In many cases, your landing pages are the first thing visitors see when they visit your website. While this can be a great way to make sure your customers have a great first experience, there’s a bit of a double-edged sword here: They can make or break your site’s conversion rate, so you’ll need to optimize them to make a strong first impression.
Landing page optimization is the process of strategically improving your landing pages to make them more appealing and impactful. Regular optimization can help you transform your landing pages to better resonate with your audience and generate meaningful results!
Below, we’ll look at why landing page optimization is so important and what to keep in mind during the optimization process.
(Note: Brands discussed in this blog post were found during our online research.)
Why are landing pages so significant in marketing?
Landing pages guide potential customers through the sales funnel and can encourage them to take a specific desired action once they reach your website. When someone clicks on your PPC ads, social media campaigns, email newsletters, or other online marketing assets, they should end up on a customized landing page specific to the campaign.
Successful landing pages could have a conversion rate as high as 21-50%—which is certainly nothing to sneeze at.
In marketing, they can also be a valuable way to gather information (if not a direct conversion). Say you’re looking to grow your email list. You could use a lead generation page with a form to collect email addresses. Landing pages have the highest conversion rate of any type of signup form, at 23%, making them a perfect option for this purpose. If you’re promoting a specific product or discount, create a page that highlights that promotion and encourages visitors to make a purchase.
Without landing pages that convert, potential customers may lose interest or get distracted once they’ve visited your website. With so many links and features, the homepage of your site might be overwhelming for visitors if they’ve come directly from an ad. Instead, keep them engaged and encourage them to make a purchase by directing them to a landing page.
The importance of landing page optimization
With landing page optimization, you’ll assess and improve many different aspects of each landing page on your site, from layout to visuals to copy. This creates a better experience for your target audience and boosts engagement and sales.
Many brands create dozens or even hundreds of landing pages for their sites as part of ongoing marketing campaigns. When you’re creating so many landing pages in a short amount of time, it’s easy to let quality slide. However, if you don’t optimize your landing pages, they might not generate the engagement you’re looking for, causing your website to stagnate in the long run.
Optimization can improve the overall performance of your landing pages and keep them current. In fact, 38.6% of marketers say video is the top element that impacts landing page conversions, so adding product videos to your landing pages may help reduce your bounce rate and keep your audience engaged.
Even smaller changes can have a big impact on your landing pages’ overall success. Something as simple as removing cluttered design elements or outdated references will make your landing pages feel more sophisticated and professional to visitors.
What can a well-optimized landing page do?
Landing pages may be relatively short in length, but when they’re well-optimized, they can have a major impact on your sales and engagement. Here are some of the benefits of a well-optimized landing page.
Increase conversions
High-converting landing pages turn website visitors into engaged customers. Today’s consumers have a wealth of choices when shopping online. Since they’re exposed to so many products each day, your website needs to stand out from the pack in order to compel customers to make a purchase.
When you optimize your landing page, you can increase your site’s conversion rate. Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that take a desired action, such as purchasing a product or signing up for a subscription. Optimized landing pages use carefully crafted messaging and design to compel visitors to act.
While the average landing page conversion rate is 5.89%, a landing page that’s been optimized can perform much better.
Improve trust and credibility
Optimized landing pages can change the way potential customers view your brand. When your landing pages are fully optimized, they will look sophisticated and professional. This helps build trust among users who are visiting your site for the first time.
Factors like fast loading times, clear images and graphics, and engaging copy with no typos will all make your landing page more credible. Regular optimization ensures these details don’t go unnoticed.
Increase SEO performance
In most cases, visitors will reach your landing pages through other components of your marketing strategy, such as your email newsletter or social media marketing. However, it’s also possible for your landing pages to show up in organic search results.
There is an overlap between search engine optimization and landing page optimization. Following search page optimization best practices can also help your landing pages and your site as a whole rank better in search engine results. Here are some examples:
- Improve page speed and load times.
- Add high-traffic keywords to your copy.
- Optimize your meta description and URL for search engines.
Generate higher engagement rates
Optimizing your landing pages can improve overall engagement rates for your website. A key part of optimizing is making your landing page design more appealing and adding interactive elements. You might add videos, infographics, interactive forms, or games to your landing page as part of the optimization process.
These features can boost engagement by increasing the amount of time visitors spend on the page. A well-optimized landing page can also encourage users to visit other pages on your website and engage with your brand in other ways.
How can you tell if a landing page is optimized?
There isn’t one specific benchmark that will tell you if your landing page has been fully optimized. Instead, there are several key components and performance metrics to watch for.
It’s also important to note that landing page optimization isn’t static. You may need to repeat the optimization process several times for the same landing page as your company grows and customer expectations change. Re-evaluating your landing pages on a regular basis ensures that they don’t grow stale.
Positive user feedback
If you’re receiving positive feedback from visitors about the quality of your landing pages, that’s a good indication they are fully optimized. One of the primary goals of any landing page is to create a positive experience for visitors, which is why getting regular feedback is so important.
There are many ways to collect feedback from your site’s visitors. One way is to include a simple pop-up asking users to rate your site or leave comments. This allows users to give feedback in the moment.
You can also conduct surveys of customers after they’ve made an online purchase. This gives you the opportunity to ask questions in more detail, but you also won’t get spur-of-the-moment reactions.
Another option is to conduct user experience testing before your landing page launches. UX testing gives you insight into how your audience will interact with a web page by collecting detailed feedback from participants about the experience.
Low bounce rates
Your bounce rate is the percentage of people that navigate away from your site after opening the landing page, rather than clicking through to another page. Since landing pages are designed to stand alone, they often have high bounce rates if they aren’t properly integrated with the rest of your website.
If your landing pages have a low bounce rate, with most visitors moving on to other pages on your site, that likely means your landing pages are optimized. This low bounce rate indicates that your landing page is compelling and sparks interest in your brand.
Session duration and user engagement
Another key metric to watch as you optimize your landing pages is session duration. If users are spending more time on your site after visiting your landing page, that shows that they’re really taking in the content rather than just skimming over it.
You’ll also want to assess overall user engagement. If you have interactive elements on your page like videos or forms, pay attention to the percentage of visitors who use them. High engagement levels are a good indication of a fully optimized landing page. You can take an even more granular look at your engagement levels by using heatmap tools, such as Hotjar, to see exactly where users are clicking on your site.
Examples of successful, well-optimized landing pages
Looking for some inspiration? Here are a few examples of brands that have created engaging, well-optimized landing pages.
Rover’s product pages
Rover has created straightforward yet appealing product pages that show off its pet sitting services. Take this dog walking landing page, which opens with a form asking users when they need dog walking services to match them with a local service provider. Backed by a picture of an adorable golden retriever, this form is effective because it generates engagement right off the bat.
As users scroll down, they see high-quality landing page copy that highlights the benefits of Rover’s dog walking services, as well as a user-friendly overview of how the app works. At the bottom, the page links to other service pages and location pages as well as to the Rover app. Having these pages readily accessible boosts engagement levels across the site and can also be beneficial for SEO.
Zendesk’s pricing page
Having a detailed pricing page can help brands build trust with their audience and creates a sense of transparency. This is particularly important for B2B SaaS brands, which often have complicated pricing structures.
Zendesk’s pricing page does this exceptionally well, highlighting its four plan options in detail. There are CTA buttons that link directly to the platform’s free trial so users can get started right away. A widget at the top of the page allows users to choose between monthly and annual pricing and enter the number of agents who will be using the subscription. These features help users get the most accurate pricing information for their needs with minimal effort.
Duolingo’s course pages
Duolingo is known for its innovative digital marketing tactics, and the brand’s course landing pages are no exception. For example, take this French course landing page, where visitors are greeted with a simple but effective tagline that highlights the brand’s value proposition. The graphics are sleek but distinctive, highlighting what makes the brand unique.
After scrolling down, users are greeted with more detailed copy and imagery highlighting the benefits of Duolingo’s language learning method. Users will also find links to Duolingo’s app landing page on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store so they can download the app right away if they want to learn more.
Where to focus when optimizing your landing pages
If you’re just getting started with landing page optimization, the process might feel a bit daunting. Here are the most important elements to focus on when developing your landing pages.
Design
Sophisticated landing page design is key to making a good first impression. If your landing page is either too cluttered or not eye-catching enough, it won’t resonate with site visitors.
One of the most important factors to consider is the layout of the page. Each element should have enough room to breathe—if the components of your landing page are too close together, they’ll quickly start to feel overwhelming.
Finally, the design of your landing page should be highly responsive and optimized for mobile use. Responsive design elements move and adjust based on the user’s behavior, which makes the page feel more streamlined and sleek.
Content
Visuals are only one part of a successful landing page—you’ll also need strong written content that resonates with your audience and drives conversions.
When writing your landing page content, consider your target customer and the type of language that will resonate with them most. Speak to your audience’s experiences and pain points to create a strong emotional connection.
Using a conversational, human tone is also key when writing landing page content. If your content is too complex or wordy, readers could end up getting bored and scrolling away. Keep paragraphs short and easy to scan.
User experience (UX)
A positive user experience is another key component of a successful landing page. If the page takes too long to load or is frustrating to navigate, your visitors will likely move on to something else, damaging your credibility.
You should optimize your landing page for many different types of mobile devices, as a significant portion of internet users access the web via mobile devices.
A/B testing
Many landing page optimization tools offer A/B testing, which allows you to compare different landing page elements to see which one is most effective. With A/B testing, you’ll launch two landing pages that are identical except for one key difference. For example, you may test out two separate color schemes, fonts, or layouts.
You’ll run both landing pages for a short test period and then compare the results. With a direct comparison, you can decide which landing page elements to use in the long run.
Common mistakes to avoid when optimizing landing pages
Here are some of the most common pitfalls to avoid when learning how to create landing pages and optimize them.
Cluttering up the design
A cluttered landing page design will quickly overwhelm your site’s visitors and make it difficult to get your message across. To prevent your design from becoming too cluttered, you’ll need to place white space between the elements for balance.
Another way to prevent your design from becoming too cluttered is to use landing page templates. Bitly Pages templates take the guesswork out of design, making it easy to create landing pages that are visually appealing. With templates, you add your text and images to the page in predetermined slots, which gives your pages a clean look without any coding or advanced web design required.
Ignoring page load times
When you’re so focused on the design and content of your landing page, it can be easy to forget about user experience elements like load times. However, fast load times are a must for keeping users engaged. Nearly 70% of consumers say that page speed affects their willingness to buy from brands online.
There are many simple but effective changes you can make to your page to speed up total load times. For example, you can compress images and minimize code on your page for faster speeds without compromising the user experience. You can also use browser caching strategically to keep load times fast.
Forgetting to use contrast colors
Contrasting color schemes help important elements of your landing page stand out. Things like your text and call-to-action buttons need to be a significantly different color from the background of the page to ensure readability. If you use colors that are too similar to each other, the different elements on the page could blend together and become difficult to read.
Not being clear in the call to action
Every landing page needs a strong call to action to achieve its conversion goal. If your page doesn’t have a clear CTA, visitors won’t know what to do next and likely won’t interact further with your brand.
Effective CTAs are very clear and compelling, without being overly pushy or salesy. The CTA should be very specific about exactly what action you want visitors to take, whether it’s sharing their email address or making a purchase.
Here are some examples of common CTAs for landing pages:
- “Sign Up Now”
- “Subscribe”
- “Buy Now”
- “Learn More”
Overlooking social proof and testimonials
Social proof is the idea that people look to others when making decisions. For many people, social proof is particularly important when making purchasing decisions. One study found that 99% of consumers read online reviews before making purchases.
Adding reviews, testimonials, and other forms of social proof to your landing pages adds a sense of credibility that you can’t generate with strong copywriting alone. Depending on your product, social proof could be anything from short Google reviews to detailed video testimonials from past clients.
Not creating a mobile-friendly page
Today, 77% of online shopping traffic in the U.S. comes from mobile devices. If you don’t create a mobile-optimized landing page, you’re automatically excluding a massive number of potential customers.
Luckily, Bitly Pages templates are automatically optimized for mobile. These templates use responsive design to adapt to different screen sizes, and they also offer simplified navigation and layouts that are easier to use on a small device.
Create optimized landing pages to meet your goals with Bitly Pages
Landing pages can do everything from lead capture to promoting exciting new products, but they need effective design, copy, and UX elements to do so. By optimizing your landing pages, you’re ensuring that your marketing assets generate the best possible results for your brand.
Bitly Pages makes it easy to generate high-quality, optimized landing pages for your brand, even if you have no web design experience. Bitly Pages offers visually stunning templates to choose from if you don’t want to start from scratch, and it integrates seamlessly with other Bitly products so you can monitor all your campaigns in one place.
Create custom landing pages that convert using Bitly Pages. Sign up for free today to get started.
