If you have created a few landing pages with offers for your prospective customers, congratulations you’re making significant headway on becoming a marketing automation superstar. It’s important, however, to not just “fix it and forget it” with your landing pages. You want to make sure you’re optimizing every part of the page to maximize the number of downloads and leads you capture. Here are three easy landing page tests you can do to make sure you’re reaching your full lead capturing potential.
SWAP OUT IMAGES
You want to make sure your landing page images are compelling, on-brand, eye-catching and convey the proper message. The use of different imagery throughout your landing page design can affect conversion on your page. According to the Association for Psychological Science, there is a direct correlation between emotions and imagery. They found that emotions could be evoked and manipulated through the use of different photos. What emotion do you want the image on your landing page to evoke? For instance, sunshine evokes feelings of happiness and freedom, as do warm colors like orange. Dark colors can evoke foreboding, sadness and unhappiness, so use dark colors wisely. Learn how to manipulate your photos to portray the emotions you want your customers to feel.
It’s also important to use photography on your landing pages that feels genuine and on-brand. Since being genuine is associated with trust, you want to make sure your customers perceive you as honest and trustworthy. Oftentimes, generic stock photography can portray the opposite of those feelings. Instead of using a generic stock photo of a brunette girl with a customer service headset on, why not take a picture of your employees standing at the front desk with your shoppers, or an employee talking on the phone with a customer? Instead of a generic photo of a business person, include a picture of yourself on the landing page.
For instance, we did a photoshoot with our customer service team and one of our customers, CEV Consulting to use on our website. Check out the difference between that authentic photo
Compare a generic stock photo of a customer service rep:
To our authentic team + customer pic:
The more your landing page images feel true to your brand, the better your prospective leads will feel about giving you their business. Also, don’t discount taking photos with an iPhone or smartphone and doctoring them up in a photo editing program if you can’t afford a photographer. This type of scrappy work can result in beautiful, professional landing page images.
Finally, studies have shown that featuring humans in photography are more compellingthan logos, landscapes or other generic images. Facebook recommends using photos of real people in Facebook ads instead of illustrations or logos. Because of the positive, emotional connection with photos of individuals, it’s probably a good idea to include them within photos on your landing page. However, you can’t be absolutely sure what will resonate best with your audience until you A/B test photos with humans and without.
TEST BUTTON COLORS & CALLS TO ACTION
You want your landing page visitors to click and convert, and the way they do so is through your call-to-action button. Don’t assume that the best button color for your landing page is a color that matches your brand. You want your button to stand out, and a contrasting color is likely best. Studies have shown that red buttons beat green buttons, but orange is best. Some brands have followed this advice, however, and seen opposite results. So the best thing to do for your business is to test different colored buttons to see which make your customers want to click.
You also shouldn’t default to “Submit” as your text on the button either. “Submit” is dull and doesn’t give the lead what they want. Try changing your call-to-action buttons to say something like:
-
See Business Plans
-
Start Your Free Trial
-
Download My Free Guide
-
Create My Free Account
All of the copy on these buttons have one thing in common—they’re speaking to what the lead is trying to obtain by clicking submit. Don’t overthink your button text because you can test and change it— “Get” is one of the most effective calls to action. Just remember to keep your call to action short and focused on what your prospective buyer will receive.
Finally, make sure your button isn’t competing with any other calls to action on your page. You don’t want three buttons inviting your customers to sign-up, see your testimonials and email you. Decide what you think is the MOST important action you want visitors to take, and make that button prominent and the only option.
TRY OUT DIFFERENT FORMS
You want your customers to fill out a form before they click submit, so you can gather lead intelligence that will help your email marketing campaigns or sales team. But what is the right length of fields on a form? Generally, the advice is not to include more than 5 – 7 pieces of collected information that a lead needs fill out.
Our resources page, for example, only asks for name and email address. For bottom-of-the-funnel leads who are requesting a demo, on the other hand, we ask for a bit more information as they are more invested in our solution.
However, much like the button color the best advice is to test what works best for your landing page visitors. Every target audience can exhibit different behaviors.
Another variable that matters on the form is the type of information you’re requesting. Leads might be willing to give their phone number, but not their email. They might balk at a question such as, “How often do you need financial assistance?” but be more willing to answer, “Would a loan be useful to you?” The way you word your form questions matters. Be sure to think carefully what types of information will help you segment your leads, and decide which are more sales qualified, then test out different versions of these questions.
As with all A/B tests, it’s important to isolate a variable you’re testing. If you’d like to test your button color, make sure nothing else is different about the landing page. Landing page variation A should look the same as landing page variation B, minus the one test you’re performing. This way you can be sure the test is accurately recording a lift in change.
This post originally appeared as a guest contribution on Hatchbuck.com — a great resource for small business owners looking for a marketing automation tool!
