Landing Page Optimization Review

This is a review on landing page optimization which is provided by CXL Institute and it is the part of the Conversion Optimization Mini Degree. This course is presented by Michael Aagaard , a Senior Conversion Optimizer, International Keynote Speaker & Public Speaking Coach. A really descriptive course with the lots of precious details and real-world examples that help to better understand the content and how to create a landing page effectively.

Understanding the landing page experience

There could be various definitions of what a landing page is. In essence, landing page is that users land on and it`s the first page that users see after having clicked some kind of ad source. To illustrate, the user might be led on a landing page by clicking on PPC ad, display banner, email link , that could be social media and etc. Landing page is a page that works independently and it focused on a clear-cut conversion goal. For retailers, it could be selling their specific items or making the audience fill a form out so that they can obtain and use a coupon code for their special offer.

An effective landing page ought to be following some characteristics such as:

1.    Shortens journey via click to conversion

2.    Follows up on " promises " made in ad source

3.    Speaking to user motivation and addressing barriers

4.    Answering crucial questions and creates clarity

5.    Creating an obvious path to the conversion goal

The instructor gives an example of his own experience during the course, while after clicking on a banner to see a live demo of mobile marketing automation, he was led to a landing page with various choices on which the user had to do more searching to find the desired demo. Although I would stop there and leave the website if I were him, however, the instructor insisted and began to further investigate. After he found what he wanted, he came to the conclusion that the feature was locked and there was a label notifying that the user had to send an email in order to get some information on live demo.

The role of the landing page in the landing page experience

The landing page is part of a bigger experience from awareness to conversion.It goes without saying that it should be configured as part of the entire purchase funnel, but the success of a landing page is not entirely dependent on this page alone. There are actually multiple steps. And all of these different steps have an influence on the final like conversion goal or getting people to confirmation. And it is not enough to look at the landing page solely. Since it`s our of context. To illustrate, knowing what was the promise you made in PPC ad, and knowing that you have to follow up on that is really crucial.

For an ecommerce website, the funnel may look like as shown below:

In order to prevent any friction here, we need to test and optimize all different steps. So for instance, for an ecommerce website, if the checkout step 2 has a bug, we could keep optimizing and testing the landing page forever, and measuring on conversion and not getting anywhere. As we failed to understand that the problem was actually after the landing page.

Factors that influence the conversion experience

In terms of a landing page, first and foremost, we need to address things like the copy, design, UX and so on. Additionally, we need to focus on some factors such as device, browsers, operating systems, all the steps in the funnel which have been mentioned previously, and also factors user's age, gender, location and there is also another layer of psychology and motivation, barriers, concerns, anxiety, brain chemicals. All things which I mention above can have a massive influence on how successful landing page is and more importantly on conversion rate.

Finally, you can look at the optimization process at a glance:

Fast vs slow thinking and cognitive biases

This part of the course is devoted to providing a better understanding of how how the brain works, how humans make decisions and how is useful for landing pages optimisation. Humans two have fundamentally modes of thinking ( ways of processing information ): Intuitive Thinking ( Fast )and Analytical Thinking ( Slow ). For further information, you can read this.

The difference between them is that the fast thinking is something that happens to you while slow thinking or analytical thinking is something you do and it requires an effort. Referring to very well-known psychologist Daniel Kahneman, there are two different modes of thinking as system one and system two. So some of the characteristics here is that system one is automatic, it`s emotional, it`s subconscious and it lives only in the moment. On the other hand, system two is effortful, it`s logical and it`s conscious and it has the ability to project itself into the future.

In order to explain briefly how the systems above work, he invited his former colleague to participate in this experiment. A colleague was asked to read some colours. In the first step the word was matching with the colour of the font, And as a result , it took her seven seconds.

However, in the second step, the colleague had to say the colour of the font while the actual word wasn't matching that colour. As a result, it actually took her over three times as long. This is not an intelligence at all. This just shows how quickly we become cognitively strained and how quickly it can become more difficult for us to solve a task.

How is this related to landing pages and conversion optimisation though? The higher the cognitive load, the higher the cognitive strain, and the harder it becomes for us to go through. For marketers, the goal is to keep people away from having to do too much effortful, strained thinking. so clear that they don't cause any friction by making the user to use the system two of thinking.

There are some mental shortcuts that the brain uses to keep us from spending too much time in system two. And these cognitive biases or mental shortcuts as we can call them, but in connection with landing page optimization, there are three biases that I`d like explain them briefly below.

• Priming: the idea that exposure to one stimulus influences response to a subsequent stimulus.

This can be exemplified by the fact that is for some landing pages that promise free stuff like tutorials, courses or something and the users think they only have to fill out a form but suddenly remember that they have to send their card details the second before converting.

• Framing : the idea that the way you deliver a message has direct impact on how it is perceived.

To illustrate this, if I say, "Tonight we're having cold,"dead fish with old seaweed."That's a very different way of delivering it than saying,"Tonight we're having delicious sushi with wakame salad." The brand could be promising that the users don't have to pay anything for a free trial of something that is partially true as the user still have to complete an unexpected step (providing card details) and this also means that the free trial will last for a specific period and after that the user will have to start paying.

• WYSIATI the idea is that what you see is all there is.

An example of a laptop cover landing page was used by the instructor here. This was actually a laptop insurance landing page, however, using the word cover is very confusing, as most users can only think of fancy laptop cover designs when we hear laptop cover. But it is crucial to sell what you actually sell on the landing page-make it as simple as possible.

Intro to brain chemicals – Dopamine and Cortisol

In this section, we’ll get an introduction to basic neuroscience and two of the most important brain chemicals, dopamine and cortisol that affect the landing page experience.We`ll understand how brain chemicals affect human user experience so we can take this into consideration when building new landing page and additionally, we`ll simplify how dopamine and cortisol drive human behaviour and how we can use these to create optimal user experiences.

 Dopamine is released when we are exposed to a reward stimulus. It supposed to drive us constantly towards new and bigger rewards. Dopamine produces the joy of finding things that meet our needs. It plays a central role in motivation and habit formation. The problem is that beside the instant kind of joy we get when there is a trigger which increases dopamine levels, we're getting back to normal so as a result we're getting used to this and we're becoming greedy by requiring more and more - it's getting a habit then or by other words this can become an addiction. Dopamine also dips lead to disappointment sometimes anger.

And there`s also cortisol which plays a big role in driving squirrel away. Cortisol helps us avoid pain or things that are bad for survival. Cortisol helped our ancestors avoid truly life- threatening situations. That`s why cortisol has such a dramatic effect on our behaviour. Beside the fact that life circumstances have changed, however, we still feel threatened in situations that aren`t truly life-threatening. Even relatively small setback can make us feel this way. So, how does this impact user interaction/engagement with our brand? Simply put, if consumers have already encountered something bad with a brand because of a technological bug, such as the failure to convert, then this bad experience makes them produce cortisol. As a result, cortisol is created again the next time consumers have to communicate with the same brand, even though they just think about the future contact with the brand and this prevents them from interacting.

Conclusion

In this article, we analyzed what landing page is, some successful factors, the importance of the landing page in the entire conversion process and some psychological factors based on slow and fast system thinking and brain chemicals.there are much more included in this section such as: essential steps to build a successful landing page, how to make a decision on the volume and quality of content needed and in which order, how to write copies, important design and copy elements and many more.