing page to address all types of visitors. It’s okay to have more landing pages – according to Hubspot, the more landing pages you have, the more opportunities you have to convert site visitors into leads. 

Think about this: If we spend much time optimizing landing pages for different devices and browsers, don’t you think optimizing landing pages based on visitor sources should be mandatory? 

Landing page optimization is about a seamless and flawless experience for users on all browsers, devices, and sources.

If you strategize your landing page based on visitor expectations, where they are coming from – you are more likely to witness an increase in conversions.

Before we get into different tactics you should consider when optimizing landing pages for different sources, let’s begin by looking at the golden rule of every landing page. 

The Golden Rule of Every Landing Page

You probably have heard this a thousand times: good persuasive copy isn’t written in an overly “sales-focused” manner. But it is written in a way that truly speaks to a visitor as an individual – no matter where the visitor is coming from. 

Once a visitor lands on your page, your page has to show the visitor: 

• That they are in the right place
• That the site/company is trustworthy
• The product/service they need 
• The info they need to stay and read/skim
• Where they should sign up or buy. 

Most brands fail to do this on their landing page because all they do is talk about themselves or they use company-centric language that explains what they are all about. 

The problem with this approach is: your target customers don’t care about you or your company. They care about themselves. And they want the company they give their money to care for them, too.

So, simply put: If you’re not even able to speak your audience’s language, your landing page is essentially telling them that you don’t care about them and that you just want their money.

Having said that, now let’s look at how you can optimize your landing pages for visitors coming from different sources. 

Visitors coming from Social Media 

One of the deadly sins of landing page optimization is to send your traffic from a social media ad to your homepage. If a visitor clicks on your social media ad, they are expecting to see more of the ad information on the page you’re directing them to. It’s a well-established principle that digital ads are far more likely to drive conversions when combined with complementary landing pages.

A disconnect between your landing page copy and social media ad will certainly make you lose conversions. There has to be a consistency between what you use to draw their attention and what you’re going to use to convert them. 

For instance, let’s take a look at the perfect example above from Highrise, how the color, typography, and visual design are matching from one point to another. There is a consistency in what the ad is promising, as well as the design they have used to make it look familiar to the visitor.

While we are here, it’s also important to note that your landing pages are optimized for the mobile market. Over and over again we have noticed that brands only optimize their social media ads for mobile users and forget to do the same on their landing pages. Tell you what, there’s nothing more annoying to a mobile device visitor than clicking on an ad that takes them to a hard-to-read landing page. 

If you are actively targeting people on mobile, make sure your landing pages are as effective as your ads – or you will lose conversions. 

The post-click landing page should be designed as a natural extension of the ad clicked. Each element on the page should notify the visitor they’ve landed at the right place, and that the offer they wanted is only a CTA click away.

Visitors coming from a Podcast you appeared on 

Getting that podcast appearance can be a good thing for your personal brand. But it becomes sweeter when you can actually get serious traffic from it. 

Most people make the mistake of sending traffic from a podcast appearance directly to their home page. You’re smart, don’t be like them. 

If you want to have high conversion rates from that particular traffic, then you need to create a customized landing page designed specifically for the traffic that will be arriving on your landing page.

This particular landing page should not just be like any other landing page. But it should have the same feel as you did on the podcast you appeared on. 

For instance, folks at Industrial Strength Marketing Podcast have an episode where they talk about a free guide for “7 Reasons Industrials and B2Bs Need Responsive Websites.” They also have a dedicated landing page for this particular episode: 

This same principle should also be applied when you write a guest post. I know you won’t have landing pages for every guest post you write. But if you regularly post about a certain subject, you should consider having a customized landing page. 

Visitors coming from a Comment section 

The principle for this landing page is similar to the one above. 

When dropping a comment on a website’s comment section, I’ve seen many people also adding a link that redirects visitors to a certain customized landing page. 

I know. Having a customized landing page for every site you drop a comment on is unrealistic. But if you have landing pages for the sites you comment on the most, you can quickly orientate people after they’ve clicked your link.

Visitors who click on your email signature

Where do you usually send visitors that click on your email signature? 

Most people direct visitors to the homepage. It’s not bad, considering that the person clicking on your email signature already knows about you. 

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be creative enough to get personal by introducing who you are and what you are really passionate about. 

Use this opportunity to add a more personal—and bottom-of-funnel—touch to your communication.

Thank you landing pages

A thank you page is the page your visitors, leads, and customers see right after filling out and submitting a form on a landing page/web page. Think of it as a page rich with opportunities to apply basic upselling psychology.

Wistia has one of the best “Thank you pages” I’ve ever seen. Wistia knows how to use creativity to get someone excited to hear from them. I mean, once you submit a form requesting to talk to their sales, this is what you will see: 

Just below that video, they also invite your prospects to learn more about their product: 

Give your leads every opportunity to self educate and look around after they convert (like displaying your site’s navigation menu) and they will love you for it.

Visitors who have just subscribed or signed up

When building your subscription flow, you can customize the pages that appear to subscribers as they sign-up. You can also control where your new subscribers are directed once they complete the sign-up process and exit out of the subscription pages. 

Where do you send your visitors after they have signed up to your email list? 

I know for a fact that most marketers don’t put much thought into their post-sign-up pages. In a way, most post-subscribe pages don’t serve much of a purpose except to confirm that someone has successfully opted in. 

A well-crafted post-sign-up page should take full advantage of the momentum that the visitor has at that moment. 

When a visitor successfully opts into your email list, you can use your post-signup landing page or maybe use a popup to drive more op-tins:

The way to create a snowball effect is to invite new subscribers to share your opt-in page with their friends. You can include social media sharing buttons to make this easy for your users.

Visitors who land on the 404 error page 

Okay, you might be thinking ‘isn’t a 404 page just an error page?’, and you’d be correct, but it could be the first page that your visitors land on when they try to visit your site. 

Who said visitors who land on your 404 error page should leave annoyed and frustrated? 

We have a whole article on this blog that talks about increasing conversions on 404 error pages. In that article, I mentioned that a strong 404 page is not only on-brand but is actually a place to put brand voice on display. This can be done through humor, an interactive element, or even just by simply being helpful and human.

Check out this humorous Gong 404 error page: 

Gong’s error page is quite humorous. The page also offers a solution that can help visitors out of this dead-end. 

First-time vs. Old visitors 

So as you look to optimize your landing pages for different traffic sources, you might also need to think about that traffic in terms of first-time visitors versus old visitors. 

In our experience optimizing landing pages for different brands across different industries, we have noticed that there is always a significant difference between what works for first-time visitors and those who have visited your page two to three times in the previous 8 weeks old visitors. 

A few facts about first-time visitors: 

• First-time visitors are strangers to your business.
• It is the most underperforming group with a conversion rate significantly lower. 
• At the awareness stage, they are not ready to make a purchase decision.
• It is the most expensive type of visitor on your site, as shown by your traffic generation spend. 
• They have unique information and messaging requirements. 

A few facts about old or returning visitors: 

• They know about you. 
• They are more likely going to take the desired action you want them to take on your page.
• It’s much easier to convince them to make a purchase since they are way past the awareness stage. 
• Your copy needs to be persuasive.

Whether the visitor is new or old, your landing page should actually act as the brand representative. Your first-time visitors are not even sure if you will deliver what you promise on your landing page. Returning visitors have already shown interest by coming back to your page, all they need is a little nudge to make the purchase. 

So it’s important that your brand representative (landing page in this case) establish trust for the first-time visitors, and provide a compelling offer for old visitors. 

Here are some landing page elements that can work for both old and new visitors:

1. Add Testimonials 

Newcomers will never trust your business if no one recommends it. In fact, all visitors (new and old) are naturally skeptical any time they venture onto a company website, which is why it’s important that your landing page reflects positively on your business. 

One way you can do this is by inserting some customer testimonials on your landing pages. A customer testimonial (even a short quote) goes a long way to build trust. 

The landing page of FigPii is a perfect example. The testimonials on the page leave a good impression on your potential customers. 

But you have to be extra careful with testimonials – they can make or break your conversions. Testimonials have to be real and they should always contain real people not characters from stock photos.

2. Provide Social Proof 

Displaying social proof quells fear and makes people feel more confident about taking the same action. One way of showing that is by displaying the number of customers who have purchased the product or the number of people who have downloaded your asset. 

FigPii displays social proof by showing the number of countries, and the number of visitors recorded using the CRO platform.

3. Display Certification Logos 

This has always been a classic tactic to garner the trust of any kind of visitor. If you have associations or partnerships with trusted companies in your space that are relevant and well-known then display them. 

This is particularly important if you are asking for payment or identity information.

In our experience, the best way to turn a visitor into a buyer is to understand the moments of struggle that have led customers to consider hiring our products. You also have to understand their emotional and social needs. 

To do that, you need to interview customers in a particular way about their Jobs-to-be-Done (#JTBD). This way, you bring them back to that very moment they thought about purchasing your product.

#JTBD framework drills down into the minds of the customers and helps you see the emotional and social needs that trigger customers to make a purchase. As you talk with customers about their JTBD, you will start to hear what words customers use to describe their own struggle.

You can then use these words to craft your landing page copy as if it were a mirror. So when a new visitor reads your copy, they will see themselves. 

If you want to learn how to conduct a JTBD interview, we’ve uploaded a whole recording of it on our Youtube channel, be sure to take a listen. 

Conclusion

Looking at the above tactics, it’s easier to think that it’s impossible to have all those kinds of landing pages, right? However, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to any brand. Most brand decisions you make are based on where your business is coming from. Optimizing your landing pages based on visitor sources definitely increases conversions, and it also increases the relatability and personability of your business’ online presence.

The post Landing Page Optimization Tactics For Different Sources of Traffic appeared first on Invesp.

Who wouldn’t love landing pages? Helpful to visitors and great allies to companies, landing pages drive targeted traffic to your website, bringing in qualified prospects in search for the solutions you and your company offer.

A website can increase leads in 55% by increasing the number of landing pages from 10 to 15. However, generating leads is still the top marketing challenge. The median conversion rate among different industries for lead generation pages falls between 2.6% and 6%. So, there is still room for improvement.

For the right sense of the term, a landing page is any page on a website, where visitors land coming from an external traffic source. But dedicated landing pages, for specific campaigns, are the ones designed with one goal and call to action in mind. These standalone pages have a different purpose than the pages on your website, as they are built to drive targeted traffic to content that your prospects need. These visitors arrive at your page after clicking on an ad or link.

Dedicated landing pages take visitors to specific content, by the hand, not down the rabbit role to figure things out for themselves.

This resourceful nine-step guide will help you design landing pages that address your visitors’ needs as well as engage them in opting in your offers. You can find here clear definitions, examples, and actionable insights all along the way, from crafting to testing your pages.

Step 1. Start Designing Backwards:

First, the End Goal

When designing a landing page, your first step is to define the end goal of the page. Take a few minutes to jot down:

• Why do I need this landing page?
• What is the primary goal of this page?
• What main action do I want visitors to take on this page?
• Why is this visitors’ action important to our company?

At this step, you should figure out your main goal for creating the landing page or, as I would like to call it, the soul of your page.

In finding this goal, you should account for both sides involved. You have to take into account your interests as well as your visitors’ concerns:

• What do I want to accomplish by creating this page?
• What do my visitors want to accomplish by visiting this page?

You want visitors to convert on the landing page, maybe fill out a contact form or provide credit card number, or an email address, and so on.

Sounds like a good plan, but there is a catch. Online visitors do not follow a script.

Your future leads, as strange as it might sound, did not wake up thinking: “oh, today I feel like becoming a customer to an unknown online company. I can’t hardly wait to spend loads of money and tons of my time with people I’ve never seen before.”

Nope.

They woke up with an ever-growing list of problems to solve.

Your visitors come to your landing page to solve one, or more, of their problems. When they click on your ad, they do not desire to download a book, start a course, or share personal information. Their goal is to find a solution to a pressing need.

So, when future leads come across an ad on creating a profitable course, or learning new skills, they click on and follow through to find out more on how to make a profit teaching, or how to master a new in-demand ability. Their concern is on addressing their needs.

What are some of the common business goals for designing a landing page?

• Email capture: by capturing the visitors’ email of the visitor, you can keep the conversation going, and convert them into customers at a later stage. Email capture landing pages typically include an offer in exchange for the contact information, for instance you can offer a useful webinar in exchange for an email address.

• Free trial sign-up: A landing page might explain to visitors the benefits of an online product or SaaS (Software as a Service), leading the visitor to sign up for a free trial.

• Lead capture: Generating qualified leads also comes as one of the goals of landing pages, as opposed to the leads brought by a regular website contact form. As the offer on a landing page is tailor-made to a target audience of people interested in the topic, these leads already show interest in the solution your company provides.

• Segmenting promotional offers: You can use your landing page for different promotional offers, for example, if you want to generate coupon codes and advertise different products.

Our guide will help you mainly on designing landing pages for email capture, qualified lead capture, and free trial sign-up.

Actions to Take on Step 1

To determine the end goal of your landing page, consider your buyer personas. Answer the following questions:

• Who do you intend to reach with this page?
• Why do you want to start a conversation with these people?
• What will get their attention?
• Why would they be interested on your landing page offer?
• Where can you find them online (to place your ad)?
• What are you going to eventually sell to them?
• Why would they want to buy your product, or hire your service?

 

Step 2. Creating the Offer

Now that you have defined your landing page main goal, let’s move on to creating an outstanding offer to attract the right visitors.

As you consider your target audience, you can craft the best-suiting offer to raise your future leads’ interest on your products and services.

You should figure out an offer that is manageable to create, interesting enough to be worth exchanging for personal information, and exceptional enough to qualify you as someone able to help visitors in their quest for finding solutions.

Some of the popular offers in landing pages are:

• comprehensive guides in e-book formats
• e-courses in email, video, slides, or podcast formats
• whitepapers on recent industry trends and facts
• benchmark reports
• research and studies reports
• newsletters with exclusive content
• checklists
• scorecards
• auditing lists
• excel spreadsheet templates
• online workshops
• webinars
• consulting meetings
• free trial sign-ups
• coupon codes

Actions to Take on Step 2

To define and create the offer, you can:

• map your customer journey to find what offers best suit each stage, you can go over a mapping template as well as your analytics and CRM info.
• conduct polls and surveys to better understand what your visitors are looking for.

Step 3. Crafting the Copy

You now have a clear goal, and an outstanding offer. It’s time to write engaging copy to show your visitors how lucky they are to have found your offer.

Copy on the landing page should address the problem your visitors are looking to solve. The words should explain your offer, of course, but you must frame them in terms of benefits for visitors.

To structure your landing page, you have three types of copy: the headline, sub-headline(s), and body copy.

The headline

The headline is the first copy the visitor will see. As you might already be familiar with, your page visitors’ have a short attention span. You have less than 10 seconds to tell your visitors what your page is all about.

Your headline is your main ally in quickly informing visitors about your offer.

An effective headline gets your point across in a concise and clear manner, explaining your offer directly to visitors, and addressing their interests. To create your headline, you need the information you gathered about your visitors when you were on step 2, creating your offer.

Let’s see some of the headlines in our samples of landing pages.

Take a look at the headlines below. Without the hero image, and the rest of the copy, can you understand what they are offering?

• Outline your sales page [Courtney Johnson]
• Total Retail’s 2016 Salary Benchmark Report [Total Retail]
• Get two months of unlimited classes for free [Skillshare]
• 7 steps to launch your own profitable online course [Teachable]
• Create your course today [Thinkific]
• Free landing page [Wix]
• Ready for better videoconferencing? [Zoom]
• Don’t just know your customer. Trust them. [Sift Science]

If you can understand these offers, then they are clear, effective headlines. For Sift Science, you need more context to recognize the offer, but all other headlines are straight to the point.

Make sure your headline presents your offer and a benefit to visitors. Thinkific, for instance, offers a tool to “create courses” with the benefit of being easy and fast to use, so the visitor can finish preparing the course “today.” Skillshare offers unlimited classes, with the benefit of being free. The same benefit Wix offers for landing page creation.

Skillshare and Wix also use the exact same headline on their ads and pages. As much as possible, you should also keep the same headline for your ad and your page, so visitors recognize they arrived at the right place as soon as they land on the page.

When crafting the headline, the goal of the landing page will help you define what to say to your visitors. Your headline should bring your USP (Unique Selling Proposition), but keep in mind this proposition should permeate the whole page as well.

Subheadline(s)

After you gained visitors’ attention with your clear headline, the subheadline comes in to explain more about your offer.

At Sift Science’s page, while the headline conveys a benefit, “Don’t just know your customer. Trust them,” the offer is not quite clear without the subheadline “Prevent fraud and abuse for your web-scale business with real-time machine learning” accompanied by the hero image with a checklist of features.

For the salary benchmark report, offered by Total Retail, the headline is simply the title of the offer, while the subheadline sets an initial question to grab visitors’ attention and signal a pain point.

After the initial question (“Do you think you are being underpaid given the scope and responsibilities of your current position?”), they paint the scenario by asking further questions (“Are you curious how your salary compares to what your peers are making?”).

Skillshare uses the subheadline to specify the number and type of classes they offer. With the subheadline, visitors find out they will have access to over 15,000 classes to improve professional skills and passion projects:

Body Copy

After the headline introduced your offer, with a benefit, and your subheadline clarified and specified the offer, you need to provide more details to visitors.

Your body copy should naturally answer the questions visitors might have about your offer in terms of benefits and features.

On Skillshare page, visitors readily understand they will have free access to many classes, so their natural follow-up questions are “what type of classes?” “what will I learn?”

The page answers these questions by showing some of their popular classes, with video thumbnails and the name of the classes:

Next, visitors will wonder, “how will I learn in this platform?” The page answers this question with bulletin points that also address “why should I join the platform?”

This last section of the page brings the benefits and features of the platform. At this point, visitors recognize they will have a personalized experience to navigate and choose among the huge library of classes. Visitors also find out they can access the classes from multiple devices.

There is a slight inconstancy in the page, because the closing argument above mentions “over 13,000 classes,” while the subheadline mentions “over 15, 000 classes.” These contradictions and typos are bound to happen, so always make sure you proofread your copy before launching the page.

For the body copy of your landing page, define the following structure:

• Supporting argument
• Closing argument

To organize the arguments:

• Create bulletin points
• For each bulletin point, add benefits and features

Let’s see how Sift Science presents body copy in their landing page. Their page has six sections with benefits and features. The first section shows visitors the results they can achieve by using their software.

Following the results section, comes a section highlighting product features with explanations of benefits.

A new section on features is followed by a section highlighting benefits as “easy to use,” and “easy to integrate.”

A new section on features specific to machine learning comes before the closing argument “Getting started is a breeze!”

Long vs Short Copy Landing Page

Sift Science’ landing page feels long with all six sections, plus the area above the fold. But it makes sense. The goal of the page is to get visitors to sign up for a free trial. The product is complex and the offer demands visitors’ commitment. The page should provide comprehensive, but not overwhelming, information on benefits and features.

Total Retail’s report, on the other hand, has a short landing page. No problem, though. It is still a complete page with headline, subheadline, supporting argument and closing argument. Once visitors identify the problem painted by a series of questions, the page reinstates the solution: “Total Retail’s salary benchmarking report is the resource you need.” The next paragraph reinforces why the report is a great solution, with a supporting argument. The last paragraph closes the argument with an interesting benefit provided by the report.

This short landing page is designed to offer a free report. There is no need for extensive explanations as Sift Science’s offer requires.

Landing page gurus still debate over the merits of different lengths of copy. Some believe in using more copy you are able to better explain the product or service. Others believe that short copy, by reducing the risk of losing your visitor, is better.

There is no single answer to the debate. However, there are a couple of general guidelines that you should consider.

Short copy is usually better for giveaways or free offers. If visitors want what you are giving away, they don’t want to read too much – they just want the freebie. If they don’t want it, they will not be interested in reading long copy anyway. Long copy works better if you are selling something, particularly big-ticket items. Visitors want to know as much as they can about something before they part with their hard-earned dollars.

Actions to Take on Step 3

To produce engaging copy to your landing page, you should:

• Define a clear structure, with a headline, subheadline(s), supporting argument(s), and a closing argument.
• Check if the headline helps visitors understand your offer as soon as they land on the page.
• Aim for a headline that presents your offer + a benefit to visitors.
• Create your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
• Find the right words to use. The right words are the same your prospects and customers use to talk about their problems and the solutions they want. Listen to your prospects and customers to find copy that converts.
• Check the vocabulary benchmark for your industry.
• Use bulletin points for benefits and features.
• Decide on long or short copy based on your page goal and type of offer.
• Edit and proofread to make sure information is coherent and consistent throughout the page.
• Remember to add meta descriptions and keywords. While these are not exactly copy on your page, they help visitors and search engines to recognize your offer.

 

Step 4. Wireframe all the Elements

With a clear goal, the right offer in hand, and copy already set, it’s time to wireframe the layout of your landing page.

The wireframe guides you in defining the elements your page will have, the quantity and types of images, as well as the quantity and type of copy. While at the wireframe stage, you can move elements around, determining if the layout feels too crowded by images, or text.

The elements you should consider including in the layout are:

• Headline
• Subheadline
• Hero image
• Form
• Additional images
• Call-to-action button
• Above-the-fold mark
• Benefits and features
• Client testimonials
• Media mentions

For Zoom.us, the wireframe of their landing page shows the big blank space for the hero image, a form above the fold on the left side, three images to show the benefits, and two more call-to-action buttons, at the bottom, followed by clients’ logos and the footer.

Remove Navigation Links

As the landing page has the central purpose of generating leads, the more focus on the call the action, the better for achieving higher conversion rates.

In general, wisdom tell us that navigation links should be removed from you landing page, on top as well as at the footer. You can see Zoom.us chose to maintain the links at the bottom of the page. These links could distract the visitor away from the main call to action.

Wix.com, on the other hand, created a landing page free from navigation bars. When you contrast this page with their homepage, you can see the navigation links on top. The homepage serves different purposes, as it should be serving, while the landing page focus on offering their product, as promised by the ad, “free landing page creator.”

Keep Scent from Ad to Page

As you create the wireframe for your landing page, you should also work on keeping the scent from traffic source to landing page. As the visitor clicks on the ad, the experience on arriving at the landing page should be as seamless as possible. Color, layout, and wording should match from ad to landing page.

A landing page’s design should match the related promotional creative as much as possible. If a user clicks on a PPC ad: “10% off lawn mowing service,” they expect to see the same headline on the landing page. If the user clicks on an ad with a blonde model dressed in a red cashmere shirt, they expect to see that same blonde model as they arrive on the landing page.

Wix.com maintains the scent of words with the “free landing page” headline.

Thinkific, on the other hand, does a better job in keeping the scent of just one of the ads. You can see the blue ad resonates with the landing page, while the red ad does not seem to belong to the same campaign.

Actions to Take on Step 4

When designing your landing page layout, you should:

• Look for inspiration, and a create a board of references you can check whenever you need to organize the structure of a landing page.
• You can work with wireframing tools.
• Remember to stick to a clean design, to help the visitor easily find the information.
• Use bold, colorful, and large text and images for the most important parts of your page. A quick glance at your landing page should be enough for someone to understand your offer.
• Create a natural flow to conversion. A good landing page design leads the users’ eyes along the page towards the call to action. Web page viewers tend to look at a page starting from the top left and moving to the bottom right. The design of your page should follow this flow.

Step 5. Designing the Form

Filling out the form and submitting it is a highly engaging moment of the visitors’ experience, so you should make it as clear and direct as possible.

The form should be easy to read and easy to understand. Decide on the length of the form, by limiting the required fields. Too many fields might scary new leads away. Too many fields also look as too much trouble to go through. Simplify the form as much as possible.

For example, rarely will you need full mailing address information, because zip codes tell you the city and state. Asking visitors for a telephone number is often a turn off as no one relishes the prospect of telemarketing calls. If you need broad demographic data, try using easy to click multiple-choice check boxes.

You can see below Total Retail asks for company zip code, even for the revenue info, in exchange for offering the benchmark report, while Teachable asks only for the email in exchange for offering free webinar attendance.

Actions to Take on Step 5

To design your landing page form, you should:

• Consider the goal of the page, so you can include the right fields to collect only useful information from leads.
• Think about which fields are crucial to qualify the lead for sales:
  • Do you need info on the prospect’s job position?
  • Do you need a cell phone number or just email is enough to contact leads at the moment?
  • Do you need the lead’s physical address?
  • Is information on lead’s company important at this stage?
• Pay attention to the length of the form, and keep it short.
• Consider the offer and balance the amount of personal information visitor will be willing to share to get the free offer.
• Place the form above the fold.

 

Step 6. Designing the Call-to-Action Buttons

The center of all attention comes to scene. If by now you have defined your goal, decided on the best offer based on your visitors’ interests, and designed a clean layout, the right call-to-action button will be a breeze to create.

You already know where to locate the call-to-action button, because you have decided on the best spot while creating the wireframe. Hopefully, you chose to add the first button above the fold. It should be clearly visible and easy to read.

You are also equipped to choose engaging copy to add to your button, because you are aware of your visitors’ needs. The default text on a form is usually “Submit.” Conventional CRO wisdom is to use better text that indicates to the visitor what will happen when they click on the button. While some studies suggest that changing the text can have significant impact on your bottom line, we think that the impact has been exaggerated.

As you can see, Teachable, for instance, chose the first person for the button copy: “Yes! Claim my spot.”

Actions to Take on Step 6

When designing your call-to-action button, pay special attention to:

• The microcopy you choose, make sure it is engaging and relates to the offer and theme of the page
• Multiple locations. You should add more than one CTA button on your page, so visitors can easily find them, without the need of scrolling up and down the page. A rule of thumb is to have a call to action for every “screen,” or about every 400 to 500 lines of vertical resolution.
• Distinct break in your copy at or near the fold, or your reader may not know to scroll down. While web browsers automatically add scroll bars to longer pages, they are not always noticed, so the reader needs to know there is more information below the fold.

Step 7. Choosing Images

With forms and buttons in place, let’s now add some spice to your landing page. Images and videos play a crucial role in helping visitors identify your offer.

There are a few rules of thumbs here. A basic guideline is to use graphics and colors that are similar to, if not the same as, those used in any other promotional creative relating to your page. Changing the graphic approach and/or the color scheme with which your customer has become acquainted can cause confusion and lead the customer to click away. You need to make sure images keep the scent from ad to page.

The Hero Image

The hero image should convey a strong message along with your headline. A carefully chosen and well-positioned image should be a major element of your landing page design. When scanning a web page, visitors will most often look at the image first.

A key criterion for choosing images is relevance to the product or service being promoted. If you are offering an e-book, choose a cover mockup or display a few of the inside pages. Anything that helps the reader visualize the offer.

Skillshare uses the picture of someone training calligraphy, one of the courses available at their platform.

Zoom chose a hero image of someone using their product.

The hero image might also be used to instill trust. In the landing page for Courtney Johnson’s workshop, you can see a hero image of the speaker. This image presents Courtney to visitors and helps in establishing a relationship of trust between her and future leads.

Sift Science aims at portraying the idea of “I trust with my eyes closed,” so they chose the image of a person with closed eyes. More than establishing a relationship of trust with the visitors, this hero image intends to convey the selling proposition of the product.

Wix has an inspirational style of hero image.

Supporting Images

Supporting images in your landing page should help you convey your supporting arguments.

Skillshare chose six screenshots of classes, and three icons to help describe three key benefits.

Sift Science uses icons and a screenshot of their product interface.

Thinkific also uses screenshots of the interface to create courses.

Actions to Take on Step 7

When choosing images for your landing page, keep mind these should:

• Help position your offer as legit. So, be careful when using stock images that look phony.
• Come in two different groups:
  • Hero image
  • Supporting images. If you have technical information, perhaps a chart or graph can get your point across more easily. Make sure that, unless your graphic is the main image, it does not over power other elements and become the focus of your page – this could distract the viewer from continuing on the path to conversion.
• Assume any formats that help better convey the main message of the page. The images might be:
  • photos of people
  • photos of products
  • videos of people
  • demo videos
  • explainer videos
  • cartoons
  • drawings
• Have a good quality.
• Help you achieve the goal you set for the page.

 

Step 8. Add Trust Elements

Trust is fundamental for conversions. Visitors need reassurance that they can trust the site they are visiting. The internet is a scary place sometimes. You are, after all, asking visitors to share personal information with you, in exchange for your offer.

It is always risky to enter into an online transaction with someone you do not know. People may fear giving you money or their personal information because they do not know you. How can you get potential customers to trust you without ever meeting them?

You can convey trust in your landing page, by adding a few elements, as:

• Client testimonials
• Client logos
• Media mentions
• Authority endorsements
• Third-party security certifications
• Guarantee seals
• Trust badges
• Number of clients
• Proof of experience

Sift Science uses the logos of clients on a gray border. This page also provides case studies with the results some of the clients achieved by using their software. As both these sections help build visitors’ trust on the product, Sift Science chose them as first and second sections of the page below the fold.

Thinkific uses client testimonials in three different formats. First, they show a tweet from a happy client, under “Thinkific love.” They also use a quote from a Pinterest marketer and trainer. To raise visitors’ trust, these two elements appear right below the fold. Further down, before the closing argument, there is another quote, now accompanied by the client’s picture and company logo.

Actions to Take on Step 8

To add trust elements to your landing page, first save them a spot while you wireframe the page. Next, you have to:

• Gather social proof. You can find some advice on building social proof from scratch and on how to use social proof to boost conversions.
• As possible, ask clients to provide pictures to accompany their testimonials.
• Reduce FUDs (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubts). Make sure your visitors feel safe in providing their personal information or signing up to your service. To help them feel safe and connected to your offer:
  • Maintain scent from ad to landing page.
  • Keep your form short; don’t ask for too much information.
  • Proofread your page. Grammar and vocabulary mistakes signal fake pages to visitors.
  • Add guarantee seals and trust badges.
  • Do not add too many trust elements. If you add too many of them, your visitor might doubt your offer is legit.

 

Step 9. Include a Thank You Page

If a visitor went through the whole process of clicking your ad, checking your landing page, filling out the form, offering you contact information, the least you can do is say thank you.

The thank you page shows good manners, but also this is a prime spot for confirming to the visitor that you received their information. The internet sometimes messes up, so if a visitor just entered a lot of personal information in a form, they want an assurance that the information went to the right place.

So, use the thank you page to:

• Say “thank you” to the visitor.
• Confirm the info went through.
• Explain how the visitor gets access to the offer.
• Offer a bonus.
• Add social media sharing buttons.
• Add secondary calls-to-action.

This a place to engage the visitor further and help in creating and consolidating visitors’ experience.

 Take advantage of that magic moment directly after the customer says “Yes, I like you”. By paying careful attention to your confirmation pages you add the opportunity for some powerful brand extension touchpoints:

The opportunity for more subtle follow-up marketing: keeping people within the sphere of marketing influence if they follow or share on social media.

The opportunity to exceed expectations: differentiate by being the best. Surprise people with a bonus extra offer or content download.

The chance to offer info/advice that would have crowded your landing page: if you wanted to convey a message that wasn’t appropriate for your landing page (as you were rightfully keeping it focused on a single message), you now have the opportunity to do so.

The chance to offer a guided experience: most people like direction. Offer a suggestion of what to do next.

The Landing Page Course

Courtney confirms visitors’ subscription on the thank you page, and informs them of the worksheet they will receive in their email.

Actions to Take on Step 9

For your thank you page, you should:

• Consider the page goal you set at the beginning. By recognizing the goal, you can decide which sharing buttons you should add, or which bonus you could come up with.
• Think through which actions you want your visitors to take after they accepted your offer.

Conclusion:

Monitor and Measure the Success of Your Page

Once your page is set, make sure you avoid the most common mistakes on creating your landing page and move on to monitor it and measure visitors’ engagement.

If you want to improve your results, check my webinar on optimizing landing pages for higher conversion rates. You will learn about segmenting your traffic and planning for creating effective A/B tests.

A/B testing is powerful for landing pages. Tests can generate up to 30-40% more leads for B2B sites and 20-25% more leads for ecommerce sites. A/B tests are considered the most effective landing page optimization methods, for 52% of marketing, sales, and business professionals around the world.

Would you like to start A/B testing your page? Check our guide with the essentials of A/B and Multivariate tests, follow the 15 steps below to a successful testing, and avoid these testing mistakes:

While testing and monitoring your landing page, you might find out you do not have enough traffic to your page. We recommend you run A/B tests only if your page already has over 200 conversions per month. If you have less conversions, that is unfortunate, but fixable. You can still optimize pages with low traffic.

The post The Beginner-Friendly Guide to Designing Conversion-Oriented Landing Pages appeared first on Invesp.

While a good landing page is bound to get you a lot of conversions, an ill-planned landing page will have the exact opposite effect. It will not just lower your chances of getting customers, but also work negatively for the reputation of your business online.

Even though there are hundreds of tips, tricks and tools available on the internet to guide marketers for creating converting landing pages, there are still a few mistakes that often end up costing them customers.

Here’s taking a look at the 11 deadly sins that marketers need to avoid making on their landing pages:

1. Your visitors don’t understand what you’re offering

Let’s face it, most internet users are seeking for information that they can easily consume and get value from. If your landing page isn’t able to convey its point in 5 seconds, you’ve lost a possible customer.

Look at this landing page. Can you get in 5 seconds what it offers you?

Actually, it is the landing page of Revconvert, a content-discovery platform that recommends content form other websites based on the content users already viewed.

Compare it to the landing page of their competitor Taboola:

Isn’t is more clear what the company offers to you?

This landing page has almost all the elements of a good value proposition:

1. Headline that describes the end benefits: “Grow your traffic & customer base”.
2. Subheadline explaining what they offer: “Reach potential customers across the world’s most popular websites. Engage target audience naturally, while they’re reading interesting content”.
3. Visual supporting the value proposition statement: an image that show how native ads look like on the page.

Creating a value proposition is not as easy task as it may seem. It requires a bit of groundwork: competitive analysis, target audience research, and creating personas. Only after that you can start writing a compelling value proposition statement using, for instance, G. Moore model:

For (target customer) who (need statement), the (product/brand name) is a (product category) that (key benefit statement/compelling reason to buy).Unlike (primary competitor alternatives), (product/brand name) (primary differentiation statement).

To validate your value proposition, you can use “grandma approach”, i.e. if you grandma would understand what you offer to people, other people will understand it too. Of course, using your grandma to validate your value proposition statement is a bit too much, but it will never hurt to ask a person who hasn’t probably heard of your value proposition before to answer a few questions before you take it live:

• what does the landing page seem to offer;
• what do they seem to get out of it;
• what action would they take on it.

And least, but not the last: make sure your value proposition is highlighted and easily understandable. Don’t forget that your landing page visitor will evaluate your page and your offer only in 5-second blink.

This will help you create a value proposition that resonates with the customer on a psychological level, yet conveys the product highlights

2. Your visitors are not sure about what they need to do

While it is important for customers to know who you are and what you’re offering, it is also important for them to understand what they need to do after reaching your landing page: What are they supposed to takeaway from the information you offer and what is the action that is desired of them from the page.

When creating a landing page, it is important to highlight only the vital aspects of your product or service- what they are getting out of your business and what they are supposed to do. This is the reason why CTA is an integral part of the conversion trinity. Your landing page visitor should know what to do next and have enough confidence to take the action.

In the Revconvert example above, the absence of clear CTA adds extra confusion as well as in the example below where there is no obvious call to action in the above the fold area asking visitors to fill in the form to get a quote; this may lead to confusion and increase visitors’ fears, uncertainties and doubts. However, the actual CTA button is located almost at the bottom of the page, at the end of the form. So, visitors have to scroll all the way down to see it.

Aligning the landing page elements to the intersection of the gridlines create more tension and energy at the page. Look at the landing page of GoToMeeting:

The sign-up form is off-centered in such a way that eyes of the girl looking at the form, header and CTA are located at the intersection of the gridlines.

Another good place for the main CTA is closer to the center of the page, like it was done by Emma. Don’t forget to make it slightly bigger than the other elements on the page, as the famous  Nielsen study suggest that users focus more attention on larger elements and larger fonts.

3. Your landing page is loading way too slowly

The loading time of your landing page has a direct effect on its conversion rates. Pages that take more than 2 seconds to load don’t just lose the interest of the visitors, but also possible conversions.

Improving loading speed of your website is usually a quite easy task to tackle.

If you’re not sure how optimized your landing page is for load time, use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It helps you identify the elements that are taking longer to load.

Here are three quick fixes that could help you to improve the loading speed drastically:

1. Use a content delivery network (CDN) and distributed DNS, like Cloudfare, Incapsula, or CDNIFY. CDN moves static content closer to your website visitor which significantly increases the loading time.
2. Use image optimization software like Kraken.io to make your images lighter and their loading speed faster.
3. Use cloud storage service for storing static content like images and free your server resources. One of the biggest cloud storages is Amazon S3 which is used by many startups and Amazon itself.

4. You’re building your landing pages for mobile only

While mobile internet users have exceed those using the conventional desktop, it is also important to keep in mind that the desktop audience still constitutes about 42% of your website traffic.

So don’t just focus on creating a mobile friendly landing page, also keep in mind that those who are accessing it via the conventional desktop might be looking for more information on your offerings.

5. You’re not A/B testing your landing pages

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to creating a converting landing page. While a certain aspect might work beautifully for another business, it might make yours lose customers. This is why it is important to A/B test your landing pages.

Split testing refers to the process of creating different variations of a landing page and tracking conversions for each in order to improve the overall effectiveness of the campaign. The process includes changing various website elements that are likely to grab the visitor’s attention or make him convert. Some of the elements that you definitely must split test on your landing page include:

• Background colour
• Page headline
• Type of offer made
• Offer text
• Call-to-action text
• Web form copy
• Images and other visuals

It is not surprising that 60% of companies believe that A/B testing is “highly valuable” for conversion optimization.

At the same time, 63% of companies believe that is it not difficult to implement A/B testing while 7% believe that A/B testing is very difficult to implement.

Here is a simple example why A/B testing is so important.

Vidyard conducted a survey on video content. Over 70% of respondents claimed that video performs better than other content for producing conversions. So, the majority of marketers shares the belief that videos is very good for conversions. it really so for every website?

We had a client whose landing page had a video in the above-the fold area and looked like this:

There were several issues with this landing page, but we decided to focus on a since hypothesis: “Removing the video and replacing it with benefits and a CTA will increase sign-ups.”

The modified landing page looked like this:

As a result, our client saw more than 88% uplift in conversions:

Why video was bad for conversions on this landing page?

1. Video had no added value for the visitors of this landing page as they came to it already knowing what was the offer.
2. Call to action gave visitors a clear instruction of what to do next.
3. The video had no added value for the visitors, so it simply occupied “prime real estate” of the landing page and could be replaced with other more persuasive elements.

Lesson learned: you should not make blunt assumptions on what might work for your website visitors, you should test it to confirm your assumptions.

6. Your campaigns lead to the same landing page

You have narrowed down who your business is targeting in the consumer market. But let’s take into account who actually constitutes that target audience. Dig deeper into consumer behavior and you’ll understand how each individual is different from the other in the same target market. Then how do you expect them to convert on the same landing page?

Segment your target audience further based on insightful data points like their interaction with your business or industry, what they’re looking for and their previous purchase triggers. The more contextual your landing page is to their needs, the higher will be the conversion rates.

7. Your landing page lacks visuals

According to a study by Zabisco, our brain processes 90% of the information in visual format. For that matter, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than textual content. If your landing page hasn’t been able to convey its value proposition effectively, then you need to incorporate visuals that would do the same for you.

Be it a few product images, how-to videos or quick gifs, make it easy for the visitor to understand what your business does and what value he is going to gain out of it.

This is how Manpacks, a quarterly subscription to men’s essentials, uses the visual to underline the nature of the subscription services it provides:

And here Bear CSS uses this cute bear to point out into the CTA direction to focus visitors’ attention on it:

8. Your landing page demands a bigger commitment

It is important to keep in mind that not all your landing page visitors are at the same level in the sales cycle. While some might readily share their contact information and convert with your business, there are also those who might be interested and need a little more nurturing.

Most landing pages offer a conversion that demands a bigger commitment from the visitor, resulting in overwhelming and losing him. So offer a micro conversion like a demo, free trial without credit cards, simply subscribing to your newsletters or following you on social media – of course, you need to keep in mind what your business goals are and how these micro conversions add up to the bigger picture.

This is how Kissmetrics added a micro conversion, “Request a Demo”, to their landing page since there are a lot of businesses who aren’t sure how analytics can contribute to their growth. They probably won’t click on the “Try Kissmetrics” CTA; however, they may consider watching a demo.

9. Your landing page design is way too cluttered

While we say offering micro conversions is sometimes important, it is also vital that your landing page leads the visitor to one goal and not overwhelms him with multiple offers. But the sad news is, about 48% of the landing pages contain multiple offers and call-to-actions. This clutters the entire design of the landing page and confuses the visitor.

Look at this page of DAZ 3D, a software company offering 3D software. It is landing page of their shop selling various add-ons for 3D modelling:

Too overwhelming, isn’t it?

So make sure your landing page is laser focused on only one action. Get rid of all other navigation or elements that might lead the visitor to another aspect of what your business offers. The cleaner the design is, the better the visitor is able to consume the information you’re offering.

Compare the landing page of DAZ 3D to Adobe Photoshop CC landing page, which is crisp and clean:

Even menu of this landing page looks extremely visually clear:

10. Lack of trust elements

There are multiple businesses who are offering similar products and services in the digital space today. While some are considerably old in the industry, there are a few that have just begun and are building their reputation in their target audience.

As an end consumer, I don’t want to be associated with a product that is half made, is in beta or doesn’t guarantee any kind of results. Most visitors to your website don’t convert, if they can’t see any trust signals.

Trust signals or elements are usually social proof of what your business delivers and what your existing customers are gaining out of it. A simple way of adding these trust elements to help your visitors make quicker decisions, is to include a few testimonials, feature in popular publications or ratings shared by customers.

For instance, Exit Bee has a fairly new technology that helps boost the conversion rates of eCommerce websites. Now it is hard to convince online store owners that it actually works with on-site retargeting. So it has included two testimonials from customers, whose case studies are featured on their website too.

11. Disconnect between the ad and the landing page

One of the most important and a common reason for businesses to lose conversions on their landing page, is a disconnect between the ad and the web page copy.

In simpler words, promising your target audience something to draw them to your landing page, and then offering something else altogether, is only going to make you lose business. There has to be a consistency between what you use to draw their attention and what you’re going to use to convert them.

For instance, see the ad on the left and then the landing page copy on the right. There is a consistency in what Optimizely is promising, as well as the design they have used to make it look familiar to the visitor.

When you don’t maintain a consistency between your website or landing page and advertisements, you end up losing the opportunity to even generate leads.

Takeaway

Landing pages take more than just a good design to create. They need to be well strategized based on data of what your target market looks like, what they are looking for and how you can get your value proposition across the best.

A/B test your possibilities before you settle down on one landing page for your marketing campaign.

What other tips do you have for creating a high converting landing page?

The post 11 Deadly Landing Page Sins Every Marketer Needs To Avoid appeared first on Invesp.

Yet, they are widely misused and poorly understood.

Should you use a video landing page, a two-step landing page or a click-through landing page? Would an email opt-in landing page work better, or should you go with a microsite?

In this post, I’ll share 4 types of landing pages guaranteed to convert and show you how to use them.

1. The Opt-in Bribe Landing Page

This is one of the most common types of landing pages online: a product image, some copy, and a form. Visitors who land on this page can opt-in to your newsletter in exchange for downloadable content such as an eBook or guide.

This landing page works due to three reasons:

• Preview image: The product image or graphic visualizes the product and makes it appear more “real”. It also gives you an opportunity to use strong visuals to help the product stand out.
• Headline-focused: The first thing you’ll see on an opt-in bribe landing page is the headline. This is critical for grabbing the reader’s attention and hammering in the value proposition of your product.
• Short form: This landing page usually has a short form with at most 2-3 fields. This is easy to fill and eliminates a lot of friction.

How to use it

There are four key ingredients in an opt-in bribe landing page:

• The headline
• The body copy with a list of benefits
• The product image
• The form

To use this landing page, focus first on the headline. Use strong, emotive and benefits-focused headlines to persuade users.

Next, add your product image. This doesn’t always have to be a product image; you can also add a video, a testimonial or a quote from an authority figure.

Your body copy is important, but not quite as much as the headline. If you’re sending traffic to this page, chances are, you’ve already pitched your downloadable to your audience. Hence, this copy should focus on amplifying the benefits instead of repeating them.

Lastly, add your form. For best results, keep this to as few fields as possible (two is best – Name and Email).

Of course, B2B businesses require more data about their customers. It isn’t unusual for forms in B2B fields to be several fields long.

For example, the HubSpot form above asks several questions from the customer before the download:

How to improve it

While the above four landing page elements are essential, you can improve your conversion rates by adding the following:

• Testimonials from recognized authority figures.
• “As Seen On” logos and badges showing off your digital footprints.
• Two-step download button. This removes the opt-in form and replaces it with a button. Clicking the button takes the visitor to the form.
• A section talking about your company to build trust.

You can also try replacing the product image with a video.

2. The Video Landing Page

There’s a good chance you’ve chanced upon a landing page like this online:

This landing page-type focuses exclusively on the video. Often, this involves removing the play/pause buttons and using a blank background so viewers can focus on the video. Some pages even disable the volume control.

It’s only after a viewer has watched the entire video will the landing page redirect them to a download or sales page.

These video landing pages work because:

• More conversions. Any buttons/forms show up only after the viewer has watched the entire video (or a fixed percentage of it). Viewers who consume so much content are likely to be highly engaged, and thus, convert better.
• No distractions. Landing pages, by design, have minimal distractions. Video landing pages, often, do away with everything save the video, which equals reduces distractions even further.
• More engaging. As a format, video is far more engaging than plain text or even images

How to use it

The video landing page has just two core elements:

• The video
• The form, button or landing page

The most important element, of course, is the video. Whitescreen videos work particularly well since they can blend into the white background.

The form shows up either after a viewer has seen the whole video (or at least a large part of it) or is visible from the very start. There is no set best practice, but marketers often redirect visitors to a separate landing page at the end of the video. Here, they can download content, sign-up for a service, or take any action that continues the narrative started in the video.

How to improve it

A few things you can test include:

• Video duration
• Post-video content. Test between pop-ups forms, buttons or redirection to separate landing page.
• Content trigger. Test whether your forms/buttons etc. show up after 30%, 50%, 90% of the video.

3. The Product Landing Page

This landing-page type dominates Hacker News and Product Hunt. In fact, it’s so common that its structure is often the subject of mockery.

As cliche as it might be, this landing page type works well.

Three reasons why:

• It focuses on features and Readers get a complete idea of what the product is, the problem it solves, and how it works.
• It shows off the product visually. Most product landing pages are highly visual and show off the product’s features and design.
• It uses conversion enables such as social proof, FAQs, etc. One detail common to most product landing pages is the presence of testimonials, user reviews, “featured in” sections, etc. This helps remove doubts and enables higher conversions.

How to use it

The product detail landing page is extremely flexible. Most pages have at least the following features:

• A hero image + strong copy above the fold.
• A list of features and/or benefits.
• Some social proof.
• A pricing/how to buy section.
• An “about” section.

You can mix and match these elements as per your requirements.

How to improve it

The product landing page is extremely flexible. You can throw in or remove elements as you see fit.

For instance, if you’re selling to technically savvy users (such as a cloud computing solution for programmers), you’d focus on the features. For others, you’d focus on the benefits. For SaaS products, a pricing section would be useful, while for more expensive products with longer sales cycles, you can stick to a “call us now” section, and so on.

4. The Long Sales Page

The long sales page has been a staple of marketing since the early days of the internet.

These pages run long – often at 8,000-10,000 words or even longer.

Strangely enough, despite our aversion to reading online, long sales pages convert exceptionally well when done right.

Ramit Sethi’s sales page for Earn1k, for example, was 47 pages long.

These types of sales pages work particularly well for customers in the last stages of the buyer’s journey. Since you’ve already nurtured them, you only need to push for a final commitment by focusing on your product’s value proposition – something these pages do really well.

Why do these pages work?

Here’s why:

• Captures attention. Long sales copy captures attention like nothing else when done right. Good copy is essentially good storytelling, and good storytelling will make someone read even 30 pages. Plus, the format – text with few images – does a great job of keeping out distractions.
• Focuses on value proposition. The best converting long sales pages consistently emphasize the value you’ll get from buying the product. They are less a list of features and mostly a list of benefits.

How to use it

There are essentially three core elements in a long sales page:

• The headline. This is critical for grabbing the reader’s attention after he/she lands on a page.
• The body copy. This is the heart of the page and the part where copywriting skills come into play.
• The call to action button. Usually a large “buy now” button spread throughout the page.

The headline is the first element you need to work on. Something emotive, catchy and visual is highly recommended.

The body copy should focus on storytelling instead of simply listing out the features/benefits. The best performing sales pages get into the mind of the reader and talk to their fears, uncertainties and ambitions.

The CTA is usually a variation of the “big orange button” with a number of visual reassurances of credibility (such as VISA/Mastercard logos), such as this:

You’ll usually find the CTA at least once at the top of the page, once in the middle, and several times at the bottom of the page.

How to improve it

Lengthy sales pages can come across as scammy due to their history of abuse by marketers. One way to stand out from such pages is to use better design.

This way, instead of the standard single-column page, you’d have something that resembles a product landing page, but with a focus on storytelling.

Apple does this exceptionally well:

Over to You

What landing page you use will depend entirely on what you hope to achieve from it, your audience, and their position in the buyer’s journey.

If you want emails, an opt-in bribe page will work great. If you’re marketing to make sales, a lengthy sales page would do the trick much better.

Take your pick of the above four landing pages, grab some landing page templates from your favorite landing page provider, and add your content. As always, make sure to test your pages for the best results.

The post 4 Types of Landing Pages Guaranteed to Convert (and How to Use Them) appeared first on Invesp.

Yet, almost half of all businesses take their visitors to the site’s main home page where they get lost.

Instead, if you send your visitors to a targeted landing page, you can convert leads and customers at a much higher rate.

Landing pages are the heart of any marketing campaign. The quality of your landing pages will often impact the quality and quantity of your customers and leads.

However, before you can design a conversion-oriented landing page, there are a few questions you need to answer.

Question 1. What is your conversion goal?

The conversion process begins with the end in mind. What you’re trying to accomplish on a landing page will deeply affect its eventual design.

For example, a landing page for downloading a free eBook in exchange for an email will likely be short. This is because the ask itself – an email address – isn’t huge when compared to the value on offer (a free eBook).

Hence, you can use a simple design that emphasizes the eBook’s value:

If you’re selling a $97/month SaaS product, however, you need a lot more content to convince visitors. Your landing page will be much longer with multiple points of persuasion.

Depending on the conversion goal, you can divide landing page designs into two categories:

1. Lead-generation page: Lead generation landing pages contain an opt-in form and call-to-action to get contact information out of a visitor.

Here is an example of a lead generation landing page:

2. Click-through landing page: Click-through landing pages are effective to warm visitors up for a sale. These pages often lead to another page with more information about the offer.

Here is an example of a click-through landing page

If you’re trying to convert visitors into leads, you’ll use the former. If you’re just warming up raw visitors or inform existing leads about a new offer, you’ll use click-through landing pages.

Question 2 – Who is your target audience?

There is no such thing as a “generic” landing page. Every successful landing page targets a very specific audience.

For example, if you’re pitching a white paper to CXOs, you’ll need to emphasize new findings, industry insights, and specific high-level solutions that appeal to C-level executives. You might also want to capture more than just emails in exchange for the download.

Take a look at this landing page from Salesforce as an example:

On the other hand, if you’re pitching a “how-to” guide to complete beginners to a topic, you’ll need to break down jargon into simpler terms and use more persuasive copy. Your form will likely ask for just a name and email instead of things like company size, current role, etc.

See this page from Groupon as an example:

Before you start the landing page design process, clearly identify your “ideal customer” for that landing page. This should be as specific as possible. Instead of saying that your customer is a “Person in his/her 40s who works in IT”, say, “40-year old man who lives in California, works in a large tech company, and reads TechCrunch regularly”.

This will help you design much more targeted (and hence, better converting) landing pages.

Question 3 – How easy is it to consume your landing page?

You need to ask yourself if your landing page is inviting and easy to read. If it isn’t, people won’t bother to stick around.

What makes a landing page easy to read?

Bullet points

Bullet points allow you to concisely summarize the benefit of your offer . As a result, a visitor can quickly scan and consume your page without getting discouraged by lengthy paragraphs.

Whitespace

Do you have ample white space which ensures a visitor’s focus goes to where you want it to go?

Lack of whitespace can confuse a visitor as many elements demand their attention.

For example, see how The Economist uses lots of whitespace to make its subscription page easy to read:

Persuasive images

Images not only add visual flair to your landing page but also help persuade users.

For example, this landing page shows the product you’re about to download with a high quality image:

On the other hand, this landing page shows off an emotion you want your users to feel.

This image is purely for persuasion; it doesn’t offer any actual insight about the product.

Question 4 – How trustworthy are your landing pages?

With widespread fraud and security lapses online, gaining trust of a customer on your landing page can make or break a lead.

How do you demonstrate trustworthiness and reliability on a landing page?

Here are a few tactics:

1. Social proof

Social proof is a natural force that compels people to follow what others are thinking or doing. If you don’t have social proof on your landing page, your visitors might second-guess themselves and drop off.

However, if their peers (friends, experts, other customers) are using and recommending the product or service, they will be more compelled to take action.

The thought process goes like something like this: “If so many other people are using this, it surely can’t be bad.”

There are many ways to social proof your landing page, such as:

• Customer testimonials
• Influencer/expert reviews and quotes
• Share/view count

Here’s a landing page which uses expert quotes as social proof:

2. Security credentials and assurances

Your customers are naturally wary of giving away their personal details. They want to know that you won’t use abuse their privacy or hand over sensitive data to third-parties.

Reassuring users through security credentials and messages can go a long way towards improving conversion rates.

For example, this page clearly notes that the user’s private details will not be abused:

Also note the “SocialSafe” security badge.

These are just two ways you can make your landing pages more trustworthy.

Question 5 – Is your call-to-action clear?

Your CTA has a simple goal: to show users what’s on offer.

For example, if you’re offering a free eBook download, your CTA shouldn’t say “SUBMIT”. Instead, it should say what you’re offering (“FREE DOWNLOAD”).

A short, action-oriented and targeted CTA copy which is specific to the offer on your landing page will convert better. Call-to-actions which describe exactly what your leads are agreeing to will receive more responses than those which are vague.

Here is an example from CanaDream who fixed their CTA copy.

By changing the CTA button copy from “GO” in the image on the left to “Get RV Rental Pricing and Availability Now!” CanaDream increased their conversion by 106%.

Similarly, this landing page simply says “Create a Landing Page” instead of a generic action such as “Submit” or “Get Started”:

Conclusion

The more landing pages you create for your different products and target audiences, the more opportunities you’ll have to convert visitors into leads.

However, before you create each landing page, ask yourself the questions discussed above so that you design pages which actually convert and don’t drive away visitors.

The post 5 Questions You Need to Ask to Design Conversion-Oriented Landing Pages appeared first on Invesp.