Every business, whether they are a global ecommerce store or a local service-based solopreneurship, wants to increase its conversion rates. The average conversion rate across all industries is 2.35%. You can use this figure as your baseline. The top 10% of landing pages see a conversion rate of 11.45%: this is what you are ideally aiming for.
What can you do to boost your conversion rates? What are those small tweaks you can implement that are more likely to capture the attention and interest of your target audience?
Crafting a Compelling Selling Proposal is Crucial to your Landing Page Design
When looking to boost your conversion rate, you need to focus on making the right first impression. Customers and clients rarely have a lot of time to browse and explore. They want to know as quickly as possible whether the brand they are looking at has what they need.
By creating a compelling, straightforward, and easy-to-understand selling proposal, you can quickly qualify your visitors. Those who are a good match will stay to learn more, and those who are in search of something else will bounce.
Distill your offer and your values into a couple of key points. Make them the heroes of your landing page header. Write short sentences using the most relevant keywords and phrases.
Make sure to approach the issue from the customer’s point of view. What are their pain points, and how are they looking to solve them?
Trustshoring does a great job by addressing multiple pain points in their homepage header. Their main point is that they are able to help you launch an MVP and speed up the development process for any ongoing projects.
They then go into further detail, touching on the most important elements of the process: meeting deadlines and budgets, expert consultations and saying goodbye to micromanaging your own projects.
Provide Social Proof
Social proof is a very effective marketing tactic that can help you both build trust and increase conversion rates. Since it comes in all kinds of formats, the only thing to consider is which one you should use for your landing page design.
If you sell a product, make sure to allow customers to leave star reviews. Having more than 50 reviews for a product can increase your conversion rates by 4.6%.
If you offer services, ask your clients to provide a quick testimonial. If you want to go the extra mile, have some clients film video testimonials or invite them to your office for a quick interview.
Make sure to ask your clients to pitch about more than just the quality of what they paid for. Ask them about customer service, delivery times, packaging, and checkout emails. The more you are able to prove that your end-to-end service is great, the more people you will convert.
Another way to feature social proof on your landing pages is to show the news outlets you have been featured in. Shop Solar does with their header carousel. When you know this brand has been mentioned by the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Time, it’s much easier to trust them.
Note how they also feature a Reviews pop-up on the left. This tiny element is a great way to keep visitors engaged without asking them to browse individual products. They can get a feel for their quality from the homepage too.
Highlight the Search Option
The site search feature is an often overlooked landing page element that can significantly impact conversion rates. It is especially important on large websites that either have a ton of content or that sell thousands of products. You can expect visitors to find what they want without a search bar.
While just having said search bar is often enough, there are many things you can do to further improve it, thus boosting both user experience and conversion rates.
Let’s look at a great example from MarketBeat. Here’s why it works so well:
The search results appear even before you type in your query. This will help you understand what you could look for: news or stock prices or trends, for example. You may also immediately spot something you are interested in, as the predefined results are the site’s most popular searches.
You can search through different categories, and this is clearly highlighted. You will immediately know if the search result is an article, a company page, or a data-based page.
The results change while you type, so you can find a relevant result faster, plus you can also see more of the website. You may spot a news headline you didn’t know you were interested in, for example.
This kind of intuitive and very user-friendly search feature is a great addition to any large website. It will also be helpful on a smaller one, but the results won’t be as numerous.
Use Non-Intrusive Pop-Ups
Pop-ups can be a great way to boost engagement levels and show your landing page visitors something they have not yet seen. However, they can also be quite intrusive and annoying, especially if they interrupt the browsing experience, as most of them do.
Instead of dropping a full-screen banner from the top of the page or even shooting out a smaller exit-intent pop-up, try engaging your customers with a chat message. It’s less intrusive, takes up less screen real estate, and is a good format for delivering extra messages.
This is what Aura did on their homepage. They only show the pop-up to first-time visitors (returning ones don’t get to see the message), and it’s very subtle and respectful. The message itself is also very useful: it gives you a clear benefit for converting and reminds you that there is a free trial available if you are interested.
You can further adapt this strategy and tailor it to leads in different stages of the sales funnel. Returning visitors can get different offers or be shown different benefits, and even existing customers or free trial users can be further nurtured with a personalized message.
Make Your CTAs Pop
Since the CTA is the one element that directly leads to conversion, it needs to be given its due attention. A lot of brands fail to invest any real time and effort in CTA design on their landing pages. As a result, they end up with subpar CTAs that don’t encourage conversions.
Here is what makes a good CTA:
Actionable language that evokes an emotional response
A clear value proposition
A time-sensitive deal or a play on FOMO
Personalized copy that speaks directly to the visitor: use “my” and “your” instead of generic passive voice
Prominent placing and a stand-out design
Short and clearly legible text
A logical hierarchy that matches the flow of the page
Supporting text that highlights the value of converting
Enough surrounding white space
You can also brand your CTA copy, make sure that the button is clearly clickable, and play with shapes, colors, and fonts.
Going does a good job with their CTAs, implementing the most important best practices from the above list, as you can see on their page dedicated to finding cheap airline tickets.
The buttons are large and vibrant. The “sign up” CTA is the first thing you spot on the page. For the rest of them, they have used a branded CTA, “Get Going”. The CTAs are placed in logical places, and there aren’t too many of them. Just enough to ensure that a button can easily be reached from every part of the page.
Show Relevant Statistics
Facts will often speak louder than promises, and numbers can often be more compelling than words. If you can, include relevant statistics or figures on your landing pages that will show your leads what they can expect to get from you.
This won’t always be possible, but you can get a bit creative and come up with your own statistics. For example, if you sell shoes, you can say that 93% of your shoppers get their size right on the first try, based on your great sizing guide. You can get this stat by analyzing your returns and the reason why people send an item back.
If you are a service-based company, you can show the results you have achieved for your clients. You don’t have to write entire case studies (although that would be very helpful, too). You can just summarize the key numbers on your landing page.
Dropbox is a good example of how you can make this tactic work. They use numbers to show you the size and reliability of their service. If over 600.000 teams use them and if their mobile app has been downloaded over a billion times, you know that they are doing something right.
When displaying stats, make sure you don’t inadvertently make them sound like a promise. For example, if you claim that you get an average of 100% growth in the first six months for your clients, make sure new ones understand that this is not a guarantee and that results will vary by case.
Create Multiple Conversion Paths
Finally, you also want to make sure that you offer your website visitors various options for converting. This is especially important if you are a large brand that offers a wide variety of services or sells numerous different product categories. Instead of showcasing just one, provide leads with multiple conversion paths.
You will likely not be able to provide all relevant paths from a single landing page (especially not your homepage). Your main menu still serves as the main navigational element that will help leads find what they are looking for. However, by offering several varied CTAs and directing traffic accordingly, you can significantly boost user experience.
Unbounce is a very good example of this mindset. They offer dozens of products, and you may not be sure where to start. In their homepage header, however, they offer you the choice of creating landing pages or writing copy with the help of AI. These CTAs then take you to check out two of their most popular products.
However, there are other helpful CTAs further down the page that can teach you about the best way to use their solution, show you use cases, and highlight some of their other features. While they haven’t covered all of their bases, they provide just enough information for a lead to get started.
Wrapping Up
Before you start implementing any of these landing page tweaks, take a look at the version that is currently live on your website. What are its best elements, and what could be improved? Then consider how you can personalize and adapt these suggestions to match your design, tone of voice, and brand story.
Need some help with your landing page design? Wix website builder Phantom Eye Design creates websites that help turn your visitors into customers. Schedule your free strategy call with us today.