Landing page optimization is the art and science of creating better performing landing pages. The key way to measure the performance of a landing page is through the conversion rate. A conversion is when a visitor completes a desired goal. For example, this could be a visitor purchasing a product or a successful lead through landing page form. Conversion rate is a way to measure landing page effectiveness as it takes into account for both converting and non-converting visitors. For instance, if 10 visitors access a landing page and 2 of them convert, that is a conversion rate of 20%.
What is A/B split testing?
Testing two versions of different landing pages to see which one performs better is called A/B split testing. You can A/B test an entire design or something as little as one word. Let’s take a look at an example.
Source: https://vwo.com/pages/vwo-split-testing-tool/
The performance between between two versions can be significant and it’s only measurable by testing can you find out. The image above provides a conceptual example of what landing page A/B split testing may look like. Between example A and B there is a much different layout, with layout A having larger imagery and layout B having smaller imagery with supplementing text. In this example; Layout A had a much lower conversion rate than Layout B, with only 22% of visitors converting. Layout B had a conversion rate of 52% meaning over half the visitors to the landing page had converted. Although this is only a conceptual example, the difference is not extreme or unrealistic.
From an A/B split testing case study conducted by Unbounce, the author managed to increase the conversion rate of Career Point College’s Registered Nurse landing page by 336%. They begun be removing unnecessary elements from the landing page anatomy such as the primary navigation. Repositioning of the form from below the fold to above the fold also showed a major increase in conversion rate. These are two minor adjustments that reflected a significant change in conversions.
With A/B split testing, there is really no limits. Through Google Analytics, you are easily able to A/B split test limitless amounts of elements within your landing page anatomy. Landing page optimization isn’t just about design, too. One especially important aspect of landing pages that should be tested is copy writing. It’s very rare that you’ll create the perfect copy on the first go, and it’s recommended to experiment with all copy on your page. Whether that be in headings, buttons, form fields, descriptions — everything has room for improvement.
Page Speed
The speed of your website has an impact on visitor conversions. If your website is slow loading is filled with a lot simultaneous downloads of images, scripts, or video, the page load time will take a hit. Page speed is also becoming increasingly important as more and more devices on the web are mobile devices. Mobile devices are often used on mobile networks which are a lot slower than traditional Ethernet powered computers. Let’s take a look at how you can test your landing page’s speed.
Pingdom speed test (click to view the test)
Over at Pingdom, you’re able to test the speed performance of your landing page. I have done optimization on this website which has reduced the amount of requests and page size which has in return lowered the page load time down to 516ms. Enter in your landing page’s URL and see what score your landing page gets. If your score is below 70/100, you should consider improving your web page. You can improve the score by lowering the amount of requests (images/video/scripts/fonts) and decreasing the total page size. Pingdom also provides you with a ‘waterfall’ where you can see which part of your page are taking the longest to load. In the settings, you can also test your website from a variety of different places around the world to see how visitors from other countries experience your website.
Search Engine Optimization
Often, like most websites on the internet, organic search traffic may be the highest source of traffic to your landing page. This means that you need to ensure that your website is easily read and understood by web crawlers like Google. You can display data in your HTML which bots like Google can see called the meta title and meta description. These are snippets that Google will use to display in search results. By doing this, you can customise the text and representation of your landing page where users visit. Another side of SEO is on-page SEO. This is all about the structure and quality of your HTML. These include limiting some elements like <h1> to only one tag and a few <h2> tags. By improving on-page HTML, it helps Google to see read and understand the structure of your landing page. If you’re looking for more SEO techniques, Moz has an excellent beginners guide to SEO which you should definitely check out.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an excellent tool for seeing how visitors are interacting with your website. You are able to see analytics based on the categories: audience, acquisition, behaviour & conversions. Within each category, there are a lot of insightful information such as the type of people visiting your website. Visitor location, age, gender, interests, behavior, engagement, technology & more. Google Analytics is easy to set up and all you need to do is put a snippet of code onto your landing page. It’s very useful for seeing how long visitors are spending on your landing pages, how many are returning visitors, and what kind of visitors are converting. Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for landing page optimization, and best of all — it’s free.
Google Analytics Dashboard
Landing Page Optimization Summarised
Landing page optimization is all about the experience your landing page provides. Some questions to ask yourself include: Is it easy to read? Does it perform to the best of its ability? How long does your landing page take to load? How does Google rank & index your landing page? Will a different layout affect conversion rates?
References & Further Reading:
Gofman, A., Moskowitz, H., & Mets, T. (2009). Integrating science into web design: consumer‐driven web site optimization. Journal Of Consumer Marketing, 26(4), 286-298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07363760910965882
Gardner, O. (2014). The Most Entertaining Guide to Landing Page Optimization You’ll Ever Read. Moz. Retrieved 12 November 2015, from https://moz.com/blog/most-entertaining-guide-to-landing-page-optimization
Hand, B. (2015). Analytics & Conversion Rate Optimisation. Presentation, DIT, MSc in Digital Marketing & Analytics.
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