5 Ways to Improve Landing Page Conversion Rates
Landing pages are an inexpensive and versatile way to communicate with prospects. But although landing pages are rapidly gaining popularity, many marketers struggle with low conversion rates. We have outlined some tips below that have been effective in improving our landing page conversion rate. We are confident they will help you too.
1. Optimize copy.
Prospects will not read through paragraphs of text, especially if it reads like a brochure. Effective copy is concise, direct, truthful, and entices visitors to take action.
Keep your copy short. Short landing pages consistently have higher conversion rates than longer pages, so resist the temptation to wax poetic about your product. If you want to convert leads, cut the filler.
Be direct. You have about three seconds to convey your message so get to point. If you can’t explain your offer in a sentence or two, rethink it. And don’t try to lead a prospect through an offer because they won’t read through to the grand finale.
2. Deliver a focused message.
A landing page should deliver a targeted message and entice visitors to take one specific action, such as registering for an event. Multi-purpose pages with competing offers just distract and confuse visitors. Studies have shown that as the decision-making process on a landing page increases in complexity, conversion rates drop dramatically. Simplify your pages and your conversion rates will increase.
3. Customize content for each visitor.
You can drive prospects to landing pages from a variety of locations but one thing remains constant-content drives clicks. If your offer is compelling and relevant, you will capture attention and your conversion rate will increase.
To ensure content is relevant, customize your landing pages with dynamic content that is generated based on what you know about your visitors. If you are marketing to a steady pool of prospects, you presumably already know a lot about them. Use this information to deliver one-to-one messages with images, text, and offers that are tailored to appeal to their preferences and needs.
4. Improve Design
The point of a landing page is to entice visitors to respond to a specific offer. In order to do so, you must remove elements that distract the reader including a navigation menu, banner ads, superfluous images, and competing offers.
Your landing page should be optimized for scanning and contain bullet points, bold text, and headings whenever possible to enhance readability. A good, clean design can go a long way toward improving your conversion rate.
5. Optimize forms
Visitors generally don’t like to share personal information, especially if there is no clear benefit. Long, complex, or ambiguous forms are intimidating and drastically decrease conversion rates.
To improve your forms:
Reduce form length by only asking for vital information such as name, e-mail address, and company. Eliminate fields related to unlikely means of communication, such as fax number, and search for supplemental contact information online if necessary.
Pre-populate forms fields with what you already know about your prospect. Avoid qualifying questions, such as estimated budget or purchase dates, because they turn visitors off and reduce conversion rates.
Be really specific about what will happen after a prospect submits a form. This can be done by changing the button name from “submit” to something more descriptive like “download a trial version now” or “register for the webcast”.
Clarify your privacy policy in a few lines and post it in a prominent location near the form to establish trust.
Landing pages provide an incredible array of opportunities for the savvy marketer. By implementing the recommendations outlined above, you should see an improvement in your conversion rates and be well on your way to success.
