This is a guest post by Ruben Corbo Maxymiser.com.
Online marketers understand the importance of creating and deploying optimized landing pages that are designed to convert.
These pages are the first thing that your potential customers will see when they visit your site, so it makes sense to make them as effective as possible so you can grab their attention and get their email addresses while you’re at it.
So what makes a landing page good and effective? What elements on the page can you do without? There’s no fixed formula when it comes to creating an effective landing page, because it all depends on what will work best with your target audience.
It’s Time to Do Testing
At this point, it’s time to consider running some tests, like A/B tests or multivariate tests. Both methods are similar in the sense that site visitors are shown two variations of a single website. They only differ in the number of elements that have been tweaked: A/B tests specify that only a single site component is to be change, while no specific number of elements is given for multivariate tests.
Multivariate testing is used to determine what types of tweaks and changes to introduce to websites and improve landing pages, email copies, and other types of marketing and advertising materials.
In general, it’s recommended that complex sites go for multivariate testing, while simpler web pages with fewer elements can go with A/B testing.
A/B Tests versus Multivariate Tests
You can choose to run one test or the other at the start to get a feel for both methods and determine which type would suit your purposes more. Since only one element can be changed in A/B tests, it will take a longer time to come up with an optimized landing page. However, the reason for any change in results can be easily identified with this method.
You won’t be able to do that with multivariate tests, although you will be able to implement more tweaks after each test to come up with an optimized landing page in a shorter amount of time.
Source: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/category/multivariate-testing/
What to Test for on Landing Pages
Virtually anything on your landing page can be tested. You can bring your team together so you can brainstorm the elements to run tests on. Here are some suggestions to help you get started:
Header – This is usually where the site logo, banners, and navigational menu are located. You can play around with the positioning of these three elements, as well as focus on the specifics of each when you’re done with that. For example, test out different logos that appeal to different demographics in your audience and see which one makes the biggest impression.
Banners – These can contain ads, site announcements, or links to special content. You can try out different types of banners, like those that are either purely images or contain a mix of both images and text.
Content – Once your design elements are fully optimized, it’s time to consider this component of your website that actually contains the meat of it: your content. Play around with different font faces, font sizes, and paragraph formatting. You can also try out different tones and writing styles before settling on the one that gives you the best feedback.
I’ve used landing page for my blog few weeks back, back then I got very good results (especially I saw daily increase in my email list), all the credit goes to my theme Marketers Delight.
And I think landing pages convert more if we use convincing headlines and info.
Those images are really useful. I may have to snag it and print it as a personal reference. 🙂
As for colors, I believe it varies a lot and it doesn’t just depends on the niche but also the button or section that uses those colors. Like green for money/wealth doesn’t seem to work anymore but if used on a specific section, it could still attract the eyes of the visitors.
Nice Post! One thing that I would add to this post is, NO NAV MENU on the Landing Page. If you have not tested a landing page with NO NAV MENU, please do so and let me know the result. My bet is that your conversion rates will go up. 🙂
Landing Pages really influence the sales of a product, It’s important to design it appealing and luring. Testing is really important and analysis of conversion rates for different designs is good
Hey Ruben,
One thing that has always troubled me in testing and looking at the best CTR is that it will not necessarily be the one that will make you the most money. Do you ever take that into consideration when testing?
Regards
Have
I looked at my landing page on my website after reading this article and it did not follow any of the guidelines that you posted. I will be having a very pointed discussion with my designer and I hope that it will help with some of my conversion problems. Thank you so much for the much needed info.
These are some very important tests that i was totally unaware of. People willing to spend in such efforts are sure to reap the benefits of having improved visibility.. Thanks for the share.
I did not know of a landing page and do not even have one on my website at all. I just hope that the exposure of the web brings me leads and I did not kn w that there was a way to get data about it. Looks like I have some major homework to do about this.
Interesting, great info graphic too. I’m about to start doing some re-design work on my site and I’ll be testing different versions to see what converts bette. I have a video there at the moment so it will be interesting to see if taking that down impacts on things. I’m also just lifting the overall quality of the design which I think will get it a bit more attention but I’ll look at the specific tips above too.
This is the first time I read about Multivariate testing ad I think it is a fantastic idea I’ll be looking into. I also fascinated by the part of colors. Thanks for this amazing post.