5 More Things to A/B Test on your Landing Page

Are you satisfied with how your landing pages are converting traffic?

Are you happy with your 8%, and ready to move on to other marketing stuff?

Well stop!

Increasing our page’s conversion rates (even from 8% to 9%) can mean thousands of dollars in increased revenue for your business.

Maybe you’ve just run out of ideas for things to test on your pages.

That’s why bloggers like myself write articles like this one.

Here’s “5 More Things to A/B Test on your Landing Pages”.

Because you should never be satisfied.

Video

Let’s make this short. If you’re not convinced that video can help your landing page’s conversion rates, here are five reasons you need to hear:

1. Your landing page visitors are lazy (thus why we recommend bullet-points over long paragraphs). Even better than text, however, is a video explaining what they stand to gain from a conversion.

2. Your landing page visitors are hasty. A video encourages your landing page traffic to stick around for that little extra time your page needs to encourage a conversion. People make their initial decision about your brand or offer in the first 5 seconds. Videos mean they stay on your page for longer.

3. Your landing page visitors don’t trust you. A video communicates personality and the idea of a “real person” far better than language ever can. Your landing page traffic needs to know (immediately) that they’re dealing with a brand made up of real people, not robots (see “Tone” below).

4. The face of your business is interesting. Whether you use your CEO, CMO or a recognized brand representative (as Wishpond does with our good friend Bree), the face of a real person is far more interesting than text, a model, or a picture of your product or content.

5. Videos are multi-faceted. You can test the length of your videos, internal CTA’s, directional cues (see below) as well as use your videos for SEO and brand awareness on YouTube.

Here’s what a video might look like on your landing page (from Wishpond’s landing page templates):

Short-Form vs Long-Form

This is one worth testing for yourself, because there are case studies that go either way. Many businesses have found up to 20% increases in their conversion rates when they cut the fluff, bullet-point their value and condense their description into a single, above-the-fold screen.

However, an equal number of businesses have found the same 20% increases when they re-iterate, expand, and elucidate their landing page traffic with landing pages that never seem to end.

I’m not going to mess you about by telling you either strategy will absolutely work for your business. However, this is 100% a strategy worth testing for your own business and particular campaigns.

Here are a few guidelines:

If you’re going the long-form route, include multiple CTA’s so your landing page traffic doesn’t have to scroll back up to the top to convert
If you’re going the short-form route, test including other links to pertinent information within the page. Theoretically traffic that is sold by your short-form page will engage and traffic that isn’t quite satisfied will click further.
If you’re going long-form, include many different USPs and header fonts to encourage our traffic to continue scrolling. The same font size will make for an extremely boring and low-performing landing page.
If you’re going short-form, consider using a video (above) that communicates the value of engagement in an interesting way.

Directional Cues

The design of your landing page is important (you know this already). You know that placing your USP at the top and in the center is better than placing it low and to the right. You know that a CTA button generally elicits higher conversions on the right than it does on the left.

What you may not know is how to encourage people to look where you want them to look, and this is where directional cues come into the picture.

Here are the four primary directional cues you can use in your landing pages:

Perspective Cues: One of the least obvious (but most effective) strategies within directional cues, perspective is a subtle way of bringing something front and center or dropping it back. Characterised primarily by angled lines, boxes or shapes, perspective cues can draw attention away from secondary landing page elements and toward your primary focus-points.
Arrows/Linear Cues: Also including pointing, arrows and linear cues are the most common we see. They’re often used with Facebook Landing Pages to show people how to become a Fan or where to click.
Eye-Direction Cues: My favorite directional cue, eye-direction uses a bit of psychology to get your business conversions. People have a strong tendency to follow the eye-direction of people they see – something they do completely unconsciously. We have an even stronger tendency to look at people’s faces (equally unconsciously). Attract the eye of your landing page visitor with a real-looking person (non-model) and then send that eye to where you want it (your USP or CTA button).
Whitespace Cues: The blue box within my example above could be your CTA button. If we hadn’t placed the whitespace around that box, it would stand out far less. This is because a lack of color (or landing page elements) can be just as eye-catching as a presence of color. Consider this strategy for your USPs, benefit lists, customer testimonials and CTA buttons.

Color Scheme

Choosing the right color scheme for your landing page means you have to know your target audience well – thus it’s something you need to test.

Color matters to us, even if we never consciously notice it. We see different colors and they have different connotations for us. Some represent solemnity, others excitement. Some represent youth and naivete while others communicate professionalism.

Using the wrong color can drop your conversion rates, and (unless you test it) you wouldn’t necessarily know what’s going on. You could change every other variable and see no effect.

So here are some general rules of thumb:

Black, grey and white: Professionalism, sincerity, sophistication. Think IBM.
Light blue, dark blue, grey and orange (for CTA): The startup look. Up-and-coming. Seriously, after you finish this article, go check out how many startup websites are blue and white with an orange CTA.
Green, brown, beige : Environmentalism, health, wellbeing. Think Greens+.
Purple and white: Female-friendly, womanhood, comfort. Think International Women’s Day.
Black, red, gold: Male-friendly, masculinity, strength, permanence. Think every online betting site, ESPN, and others.

Tone of Landing Page Copy

Is your business professional and sincere or fun and animated? Do you have a different tone on social media than you do in your marketing emails? Perhaps you’ve found success with a blogging mascot but the tone hasn’t translated into your landing pages.

Well, test it.

How?

Test intriguing titles for your lead generating content, like “This took us 6 months to make and analyzes 200 individual case studies in our sector. Want to know what it’s about?”
Test casual CTA button copy, like “Woohoo!”, “Boom!” or “Make money money, make money money money!”
Test a fun and humorous “thank you” landing page for after your lead converts. Try something like “Thanks for downloading our ebook! So… we were wondering… Would you like to go on a date with us? It’d only be half an hour and we could tell you all about ourselves.” Include a “yes” box and a “no” box and frame the entire thing as a note passed in class.
Get creative with images and other visuals. Test an introductory video from your whole company. Introduce your customer service team in funny hats or a mascot.

Tone is something you need to test for yourself. Many businesses will already have a recognized business persona on social media, but haven’t yet considered incorporating it into their sales funnel. Test it within different verticals, among different demographics, and for different objectives.

And if you want a refresher course on A/B testing: how it works, when to do it, and what elements you should be testing first, check out my article “ How to A/B test your Landing Page to Maximize Conversions.”

Conclusion

I could go on an on with landing page elements and variables for you to test, but let’s get started with these five. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas and inspiration to take forward and maximize your page’s potential for conversions.

If you want a simplified A/B testing tool (without the cost or confusion of many of the larger providers) I have to mention that Wishpond just released landing page A/B testing as one of our newest (and most exciting) tools. If I wasn’t so stoked I wouldn’t say anything really.

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By James Scherer

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