Why is Landing page optimization(LPO) important?
Landing page optimization, or LPO for short, is the process of testing and improving the design of a dedicated page to generate leads or buy a product.
It focuses on the design, copy, and media inside the page to influence users to take action, whether it is to submit a form or purchase a product.
LPO is important because it allows you to improve your user experience based on past data and experiments to appeal to your audience.
What are the different types of landing pages?
There are two types of landing pages: lead generation and product pages.
The main purpose of a lead generation page is to persuade the user to submit a form where information is being gathered from them.
The product page sells a product that can be purchased by clicking the buy now (CTA) button.
Landing Page Design
Be aware of the design of the landing page; create blocks of content that appeal to the users’ eyes. Use whitespace, media images, videos, and relevant designs that help users take action on your site, from scrolling and viewing the content to purchasing a product or submitting a form.
Make use of media appropriately. Don’t shuffle the images around, have an organized method of showing them across the page, insert whitespace wherever you think that users need a pause on their pageview, and follow graphic design rules that can help you navigate the content.
It is a good idea to include visuals on your page, this could be a chart, a graph, statistics, and facts that can help you be a credible and reliable source of information.
Another important block of content would be to add user testimonials to better position your service/product as trustworthy.
Share your top 5-star reviews and you can even verify if users read through it through a heat mapping tool that checks for scrolling behavior.
Ad Copy
Your copy must appeal to users and explain the main objective of the page, including the benefits of the product/service, and answer questions like “What is in it for me? What do I gain?”.
Make sure to have ad copy that is engaging with users. Write a story that appeals to users’ emotions, remember the 4 P’s: product, place, price, and promotion.
Sometimes you need to understand that over-selling can kill the transaction and it is mainly about what users win with this transaction or submitting the form.
Use eye-catching headers that appear to your target audience
Write headings that move the emotions of your readers positively, an example could be: “This ‘product’ makes me feel in the clouds and you should use it too”.
Highlight the benefits of the product/service inside headers. This helps with user engagement and makes your page sticky when scrolling through it.
Be Descriptive and Concise
You more than anyone knows the service/product than nobody else, so show how it works in two to three sentences. This shows how of an expert are you in the field. If you are selling a microwave, show the key features it has but at the same time be concise.
You don’t want to ramble and be repetitive on your landing page, make the reader flow through the copy as if it were an amazing story that will keep them engaged and curious to wonder and ask themselves questions about the product/service.
Make easy-to-follow instructions
Share the most important steps to showcase your expertise, if you are selling a microwave, for example, talk about the presets it already has, or how to use it if you would be microwaving popcorn.
You can have a bulleted or ordered list that shows the easy-to-follow instructions on your page.
Use a friendly, confident tone of voice
Depending on the objectives of the page, you can change the tone of voice of your copy by understanding your audience.
If your audience is small business owners, try to be persuasive and have a professional tone to influence them to buy your product/service.
If your target audience is people between 55-65+, then changing the tone to be more explanatory and friendly can help you be more persuasive when they are buying something or submitting a form.
Research your audience
By researching your audience, you can understand how they react to your landing page copy and interact with blocks of content.
Use your knowledge to build a landing page that resonates with your audience, you can build multiple landing pages to accommodate the messaging and design of each of your multiple audiences.
For example, you are offering loans to small businesses and you have a landing page dedicated to them, then you have another page that is targeting specifically big corporations that you are offering working capital.
They are different audiences with different objectives.
Use animation wisely (if necessary)
It might be a great idea to add animation to your landing page and make it sparkle, but remember that way too much animation can make the objective confusing. If you have flying ducks around a button, it might confuse the user into clicking or not clicking it.
Be intelligent with animations, there is nothing wrong if you don’t use them, but make sure you put yourself in your customer’s shoes to see if you are blocking the main objective to be completed.
Write a clear call to action
A must-have, writing a clear call-to-action can help your audience take the next step in the digital journey.
After they have consumed all the information necessary to make the leap of faith (submitting a form or purchasing a product), it is up to them to follow through the process (you already made all the necessary adjustments to be persuasive and influence them to reach that point).
Track the success of your landing page
You should track the progress of your pages through web analytics software, there are a lot out there such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and others.
There are heat mapping and session recording tools as well, such as Mouseflow, Lucky Orange, etc. You might want to view the conversion rate of your pages, pageviews, sessions, referrers,
There are other tools that help you do experiments and test different parts of the page, two of the most known for this are Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely, they can both help you test different parts of the landing page like copy, images, positioning, call-to-actions, etc.
TL; DR
Landing page optimization is a process that helps marketers and content designers make informed decisions based on fact-based data. Web analytics and digital experimental tools will help you tweak and improve landing pages with the scientific method.
Remember to test test test! LPO is an ongoing journey that helps both the marketer and the prospect to create engagement and generate interest or a transaction.
Remember to use psychological triggers for good. Both parties must win to have a successful transaction. Give value and it will come back to you!