The Science Behind a High Converting Landing Page

If you spent time and money creating a compelling offer for new prospects, you want to maximize the number of conversions from this offer. But what is the best way to ensure the most amount of people who visit your landing page, convert? Building a successful landing page is like a science — and much more complex than popping a form and offer on a page. We gathered some of the best advice and case studies across the web from the industry-best landing page tools and brands to help you understand the periodic table of landing page conversion:

PL (PEOPLE)

37Signals increased signups by 102.5 percent for their Highrise product — just by adding a picture of a person. They did a number of A/B tests, including testing long-form pages vs. short-form pages, pictures of customers vs. no picture, and changing the picture of the customer. They concluded that:

• Big pictures of smiling people/customers work

• It doesn’t necessarily matter who your person is (male, female or ethnicity)

• Short-form pages with a picture of a customer outperformed long-form landing pages

Takeaway: People trust other people’s opinions. Add a picture and testimonial of a customer to your landing page, and you could see skyrocket conversion rates.

CTA (CALL TO ACTION)

Black & Decker made a six-figure impact by testing simple CTA button copy such as “Buy Now” vs. “Shop Now.” Through A/B tests of copy on their product buttons, they thought that ‘Shop Now” would be more successful because it sounded less committal, but they actually found that “Buy Now” was more successful — to the tune of 17 percent more conversions.

Takeaway: Even small words matter — test the copy you’re putting on conversions buttons, and it could make a big difference.

FL (FLOW)

Underwater Audio experiences a 35.6 percent increase in landing page conversion — just by moving a block of text from right to left. Why does this matter? Because there are studies that show that the human eye naturally follows an “F” pattern when reading either online or print copy. (Top left to right, then down and left). In this case, the block of text they moved was a customer testimonial. Perhaps having their prospects read this before seeing the CTA button provided the social proof they needed to convert.

Takeaway: Placement of copy, buttons and images can affect how messages are digested by your prospects, so test moving elements around the page.

MB (MOBILE)

Walmart Canada boosted online conversion by 20 percent — just by ensuring their had a mobile responsive design. Walmart discovered that their mobile design did not look good, and it took forever to load. They launched a new mobile responsive design and A/B tested other elements such as removing a button that said, “View Details” when you couldn’t purchase the item online. Overall, these changes gave Walmart a conversion boost of 20 percent on all devices and mobile orders went up by 98 percent.

Takeaway: Check out your device traffic in Google Analytics to understand how much mobile traffic your website receives, then test how your site looks and performs on your mobile phone. If you have less-than-perfect performance and a good amount of mobile traffic, it’s time to invest in a mobile responsive design — and fast.

VP (VALUE PROPOSITION)

Sims3 was able to get 128 percent more people to register for their games by improving the value proposition they included on their landing page. They changed their A landing page, which didn’t feature a value proposition, to a B landing page version that highlighted their game was free, plus the free inclusions visitors received by signing up.

Takeaway: Tell your visitors the value they’ll receive by signing up for your offer — and never hide the fact that you offer a free product or trial version for signing up.

Remember these important elements to a landing page — people, CTAs, flow, mobile and value proposition — and you’ll be well on your way to understanding the science of a high-converting landing page. Testing these types of elements in A/B tests within your marketing automation software or landing page software will help improve the ROI of the offers you create for your customers, increasing revenue for your business.

This post originally appeared as a guest contribution on Hatchbuck.com — a great resource for small business owners looking for a marketing automation tool!