Optimising your landing page - why and how?

I am assuming if you are reading this article, you already know what a landing page is. However, I am also aware there is a fair amount of confusion on this topic. For clarification, a landing page is the first page you land on after clicking a link design to direct traffic to your website. A link could be through organic search such as Google, paid social media ads or any source of traffic generation content. So, in theory, a landing page could be any page of your website. However, when we talk about a landing page this is usually a particular page on your website that has been optimised to receive traffic, typically this is your home page or product/offer page and NOT your terms and conditions page. 

Why is it essential to optimise your landing page? 

I honestly think that your landing page is one of the most critical aspects of your digital presence. Think about it like this - your landing page is your storefront, it's the first impression your potential customer has of product or brand, and it is also where your potential customer inputs their sensitive personal information. It comes down to trust, if your customers first impression isn't positive, they're gone. You see, you could be the most excellent marketer in the world driving the very best traffic to your site, but if your landing page is not continually being optimised you will see a low or stagnant conversion rate. While we are on the topic of conversion rate - a conversion rate is the percentage of customers that convert to your desired goal, i.e. complete a purchase, sign up for your newsletter etc. Conversion rates vary depending on various factors such as industry, location, offers etc. The average conversion rate I see is between 2-6%. The aim for optimising your landing page is to see a growth in your conversion rate - increasing your conversion rate from 1% to 2%, and this signifies a 100% increase in your business. Cha-Ching!

How can you optimise your landing page?

Optimising your landing page is a never-ending task; there are always improvements to be made. The key for optimisation is to make small changes, analyse, review and improve. Here are the essential elements and fundamentals you should include to get started:

1. Page speed- Hands down page load speed is the most important aspect of optimising your landing page - this becomes even more important on mobile as 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. Google’s mobile page speed study shows that a site’s bounce rate gets worse every second it takes for a page to load. Page load speed is a massively important topic, so I will be writing a full article on different ways to improve your page load speed soon
2. Offer- Your offer needs to add so much value to your potential customers; they simply cannot refuse to bite your handoff. Your offer doesn't need to be super complex, and it could be as simple as buying X get Y, BOGOF or even X% off, the critical aspect is that you sell the offer. For example, 'get our state of the art military-grade x-ray lenses FREE with any glasses over ￡150'. Your customers are desperate for the x-ray lenses, but they can only get access to the offer when purchasing your core product. You get the gist
3. Headline and subheading- Your headline and sub-head have two main jobs. The first is to confirm that they have landed in the right location. The second is to spike interest. Your headline along with every other element has to want the potential customer to learn more about your product or business
4. Call to Action- Your call to action (CTA) is the action you want your potential customer to take when they land on your page, this is typically the add to cart/buy now button. Your CTA needs to smack your customer in the face so they cannot miss it. If they need to go searching up and down your page to find your CTA you could be missing out on a considerable amount of sales. Try adding emoji’s to your CTA to see how this affects conversions.
5. Product image- This is relatively similar to the headline and sub-heading element but in a visual format. As the old saying goes 'an image can say a 1000 words'. You want the first image that loads to be a powerful hero image that grabs the customer’s attention.
6. Trust elements- There is a whole range of potential trust elements you could use for optimising your landing page. The idea is that your potential customer sees this element, and it instantly gives credibility to your page and brand. These elements could be highlighting a 5-star product review or, a great one is, adding payment provider badges such as Visa, MasterCard next to your CTA.
7. Urgency- Creating urgency by saying your fantastic offer will end soon is a sure-fire way to improve your conversion rate. Urgency leads your potential customer to act fast and buy now due to fear of missing out (FOMO). One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is by adding a timer below your CTA counting down.
8. Social Proof- We see social proof all the time in digital marketing. If a post on Facebook has 10,000 likes and 5,000 positive comments, people are more inclined to have a look because it has 'social proof'. You can achieve social proof on our landing page in the form of testimonials or highlighting the brands you have previously worked with. 
9. Product demo- You need to clearly show what your product is, what it does and how it will benefit the user. I find the best way to do this is through video because this takes the least amount of mental effort for your customers to process.
10. Competitor analysis- If your potential customer is considering buying your brand or brand Y, you better tell them exactly why they should be buying your brand. I think the most critical aspect of this would be to making it super clear and easy to process.
11. Guarantee- Give your customers a great guarantee; this will reduce any sense of risk from their pending purchase. Your guarantee could be a 30, 60, 100 or even a 365-day money-back guarantee. You may have seen similar guarantees with mattress companies offering a 100-night test. This instantly releases any doubt for the customer, knowing they can return the mattress if they are not 100% happy. You may be hesitant about this guarantee at first. Still, typically if a customer approaches you with an issue demanding a refund, I bet 99% of the time you refund them anyway. Give it a try and see which guarantee works best.
12. Reviews- Reviews are very similar to a social proof element that uses testimonials. However, using testimonials as social proof in this manner is sometimes a double edge sword. In essence, your potential buyer knows that testimonials are easy to put together and could even be fake. With product reviews, there are various ways to ensure that your prospective purchaser knows they are 100% genuine. You could use a good product review platform such as Yotpo which has a verified purchase badge, ask your customers to include pictures within their review or even ask them for video reviews.

Time to optimise

Ok, so you've got your land page all set with the fundamental elements. Now what? As mentioned before the goal is to see improvements to your conversion rate. You now need to start gathering data about how your potential customers are interacting with your landing page. I highly recommend you install a heatmap on your site such as HotJar. HotJar will provide behaviour analytics and user feedback through tools such as heatmaps and session recordings, allowing you to track the full user interaction. You then need to start testing each element individually and record the results on a weekly or monthly basis - this will vary depending on the amount of traffic on your site.

I highly recommend you make a clear plan for your optimising process. A clear plan will allow you to stay organised and record your results.

To start your optimisation process, you could start with your CTA - have a play around with colours, try adding emoji's or changing the text from 'buy now' to 'complete your purchase'. Record your results and move forward with whichever provided the best conversion rate—next test your hero image, then your headline. You start to get the idea and probably also understand why it is such a long process, but don't let this put you off, once you have your landing page optimisation you will reap the long term benefits!

As always if you have any questions, please let me know.