Whether you’re offering a demo of your product or services, or a free 30-minute consultation, or perhaps a free guide or eBook – whatever it is you’re offering, you need to make sure your landing pages are fully optimised to increase the chances of a conversion.

So, how can you go about optimising your landing pages for conversions? Check out the ten tips below!

 

1. Keep your copy clear and concise

The content on your landing page should highlight exactly what the offer is and what your audience will get out of downloading this offer. Using a bullet point format can help break up the text, making it easy for the user to digest the benefits of the offer and giving them the ability to make that snap decision – the decision is hopefully ‘yes, I want this!’

2. Keep your landing page distraction-free

Your job is to effortlessly guide the user around your site, giving them visual clues about what it is they should be doing next. Getting rid of any additional distractions on your offer landing pages can ensure you’re keeping them focused on converting with your offer. Common distractions you should remove include menu navigation, other calls-to-action to other offers and social sharing buttons – save this for later!

3. If you can, link your landing page to a thank you page

Not only is a thank you page fantastic real estate for another relevant call-to-action to be placed, but it’s also great for tracking conversions through Google Analytics. Setting your thank you pages as conversion goals in the analytics dashboard can help you confidently report on campaign progress!

4. Make sure your landing page has a form

If your content contains a value high enough to require a form, you need to capture their details, almost as a worthy exchange for your content offer. You’ve spent all this time and effort putting it all together, why are you giving it away without an exchange of useful information? Obtaining the user’s email address and first name allows you to not only email market to them, but it allows you to personalise their email subject line. In fact, a study conducted by HubSpot found that the subject lines containing the recipient’s first name had a higher click-through rate than those that didn’t!

5. A/B test one element at a time

A/B testing is something that should be a part of an on-going improvement process when it comes to your landing pages. Testing multiple elements at once, however, is a big no, no. If you do test multiple elements at once and your conversion rate increases – that’s great, but do you know which element change is responsible for this increase? Start by changing something small, such as the colour of your call-to-action button – the one that leads users to your landing page – and see if you’re receiving a higher click-through rate.

6. Create a ‘limited time’ offer

Making your offer appear as though it is scarce or there are a limited number of these offers you can give away creates panic and can help you increase your conversion rate. The user feels this is perhaps their last chance to grab hold of your offer; they don’t have time to think it through and come back later – because there won’t be a later! Try it and measure your results!

7. Make sure your offer is relevant

Seems basic, right? But SO many businesses fail to create offers that will engage their audience and tend to their wants and needs. Your aim is to help your audience solve a problem, if you’ve spent time creating an offer they just do not want, you can try all the tactics in the world – they still won’t convert!

Understanding your audience really is the key to successful marketing campaigns – regardless of channel, if you don’t know who makes up your audience, you’ll never get the results you want.

8. Include calls-to-action on your thank you page

This point has been mentioned in passing in point three. This is the perfect space to start promoting your other offers. Just because your user has already converted (congratulations), it doesn’t mean they’re still not interested in further engaging in your other content. If you don’t have another offer to promote at this time, don’t leave this great space empty, even sending them back to a blog post you think they’ll enjoy is better than nothing!

9. Use your customer reviews

Using your customer reviews, obviously only the positive ones, on your landing pages can help reinforce trust to your user. Feeling they can trust your business, there’s a higher chance they’ll go ahead and convert, downloading your demo, your eBook or guide or taking you up on your offer of a free consultant. Make sure the reviews are specific to the topic you’re discussing. Putting a review from a customer who had a product demo on your landing page for a free eBook, won’t do the trick. It’s irrelevant and your users may bounce straight off the page!

10. Include social share buttons

Including social share buttons on your thank you page and encouraging to share this offer with their friends can be a great way to boost the exposure of not only your brand but of your specific content offer. Be careful when you offer the opportunity to share the content offer/demo to link the share button to the landing page NOT the thank you page – you want them to share it but you still need to track how many downloads your content has had, and exactly who has downloaded it!

Hopefully these ten tips have helped spark some ideas for optimising your landing pages to increase conversions. Let us know in the comments if you use different optimising tips!

Piece written by Helen over at HelenJ Marketing.