4 Insanely Simple Strategies to Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates
Imagine that you’ve been invited to a turkey dinner at someone’s house. When you arrive, you realize that nothing has been prepared. All you see are a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the counter.
Now, it’s not that you dislike peanut butter and jelly. I mean, everyone likes peanut butter and jelly, right? But talk about not living up to expectations!
Maybe the delicious turkey — complete with cranberry sauce and stuffing — is concealed in some back room, waiting to be discovered, but what do the hosts expect you to do? Walk through every room in the house, sniffing for the delightful aroma of freshly roasted turkey, opening every door and drawer you pass by?
Few guests will wander from room to room in this never-ending hunt. Most will simply turn around and walk out the door, heading for the nearest restaurant.
This is essentially what you’re doing to your audience when you draw them to your site with a specific ad or offer and then dump them on the homepage with no mention of the offer.
In this article, we’ll show you how to increase landing page conversion rates — and maybe your guests will stay longer next time.
How to Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates
You’ve spent the time (and probably a significant amount of money) to serve your target audience with a tailored message to bring them to your site. Once a visitor lands on your site, you need to continue this conversation. Otherwise, you’re seriously damaging your conversion rate and, to be blunt, wasting your money.
Instead of directing traffic to your homepage (or product category pages), direct them to a custom landing page that’s specific to the ad they just saw. Make sure your visitors see the turkey they came for as soon as you open the door.
Let’s look at some simple strategies to increase your landing page conversion rates.
Provide Context
The most important component of syncing an ad to a landing page is maintaining context.
You don’t have to utilize the same headline and copy — and you shouldn’t. Don’t simply copy and paste your ad on the landing page. The headline and visuals on this page should organically follow the advertisement that brought this visitor to your website in the first place.
Think about the next logical element a potential customer should encounter after reacting to your ad, and provide them with that information.
It isn’t rocket science. If you sell a specific product at a 50% discount, make it a prominent feature on the landing page so your potential customers see it again as soon as they land on your site.
Maintain Focus
Each landing page should have a single goal. Unlike your homepage, whose job it is to route a variety of different customer segments down a variety of different paths, a landing page should be focused on achieving one particular user action, such as:
- Signing up for an email subscription
- Purchasing a product
- Watching a video
- Sharing something
Choose one goal only! Whichever goal you select, use it as the emphasis of this ad campaign, and center all of the information on this landing page around that goal. You don’t want to distract your user from achieving this one goal.
Make Them Easy to Create
If your landing pages aren’t easy to create, you won’t employ them for every campaign; it’s that simple.
To be effective, landing pages must be specific. It’s best to have numerous variations, even within an individual campaign, to target different audiences and channels.
You must be able to generate landing pages on the fly and then discard them when the campaigns are no longer active.
Content creation for each landing page will always take time. You can’t, and you shouldn’t, rush it! However, the actual page-creation process has to be quick and easy.
To get your landing pages up and running, consider using Unbounce, Leadpages, or Instapage.
Test, Analyze, Repeat
You should test specific elements on your landing pages in order to improve conversion rates over time. This not only increases the success of a single campaign but also allows you to apply what you’ve learned to future landing pages.
Make sure your sample size is sufficient before declaring the test a winner and moving forward. Most platforms will notify you once your tests are statistically significant. If not, you can use this handy calculator from Optimizely.
Final Thoughts
Increasing landing page conversion rates — much like making a five-course turkey dinner — may seem like a daunting task at first. However, we hope that by breaking these strategies down into bite-sized morsels, you’ll feel a little less overwhelmed. And hopefully you’ll be motivated to embark on this mission!
If you need a little extra push (or a little extra gravy), just reach out! Our award-winning team is always here to help.
