Barb Coté
Are you running campaigns that are getting a decent click-through rate, but no conversions? Are you running campaigns that don’t really deliver? You might want to consider these 8 tips to improve landing page conversion.
1. Define WHAT a conversion is.
What do you want the visitor to do in order to consider your page a success? Is it to just land on the page, verify their contact information, download a brochure, answer questions, make a purchase, or go to another page?
2. Define WHOM you want to click on your ad.
Build a profile of your ideal visitor. Keep this person in mind when creating your landing page. Think about how long it will take them to do what you want them to do and if they might experience any frustration or confusion in the process of achieving your ideal goal. Weed out unnecessary information (navigation bars and secondary offerings) that might cause them to wander off course or become confused as to why they are there.
3. Create a seamless “LEAP.”
The landing page and prior ad (bait) should match. The easiest way to clue visitors in that they have arrived at the right place is to use a similar heading or keywords from your ad creative.
4. Deliver AS PROMISED.
Depth is about delivering what was promised — quickly. You want to share real information, tailored to the search that the respondent was pursuing.
5. Make it EASY to convert.
Lead the eye. Use typography and color to your advantage. Lead the eye along the page towards the conversion exit. Thoughtful use of whitespace, large copy, and graphics can make a long page seem much shorter than it really is.
6. AUTO-populate forms.
Remove all unneeded fields. If you’re asking users to register for a newsletter, ask only for an email address.
7. PIMP it out.
Use your full arsenal of web-ertainment. In the age of YouTube, a video can be a compelling way to build rapport. A Flash animation—can get them involved. Choice of imagery is critical. Choose images that are related to page content, clearly composed and appropriately cropped and contain realistic (not models) people who are smiling and looking at the camera.
Incorporate these features as part of purposeful design.
8. ANALYZE your failures.
How well do you do with the respondents who don’t convert on your landing pages? Just because they weren’t ready to convert on that specific offer at that exact moment, doesn’t make it a throwaway experience.
Analyze what they do — track what people click on — or avoid.
Jakob Nielsen in his latest book, Eyetracking Web Usability, is quick to say,
“By itself, eyetracking can do one thing and one thing only: discover what users look at. But a pure count of fixations can’t tell us whether users are productive, happy, or confused when they look at certain things and not others. Users may look a great deal at a certain paragraph of text because the content is relevant and interesting. Good! Or maybe it’s because the writing is convoluted and hard to understand. Bad!”
In other words, eye-tracking is not flawless behavior predicting, because it is NOT brain tracking. The only predictor of landing page conversion success is live testing.
References:
About the Author:
Barb Coté serves as the Creative Director at digital marketing agency SIGMA Marketing Group. Connect with Barb on or follow her on .
