Growth startup (7/12): conversions review

Ready for another post from this series of growth marketing, based on my learnings from CXL’s Growth Marketing minidegree?

Last Sunday, we focused on attribution models, flying over:

• Attribution meaning,
• Thinking beyond the last click only,
• Attribution models,
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning for attribution.

Today, we’re gonna deep dive into conversions by landing pages. ??

Landing pages are so powerful, so revenue-driven… And so misunderstood.

GROWTH STARTUP SERIES PREVIOUS POSTS:

Growth startup (1/12): open-minded growth vs. traditional marketing review

Growth startup (2/12): building a customer-centric growth process review

Growth startup (3/12): running growth experiments with research and testing review

Growth startup (4/12): conversion research review

Growth startup (5/12): mastering a/B tests review

Growth startup (6/12): attribution models review

Your BFF you don’t listen or understand

We’re used to thinking of landing pages as self-centered pages. Ok, we all know that they’re connected to a previous PPC ad or email and to a subsequent form. But we usually don’t see more than that.

And there is a “more”. Always does. A “more” that makes all the difference. As always in life. A “more” that gives landing pages the importance they deserve.

Landing pages are not self-centered pages. They’re customer journeys in themselves.

But why?

Because everything usually starts on search SERPs or social media feeds, where you see a PPC ad that connects to a landing page. Once there, you need to fill up a form that guides you to a confirmation page. And it goes on and on with email nurturing…

As you can see, it’s all about a journey that we tend to forget because we’re fixed only on our landing pages.

User experience and broken promises

If you wanna conversions using landing pages or get better results from the ones you already have, think of the user’s journey.

Let’s suppose that a user was impacted by your PPC ad that has great colors, awesome imagery, and beautiful graphic elements. Then this experience is lost when the landing page connected to this PPC ad shows up very differently, breaking the user experience.

Worse than that, it’s poorly constructed with confusing messages and an annoying form.

Don’t expect your landing page to perform if it's disconnected from what you are promising on your PPC ad or email.

Landing pages tell people what they’re about to receive if they do something. It’s all about expectations and anxiety (***consider studying psychology and neuroscience***).

If you promise, deliver it.

And don’t lose yourself betting or guessing what people are gonna think or do because you’re not the user you’re trying to convert.

That’s why coherence is so important: landing pages deserve a holistic approach because they’re pieces of consumer journeys and experiences.

Wireframing and information hierarchy

Take some time (and some more) on wireframing, a visual guide that helps you build your landing page.

"The wireframe helps me visualize the landing page early on. It helps me prioritize content and build structure and it makes it easier to align copy and design and that is a key point because there's often a battle between copy and design. The two go hand in hand."

Michael Aagaard, senior conversion optimizer

And take another “some time” on information hierarchy. This is key because it tells you what information is most important and how much information is necessary to your landing page.

Landing pages don't need to be short - in fact, a lot of them are very large (and exaggerated sometimes). But the information they bring must be relevant, concise, and served logically.

A good start is to answer three basic questions:

• Whom are you communicating with?
• What do you want them to do?
• Where is the traffic coming from?

“A lot of people have the idea that your landing pages have to have almost no copy on there. For example, almost no information because online people don't read and so on. Well that's very highly dependent on the conversion scenario you're in and what the product is."

Michael Aagaard, senior conversion optimizer

Qualitative and quantitative research

As we could see walking through the previous posts of this series, research is the essence of growth marketing. You don’t wanna guess or lose time to grow. This is also true for landing pages.

Quantitative research is something that you can manage on GA, for example. The data is there so easily and tasteful. And because of that, you don't want to eat more than what your metabolism can digest.

Try to focus on key information:

• Overall landing page performance,
• Overall device performance,
• Overall browser performance,
• Traffic, conversion rate, transactions, bounce rate,
• Source, second page, exit page, gender, age,
• Potential bugs.

It is also important to consider a step-drop analysis - maybe you’re losing users on other steps of the funnel and don’t need to aim your worries to your landing page.

Qualitative research is something you’ll do if you’re interested in discovering what might be the problems with your landing page. It’s not so accessible as quantitative research but has a profound value.

Search insights from:

• Full funnel walkthrough, 
• Heuristic walkthrough in the landing page (first impression, clarity, information hierarchy, UX, etc.),
• Customer review of your service/product,
• Customer interviews,
• Sales team interviews,
• Session recording,
• Feedback polls,
• Different types of usability testing. 

And how to master the copy?

There is no use in an incredible layout and good research insights if the copy fails. Again: landing pages are not obliged to be short and with little content.

Again, again: it takes hierarchy and a logical cadence when applying the copy. So try to reflect on five fundamental elements of copy for landing pages:

• Headline: does your message match what your PPC ad first promised to your user? Does your headline draw the user's attention to communicate directly?
• Benefits/features: you must bring relevant information, emphasizing the value of your offer and triggering your user's wishes to move forward.
• Credibility: guarantee that your content is trustworthy, answering doubts and mitigating anxiety.
• Expectation manager: don't fool your users by letting them know what exactly they're gonna receive if they trust you.
• Call-to-action: self-explanatory.

There is a LOT, LOT more to talk about copy.

The reason why this will be the topic of next Sunday's post.

EXTRA MILE

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