Are you wondering whether landing page testing is still important and how you can test your landing pages to increase conversions?
Landing pages are the specially optimized lead generation or sales pages where your prospective customers “land” after clicking one of your paid advertisements or email marketing links. Learning how to create a landing page that connects with your target audience and drives conversions is a crucial step towards building a profitable online advertising campaign – but the process doesn’t end there.
After creating and implementing a landing page, marketers can perform landing page testing – also known as conversion rate optimization (CRO) – experiment with landing page variations, and discover new landing page designs that lead to increased conversions.
In this short guide, we’ll explain the basics of landing page testing, why it’s still important, and which design elements marketers should focus on when testing their landing pages.
What is Landing Page Testing?
Landing page testing describes the continuous process of optimizing your landing pages to increase conversions. A conversion happens whenever a visitor to your landing page completes the conversion target that you define as part of your campaign objectives. Typical conversion targets include purchasing a product or service, subscribing to an email newsletter, registering for a webinar, or starting a free trial.
A comprehensive approach to landing page testing includes activities such as:
- Measuring the performance or conversion rate of a landing page with respect to clearly defined conversion targets
- Reviewing user behavior data to assess how users interact with a landing page, including their scroll depth, bounce rates, and average time on page
- Drawing insights from user behavior analysis to inform the landing page testing process
- Creating landing page variants by modifying design elements or copy on the landing page.
- Planning and executing content experiments to measure the relative performance of several versions of a landing page you have created.
- Measuring the statistical significance of your content experiment results to determine whether new landing page variants are driving increased conversions
- Deploying high-converting landing page variants into your campaigns to increase sales or lead generation
The most common type of landing page testing is A/B testing. In an A/B test, marketers create two different versions of a landing page with the goal of comparing their performance. The landing page is configured so that some visitors see version A of the page while other visitors see version B.
After each page has received enough visitors, marketers compare the conversion rates for both pages to determine which page was more successful at driving conversions. Split testing and multivariate testing are two other common types of content experiments.
Now let’s look at three reasons why landing page testing is still important for driving campaign performance.
3 Reasons Why Landing Page Testing is Important
Conversion Rates Impact Campaign Profitability
If you’re running an email marketing or digital advertising campaign, landing page testing is one of the fastest ways to increase sales and lead generation from your campaigns without increasing your advertising budget.
Increasing your conversion rate by just one or two percent can have the same dollar-value impact as adding hundreds or even thousands of prospects to the top of your advertising funnel – but you won’t have to expand your keyword targeting or increase your budgets.
PPC is Increasingly Competitive
Advertisers are spending more on digital ad placements than on traditional formats like print and television. This is affecting your business regardless of your industry or the specific niche you occupy – when there are ten other advertisers competing for your target customers, you’re going to see more expensive keyword auctions and higher CPC.
Landing page testing is essential in a highly competitive PPC landscape because marketers are under more pressure to squeeze every last bit of value out of the clicks they generate. If your competitors are building landing pages that perform better than yours, they’ll generate more revenue, outbid you in the keyword auctions, and steal customers from right under your nose.
Landing Page Experiences Impact Ad Rank and CPC
Google uses a combination of human feedback and automated computer systems to measure user experience on your landing pages. A poor user experience can have serious consequences, including lowering your Ad Rank (your ads will be less likely to show for related searches) and increasing your CPC (clicks on your advertisements will cost you more).
Google offers five basic recommendations for improving landing page experience – all of which you can measure and improve through landing page testing:
- Include relevant, useful, original offers and content on your landing pages
- Be transparent with information about your business and foster trustworthiness
- Build a responsive landing page that looks good on both mobile and desktop computers
- Optimize your page loading time
- Make your website as fast as possible
Landing Page Testing: 10 Design Elements to Test
Now that you understand the importance of landing page testing, what exactly is it that you should test?
When it’s time to test your landing pages, try playing with these 10 landing page elements that are known to impact conversions.
Headline
Increase conversions by writing a clear headline that effectively grabs the attention of your target audience and encourages them to stay on the page and learn more about your offer. Headlines should address common pain points for your target audience.
Lead Generation Form
Reduce friction with your lead generation forms by minimizing the number of form fields and only collecting the most important information you need to move prospects through your sales/marketing funnel.
Sales Copy
Experiment with variations of your sales copy as part of your landing page testing.
Unique Value Propositions
Write unique value propositions (UVPs) that clearly convey the benefits of your product. Try different variations on your landing page to see which ones best resonate with your target audience and drive conversions.
Page Layout
Experiment with short-form vs. long-form landing pages or the positioning of design elements to increase conversions. Short-form landing pages minimize friction, while long-form pages provide more information and can be more convincing when your conversion goal involves a purchase. You can also change the background color and colors of other design elements.
Images
Create landing page variants that use different images to connect with your target audience. Images can be used to convey information, grab the visitor’s attention, or to give the page a specific feel or tone that encourages visitors to accept the offer.
Video
Using video on your landing pages makes it easy and low-effort for visitors to get your marketing message – there’s no scrolling, and they can listen to your message instead of reading it.
CTA Buttons
CTA buttons can be optimized in many ways as part of your landing page testing efforts. Try experiments with different CTA copy, or where you change the location, color, shape, or size of your CTA button.
Offers & Pricing
If your goal is to generate leads, experiment with different offers that entice your target audience to enter their name and email address. If you’re selling a product or service, you may be able to boost revenue or conversions by implementing a different price structure.
Social Proof
Social proof marketing includes testimonials, partner logos, trust badges, awards, and case studies featured on your landing page – anything to convince your target audience of your expertise, trustworthiness, and authority in your niche.
Caption: Unbounce uses social proof on this landing page in the form of customer logos.
Summary
Without a doubt, landing page testing is still important for optimizing the performance of your digital advertising campaigns.
As a marketer, learning to construct thoughtful landing page variants and test them using content experiments can help you generate more leads and increase your return on ad spend (ROAS). Providing great landing page experiences will also increase your ad rank and reduce your CPC, further increasing campaign profitability.
We hope this guide inspires you to prioritize landing page testing as part of your next paid search or email marketing campaign.
Brian Bui
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