Landing page optimization for more clicks & conversions
Your conversion rate leaves something to be desired, you want to improve your ROI or you want to be found organically in the search engine for certain topics? If you want to achieve the greatest possible success with your advertising campaigns, you need to get to grips with the creation and optimization of landing pages. These not only form the basis of successful campaigns, but can also achieve success on their own - if optimized. What are the success factors? Which elements are essential and how can you ensure that your page achieves the desired effect? In this article, you will find out what role aspects such as loading time, call-to-actions etc. play in landing page optimization.
Landing page optimization at a glance
- What is landing page optimization?
- Errors that lead to poorer performance of your landing page
- Optimize landing pages with these 11 tips
- Infographic: The most important components of landing page optimization at a glance
- See success with A/B tests
- Tools for landing page optimization
- Conclusion: Landing page optimization
What is landing page optimization (LPO)?
Every landing page has a specific goal: to generate leads, increase traffic or boost conversions. Landing page optimization (LPO) is about improving the target page with regard to the respective main goal. The focus here is on building the landing page and designing it visually and technically in such a way that potential customers are more willing to perform a certain action - be it buying a product, signing up for a newsletter or filling out a contact form. The user experience of visitors is therefore the main focus of optimization.
Landing page optimization: Why optimize landing pages?
Increasing the efficiency of campaigns
Landing pages are an essential part of advertising campaigns and can make or break the success of your campaigns. Therefore, make sure that the page provides the target group with the information they expect. With landing page optimization, you can reduce the bounce rate - the rate of visitors who leave the page without interacting. An appealing and targeted design keeps users' attention for longer and encourages interaction with the content. Not only is the user experience improved and the chance of conversions increased, but the return on investment (ROI) for advertising spend is also increased as more visitors are converted into leads or customers.
Better placement in the search engine
Although landing pages are primarily created for paid search engine advertising (SEA) and print advertising, good landing pages can also rank in organic search results. Search engines rate websites according to the relevance of the content and the user experience, among other things. By making the right adjustments to your landing page with landing page optimization and making it more appealing and relevant to potential customers, you can also influence the ranking in Google, Bing & Co.
Landing page optimization: When does it make sense to optimize a landing page?
Landing page optimization always makes sense when the landing page no longer delivers the desired benefits. This may be the case if conversions are declining and campaigns are no longer delivering the results you had hoped for. However, landing page optimization can also be beneficial for campaigns that are running well. With simple adjustments, you can easily increase the conversion rate while maintaining the same advertising expenditure and thus make your campaign more efficient.
Errors that lead to poorer performance of your landing page
You have spent a lot of time creating your landing page, but unfortunately it is not performing as you wanted? There are various aspects of a landing page that can significantly influence its performance. However, the most common weaknesses can be found here and provide starting points for landing page optimization:
Too much information at once is difficult for the reader to digest. For this reason, a landing page should only contain information that is really relevant to the goal and topic of the page. In-depth background knowledge is often out of place here.
Information is all well and good, but if the customer is not prompted to take an action, they will not do so. Similarly, too many different calls to action can confuse the customer and inhibit any action.
Time is money, and today more than ever before. If a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, the user quickly loses patience, leaves the page and looks at the next search result. If you want to compete, you have to guarantee a certain loading speed.
86% of Germans are smartphone users and, depending on the context - private or professional - use mobile search engines. If your site does not function smoothly on mobile viewports, users will quickly abandon it and, in case of doubt, turn to a competitor's site.
Worst case: the customer does not feel addressed by the landing page. Nobody reads through a text if they don't recognize any added value for themselves and simply don't feel addressed.
Links and media for visualization are not bad per se for the performance of a landing page, but in excess they can distract from the essentials and unintentionally redirect the user to other pages and inhibit conversions.
Do you have questions or need support in optimizing your landing pages?
As an experienced full-service agency, we not only support you in improving your advertising campaigns, but also optimize the associated landing pages. Contact us today for a non-binding introduction!
Optimize landing pages with these 11 tips
Would you like to improve your landing page? Then put on your customer glasses and take the user perspective. Who are you and what are your needs? Does the website provide you with all the information you need? What bothers you about the site? Aspects such as the structure, the content elements used and the content of the landing page play a major role in landing page optimization.
- Headline in a nutshell
- optimize the landing page with a meaningful heroshot
- Value proposition: the text
- Varied content elements
- visualization & loosening up with image and video material
- Place CTAs often and sensibly
- Testimonials, ratings & seals
- build a page logically and intuitively
- use forms and keep them simple
- Generate organic traffic with SEO
1. headline to the point
Pay attention to the headline when optimizing the landing page. It should be catchy and prepare the user for the content. Nobody wants to be misled and waste valuable time dealing with things that are not actually relevant to them. Therefore, formulate your headline as concisely as possible and get to the heart of your message (AIDA model). Choose your words carefully and target your audience with exactly what you have to say. Depending on the technical requirements of your CMS, you have the option of including additional information in a subline (subheading) in the headline.
2. optimize the landing page with a meaningful heroshot
A good headline goes hand in hand with the design of a good header image. Pages with only text are boring and are often considered less trustworthy. You can use stock images for this. However, these are sometimes used so excessively that they cannot provide an individual recognition value. If, on the other hand, you use graphics you have created yourself or meaningful photos from your own photo shoot, you can score points directly with your customers.
3. value proposition: the text
An important aspect of landing page optimization is the improvement of textual content. This is where you as a company have the opportunity to show what you offer and what makes your service or product so special. Highlight all USPs clearly without falling into gobbledygook. By communicating your value proposition to your customers with your statements, you can convince them of your offer. Improving the content can work wonders, especially if the bounce rate has been quite high so far. Users may not find the content on the page that they expect, may be overwhelmed by the information or may not be prompted to take any action due to a lack of a call to action.
Make sure that your page has a common thread and that you guide interested parties through the page and do not put any obstacles in their way. Divide your text into meaningful sections and use subheadings to structure the text logically and clearly. In addition, address your target group with the text and pay attention to the choice of words and tone of voice when conveying your message. In this way, you can persuade your customers to make a purchase decision.
Do you need support in creating unique content tailored to your target group? As a copywriting agency, we are happy to support you with landing page optimization.
4. varied content elements
Nobody wants to wade through a desert of text online, especially not if the user is looking for specific information or solutions to their problem. By using different, exciting content elements, you can keep the reader's attention and highlight content. For example, use bulleted lists or checklists for clear communication of benefits or timelines to visualize processes. Do you need support with this? As a web design agency, we know how to design functional content elements in an appealing way. We are happy to support you with landing page optimization.
5. visualization & loosening up with image and video material
Use images and videos to break up longer texts and make your page more appealing. As with the Heroshot, your own material is best suited for this. Exchange stock material as part of the landing page optimization. As a photo and video agency, we are happy to take care of the organization and execution of appropriate shoots and prepare the produced material specifically for your website.
6. Place CTAs often and sensibly
Calls to action are the be-all and end-all of landing page optimization. This is because they not only visually break up text, but also show users the way to the desired action and can have a significant impact on the performance of your campaigns. With clearly formulated call-to-actions, you tell your customers exactly what they should do. Ideally, you should include a benefit directly in the CTA. Are you offering something for free? The customer gets a discount? Include these formulations in the design of the call to action. Use verbs and adjectives that emphasize the added value for the customer. Are your website visitors reading your entire page but not converting? Check whether your CTAs are eye-catching enough or whether any design adjustments are necessary. Depending on the length of the text, use several CTAs on your landing page and end the page with a form.
7. Testimonials, ratings & seals: Create trust and dispel concerns
Customers are initially skeptical if they don't know you yet. Poor product quality, inadequate service and scams are unfortunately not uncommon on the web and customers want to be sure that you as a company are trustworthy with your products and services. Show credibility and create trust by including awards and quality seals that you carry on your landing page. Customer reviews are also often a game changer in terms of trust. If your customers speak positively about you, this gives you credibility. Testimonials, ratings and quality seals are a guarantee for customers that you will deliver on your value proposition. Take these into account when optimizing your landing page.
8. build a page logically and intuitively
Have you ever heard of "above-the-fold"? The term originally comes from the newspaper industry and describes the upper part of the newspaper that is visible when it is folded up on the shelf. Today, the term is also used in web design and describes the area of a website that is immediately visible when called up without the user having to scroll. True to the motto "first impressions count", a good landing page must contain all important information such as a clear and meaningful headline and ideally also an initial call to action "above the fold". This is where it is decided whether the user wants to find out more and continues scrolling through the landing page, or whether they bounce straight away. The aim is to attract the visitor's attention and persuade them to stay on the page and ultimately convert. Is this not yet the case for you? Then take this into account when optimizing your landing page.
9. use forms and keep them simple
Forms are important so that you receive all the information from the customer that you need to process an inquiry. However, the basic rule is: less is more. The more information you ask your customers for, the more form fields they have to fill in and the more time and effort they have to put in. This increases the likelihood that they will leave without converting. A reduced form, on the other hand, contributes to a higher conversion rate. So take the hurdle for your customers to make initial contact and ask for further information relevant to you in a second step.
In some cases, however, it may make sense to increase the barrier to contact by adding form fields. If you are not satisfied with the quality of your leads so far and are flooded with contact requests that cause you more work than actual added value, you can remedy this by adjusting the data queries as part of landing page optimization.
10th landing page optimization: Generate organic traffic with SEO
You want your landing page to become more visible organically and generate traffic? With search engine optimization, you have the opportunity to bring your site to the top of the search engine results. Starting with the choice of a keyword and the use of a correct headline hierarchy through to content and term-based optimization - optimizing your landing page can also help to increase traffic and consequently the conversion rate. Want to do SEO but don't know how? As an SEO agency, we are happy to advise and support you in all activities that suit you.
11. note loading speed: reduce loading time
The loading speed contributes significantly to the success of your landing page. How can you influence it? In addition to technical requirements, which you can either fulfill yourself or have fulfilled by your advertising agency, the compression of video and image material as well as files is an important factor for the shortest possible loading time. This is because the larger a file is, the more information has to be retrieved and the slower a page loads. Instead of uploading original images to your content management system, you should reduce their size in advance. If this has not yet been done, this is part of the landing page optimization.
The most important components of landing page optimization at a glance
Who can optimize landing pages?
If you are familiar with your content management system and know which screws to turn, you can carry out landing page optimization on your own. However, there is often a lack of experience and time to make adjustments to your own website. As an experienced content agency, the optimization of landing pages is our hobbyhorse. We base our landing page optimization on previous analyses and track adjustments in order to understand the development of the page. Contact us for a non-binding initial consultation. We can help you generate more leads more efficiently.
See success with A/B tests
Would you like to know whether your landing page optimization was successful or would you like to find out which adjustments are more effective? A popular test option is to carry out so-called A/B tests. This involves creating two versions of the same landing page and running them against each other at the same time. After a set period of time, the performance of the pages is compared and conclusions can be drawn about the success of individual measures.
Tools for landing page optimization
To determine the current loading time, the current performance in Google or to track the click paths of your users, you can use tools, some of which are subject to a charge. These support you with landing page optimization. These tools include, for example, Google PageSpeed Insights for checking page speed or SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Sistrix or PageRangers.
Conclusion: Landing page optimization
Whether as the main target of Google Ads or social media campaigns or independently for search engine optimization (organic search engine advertising) - landing pages are an essential component of various marketing measures. They offer the opportunity to present all relevant information and benefits about your offer and prompt users to take action. If your conversion rate is not yet satisfactory, this may be due to content, visual or technical issues. Landing page optimization starts there and enables you to improve your conversions. The measures may involve restructuring the page, adapting the design or improving the page speed, for example.
