Landing Page Optimization

Landing page optimization is a way to improve the usability and conversion rates of landing pages. You can use it as an alternative or supplement to search engine optimisation, which helps your website generate more traffic on its own.

Landing Page Optimization is the process of optimizing a website’s landing page to increase conversions. It can be done by adding relevant content, ensuring that the layout is appealing, and optimizing for mobile devices. Read more in detail here: landing page optimization service.

Landing page optimization relies heavily on tests; after all, if you don’t test, you won’t know how to improve your pages and keep them converting successfully.

To get started, let’s make some testing hypotheses.

Hypotheses are being tested.

Instead of testing based on your “gut sense,” you should test based on what your website data is telling you. If you employ eye-tracking heat maps and observe that a lot of people are exiting the page before they get to your lead generating form lower down, you may want to try placing that form above the fold to see if it improves engagement.

Change the call-to-action, the form’s headline, or even what the form offers in return for a name and email address are all possible testing.

Conversions Aren’t Everything

Many conversion rate optimization experts will concentrate entirely on raising conversion rates, and we’ve discussed this extensively in this article — but it shouldn’t be your main goal. More sales – either better revenue per transaction or a bigger order volume — are what you really want, and they are the conversions you’ll want to focus on improving. Keep in mind that click-throughs and subscriptions will only get you so far.

Before we get into the tests themselves, there are a couple scenarios to be aware of where testing might really harm your marketing efforts before you ever get started. The first is, naturally, if your site is still being built or if your web server is experiencing a scheduled outage. If just a few individuals succeed, your testing data will be skewed and you will obtain an inaccurate result.

Another difficulty is if you’ve just recently built your website and are still attempting to attract visitors:

It’s preferable to wait till you have more traffic before proceeding if you’re not even achieving a successful 10 conversion targets every day.

That’s because landing page optimization, as well as the conversion optimization that comes with it, is based on statistics and probability. All of your efforts will be cut short if you lack the sheer statistics required to make an educated conclusion. If your analytics graph like the one below, focus on traffic first, then optimization.

Finally, findings might be skewed by seasonal traffic: Here’s an Alexa ranking of 1800Flowers and their relative traffic around Mother’s Day (May, in the U.S).

You have some quite distinct categories of people coming to the site in the days leading up to and even after Mother’s Day. Before the big day, there are the planners, who want to make sure their present is both reasonable and well packaged. You have the last-minute shoppers who are racing about trying to locate a decent present for mom before the deadline right up to and beyond the holiday. They don’t care (as much) about how well-organized the product is or how much it costs; all they worry about is that it arrives on time.

As you can expect, you have two distinct groupings of consumers focusing on two very different attributes at two distinct periods. This isn’t the time to experiment with a fresh new marketing strategy or make site modifications – it’s the busiest shopping season of the year, and your consumers need to know that they can rely on you and won’t be startled by unexpected changes.

With that stated, if your website doesn’t have any of these difficulties, it’s a fair bet that you can start optimizing your landing pages right away and see significant results in a short period of time. Let’s start with the first stage, which is deciding which sites to test.

Choosing the Best Page to Test

The page itself is the first thing to look at. You’ll want to keep track of factors like the bounce rate and conversion rate to uncover pages that aren’t converting well (from the conversion goals we set earlier).

Go to Content > Site Content > Landing Pages in Google Analytics, then choose Comparison View from the icons at the top to see your bounce rate. Finally, choose Bounce Rate (as a percentage of total visits) from the drop-down menu:

In Google Analytics, here’s an example of bounce rates.

It’s important to remember that a high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a negative thing. If you have a troubleshooting or instructional user manual on your site, for example, a user may locate precisely what they need, print it off, and leave the website. If, on the other hand, you have a call-to-action and aren’t getting many visitors beyond the first click, it’s time to check into your bounce rate.

You may take into account points from analytics in addition to the bounce rate, such as:

• The average visit duration (how long do visitors spend on the page?)
• % New Visitors (how many folks are totally new to the site?)

HiPPOs should be avoided at all costs.

The HiPPO — or the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion — is one surprise explanation for a lack of adequate landing page optimization (which generally presents itself at this stage). Perhaps your marketing manager or vice president is hesitant to conduct tests because they don’t want to alienate visitors by displaying them a significantly different version of a single page, for example.

Fortunately, by limiting the sample size of the landing page optimization tests you’re doing, you can overcome this obstacle and get everyone on board. Most split-testing software allows you to deliver your optimized pages to a limited amount of visitors, so ensuring you have a sufficient sample size to split test between is critical. Additionally, it will alleviate some of the worry that your team’s HiPPOs are experiencing as a result of new marketing campaigns in this manner.

So, after you’ve identified the underperformers among your pages, it’s time to give them a makeover.

Choosing the Right Test Area on the Page

This can be difficult because you’re probably eager to test the entire page at once. However, making too many adjustments too quickly can provide a mixed bag of outcomes, leaving you with no conclusive explanation as to what really worked.

With this in mind, the most typical sections to test on a landing page are:

The First Line

When someone visits your landing page for the first time, your title will have to do the hard work. A title that is poor, uninteresting, or dull will never persuade consumers to give the website another second of their time.

The Text in the Body

This is the landing page’s “meat and potatoes.” Short, straightforward, and to-the-point. You don’t have to go into great detail about your company’s history or what it does. Remember, these individuals are seeking for a solution or an answer, and they don’t have time to wade through a massive amount of information that doesn’t provide them with what they’re looking for right now.

The Appeal for Action

A powerful call-to-action, as you’ve seen, may drive consumers ahead into the first stage of your sales funnel, while a weak call-to-action will just lead them to click close and go elsewhere.

The Form

Testing your form entails going above and beyond just altering the backdrop color or a button; it also entails taking more drastic measures to make the offer as clear as day to the prospect. SecondWave, a mobile phone recycling business, used split testing to compare two quite distinct landing pages. Although the form fields themselves remained unchanged, the design was instantly identifiable, and the consumer understood exactly what action to take based on these visual cues:

The initial form for donating a mobile phone

The most recent version of the contribution form

With no more funds spent on commercials, the ad budget, or the bids themselves, the newly designed form saw a 53 percent increase in contributions.

The Offer

Why not try a new offer if your current one isn’t generating the reaction you want? If you’re giving away a free ebook, for example, why not transform it into a slideshow-based video presentation? Different offerings will connect with different individuals, and by changing things up with what you’re offering and how you’re offering it, you may be able to grab and maintain their attention.

It’s also worth mentioning that “ebooks” with generic branding have a greater perceived value than video or courses.

Seals of Trust

Security buttons and badges aren’t the only things that trust seals may be used for. They may have a wide range of “flair” to alert clients in a split second that your site is a secure location to do business.

Commonly used trust and checkout seals

Is your company certified? Do you sell at the platinum level? Do you have a lot of positive user feedback or genuine testimonials? Do you accept certain payment methods? These are all instances when a trust seal may determine whether or not an activity is completed. Again, testing is recommended since certain sectors have had varied success with these sorts of seals.

Directional Insights

This is a unique form of test in that it isn’t often included in “lists of things to test” when it comes to landing page optimization. Directional cues are points with a face, arrow, or other adornment that guide the user’s attention to the CTA, headline, body text, or all three.

CrazyEgg provides an example:

The arrow draws the user’s attention to the price section, especially the free trial button.

Arrows may visually focus our attention and inspire more people to follow where we want them to go when used judiciously. In the same way, our brains are hardwired to follow another person’s sight. Here are two page heat maps with a baby on them, one looking at the viewer and the other at the headline:

Red patches indicate great attention in eye tracking.

Notice how the user’s eyes was drawn to the information with more intensity when the baby’s gaze was drawn to it as well?

Live Chat

Live chat can also boost conversion rates, but only if it’s available during regular business hours. Showing them that you’re “inaccessible” during normal business hours may sadly lead them to believe that you’ll be unavailable for them if they place an order – and that’s not the impression you want to make!

EZTexting.com ran a split test to evaluate whether the option of having live chat (visible in the bottom right corner of the screen) would increase sign-ups. Here’s what it looked like before the live chat was added:

Before the integration of live chat, EZ Texting had a sign-up form.

After the live chat option was implemented, the website looked like this.

Texting Made Simple with Live Chat

Nothing else on the website had changed, but the inclusion of live chat raised the number of free signups by 31%, earning them a gold medal in Which Test Won’s annual testing awards in 2012.

Try Video

Another alternative that, when done correctly, may have a big influence on conversion rates is video. Again, a properly filmed and produced video will persuade a client to take action considerably more effectively than a shoddily shot home movie taken on a mobile phone. In addition, explainer videos have the ability to sell in ways that simple copy cannot.

BuyRealTwitterFollowers wanted to see how well video would work on their site, so they made a short explainer video with a “How it Works” section next to it. This pushed down content that would normally be “above the fold” on their website, such as professional advice and the security and trust clients may have when purchasing Twitter followers online.

The original page looked like this, with the material above the fold:

The above-the-fold material of Buy Real Twitter Followers contains guarantees, answers to frequently asked questions, and information on why you should use their service.

Except for the video file and the “How it Works” section, the video page had the same material. There were no further changes to the page:

The video and “how it works” sections have been added to the Buy Real Twitter Followers website.

When this experiment was carried out, it was determined that the video and “how it works” part boosted site sales by 216 percent – an impressive figure by any measure. It also shown that the information that the Buy Real Twitter Followers site staff considered to be the most significant (guarantees, security notes, and common replies) was not as relevant to visitors in the end, stressing the need of testing, testing, testing!

Choosing a Method for Measuring Results

Depending on what you’re testing and how much traffic you’re receiving, there are two popular approaches to assess outcomes. The A/B split test is the most frequent and easiest way for getting started. There’s also multivariate testing, which is more difficult but may offer you more results in less time if you have a lot of internet traffic. The following diagram (source) depicts the many kinds of tests:

Split Testing (A/B)

This is the most frequent way of landing page testing, and it allows you to compare two distinct versions of a page (preferably with just one item altered) to determine which converts the best. It’ll be tough to identify which modification on the competing landing page truly enhanced conversions if you make too many changes, which is why it’s ideal to modify one item at a time.

You may utilize Google’s Content Experiments to put up an A/B split test utilizing publicly accessible tools. It’s split testing on steroids — and it’s completely free.

If you’re already using Google Analytics (remember the conversion objectives we put up earlier? ), Content Experiments may be accessed in the same place. Simply go into your Google account, navigate to the Behavior section, and choose Experiments from the sidebar.

You’ll see your current experiments here if you’ve already built content experiments. If this is your first time, you should choose the Create Experiment option.

When creating an experiment, there are a few easy form fields to fill out:

• Give this experiment a name that will be easy to monitor and remember.
• This is the aim or result you intend to achieve with this experiment. This may be used to assess current analytics or ecommerce data, or to establish a whole new objective.
• Experimenting with a Percentage of Traffic — How much of your site’s traffic do you want to use in this experiment? You’ll notice results faster if the number is greater.
• Important Changes Notification by Email — Would you want to be alerted by email if your experimental test undergoes significant changes? (The answer is a resounding YES!)
• Experiment will run for the shortest length of time possible — How long do you want your content experiment to run for? Because you aim to attain statistical significance with your figures, Google Analytics will not identify a certain page as a “winner” during this period.
• Confidence Threshold — How confident do you want to be that a certain page will win? Keep in mind that a bigger number will take longer, but it will also enhance the confidence with which you can say that a page boosts conversions, sales, or signups.

You’ll be sent to a page that looks like this if you’ve completed all of these parts (image source).

Creating an A/B split test by defining the pages

What’s remarkable about this is that you can add up to five different versions – so if you want to modify five different aspects on your landing pages and compare them, you can do so. You’ll also see thumbnails of the sites you wish to test, which will help you make sure you’re comparing the proper pages.

After that, you’ll be led to a page where you can either apply the code yourself or send an email to your webmaster to have it done for you. Google will also go the additional mile to ensure that your code is functional. You’ll receive an error notice if it isn’t. You may omit validation, but it’s not advised (especially if you’re receiving an error), since there’s a gap between your site and the content experiments code, which might distort your testing findings.

If everything checks out, you’ll be led to a success page:

Success! Your A/B split test is now live.

When your experiment is finished, you’ll see the following options:

• Conversion Rate — The landing page’s conversion rate, based on the “conversion” criteria you specify.
• Experiment no longer
• Re-Validate
• Turn off one or more of the variation landing sites you’re testing against by disabling variation.
• Segmentation – This feature is quite useful since it allows you to analyze how a given landing page performs for a specific subset of your audience.

A split test with several variants is an example of a split test.

Your tests and their results will stay accessible on your Content Experiments dashboard as you run further tests:

You may also check the progress of various tests from your content experiments dashboard.

Multivariate Analysis

Multivariate testing is more involved than an A/B split test, but it has the potential to provide quicker results, especially if you want to test many items on a single page.

Multivariate simply indicates that several variables are being examined at the same time. You can execute a sort of multivariate testing using Google Content Experiments by following the identical steps above and testing numerous pages with a single element modified on each one, but it may not offer you the control or results you desire.

The reality is, it’s tough to advocate multivariate testing unless you’re dealing with a lot of traffic and expect to see significant improvements (or losses) in a short period of time. The concept of multivariate testing seems excellent to most new websites (more testing results in less time!) However, given the time it takes to get to the figures you seek, your findings will have very little statistical value.

With that stated, if you want to do a proper multivariate test, you may use web analytics tools like Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer.

Making a Value Proposition is a process that involves coming up with a unique value proposition.

Why is the “how to” component of building up, testing, and monitoring landing sites missing a section on providing value? Because, among all the code, technology, and tools, the main reason why people visit a site and choose to stay is all in the value you’re providing – and it’s easy to overlook that element.

But the real question is: how do you define an intangible concept like “value?”

What Is a Value Proposition and How Does It Work?

At its essence, a value proposition is your commitment to provide value (such as solving a problem) to your consumer. This is usually accomplished by using your title, subheadline, and the first three bullet points. You may also use a graphic to express information that words alone cannot.

There are three different sorts of value propositions:

• Providing clients with reasons to purchase from you rather than your competition (delivering value based on your differentiation from everyone else).
• Specific advantages (measured in pounds – for example, “You’ll drop XX pounds by the New Year or it’s free”) are delivered.
• Describes how your product or service will help the consumer address their issue in a manner that is relevant to them.

The most essential thing to remember is that now is not the time to utilize marketing lingo. Your consumers don’t care whether your “solution” is “synergistic” and provides a “collaborative experience” in order to “shorten” their “sales cycle.”

Consider your value proposition to be your elevator speech — the 30 seconds or less you have to tell someone what you do (and why they should care). Could you imagine telling them any of the aforementioned terms?

No, I don’t believe so.

This is why, while writing a value proposition, you must use the same language that your buyer would. Inform people in their language, not yours, on what you do. All of it comes down to three separate responses:

• What exactly are you trying to sell?
• Who are you going to sell it to?
• Why should they be concerned?

Sytropin, the developer of an HGH (human growth hormone) spray, wanted to see which landing page would improve sales, but they modified many elements on the page (thus a multivariate test would have been a better solution here, as it wasn’t apparent which option raised sales).

The first version includes a happy, fit couple alongside the product image, as well as different benefits in the subheadline and more text, as well as clear, visible subheadlines, whereas the second version includes a peaceful waterfall alongside the product image and more checkmark bullet-points rather than several paragraphs of text.

There were a lot of differences to consider between these two exams… But, in your opinion, which one conveyed greater total value to the customer?

The first version, which had the happy couple and a sub-headline, exceeded the waterfall version by over 85 percent. The traffic source, offer, product, and content beyond the subheadline were all left unchanged.

Why do you believe this version converted so much better than the others? Consider the following suggestions:

• Guaranteed attention – Rather from being lost in the sidebar, the assurance is prominently displayed to the right of the content.
• FDA-approved carries a lot more weight and trust among American shoppers.
• Promise – A certain duration (90 days) vs. a guarantee of satisfaction.

These are all factors to consider when developing your value proposition, since they are all important to customers who are looking for this sort of product. What kinds of claims do you think your consumers would agree with? What would increase their trust in you as a seller?

What a Value Proposition Definitely Isn’t:

With that stated, many individuals believe they “get it” right away and get straight into drafting their value proposition — but it’s important to note that a value proposition is not the same as:

• It’s not supposed to be charming, catchy, or intelligent.
• It’s a hysteria fest — It’s not the time to brag about how terrific you are.
• The “number one, doctor-recommended brand” is an example of a positioning statement.

Shopify, the developers of web-based shopping cart and ecommerce software, has a terrific example of a great value statement:

Create an online store using Shopify.

You’ll have everything you need to get started selling online right now.

A good example of a value proposition

This isn’t the time to dance around the issue or problem you’re trying to fix. Customers don’t want to guess — or to go halfway through signing up or checking out just to find out that your service isn’t suited for them.

Another experiment that used content to boost perceived value came from Deals Direct, an Australian e-commerce site.

The initial version included a backdrop overlay behind the “Your Shopping Cart” lettering, as well as text explaining the site’s security and payment choices. There were additional links to information regarding the site’s online safety and return policy:

The second option (with a different title — View Cart) detailed how consumers may complete their transactions. It omitted information on online security and refunds.

As you would expect, the first edition, which focused on safe shopping, approved payment methods, and return policies, exceeded the first by approximately 3.60 percent in terms of completed sales. That may not seem like much, but it adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the company’s bottom line on a huge ecommerce site like this.

Developing a Value Proposition

So, with that in mind, how do you come up with a memorable value proposition that gets noticed?

Make it clear what issue you’re trying to solve.

Don’t skirt around the issue. Declare it out front and tell folks how you’re going to tackle the problem.

Describe how you’re unique.

Show folks how you’re better than your competitors, not simply tell them. The cost isn’t the only consideration. You’ve created a product that’s unlike anything else on the market. Even if your beliefs are identical to those of your competitors in every aspect but one, you must capitalize on the ONE element that sets you apart. It might be basic, but that’s OK since people need to be aware of it.

Don’t Forget About the Figures

Making your value proposition tangible is critical for providing the consumer a time period or a reference for when their issue will be solved or how much money they will save. Car insurance advertising have capitalized on this by competing to see how much money their clients can save. Simply put, they do it because it works.

Allow others to contribute to your value proposition.

When it comes to conveying your value proposition with new consumers, you’re not alone — particularly when prior customers have already contributed to it. Social proof, explicit assurances, testimonials, well-known customers or brands, and media placements will all strengthen your proposal by extending their own reputation to sell for you.

Do you want to learn from additional examples? Look at them!

What Will Happen Next?

It’s time to let your landing page tests run now that you know how to set them up. After you’ve collected data, the following step is to correctly evaluate it. This is often where individuals make errors. Even the most beautifully designed and organized landing pages may fall victim to a few typical flaws.

We’ll look at how to analyze your landing page outcomes in the following part, as well as what to do if your conversions plateau. You’ll also learn about frequent problems that might sabotage your landing page testing and how to fix them fast so you can get back on track.

Read, reread, and react.

There are four primary areas you’ll want to look at in your analytics when examining your landing pages:

1. The Rate of Bounce

The bounce rate has previously been discussed extensively, but a bounce rate of 75% or above indicates that visitors aren’t finding what they’re searching for on your sites. For example, there might be a misalignment between your ad content and your landing page – one promises one thing, while the other offers something quite different.

2. User Attitudes

User behavior may provide you with information that pure data alone cannot. For example, you may know what keywords you’re targeting and how many visitors are clicking on your ads, but user behavior, which you can see using an online testing service like usertesting.com or a heatmap service like CrazyEgg.com, will show you exactly what the user did and where they got stuck in the process.

Understanding user behavior is critical for identifying any unanticipated bottlenecks in your landing pages that are preventing visitors from moving on to the next page. These might range from significant technological issues to basic “muddy” material that doesn’t make it apparent what the offer is or why the consumer should care.

3. Variation in Traffic Segments

This is just a fancy way of expressing “traffic from many referrers.” People arriving from Twitter, for example, may anticipate something short, quick, and to-the-point, but users coming from Facebook or Google+ may expect a more informative piece. Understanding your traffic segments, where they come from, and what they anticipate may help you create landing pages that seem to be custom designed particularly for that user’s requirements.

4. Rate of Conversion

We’ve spoken about conversion rate a lot in this tutorial, but checking at your analytics will allow you to compare two sites side by side to determine which has the greater conversion rate and which aspect on the page is responsible for it. Changes may cause your conversion rate to decrease in certain situations. Testing and tracking are the only ways to find out what works.

How to Perform a Landing Page Evaluation

Analyzing your landing pages entails much more than deciding between the four categories listed above. Granted, each of the elements listed above has an impact on how well your landing page performs, but it’s best to start with the appropriate data to get a true picture of how well your pages are functioning.

To begin, look at how well your landing pages convert based on organic search results. Go to Content > Site Content > Landing Pages in Google Analytics.

We only want to look at how landing pages fared based on organic searches in our scenario, therefore we’ll filter out sponsored search traffic. Select “Non Paid Search Traffic” from the Advanced Segments column.

Then sort by visits to discover which landing pages got the most organic search traffic. You can also check the term customers put in to get to your landing page as a “secondary dimension”:

An example of a landing page with the secondary dimension “keyword” (image source)

It’s also worth noting that when other keywords are entered, the same landing page may appear.

Bounce rate may have a role here as well. Landing pages 4, 9, and 10 had lower bounce rates than landing pages 2 and 6, as seen in the graphic below. To figure out what’s generating these areas of friction with your visitors, look at the variances between your individual landing pages.

A Link Analysis is a method of determining the relationship between two or more entities.

While most landing pages don’t (or shouldn’t) have links, you may link to them from other pages on your site to offer them some much-needed organic SEO exposure.

Traditionally, we were told that using keywords in link text and placing links in our site footer would entice search engine robots to go deeper into our site map and crawl all of our delicious pages was the way to go.

While links still important (possibly now more than ever), the best strategy to ensure your landing pages benefit from maximum optimization clout is a little different than you would assume. Consider the following scenario:

• If your landing page has two or more anchor links, only the first one has any “link juice” attached to it.
• External links from other websites have greater SEO weight than internal links (which means you can ditch the bloated site footer!).
• Anchor text links are more useful than picture links with alt text.
• The higher up in the HTML code a link appears, the more useful it looks to be.
• Links in the website’s body have greater importance than links in the header, sidebar, or footer, so keep that in mind.
• It’s much better to connect to highly relevant information than to merely throw out a link to anything that may or may not be actually related to the user’s inquiry.

What’s the Deal With Google Hummingbird?

Marketers tried to recoup after Google made big modifications to several of its algorithms a few years ago (dubbed “Penguin” and “Panda” in marketing circles). The majority of the sites that were punished were “content farms” that deserved to be demoted. Google just released a new variety called Hummingbird. But what exactly does it accomplish, and how does it vary from Penguin and Panda?

What does this imply for your landing pages, moreover?

In a sentence, Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan compares Hummingbird to a new engine for an old automobile. Everything on the automobile may run OK, but it was not designed to handle unleaded gasoline or other contemporary upgrades, therefore the engine must be rebuilt. Hummingbird is akin to a new fuel-injected engine, in that it’s a contemporary enhancement on an older but still fully functional system, while Penguin and Panda were more straightforward algorithm changes.

So, how does this affect your landing pages?

It indicates that Google is changing the way it produces search results in order to provide people with even more relevant results. In Google’s own words, that indicates the company is putting a greater focus on “conversational search.” For instance, if a user types “Where can I purchase an iPhone 5s near my house” into Google, a standard search engine would return online electronics sites with the words “buy” and “iPhone 5s” in the headline.

Hummingbird tries to decipher the question’s intent, and if Google already knows your location, it may be able to show you a map with nearby stores that may have the iPhone 5s in stock.

Another Google example is a person searching for “acid reflux prescription,” which would often result in a list of medications that address the problem. It now displays instructive materials about treatment possibilities, to the point that a user may discover that they don’t need a prescription at all.

To be more explicit regarding landing pages, this implies that you should now be:

• Using your landing pages to figure out what customers are looking for when they search for the term or phrase you’re wanting to rank for
• Rather of attempting to be a one-size-fits-all “solution” for everyone and everything, the supplier of genuine solutions to people’s queries.
• Beyond keywords, be able to employ social signals, knowledge graphs, semantic search, and other alerts to provide a more tailored result to the user.

What if your keyword data is returned as (not provided)?

Around the same time as Hummingbird was being pushed out to all Google searches, many SEO practitioners began to notice that keyword data had become 100 percent “secure search” focused, which meant it was concealed from marketing and analytics tools. From a few “not given” questions to total “keyword blindness,” users’ keyword searches progressed.

Google Traffic Keyword (not specified) (image source)

Google searches now take visitors to a protected Google site for their results pages, thereby making organic keyword research obsolete. Of course, Google developer Matt Cutts basically urged SEO pros not to worry, saying that as long as they focused on providing a nice experience, they’d continue to rank well in the search engines.

Paid search users were unaffected as well, since paid results still show the terms that users searched for to get to that exact ad or landing page.

For example, there were formerly optimization and research criteria accessible, such as:

• Keyword | keyword tag conversions
• Patterns of keyword traffic by URL
• Traffic trends for long-tail keywords

And additional analytical data is no longer available — but you may still track the most crucial aspects of landing page optimization, such as:

• By engine, total organic search traffic
• Conversions from organic traffic as a whole (by URL)
• Critical words / page tags and kinds / keyword tag search rankings

So, in essence, the key measures are still there; it’s just that the method they’re presented has evolved to match the expectations of a growing and technologically informed audience.

So, rather than attempting to determine which keyword drove someone to a certain page, the question becomes…

Is the end product meeting the user’s expectations, and if not, how can we improve it?

This is why it’s so important to keep analyzing, refining, and updating your landing pages as part of your overall optimization and improvement strategy. It’s not a one-time occurrence… It’s a sequence of adjustments that lead to more of what you actually want:

More conversions equals more customers, which equals more money.

How Do I Conduct Keyword Research for My Landing Pages When the Keywords Are (not provided)?

The days of simple keyword research are long gone, and the focus has switched to smart keyword research. Of course, your analytics data is the most valuable source of long-tail term ideas, but you may also look at:

• Data from PPC and Paid Search
• Google Keyword Planner is a tool that allows you to find keywords (formerly known as the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool)
• SEMRush, Wordtracker, and other third-party technologies)

In certain ways, you can still identify useful terms; you simply have to look a bit more. Although you won’t be able to see the keywords that are bringing visitors to your landing pages, you may link what they’re looking for with the keywords your landing page is attempting to rank for and make some educated judgments that way.

You may still utilize Google Webmaster Tools to identify prospective keyword data, as well as Google Trends to determine if any significant keyword/search movements have happened within a certain period.

When deciding what to optimize on your sites, it’s crucial to have the correct emphasis apart from the keywords themselves. Every conversion may be split down into two categories: macro conversions and micro conversions.

Macro Conversion Optimization

When it comes to conversion optimization, it’s all too easy for experts, even those with the best of intentions, to get caught up in testing all the minor things that might lead to a modest conversion increase.

Micro conversions are these “small things,” and they might include:

• A product page is being viewed.
• Checkout is now available.
• Connecting via social media (Facebook/Twitter, etc.)
• Over a particular period of time spent on site
• Over a particular threshold, the number of page visits

A micro conversion is a subscription to a newsletter (image source)

“But I Thought Those Were the Things We Were Trying to Improve!”

They are, however they only result in minor gains overall. Rather, you should focus on optimizing for macro conversions.

These are the primary factors that contribute to significant conversion changes over time, such as:

• Order fulfillment on the internet
• Sign up for a paid membership
• Submission of a contact form
• A call from a potential client
• Submission of an inquiry form (for lead generation)

These are the primary drivers of conversion-based income, which is the bottom line that every successful website aspires to achieve.

Micro-conversions are like guideposts along the route, whereas macro conversions are huge, revenue-boosting adjustments.

How to Use Google Analytics to Track Micro Conversions

Micro conversions are vital to measure since they offer you an idea of how engaged your clients are with your site (which can, in turn, power the macro-conversion engine).

Micro conversions may be tracked in Google Analytics depending on the sort of conversion you wish to track:

Goal of Email Subscription

Create a URL destination goal with your “Thanks for subscribing!” page as the destination page. You’ll need to decide on a value for this aim, which might be difficult — but think of it this way:

Because this figure will be used to compute the average visit value, you’ll need to examine how many visitors who reach the target page eventually become buyers. For example, if 10% of your subscribers make a purchase, and your average purchase price is $50, you may give a value of $5 to your objective (10% of $50).

I’ve made an account.

Putting the Account Creation Completion page as your URL destination is similar to setting up an email subscription objective. In case any prospects leave out during the account creation process, you should also build up a funnel for this aim. This might assist you in identifying hidden bottlenecks or areas of friction that are preventing them from achieving their objective.

Per Visit, the Number of Pages Viewed

Create a pages/visit target if you wish to measure the number of pages viewed above the standard threshold. Believe what you consider to be an intensive visit based on your analytics data. Use the average number of pages a consumer views before to making a purchase as a reference.

Download the PDF version

This is a little more difficult. To add a “OnClick” element to your download link, first create an event in Google Analytics and then change your site’s code. In order for Google Analytics to monitor the event, it must use a specific command called _TrackEvent. An example of such a link might be found in Google’s own help file:

How to Use Google Analytics to Track Macro Conversions

This is a little more difficult since several macro conversion processes require modifying your website’s source code to integrate the necessary Google Analytics monitoring elements.

Depending on the objective you want to follow, you may additionally add individual shopping cart tracking.

Keep in mind that you’ll want to make optimization modifications with the major, macro conversions in mind — but don’t forget about the little stuff!

What Should You Do If Your Conversions Stagnate?

So, let’s suppose you’ve done everything correctly up to this point. You’ve developed realistic personalities for your ideal clients. You’ve worked hard to create your conversion objectives. People aren’t clicking on your sites because they’re clean and clutter-free.

Before you start wringing your hands in despair, let’s take a deeper look at some of the most typical causes for conversion stagnation, as well as some case studies from which you may learn.

There are too many calls to action.

The main page of Chase encourages visitors to discover more.

Too many call to actions indicates that you have a lot of items or services that you know people will like — but you don’t know which one they’ll click first, so why not give them a taste of everything?

It’s a noble goal, but having far too many links and calls to action will only serve to distract the user and cause them to spend an excessive amount of time trying to figure out which product or service they wanted in the first place.

Although a single call to action is preferable, there may be instances when you require numerous calls to action on the page. If that’s the case, you should stress the most significant one with a different color and a bigger button, while de-emphasizing the less critical ones:

Software for the Mac In contrast to the App Store download buttons, Ember’s free trial button quickly draws the attention with its distinctive color scheme.

Incorrect Call to Action

“What do you want me to do here?” is the landing page equivalent of “what do you want me to do?” You may have a lot to say, but only a limited amount of space to say it in. Your prospect will not be motivated to click if your call to action is incorrect.

Even well-known businesses struggle with this, particularly if they have multiple locations or product lines. See if you can figure out what action Starbucks wants you to do first by looking at their coffee gear website:

There are many distinct routes (and diversions) for prospective consumers who visit Starbucks’ coffee equipment website.

If your landing pages are guilty of this, one solution is to include a “New? Start Here!” link that takes visitors on a tour of the site’s various sections. This will assist new visitors in becoming acquainted with your site’s features without overloading them with options. Alternatively, you may construct separate landing pages for each sort of product you offer. For instance, various sorts of clothes, gift cards, coffee discounts, and so on.

There’s Way Too Much Text

This is an issue that many landing sites suffer from, especially if their offer isn’t totally clear.

Take a look at this home page for IBM’s DB2 database platform, with all of the text:

The content is well-structured, but it fails to address the essential question: Why should I care?

This is one of those instances when the landing page fails to address the customer’s primary concern: why should I move from my existing database software to this? Or, better still, why should I care about this offer at all? The title “industry best performance, scalability, and dependability on your preferred platform” is nothing more than a jumble of marketing jargon.

The first paragraph just restates the title, while the sidebar promotes a quotation request, a free trial, and (finally!) a case study demonstrating the platform’s advantages. Although database specialists may be able to decipher the alphabet soup of material here, the user isn’t given any compelling reasons to switch, much less contemplate switching at all.

Misalignment of title and content

Lowes has about seven convincing reasons to do things earlier in the autumn, when most home improvement projects are in full gear. The customer was bombarded with a range of offers when accessing the portal, ranging from doors and windows to water heaters and greenhouses.

This is an example of “throwing everything at the landing page and hoping something sticks.”

I was searching for a generator, for the record…

When I clicked on an ad to view a variety of generators they had on sale, I was sent to this website, and although discounts are always great, it was the wrong location, the wrong time, and even the wrong page to be showing me. When there’s a large disparity like this, it’s nearly assured that even if you offered “Free Money,” consumers would bounce back since they didn’t get a response to their question.

There Are Too Many Ads

When Google Adsense and paid text ads were popular, this was a bigger issue. Thankfully, the hysteria has subsided, but there are still sites, especially affiliate landing pages, that will follow in the footsteps of discount-loving retailers like Lowes and bombard the user with adverts in the hopes of getting at least one click.

What often occurs is a situation akin to the problem of too many calls to action. Rather of choosing a route and following it, the user will abandon the website entirely. Remove adverts from your landing page that might distract your visitor from performing the action you want them to do, much as you did with your site navigation.

There is an excessive amount of information being requested.

This is something that lead generating sites are especially guilty of — and it’s reasonable. They need to know a lot about the person they’re trying to contact in order to provide the best possible service. People are wary of frauds, spam, and other difficulties these days, and telemarketers’ high-pressure sales pitches are frowned upon.

It’s easy to understand why they’re hesitant to provide much of their personal information, even if it means saving hundreds of dollars on their auto insurance.

If you’re asking too much of your visitors on your landing page, reduce the amount of information they must provide. This may vary depending on what you’re selling. You’ll want to add secure form processing (ask your web host about putting this up) for highly personal information that’s absolutely necessary to deliver on your offer, so that the information they provide is completely encrypted, just as a payment transaction would be.

Incorporate a variety of well-known trust and authority seals to demonstrate that you’re serious about safeguarding your clients’ personal data.

When you’ve won the customer’s confidence, you should also attempt asking for further information at a later time (by providing valuable information to them over a period of time). If you’ve just “meet,” they could be more inclined to provide a few additional facts.

Conclusion

You’re losing a lot of money if you’re not optimizing your landing pages. You’ll be able to adapt your marketing message and increase income by generating separate pages for various marketing channels.

We looked at a range of landing page optimization approaches to help you get the most out of every change you make. However, this does not imply that you must accomplish everything on your own.

The good news is that there are several tools, services, and websites accessible to assist you with anything from landing page creation to heat mapping and measuring your progress over time.

I hope you found this information useful. But, if you haven’t had time to read it all (I know it’s a lot), here’s how to improve your landing page in three easy steps:

1. Determine the most important aspects on your landing page.
2. Make the landing page more search engine friendly and user pleasant.
3. Use quantitative and qualitative feedback to conduct A/B testing.

To show you how to properly execute the three stages above, I created an infographic that explains all you need to know.

To see a bigger version of the picture below, click on it:

Watch This Video-

The “landing page optimization examples” is a marketing tool that allows users to optimize their landing pages. The landing page optimization tool helps companies create effective and engaging landing pages.,

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