4 Landing Page Optimization Tips to Improve Conversions

You implement SEO, SEM, and SMM strategies to bring in quality traffic. But what if you’re not making much out of the traffic that is already on your website? What if your landing page sucks and you’re paying a heavy price in the form of lost opportunities and missed conversions?

If you think it could be your concern, even at least partially, this article is going to help you get your ducks in a row and convert those users into potential customers. 

Let jump right in!

Tip #1 Send people where they belong

You don’t want people to bounce off as fast as they land on your page. But there’s nothing you can do about it if your landing page isn’t relevant to what they are looking for. Relevance is key and it comes before almost every other optimization metric, including your landing page experience. You may have a great looking landing page that provides the smoothest experience possible; but if the user is looking to buy lemons and you’re offering them lollipops, chances are they will curse their luck and bounce away. 

Make your landing page focused, less cluttered, and more targeted. The more relevant your page is, the better will be its conversion rate (and the more brownie points it will get from search engines like Google). 

Tip # 2 Optimize the headlines, body text, and CTAs

About the headlines, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” 

What Ogilvy said a long time ago still rings a bell. People won’t get into the specifics without you twisting their hunches and changing their minds using the power of fewer words. 

Once you do that, the next thing is the body of your content. Don’t use it as an opportunity to express extravagance. The user has no time for anything irrelevant on your page. Include the most specific and interesting details about your offers and prop them up with meaningful CTAs (calls to action). You may have heard the term “sales funnel” which is closely related to what your headline, content, and CTAs should be about. 

Tip # 3 Treat your landing page as a sales funnel

What is a sales funnel? It’s a journey your potential customers take on the way to purchasing your product. At the top of your funnel, what you should be concerned about is awareness. As a user goes through the middle of the funnels towards the bottom, your main focus should be stirring their buying interest and helping them make a decision. 

People often think that the awareness stage happens long before a user lands on your site. While that may be true, it’s equally possible that a user sees one of your ads somewhere on the web and is now compelled to click it. Your job, in that scenario, is to present information that tells what your product is about and how it’s the only best option for that certain user who has no clue who you are as a brand. 

So, the above-the-fold section — the section on your landing page that doesn’t require scrolling for users to view information — should be partially dedicated to creating awareness. As you generate some interest around your offer, your user is now going to need some more specific information. This is your opportunity to highlight the unique selling points of your products. 

Ultimately, you want them to be converted. And more often than not, your user is looking for something less risky in the decision stage. In other words, they are asking you to provide them with some lead magnets — the free stuff they want to try to get to know your product or service better. It could be anything, from trial subscriptions to samples to e-newsletters, white papers, and free consultations.

From the top section down to the bottom, the content on your landing page should be organized in a way it caters to following four objectives effectively (and in their respective order): 

Awareness. Interest. Decision. Action

Tip # 4 Work on the user experience elements

Will you purchase from a shop that gives you a nice experience every time you go in or from one where everything feels haphazard and you never come out happy? Of course, from the former. 

Your online destination is no different. People aren’t just coming there in search of a product, a service, or a piece of information, they are also coming there for a better experience. What will happen if your landing page took 30 seconds to load for a potential buyer? He will bounce off and you will lose him to a competitor. 

The things that affect your landing page experience are not just its load time or relevance. They also include its responsiveness, readability, functional elements, and the overall feel. 

Now, it’s true that some of these things may sound very subjective. For example, you might say that the design and visual aesthetics of my landing page feel amazing to me. Another guy gives it a once-over and goes “yuk!” Whose opinion is more valid?

It isn’t as hard a question as it sounds. The opinion is more valid if it’s coming from a person who is more experienced and whose job it is to deal with creating, analyzing, and optimizing landing pages. 

It’s like asking who would give you a better (and more objective) opinion how your house looks like: an architect with hands-on experience or just a random guy you meet in the street? 

The point is, your landing page is your most important asset and you shouldn’t shy away from hiring someone who knows the job well. From a user experience standpoint, there are many things that could easily go unnoticed and by getting a professional on board is how you can overcome those challenges. 

There are many other things I can spend time on but they are not as crucial as the ones discussed above. Some of these are fairly obvious and you’re probably implementing them already. For example, adding a phone number, removing barriers to valuable content, keeping things consistent with your brand, refraining from using gimmicky tactics, including testimonials, experimenting with different media types, and so on. 

If you can understand these few but important optimization techniques and implement them well, you should soon notice a marked difference between how your landing page used to perform then and how it performs now (after some necessary overhaul).