A landing page is one of the most effective forms of promotion, whose aim is to present a particular product or service to a user and then encourage them to perform an essential action, e.g. purchase a training course.
The user usually reaches it after clicking an advertisement. In most cases, the landing does not contain any subpages except for the regulations. It is simple - it presents the most important product features. It focuses on the realization of the goal, which is mainly gaining users' emails or selling a particular product.
How to make an effective Landing Page?
A Landing Page consists of different sections. Usually, the key ones are: a headline that encourages interaction, a description of the product/service, a section which will attract the user's attention by e.g. referring to social proof and a form - or another option for the user to perform a given goal.
To build an effective Landing Page it is worth to approach its implementation in the following way:
- Do your research - look at the target audience you want to reach, learn about their pains or concerns, check out what the competition is offering and how your offer stands out against theirs.
- Create a Low-Fi wireframe - design a wireframe and get feedback from the team - this will help you spot and eliminate mistakes early on.
- Write the content to appear on the Landing Page - remember to keep it short and easy to understand. Focus on the end result and describe what value your product or service will bring to the user.
- Wireframe your design - when creating the last layer of your Landing Page, make sure it's consistent, readable, and focuses attention on your CTA.
- Deploy your design to the site - after deploying your design, make sure it displays properly on each device.
- Implement user activity tracking - to observe your Landing Page's performance, add a Google Analytics tracking code to your Landing Page so you can measure, for example, the number of clicks on buttons.
You can learn more about creating an effective landing page by checking out our post "7 Rules for a Good Landing Page".
A/B testing vs. multivariate testing
In designing an effective landing page, proper optimization is essential to choose the most effective version of it.
Two types of tests will help you in the optimization process:
- A/B tests
- Multidimensional tests
A/B tests will help you optimize your landing page for conversions. They usually involve creating one additional variant that differs from the main landing page by one element.
For example:
Text encouraging people to take a free online trial lesson
A: "Try it now"
B: "Try it for free"
In the case of A/B testing, traffic is directed to both versions of the Landing Page e.g. 50% of traffic goes to variant A, while the other 50% of traffic goes to variant B.
A/B testing helps you understand user expectations enabling you to find the most effective version of the Landing Page. This will allow you to achieve a higher conversion rate. Its continuous optimization can lead to increased conversions, which in turn will translate into increased profits.
Multivariate tests, on the other hand, are based on the same principle as A/B tests - they allow you to check which version of the Landing Page is the most effective, but they are, however, a bit more complicated than A/B tests, because more than one element is tested.
For example:
- Button size (bigger, smaller) first variable,
- Text in the hero section (more detailed, more general) second variable,
- An additional section (with quality guarantee information, without quality guarantee information) third variable.
Multivariate testing involves testing each of the possibilities and selecting the one that yields the best results.
How to conduct A/B testing?
To conduct A/B testing, it's a good idea to think about what might be causing rejections on your Landing Page.
Create a hypothesis for your analyzed Landing Page:
"A high rejection rate could be due to a form that is too long."
Then, for A/B testing, create a B version of your Landing Page with a reduced number of fields in the form. Before you start the test, however, be sure to test both Landing Pages at the same time and direct traffic to them from the same sources.
After the test, the choice between version A or B is simple. The one with the highest CTR wins.
It is worth not stopping with one test - for best results repeat these processes whenever you have time and possibilities.
On the Landing Pages you can, for example, test:
- button colors,
- texts under the CTA,
- number of sections,
- header texts,
- number of fields in the form,
- arrangement of sections on the page,
- text length...
...and many others.
During A/B testing, test only one element. If you change two elements, you will not know which of them had a real influence on the Landing Page’s effectiveness - if you want to test more elements, use multidimensional tests.
AB test prioritization, or how to schedule AB tests?
Another key element is AB test prioritization. Not every test idea can be adapted to our business, especially if our ideas are only based on a ‘gut feeling’.
The key to conducting valuable testing is to initially analyze the data we have and research with users.
To do this, you can use tools such as:
- Google Analytics,
- HotJar (or another similar tool) - Heatmaps, Session Recordings, Click Maps,
- User surveys,
- Heuristic analysis,
- Competitor analysis,
- Cognitive walkthrough,
- User research.
Your list of ideas for potential tests will probably be long, so it's a good idea to prepare a document with a list of hypotheses and the data you've obtained so far.
Prioritization can be done using the Potential, Importance, Ease (PIE) method.
This method was developed by WiderFunnel and stands for potential, importance, and ease.
We can define these three meanings in specific ways:
Potential - here it is worth thinking about what improvement we can make, whether improving a given element on the page will e.g. increase conversions on the website.
Importance - in this step you need to think about whether the element that we introduce to our site will have an impact on the goal we want to achieve on the site.
Ease - the last point concerns the ease of making changes - are the improvements we want to make on the website easy to implement?
The PIE method is very helpful, allowing us to prioritize and eliminate those ideas that may have little impact on the usability of our site. It is important to combine business knowledge with technical knowledge, it will help to comprehensively define the priority of tests.
Thanks to such a summary you will be able to choose the most interesting and effective ideas, which can benefit your company.
Recommended tools for A/B testing
You can run AB tests on multiple platforms, such as:
- Google Optimize - a free website optimization tool. It allows you to continuously test different combinations of site content and also helps you increase your user conversion rate,
- AB Tasty - a tool designed for larger businesses. It is designed to create a comprehensive user experience. It also features an analytics platform, editor, and automated deployment functionality for testing.
- Optimizely - another tool for organizing A/B tests that enables sample segmentation, forecasting, and web content management.
Summary
AB testing is a relatively inexpensive solution that helps analyze user preferences on a given website.
Conducting experiments with users and continuous optimization of the website brings many benefits. Tests allow us to get to know the users better, allowing us to implement valuable changes on the website, which positively influence users' behavior, like reduced number of rejections or increase in website conversion.
