Landing Page Optimization

What is landing page optimization?

Landing page optimization is a process in which you make adjustments to various elements of your landing page to increase conversions and improve overall performance. Through methods like A/B testing, you can begin to test different page elements to determine how to convert more visitors into customers or leads. Some landing page elements you can test include headlines, body copy, microcopy, photos, videos, images, and the locations of all of those elements to increase conversions.

Landing page optimization allows you to address problems preventing visitors from converting, including slow load times, poor user experience (UX), and your product or service offering.

Why is landing page optimization important?

As we’ve mentioned, the main goal of landing page optimization is to increase conversions. If your landing page isn’t selling your product or services, you’re not making any money. Improvements on your landing page can increase sales and leads while providing new customers with a good first experience with your business.

Landing pages are essential sales tools, so they must be well designed. Through continuous improvements, landing page optimization can increase conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs for the business.

Landing page best practices

After you’ve built your landing page, it’s time to give the page the attention it deserves and collect email subscribers. And whether you want your landing page to reach folks who are already familiar with your business or you’re looking to connect with new audiences, social media could be a good marketing channel to start with.

Identify your target audience

Before anything else, you have to know who your target audience is so you can target and market to them effectively. If you don’t have a well-defined target audience or you don’t understand what they need and want from your business, it will be much more difficult for you to engage with them. Once you've identified your audience it will be much easier to engage with them through dedicated landing pages.

Offer value to users

Lead generation and inbound marketing are all about attracting customers to your business. To do so, it’s important to provide something valuable and helpful to them. This might include blog posts, ebooks, white papers, free trials, freemium subscriptions—really, anything that appeals to your target audience.

Find your lead magnet

Take some time to determine what pieces of content or free products are most successful with your target audience. Experiment as much as you can, A/B test with different lead magnets and ask for feedback. Then, focus your efforts on creating and developing content that’s most popular among your target audience.

Use newsletters for relationship development

Once potential customers have shared their contact information with you, use email marketing to send emails and maintain and develop that relationship with them. This will keep customers aware of your brand and entice them to convert. When using newsletters to develop better relationships with customers, you don’t have to write new content if you have already started blogging on your website. Instead, you can send your subscribers your most recent posts in an email.

Drive organic, unpaid traffic from social media]

Once you’ve published your landing page, grab the URL and share it—along with a few details about the offer you’re promoting—across all of your social channels, to get the necessary social proof that will help to increase your conversions.

Create social ads

With Mailchimp, it’s easy to design and publish Facebook and Instagram ads that reach not only your core audience, but also similar people who would also have an interest in your ad. If your landing page includes a custom signup form, we’ll even create an ad for you based on your page’s content. All you need to do is review and submit it in a few quick clicks.

As you’re planning out your social posts and ads, don’t forget to give careful consideration to your messaging and other creative elements. Remember: Your posts, ads, and landing pages are all working together in driving traffic to help you achieve one specific goal—getting new signups and growing your list by collecting emails from potential customers.

Keep your branding and visuals consistent

No matter what type of business you’ve got or what products you sell, it’s important to keep product imagery, logos, fonts, and other elements of your brand consistent between your social promotion and landing page (check out these landing page design tips to get started). If you’re offering a promo code for winter sweaters, for example, be sure to use the same (or similar) sweater photos on both. Give your audience a seamless experience that is quickly identifiable as your own and won't affect your conversion rate.

Write with your audience—and your goals—in mind

Keep your messaging and call to action clear, concise, and relevant. Everyone that sees your social post should know who you are, what you’re promoting, and how they can take advantage of your offer. Need a few pointers? Our guides for defining your Facebook and Instagram advertising strategies can help.

Don’t forget your mobile audience

Most people browse social media from their phones or other mobile devices, so make sure that you’re optimizing the experience for them, too. Avoid using small typefaces and don’t include any unnecessary details that might be tougher for folks to read on their mobile device or interfere with the process of collecting email addresses.

Welcome your new subscribers

Getting people to join your list is a great first step, but it’s only the beginning. Once they’ve subscribed, you’ll need to make them feel welcome and keep them interested in your emails going forward.

Set up automated welcome emails

Sending a welcome email is a great way to make a powerful first impression. You can say hi to your new subscribers, tell them more about yourself or your business, and let them know what type of content they can expect to receive from you in the future.

Segment by signup source

Signup source can tell you a lot about a new subscriber—like their familiarity with your business and what other content or offers might interest them, for instance. When someone subscribes through a Mailchimp landing page, we’ll track their signup source so you can use that information to easily create segments and monitor their behavior to find out who opens your emails, reads your content, and buys your stuff.

Personalize your messaging

Once you have more context about your new subscribers, you can personalize your content so it resonates with them. For example, the person who signed up to receive a download of your workout guide might be interested to get more fitness tips or workout recommendations. Folks who give you their email address in exchange for a promo code or giveaway, on the other hand, will probably want to get updates about your products, services, and any future promotions you might offer.

Landing Page Optimization: FAQs

How do I create a professional landing page?

You can create a professional landing page using any website builder, including Mailchimp’s landing page builder. These landing pages can help you grow your subscriber list and promote products and services, improving conversion rate and driving traffic directly to your website.

With Mailchimp’s landing page builder, you can create a landing page the same way you create an email. After giving it a name and selecting your audience, you can begin designing your content using a variety of customizable templates. When you’ve finished designing and entering all the important information your visitors need to convert, you can publish your page and begin using it.

Should landing pages be SEO optimized?

Depending on your goals, you may choose not to optimize your landing page through SEO. For example, if you want to use your landing page only for paid search ads, you may choose not to have Google index the page. However, optimizing your landing page and having it indexed is typically best to attract more website traffic. Therefore, even if you plan to use the landing page for paid advertising, you can still get more traffic and conversions from the page by optimizing it for search engines.

Optimizing your landing page helps visitors find you organically, making them more likely to convert into leads or customers. Even if the marketing campaign you use it for is short, you can and should still optimize the page to get as much traffic as possible.

What makes a successful landing page?

While your landing page may look different from your competitors, successful landing pages have some similar basic elements, including:

• Matching ads: If you’re using your landing for a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, it should match the design and copy of the ad. The imagery and copy don’t have to be exact matches, but the messaging should be similar to improve user experience (UX).
• Social proof: Social proof can help convince visitors to take action because they’ll hear why your product or service works from real people.
• Simple design: You don’t need to go overboard with design to have an effective landing page. Depending on the type of landing page you’re creating, you may just need to convey a short message about the offer and what visitors can expect. Just make sure you also have a clear CTA on the page.

Optimize your landing page with Mailchimp

Landing pages are an important marketing tool because they allow you to target specific visitors and help visitors understand your offer. Simple landing pages can increase conversion rates because they make your visitors consider one offer rather than all of the different offers available on your website. When designing your landing page, consider your goals and who you’re marketing to, and set clear expectations for what visitors can expect. From there, start testing different elements on the landing page to see what leads to higher conversion rates.

Create an account to design your landing page with Mailchimp. With Mailchimp’s landing page designer, you don’t need web design or development skills to start converting visitors into customers.