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Landing Page Optimization: 9 Proven Techniques

Maggie Aland

We’ve all had a bad experience with a company website. We get to a landing page and can’t find the one thing we came to the page to find — exiting in a huff. 

It’s a frustrating experience, but it happens all too often because businesses overcomplicate their message, don’t understand their audience, or try to force too many options on the visitor. 

And while it may seem simple to understand what needs to be changed, it’s not as easy as it looks to create the perfect landing page.

In this article, we cover nine proven ways to optimize your landing page. 

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What is landing page optimization?

Before we dive in, let’s clarify what we mean by landing page optimization.

Landing page optimization is the process of using data and methods such as A/B testing to improve the performance of your landing page.

The goal of landing page optimization is to increase lead conversions on your page, whether you want your visitors to get a demo, purchase your product, or start a free trial. 

9 techniques to optimize your landing page

Follow these nine steps to get the best version of your landing page. 

1. See how your current landing page is performing

We recommend starting this process by gathering data on your existing page. 

Tools like Hotjar can show you how far visitors are scrolling, where they are clicking, and how they are moving around the page. 

This gives you insight into what on your current page is resonating with your audience. For example, if a call-to-action (CTA) that’s very far down on your page is getting a lot of clicks, you should consider moving it up higher. 

If there’s a CTA high up on the page that no one is clicking, you should consider removing it. 

In the heatmap below, you’ll see that the most clicks on this landing page are on the pricing link at the top. 

If we were to optimize this page, we could consider making a link to our pricing page a bigger CTA within the body of the page (if it’s the desired action we want our visitors to take).

2. Define your target audience

You cannot optimize your website if you don’t know who your audience is. 

Make a list of your target personas, and write down their fears, desires, and challenges. This will set you up to write copy that highlights how your product or service fits their needs.

Below is an example of how we’ve defined one of our target personas, the sales leader.

3. Simplify your messaging

Even if you have 10 different products with five features each, you do not want to throw everything at the visitor at once.

Get to the core of your business, and work to get your message across in a single sentence.

The simpler the page is the more likely it is that the visitor will understand what action you expect them to take.

Take Square for example. The company has dozens of different products, but their homepage couldn’t be simpler. They have one powerful sentence, and a button to get started.

Instead of overwhelming the visitor with all the different paths they could take, Square makes it easy and leads the user through the journey.

4. Optimize your form

If you want your visitor to request a demo, then one of the most important parts of your landing page is the form.

There are two tools we recommend to make the form experience as seamless as possible.

  • ZoomInfo FormComplete autocompletes certain fields like company and location after the visitor inputs their email address. This removes friction during the process.
  • Chili Piper allows leads to book a meeting the moment they complete the form. This doubles inbound conversion rates.

5. Keep it consistent

If you’re sending visitors to a landing page from a social post or Google ad, you want to make sure there are no surprises.

For example, if the post says “Sign up for free” and you’re taken to a page with no free signup available, it’s likely you’ll leave the page disappointed.

Make sure the copy and call-to-action on the post are mirrored on your landing page.

6. Be smart with colors

You’ve probably noticed that most CTA buttons are a brighter color than the rest of the page.

What you may not know is that marketers often use the color wheel to determine what the button color should be.

Yes, the wheel that you were introduced to in first grade.

There’s a whole psychology to colors in marketing. The main takeaway is you typically want to choose a color opposite on the color wheel from your primary color.

This ensures it stands out. Just make sure to use it infrequently so it really pops.

Drift only uses yellow in two places, and both are calls-to-action they want their visitors to take.

7. Put the most powerful messaging above the fold

People who visit your landing page want to know what the value is as fast as possible.

We as humans have a short attention span and don’t want to go digging to find the information we need.

Here are two things you want to get across as soon as possible:

  • How your product or service will benefit the visitor
  • The action you want the site visitor to take

Instapage is able to get a powerful message across clearly. As a visitor, it’s clear what to expect from the product — additional conversions.

8. Use social proof

People are more likely to trust a company if they see other people recommending the product or service.

Testimonials, case studies, and reviews are great resources to include on your landing page to demonstrate that people similar to your target audience have benefited from your offer.

We do this on our landing page by including quotes from dozens of our customers. Not only is it great social proof, but it also puts the benefits of our product in our own customers’ words.

9. Continuously tweak and optimize

Creating a landing page is not a one-and-done situation. A/B test your messaging, try out different CTAs, and play with new images. Luckily, there are plenty of landing page optimization tools out there that help with A/B testing, optimizing web forms, and understanding user behavior. 

The more data you collect, the more you’ll know about your target audience, and what it takes to have them take your desired action.

Bottom Line

Your landing page is the face of your business online. It’s important that what you’re putting out is representative of what you do.

So take the time to understand your audience and how they’ll benefit from your product before optimizing. Then use our techniques above to optimize your landing pages.

You’re well on your way to increasing your conversion rate!

About the author
Maggie Aland

Maggie is the Senior Director of Go-to Market at Chili Piper. She graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from Tulane University, and has been published in Investopedia, Fundera, and Fit Small Business among others.

With seven years of experience in digital marketing, her primary goal is to create the most helpful resources for growth marketers. Her secondary goal is to get Taylor Swift to agree to a content collaboration.

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