Getting Started with Landing Page Optimization ft. CXL Institute <> Review

This is Part 8/12 of learnings that I gained from CXL Institute’s Growth Marketing Minidegree.

6 min readOct 6, 2020

In this segment I am going to cover some important things that I learned from the Landing Page Optimization course in brief. I was so excited before starting this one as I am working on a project that does not have a landing page so now after finishing this, I can make one on my own!

Landing Page Optimization | Michael Aagaard

Let’s revise some basics first, So what do you call a Landing page? or what qualifies to be one?

It’s the page that you land on from somewhere else (not necessarily). This is the page that you were sent to from an Ad source.
Landing pages work independently, it sure is linked to a site or an app but with a clear conversion goal.
Call it a bridge that shortens user journey from s mere click to conversion.

How landing page differs from other pages?

Users who land here can relate to the promise or USP that was mentioned in the ad source.
It motivates them to buy the product/service while also addressing the friction points.
Something that can answer why am I here? (provide clarity)
and finally it must straighten all the doubts while making a clear path to the conversion.

When a user shows up they see a bunch of different things, some information, links, maybe 2–3 jargon (hope they don’t start searching it on Wikipedia because you end-up reading nuclear science no matter from where you start) So in short, what I am trying to establish here is, it’s not about making your landing page look pretty, there’s much more at stake to convert a user. Psychology, colors, emotions you deliver via copy of your landing page and so on and so forth.

Fast thinking, Slow thinking and Cognitive Biases to eliminate confusing experiences

How fast do customers make a decision?

Okay,

2 x 2 =

17 x 23 =

you didn’t just read the first one but even answered it in a jiff, that is fast thinking that we call intuitive thinking and for the later, you would take a bit of time to calculate and answer (just kidding you didn’t even try, exactly!) that is slow or analytical thinking. Do you want your users to be intuitive? or Analytical?

So Intuitive thinking is automatic it is based on emotions, subconscious, and it is in the moment, whereas when we talk about analytical thinking it needs logic, efforts, and even future planning in some cases. Here we reduce the slow thinking by making relevancy between the advert and the landing page, framing the page in such a way that it doesn’t ask much from a user but gives something in return, and lastly by following WYSIATI :What you see is all there is, following this will sort of take away the red flags and subtly drive more conversion.

Role of Brain Chemicals (Dopamine and Cortisol) in decision making

Dopamine is related with reward system, it makes humans feel safe, whereas with cortisol is responsible to make you alert, keep your guard active towards a threat. Now you don’t want people to release cortisol while they are on your landing page. Ever went on to rage clicking on some form or threw our device away when it didn’t work when you really wanted it to work? well that’s extreme case of cortisol but you get the gist.

While on a landing page funnel, we constantly promise users a reward and you must give users what they want and try not to trigger any cortisol moves that would harm conversion. It can even trigger with past bad experiences as well. Did you just copied a landing page design which had big green CTA buttons asking you to signup and promising some bonuses and bombarding users with endless information, yeah stop doing that.

Avoid use of stop words, provide what users expect, make them feel that they are in control, and please don’t add a timer of 15 minutes to grab the product or grab it before timer runs out or something like that, here you are making a pressure, which leads to analytical thinking and again triggers cortisol and once the timer runs out they are never coming back. One good example would be for eCommerce websites who show cheap products but charge a lot for delivery and that too directly on checkout page.

Wire-framing with Information hierarchy to know what you want on a Landing page before starting to build one.

So what do you mean by a wire-frame? It’s like a blueprint, more like a skeleton of the complete design. Here you take out what is in your head on a white-board, paper, or you can use tools like sketch, or power-point. The idea is to fit everything in an order so that you can zoom out and see if it matches your intent of creating the landing page. It will save you efforts as you might have to change the actual design if something is not correct. TL;DR you are allowed to make mistakes in wireframes and change it and do revisions till you get it right and go on with designing the perfect landing page.

Now coming to the part of Information hierarchy, there are some important copy and then comes not so important one. It all depends on the audience you are tapping. Are they problem aware? then start with providing them solution maybe a product video, after that throw-in a bunch of stuff that makes you look credible. If they are solution aware, then start with why they must choose you. Basically you decide on what information is most important and how much is sufficient.

Quantitative and Qualitative Landing Page Optimization Research

Quantitative is What and Where. You can do it with Google Analytics. See what pages are not converting, then dig deep to ask from where people are leaving the funnel. For this check the bounce rate of the pages. Look for a higher figure. Then check devices (mobile or desktop) optimize the one they are leaving early. This process is to know what page is killing your funnel and even to identify low hanging fruits that you can grab by simply tweaking one or two things.

Qualitative is to know Why? Answering Why are people leaving or bouncing from that page. For this you can do customer interviews, create feedback polls, ask around some questions to customer success teams and basically its figuring out what part of copy, or bugs in the page is hurting conversion.

Landing Page Copywriting

5 important things: Headline, Benefits/features, Credibility, Expectation Manager and Call-to-action.

Here are some headline tips:

It must capture attention, trigger dopamine while clearly explaining what you are about to offer them.

( Do something difficult) in ( short amount of time ) without ( problem )
Example: (Build a landing page) in (in less than an hour) without (help from your developer)

For benefits or features, clearly state your products motive, answer questions, use bullet points, or body copy, paragraphs, whatever makes it look aesthetic go for it. Also people don’t want to read too much and more content will just make them bounce so be precise.

Credibility: Put in some Testimonials, figures like 15 years of experience and 30000 + clients or something like that. Brand Mentions also does the job.

Expectation Manager: Let people know what they are getting, make them feel secure.

Call-to-action: Make it stand out, use rewarding words and not requesting ones.

Landing Page Design principles

Don’t give them a lot to digest right from the start. Do some usability tests to make sure everything is in order. Use proper colors and make sure text is visible. Pro tip: Don’t use fonts with tailends. Also make sure that your value proposition stands out. Don’t make it too crowded, leave some white space and most importantly stop using too much distracting non relevant visuals.

Give stress to elements that are going to be noticed first and put something of value with that stuff. Make our CTA’s stand out subtly and Green CTA converts better is a myth. Try the orange ones.

I can relate research part with CRO course that I took earlier. It also had some aspect of A/B testing and User-Centric design. Next I am going to take Product Messaging and Sales Copywriting course. Hopefully my writing style and the way I choose my words will be a bit more sophisticated to intrigue expert audience after I am done with the course. Fingers Crossed!