Landing Page A/B Tests to improve Conversions

An improved conversion makes enormous impact overall marketing and business results. Let’s say you have 1,000 visitors to a particular marketing offer landing page that is converting at 5%, giving you 50 leads. You adjust the page and increase the conversion rate to 15%, delivering 150 leads.That small effort results in a 200% increase in lead quantity, which isn't bad for just a few tweaks here and there.

Or perhaps you have an order page that generates 15 sales per 1,000 visits (1,5% conversion rate). With an average order amount of £100 that gives you £1,500 in revenue. Improve the conversion rate by just 0,5% and you have an additional £500 to contribute to the bottom-line. Unsurprisingly, this also makes increasing sales revenue a critical objective

So how can you go about improving your conversion rates? A/B testing is an excellent option to determine which elements of your marketing are working well and which, when changed, produce better results.That’s great but what should you be testing, you may ask. The most correct answer is everything! But let’s refine that down to our landing pages for today. We can look at A/B testing emails and other marketing assets on another day.What should you be testing on your landing pages? Here are a few ideas, and pointers on elements you can consider when testing.

What To A/B Test on Your Landing Page if You Want More Conversions

Headline

A great, compelling headline can be the difference between a conversion and a bounce from your landing page. Be sure to include your unique value proposition and ensure that it is aligned to your visitors’ needs, not your own objectives.

• Is your headline compelling?
• Is it specific and aligned to your persona's pain points and interests?
• Does it include a unique value proposition?
• Have you tested your formatting? Would a centred headline be more effective than a left-justified one?
• Have you conducted a thorough audit of your social media accounts? Have you determined which networks you will be focusing on for your campaign?
• Have you done competitor research? (Have your competitors' social pages been performing well? What are their engagement levels? Do they post a specific

BettingExpert.com is a social network offering betting enthusiasts an opportunity to monitor odds and get tips on how best to place their bets. They ran an A/B test with different headline text to see if they could move the needle on conversions.

Control headline: Passionate about betting? We are too

Treatment headline: Make More Money on Your Bets - Get Free Daily Betting Tips

In this test the treatment headline change led to a 41% increase in conversion. The control headline did not provide sufficient value or relevance to the viewer. The treatment headline conveys a much stronger value proposition that talks directly to the prospects' needs.

Lesson: Be sure that your headline leaves the prospect with a clear and relevant reason to convert. You essentially want them to be saying, "Yes please, I would like that!"

Visuals

We know that visuals work well to engage visitors. People process visual information far quicker than plain text so it is a good idea to include them on your landing pages. Images can also act as visual cues of where visitors should direct their attention.

• Do your visuals align with your brand guidelines?
• Have you considered different image styles like product shots or applications images?
• Would a multimedia file potentially perform better, whether it's video or a presentation?

Copy

Naturally your copy should give the reader a better, deeper sense of what it is that is on offer.

• Have you covered the benefits of your offer, and how it meets your persona's challenges, needs and pain points?
• Have you prepared shorter and longer content options to test?
• Have you used bullet points to clarify your copy for your audience
• Have you tested whether bolding certain keywords helps to drive conversions?
• Have you included words that invoke specific feelings from your audience?

AwayFind is an application that let's you step away from your inbox and alerts you to messages of high priority only. The tested the copy on their landing page to see if adjustments would have any impact on lead generation.

Control copy: 2 line headline with 4 lines of paragraph copy.

Treatment copy: 1 line headline with a sub heading that highlights the words AWAY and FIND.

The treatment outperformed the control by 38%, which represented a significant lift in trials.

Lesson: Put your copy to the test. Having shorter, punchier headline backed up with a subheading that brings benefits to the fore is helpful to lead generation efforts.

Call-to-action (CTA)

Depending on the type of landing page, your call-to-action (CTA) may be embedded within the form or it may be a stand-alone item to drive another action. Either way, testing your CTA is vitally important, as it is the critical component of the conversion path.

• Have you tried and tested variations on your CTA text?
• Have you used appropriate wording to prompt your reader to take action?
• Have you tried and tested changing your CTA's design, changing up elements like colour or design rendering?
• Have you tried alternative placement options like above or below the fold?

Form

In order to collect your new leads' or customer's details from your landing page, you're going to need to include a form. A form can generally create some anxiety for your visitors so it's imperative to do what you can to reduce the friction to convert.

• Have you tested your forms to discover an optimal length?
• Do the number of form fields correspond with the audience's perception of your offer's value?
• Have you tested the layout of your form, and whether horizontal or vertical formatting performs better?
• Have you tested your form field label positioning?
• Have you tested your CTA button for design and placement? This button is the last aspect of your page that your visitors will see before making a decision to either buy a product, get in touch or download an offer. It's important you are showing the best performing CTA possible.

Expedia is an online travel booking portal. They tested removing a single form field in the hope that it would reduce sale abandonment.

Both the control and treatment are shown side by side below.

By eliminating the Company Name field (which was not even a required field), Expedia ramped up site profit by $12mil. They don't offer a conversion rate increase, but I'm guessing $12mil is a decent lift!

Lesson: Uncover form fields that are causing friction and if possible, remove them. Further information can be gathered from leads later in the buying cycle. Make forms as simple as possible for improved conversion rates.

Navigation

Yuppie Chef is a South African online store that sells premium kitchen tools. And who loves premium kitchen tools? Brides to be! Yuppiechef wanted to increase their rate of wedding registry sign ups and they tested two landing pages for this – one with navigation and one without.

Control: With navigation.

Treatment: Without navigation.

They found that the page without navigation raised the conversion rate by 100%. This is true to our best-practice guide when it comes to landing pages in that we recommend removing top-level navigation. 

Lesson: Eliminate distractions on a landing page that would cause visitors to lose focus on the primary objective.

This is by no means an exhaustive list as the options for A/B testing are limitless. The important takeaway here is that without implementing A/B testing you will not know what impacts your conversion rate - either positively or negatively. If you're looking to improve your conversion rate, A/B testing (and Growth-Driven Design) is a must!

Have you tested any of the above aspects? Share your results in the comments below and let us know.