What's easier: getting twice the amount of traffic to your landing page or doubling your conversion rate?
If you guessed conversion rate, you're right.
When you need to get more opt-ins, always try to improve the conversion rate first. Making improvements to a landing page is a lot quicker and easier than getting more traffic.
Traffic is hard. Quality traffic is harder. So make better use of your existing traffic.
When we had a landing page that wasn't getting a lot of opt-ins, we decided to work on improving its conversion rate.
Our client, The Scarf Shop, is a new eCommerce store that will sell high quality scarves in many different materials, colors, and patterns for fashion forward women.
To kick off their nearly-approaching grand opening, an enticing "Coming Soon" campaign was crucial for building a database with marketing qualified contacts to have a strong launch.
We created a pre-launch offer for a discount of $25 off of a $50 purchase they can use when the store launches.
Here is the Coming Soon landing page we designed:
And here are the results:
The results came in at 4.5% for conversion rate and 4% for new contact rate.
Taking another look at the landing page, we saw many areas where the landing page could be improved.
- The design wasn't interesting and the information was difficult to digest quickly
- Users had to scroll down to see the form and completely understand the offer
- The offer was ineffective. Who wants a discount on a store that doesn't exist yet?
Then, we got to work and completely redesigned the whole landing page.
Here are the results of the new landing page:
The submission rate increased by a staggering 222% to 14%. The new contacts rate increased by 230% to 13%.
It was obvious really early on that the new landing page and offer made a huge difference for the client's conversions.
Now all our traffic will be much more valuable as we gear up for the grand opening.
The 7 biggest changes we made to increase our conversion rate:
1. Everything is above the fold
Our product is simple enough that we don't need a long landing page. We wanted to fit everything above the fold. Now the user doesn't have to scroll at all to see the entire offer and the call-to-action. Simple to understand means easier to convert.
2. No more stock photo
Because we didn't have any product images available, we had to use a stock photo for the first landing page. We decided it would be more effective to move away from the stock photography and show visitors the real product. As a part of our inbound marketing strategy, we've been sending scarves to fashion bloggers who promote The Scarf Shop's products and collecting photos of them wearing the scarves to use on social media channels and the website. Our new landing page features a real photo from fashion blogger Kim Tuttle wearing the actual product!
3. Added visual cues
Visual cues help the user take your desired action, which in our case is to fill out our form. We edited the photo Kim sent us so that she is now looking at the form instead of away from it. This subconsciously pushes the users' eyes to the form.
4. Design and branding consistency
We made the first landing page early on in the project. Since then, the brand's image has evolved and the first landing page didn't reflect those changes. The new landing page design is more consistent with the branding that's reflected on our Instagram and our other social media profiles. Plus, the use of green and brighter colors matches the Spring and Summer season.
5. A more relevant offer
The first offer we had allowed visitors to opt in for a discount code. This is a good offer if the site was live and they could use it right away. Since the store isn't live, we were basically asking them for their email in exchange for a coupon code they couldn't even use for a product they haven't even see yet.
The offer of entering to win a free scarf is much more effective, because it's something they can get value from almost immediately (without spending money). Using the words "Every Friday" is specific and creates urgency in the offer. The earlier they opt-in, the more chances they have of winning.
6. Improved form styling
The styling of the form now matches The Scarf Shop branding better by using different colors, format, and a nicer call-to-action button. The new form creates a more enjoyable "fill out" experience, overall. This is important, because you want the least amount of friction in the conversion path for the user. If you can make it fun, then your conversion rate will increase.
7. Usability on mobile devices
The majority of our traffic is from mobile, because we're doing a lot of marketing on Instagram and other mobile-centric social media channels. That means it was important that our site was also optimized to convert on mobile devices.
Here is how the old landing page used to look compared to our new landing page on an iPhone:
On the new landing page, you can see the entire offer and even the first two questions of our form without scrolling. With the old landing page, there was a lot of wasted screen real estate on the top half of the page. The new landing page is overall easier to look at and more professional looking, creating more trust with our users and ultimately improving conversions.
Conclusion
Getting quality traffic to your website and landing page is difficult and expensive, so don't waste it!
Continually optimizing, testing, and improving your landing page will always do a better job of converting that quality traffic into leads and contacts.
Make sure you put it in your schedule to review your landing page performance every two weeks to every month (depends on how much traffic you're getting) so you can always be improving your conversion rate.
