CXL Institute Growth Marketing Minidegree Review | Week 9| Landing Page Optimization.

So, this week, while I was studying for my Growth Marketing Certification, through the cxl Institute I learnt two words and how they shape user behavior and their decision-making ability. Those two words will take us into neuroscience a bit, Cortisol and Dopamine. For today's lesson we will be looking at Landing Page Optimization, so where does Cortisol and Dopamine come in? why do we have to understand how these different chemicals we have in our brains affect user behaviors especially in the landing page experience. Because it will help Us as Marketers empathize with the users and it will help demystify some of the user behavior that we see. And I think sometimes as marketers, we do have a tendency to blame the user when actually we are the ones who've created a complicated or illogical landing page experience.

What is a Landing Page? When we talk about a landing page, we are talking about a page that that user lands on, basically an entrance page. It is the first page that the user sees, after having clicked on some kind of an ad source. In most cases, you know, that could be a PPC ad, it could be a banner, it could be something in an email, it could be, you know, social media, whatever. They click on something, and then they land on the landing page. It is a page that works independently of the rest of the site or the app, and it is focused on a clear conversion goal. By conversion goal, I mean, something like landing direct on a payment page, leads page, subscribe page, learn more page, download now page etc and these pages could have their own events like CAPI or Google Analytics specifically for those landing pages to track users’ behaviors and their actions.

Seeing how we are attributing user experience, actions, and behaviors to neuroscience, let us take a look at Fast vs slow thinking and cognitive biases. we are trying to understand how users think and how they make decisions and how we can create some empathy for them. I think as marketers we do have a tendency to sometimes blame it on the user, they're just kind of slow and they're not converting, when actually in most cases that is not accurate. It is us, the marketers, creating experiences that are confusing for them. And when we understand some of the basic aspects of psychology and neuroscience, then that really helps you understand how people make decisions and why.

Now let us look at what Information Hierarchy is and why it is a crucial step in building an effective landing page. When properly structured, a logical and effective Information Hierarchy, will help you decide how much content you need on your page and in which order to present it. There are two questions that a lot of people have when they start building landing pages they are, how much content do I need and what content needs to be on there. Information hierarchy solves that problem for you.

So, what is Information Hierarchy and why is it important? Well, it helps us answer to absolutely critical questions. What information is most important and how much information is necessary. As I mentioned before, these are two questions that you inevitably run into when you start building landing pages. So one thing I want to clear up right away is that having a lot of information on your landing page is fine as long as it is relevant and served in a logical and concise way.

Quantitative LPO research using Google Analytics, Google Analytics is very Important as it shows me what is going on under the hood, information that there is no way I could get from just looking at the Landing page. With Google Analytics, you can find out where people are dropping off? Are they dropping off of at the landing page? Are they dropping off at the next step in the funnel? This is really important in knowing where we want to focus our energy. Another thing could be like understanding which device is most important, remember how Facebook tracks users across devices and attributes on which device did conversation take place and how to attribute credit. You know, if 99% of the conversions and traffic is via mobile, well then that is where we are going to start. We are not going to waste our time with desktop.

Page Optimization research using Google Analytics and quickly to reiterate, quantitative versus qualitative research. Well quantitative, we are mainly looking to answer “what" and "where" questions and the back of it will be through Google Analytics or any analytics set up. Basically, what we use using Google Analytics here, and so "what" and "where" questions that we can get asked to analytics. We are looking at a Landing page file, it could for example be users are leaving the Landing page without filling out the forms. So, we would want to know what is going on where and then often to find a good solution answer to “why" questions.

Landing page copywriting, the characteristics of effective landing page copy are more or less the same. It is supposed to shorten the journey from click to conversion, follow up on promises made in the answers, it is supposed to speak to user motivation and address barriers, answer important questions and create clarity, and last but not least create a clear path to the conversion goal.

Let us look at the five most important landing page copy elements.

1. Headline

2. Benefits

3. Features

4. Credibility

5. Expectation managers and call-to-action copying

So, the headline overall, establish message match, a match between the message that was in the ad source and on the landing page, capture attention and to trigger it mean, if people understand that there is a reward that trigger the reward mechanism. Benefits and features, they present important information, they emphasize the value of our offer, and they also kind of trigger dopamine in the sense that benefits talk about the outcome, which is, you know, part of the value presence and part of what people are wanting or looking for. In many cases features can be benefits if you already know that a feature is important too as a strong driver of motivation.

Credibility, credibility copy, credibility indicators, well, that is there to make the content trustworthy, to answer questions and to mitigate cortisol basically. Expectation managers, well, they are supposed to help us ensure that users know what to expect, so they have realistic expectations as to what is going to happen and what our offer's about and what they can get out of it.

That helps mitigate ambiguity, it increases clarity, and it helps avoid disappointment or negative reward prediction errors like we talked about. And the call-to-action copy, well, if you boil that all the way down, then the main purpose of the call-to-action copy is to make users click the button, basically.