Important Landing Page Elements: Landing pages are your ticket to converting web traffic into qualified leads.
Building a fully functional website takes a significant amount of time, money and resources. And when you’re done, what’s the next step? PPC advertising, email marketing and social media should top the list – but what happens after visitors click on your PPC advertisement or social media offer and get to your company landing page?
It’s important to remember that getting visitors to your site is the easiest thing to do, but once they get to it, you need to make every effort to turn them into leads.
You only have eight seconds to grab your audience’s attention. To determine which combination of landing page elements most successfully converts leads into customers, all digital marketers should experiment with A/B testing. This proven practice has helped many marketers learn what their target audience responds best to, and continues to be the most effective way to increase conversions.
Although some internet marketers argue that it is ineffective and a waste of time, A/B split testing a landing page is a great way to improve your landing page. To demonstrate the power of A/B testing, here are some proof:
- Moz delivered a 52% increase in sales for its Pro member.
- Lumineers increased conversion rates by 120%, resulting in 1,200 more leads in one month.
- The 71% of brands that achieved significant sales increases first tested multiple landing pages.
Marketers who know what they’re doing don’t leave their success to chance. They conduct A/B testing to assess which elements yield higher conversion rates.
Which elements should you A/B test on your landing page?
Every element of a landing page is important. However, there are a few elements that should be subjected to A/B testing, especially when you first publish your page and start generating traffic. The following list outlines five popular elements that should be A/B tested that can significantly increase conversions.
1. Test your headline.
Your headline is one of the first things visitors will see when they get to your page, so it makes sense to test this element. It also helps create an important first impression with your audience – will they stay and see what you offer, or will they leave and never come back?
A headline that doesn’t immediately grab your audience’s attention can kill your conversion rate and make all that time, money and effort you’ve invested go to waste.
To be clear, L’axelle first wrote a comfort-oriented headline and then tested an action-oriented headline:
Results? The action-oriented headline (“End the sweat marks!”) gave them a 38.3% conversion rate, 93% better than the control page.
This example does not mean that action-oriented headlines will always outperform other options. It simply means that for L’axelle and this test, the action-oriented headline was more appealing to visitors and thus helped generate more sales.
2. test the CTA.
Your landing page may be creative, unique and professional, but that doesn’t guarantee a conversion. You still need to direct your audience to the desired action-the CTA button.
The most important element of a landing page is the CTA, because that’s where the user needs to click to take advantage of your offer. The size, color and location of the button, as well as the number of CTAs all play an important role, so the button should get attention.
Centraal Beheer Achmea, a top-notch Dutch insurance company, created a landing page to promote insurance services to entrepreneurs. On the page, they tested whether or not including a link under the CTA would increase the click-through rate on the offer.
Option A (first screenshot below) has a CTA that translates to “Customize your package now,” with a hyperlink below it that reads “Share this on LinkedIn.” Option B (second screenshot below) has the same CTA, but without the link below it.
The results? You might think Option B was the winner because it gives users only one option to click: the bright orange button. But by including a second link, Centraal Beheer Achmea got a 244.7% increase in clicks on the orange CTA.
Again, this does not mean that all A/B tests including additional CTA links on your landing page will yield better results. It just means that in this case, Option A with the extra link showed better results.
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3. test images vs. videos
Images are important for landing pages, but video may be even better at convincing potential customers to convert. According to Crazy Egg, people who watch a video about your product are 85% more likely to make a purchase.
If you haven’t already A/B-tested images and videos on your landing page, you may be missing out on conversions. Including a video is a way to offer more detail about your product or service, as well as a way to engage visitors for a longer period of time. Of course, a demonstration or explainer video needs to be compelling and of high quality.
In this case, Sprout Social wanted to find out whether a product screenshot on a laptop (option A) or a product demo video (option B) would provide more conversions.
When testing images and videos, you need to know your audience and understand the possible impact of both options. In the example above, the image on the landing page may have trumped the video because the target audience consists of older people who are not as adept at video.
4. test the form fields
When you’re designing a landing page, determining how many form fields to use can be tricky. This can be one of the biggest points of friction on the entire page because, naturally, people want to protect their personal information if possible and will only pass it on when they decide that the value of the offer is worth it.
A form with too many fields can be intimidating, and you may scare away your potential customers. On the other hand, you may find that your audience is interested in your offer and will happily submit their data. That’s why it’s important to do A/B testing on how many form fields to use and what information to ask for.
Many marketers don’t want to give up valuable customer information, so create a form with all the required fields and then test it by removing first one, then two, then three, etc. fields. You can also try spreading a large number of fields over several pages: for example, three fields on the first page and three more on the second page.
Take two good but different examples from LinkedIn and Geico.
LinkedIn offers a $50 advertising credit just for filling out the form. Although all fields are required, the form is relatively short and the offer is attractive enough to convince many digital marketers to take advantage of the credits.
The Geico landing page form, on the other hand, has several steps and is very short:
After entering your zip code, you move on to the next step, which asks for more personal information, such as address and date of birth. The orange CTA button contrasts well with the page and lets you know what happens next. Anyone who visits this Geico landing page is naturally looking for auto insurance, and by offering such an easy way to start the proposal process, Geico is likely to have a high click-through rate.
5. Test your layout.
Testing “apples vs. oranges” is a good way to start testing your landing page layout. Create several variations of your landing page and use the version with the best performance to conduct further split tests.
For example, in this A/B test, Highrise offers the same information, but option B also includes customer feedback and ten points on why Highrise can help your business:
Results? Less is more.
The long form design (option B) was 22.72% worse. This particular layout test shows that when too much information is presented on a site, visitors may not scroll to see what’s below the fold, or they may just feel overwhelmed and neglect to convert.
What elements are you testing?
If you want your landing page to run like a well-oiled conversion machine, it’s important to A/B test even the smallest details. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to A/B testing, but if you start with these five elements, it will help you optimize your landing page and convert more traffic. After all, you can run A/B tests in as little as ten minutes a week.
