An effective landing page is essential for anyone selling and advertising products or services online. There are many tools and metrics available for creating and optimizing landing pages. Still, not all of them provide the measurable benefits in generating conversions that every UX/UI specialist cares most about. Since only some tools are equally effective, which metrics with conversion in mind are worth pursuing?
In this article, you'll learn about the 9 most essential metrics you should be tracking on your landing page to optimize it, and which analytics tools to use.
Tools to track results on your Landing Page
Below you will find a list of tools you should use to track metrics and collect data.
- Google Analytics is a free tool for measuring traffic statistics and user behaviour on pages. It allows you to verify where users are coming to your site from and what they did during their visit (clicks, views of individual elements). To use Google Analytics, you must register with the site and implement the code provided accordingly. This can be done directly, via Google Tag Manager, or with the help of special plug-ins for the website.
- Google Tag Manager is a tag (code snippet) management system that allows you to quickly and easily update tracking codes and related tags, on your website or mobile app.
- Hotjar is a tool for creating heatmaps and video recordings of user sessions or creating surveys to evaluate a website.
- Others, such as Zuko or Heap - are platforms that collect data on user behavior on a landing page.
Before launching a campaign
It is extremely important that you define your campaign goals in Google Analytics (regarding the desired user behavior once the user has accessed the landing page) before launching the campaign. You will apply the same objectives to your landing page optimization and results tracking. These will determine your conversion rate and bounce rate - the main metrics used to track results. You will be able to monitor exactly how many people visit the Landing Page and take actions such as filling in a form, downloading an offer or clicking a link. You will find this data under Conversions > Goals > OverView. Once you have defined your landing page goals, you should tailor your results tracking tools to them so that you can examine whether they have been met.
9 indicators for tracking results on the Landing Page after the start of a campaign
I. Conversion rate
The most important metric in the context of tracking website performance is the conversion rate. It determines the effectiveness of a campaign that is ultimately intended to increase sales of a product or service. Below you will find the formula for calculating the conversion rate.
Conversion in % = (Number of actions taken by users/Number of users visiting the website) x 100
You are probably wondering how high a conversion rate is a good result? The answer is not exactly simple. The average conversion rate on the internet is between 2% and 5%. This largely depends on the goal that the user should achieve, whether numerous actions are required on the website, the industry, and the number of visitors to the landing page. One should, of course, strive to make this rate as high as possible.
2. Views
The next step in determining the effectiveness of the campaign is to determine the number of times the Landing Page has been viewed by users. You will find this data in Google Analytics - by going to Behavior > Site content > All pages. Search for and select the URL of your Landing Page. There you will see a report that includes landing page metrics such as page views, number of unique users, average time spent on the page, number of exits, rejection rate, and page value.
At this point, focus on the page views metric to find out how many times the Landing Page has been visited. Analyze the graph and look for patterns of page views by day. At what times do visitors to the page appear? During the week or on the weekend? What promotions or events attract them? The answers to these questions will give you important guidelines for your site settings and marketing campaigns.
3. Sessions by source
When analyzing a Landing Page, it is also important to know where the audience is coming from to the landing page. This allows you to understand what does or does not work for your campaign. The Traffic Source metric indicates which channels you should invest in and which are not performing well.
You can assess which channels are attracting visitors to your site and therefore increase conversions. Here are some examples of sources of visits:
Direct traffic - users who directly type the address of your landing page into a browser.
Organic traffic - users who navigate to your landing page via search results in browsers.
Referral traffic - users who enter the Landing Page by clicking on a link on another page or source.
Pay per click - traffic to the landing page coming from PPC advertising.
Email traffic - users who click on a link you sent in an email campaign.
Social media traffic - users who found the Landing Page through a social media post or profile, such as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
Traffic sources are the foundation of creating a sales funnel; they determine the quality and quantity of leads. That is why it is worth tracking and analyzing the routes by which users reach the Landing Page. You can check the traffic sources of your landing page in Google Analytics under Acquisition → All Traffic → Source/Medium.
4. Time on page
Tracking the time users spend on a landing page can tell you a lot about the quality of the landing page. The more time users spend on it, the higher the conversion rates can be.
The type of landing page for a site also determines the length of the visit. For example, if its purpose is to educate users about a new feature, then you can expect a longer stay on the page because of its characteristics. Look for data on the time spent on the target page in Behavior → Site Content → All Pages. Then, under All Pages, select your landing page to get the report.
5. Bounce Rate
This indicator gives you an insight into your site's traffic analysis, representing the percentage of users who have left your landing page without taking any action. You can find information on the Bounce Rate in Google Analytics. Go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages and then select the URL of the specific Landing Page.
A high abandonment rate can mean several things:
- low quality content, not engaging users;
- your offer is unattractive or unclear, so users don't know what action to take on the page;
- your promotional campaign needs to be optimized because users are not finding what they expected on the Landing Page or they are not visiting the site;
- users find what they need on the page and leave without taking further action.
6. Drop off rate / Abandonment rate
Abandonment is an indicator that shows how many users drop off at a key moment and thus do not convert. Below is the formula for calculating the rate.
Abandonment rate % = (Number of users not taking the desired action/ Number of site visitors) x 100
The highest drop-off rate usually occurs with contact forms, which means that they need to be optimized. They can be too long, complicated or require too much information. You can use the Zuko tool to examine them. It allows you to create analytical tracking to find the exact place/fragment of the form that caused the opt-out and abandonment of the page.
7. Length of browsing (Scroll Depth)
This is an indicator describing how far users scroll through a page. There are two types of scroll depth indicators.
- Horizontal scroll - measures how far a user scrolls the page from left to right.
- Vertical scroll - measures how far a user scrolls the page from top to bottom.
Scroll depth can be measured in percentages or pixels. For example, if your indicator is 50%, this means that users tend to end their browsing in the middle of the page.
You can track browsing length through Google Tag Manager. Using this indicator together with the time spent on page indicator, you can create segments on user behavior such as:
Impression: entering the page.
Introduced: 10 seconds on the page.
Interested: on the page for 45 seconds with 50% scroll depth
Investigated: on-page for only 3 seconds
Initiated: the user has completed the desired task (click, form completion, etc.).
By these segments, you are able to estimate at which stage of the site's use, the user encounters problems and improve your site to increase conversions.
8. Page Load Time
Page load time is an indicator that can be defined as the average time it takes for a page to load on a device screen. The faster it is, the lower the abandonment rate and bounce rate will be. It is worth paying particular attention to mobile versions of pages, due to their ubiquitous use. There are a number of tools with which to measure page load times, including Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Analytics, or WebPage Tests.
9. Feedback from users
This is not a typical indicator, but it is useful to collect information directly from users about your Landing Page. You can use the Hotjar tool for this and add a short survey to your Landing Page. In this way, you can come to conclusions that are out of reach once you analyze the available data.
Summary
Without the right metrics and analysis, it's hard to determine that your landing page is doing its job. The key to effectiveness is to know the metrics and to continually track them. This isn't a one-off task to tick off, but constant work in establishing KPIs, measuring performance when making changes, and building new versions of pages to make the campaign a success.
All the metrics mentioned, bring a wealth of data to analyze. Keep them to be able to show what the Landing Page improvement process looks like (A/B testing) and to enable comparative reporting with previous campaigns that had the same objectives.
