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10 Secrets to Increasing Landing Page Conversion

Sep 25, 2008 Landing Pages, Webmaster Tips

Many online marketers talk about how they’ve performed multivariate tests, assembled focus groups, brought in external consulting companies, and maybe even overhauled their e-commerce engines to maximize conversion, but few actually share insights about how they do it.  Perhaps they have their own insider methodology or patented design concepts, or perhaps they’re embarrassed to admit it’s easier than you think!

Multivariate tests are great, don’t get me wrong, but what if you understand MVT and don’t know what to vary across your sample pages?  Focus groups are also great to have, but you don’t need to go out and pay people for ideas to test your pages.  Look no further than people inside your company, or heck, how about members of your family!  So what is it that makes conversion testing so daunting? Brainstorming and conceptualization.

Ask the following questions of people in your company, clients, or someone with little to no experience navigating your site (or the internet in general):

1. How comfortable are you purchasing items online, or sharing your personal information with companies?  An easy starter question to see how web savvy your guinea pig claims to be.
2. If you had to do a certain task, how easily do you think you could get it done using the site?  What you’re looking for here is first impression.  Users may not tell you upfront that the process is easy as pie, they may tell you that they’re a bit lost or that the page is confusing - exactly what you want to here.
3. Do you trust this site?  Why or why not?  Look for comfort level or try and determine the gravity that trust plays when certain individuals consider price points, products, and divulging personal information.

Taking the information you learned through just a few questions such as these can assist in developing useful ideas in a brainstorming session.  Be sure to include a number of different stakeholders in the process from across the organization.  No idea is too stupid, in fact, brainstorming sessions are some of the most exciting and fun-filled activities you can bring into the boardroom without setting off the sprinkler system!

Scrap parts of your existing conversion funnel, or maybe scrap the whole thing!  The ultimate goal of any landing page or purchase path should be to get in, get it done, and get out - that’s all.

That being said, certain elements do tend to help carry visitors from perusing your site or landing pages to ultimately becoming your new client, lead, or contact.  Without further ado, the secrets:

1. K.I.S.S.  Everyone knows KISS, but few know my version.  If your conversion funnel sucks, KISS your landing page and every other page after that goodbye!  Sometimes it’s best to mock-up your ideal conversion funnel in a flow chart and start from scratch.
2. If it doesn’t help get someone get from Point A to Point B, test to see if you need it at all.  Lots of companies like hammering visitors with completely redundant or irrelevant information on each step of the conversion process.  If I’m filling in my credit card information, the last thing I care about is when your company was founded, or why John Smith of Mobile Alabama chose your product.
3. If you’re collecting a lot of information for a lead generating campaign, make sure you don’t overwhelm your visitor.  The more you make your visitor fill out in a form, the less likely they are to follow-through with the process.  Weigh the importance of the data you ask for with the potential for abandonment.
4. For e-commerce or longer processes with several steps, be sure to inform visitors of where they are in the process and what to expect.  If I fill out my credit card information, will your shopping cart bill me right away, or will I get a final confirmation screen?  That stuff is kind of important to visitors.
5. Phase in your pre-qualifying steps if you want to maximize conversion, especially if you’re a B2B organization or within the technology sector.  Sometimes your visitor is a purchaser, and not necessarily the technical contact in an organization.  Get paid first, ask technical questions after, or offer up the choice to do both.
6. Don’t give visitors too many outs.  The last thing you need is links to different parts of your site within the conversion funnel.  If someone’s gone as far as browse your site or landing page and made the decision to purchase or surrender their contact information, you’ve already done all you can to sell them.  You’d be surprised by how simplistic the highest converting pages actually are!
7. Learn from the pros, sometimes the best ideas come from others.  Inspiration doesn’t necessarily equate to plagiarism, this isn’t grade school.  The pros already know what’s best for them, so test certain tactics they already employ to millions of visitors.  You can learn a lot from the Amazons, eBays, Dells, and IBMs of the world.
8. Ask affiliates for help.  Believe it or not, the guys that will take the most work off your shoulders when it comes to conversion testing have done it long before you’ve even started thinking about it.  Better yet, by sharing information with your affiliates you may glean insights as to what testing elements worked for your competitors, or what things may have worked but were never tested.
9. Employ abandonment-saving tactics.  You’ve probably seen these before, you go to a site, add stuff to your cart, start the registration process, get to the payment screen, and you don’t like something you see.  You immediately click back to the previous screen, get frustrated and try to get back onto the main site.  Lo and behold, a prompt pops up and says, “Hey there buddy, are you having problems?  We still want your cash, let us help you part with it.”  Shows you how much luck I’ve had implementing these “catch-alls”, but for some sites it really does work.
10. Track it all!  If you have switches, or error messages, or drop downs, or javascript apps that activate when hovered over, make sure you can track everything your visitor does in your conversion stream.  Sifting through all this information is vital in determining obstacles preventing visitors from becoming your client or contact.

Not all of these so-called secrets are necessarily new or innovative, just perhaps mildly inspirational - testing is a lot of work.  However, testing is key in determining tactics and/or creative elements that help or hinder your progress.   It may take some time to properly test significant sample sizes for each element you change, so implement the simplest changes first and compare conversion rates to old variants as a starting point.  Before long, you’ll be collecting tons of useful information for future tests.

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