Landing page optimization is critical part of your online marketing strategy. But landing page optimization can be a double-edged sword; immediate improvements in micro conversions high up the funnel may result in lower overall prospect quality.
Everyone should know by now that on-page optimization is a critical tactic in your overall online marketing strategy. Optimizing your conversion rate can effectively boost your return on investment in digital marketing, as well as reduce churn and overall spend.
What most marketers won’t tell you, however, is that landing page optimization can be a double-edged sword; immediate improvements in micro conversions high up the funnel may result in lower overall prospect quality.
Consider the pitfalls of some of the most popular conversion-optimizing tips.
It’s hard to argue that reducing the overall content on a landing page would be anything but successful for most campaigns, as it does in fact reduce the probability that a landing page will overwhelm a prospect. However, answering fewer questions about your products or services may cause havoc to your overall conversion rate over time. When dramatically reducing your landing page content, keep a close eye on offline channels such as phone and email.
Less escape routes mean more probability of prospects continuing along your chosen path. But without consistency across the rest of your site, overall new visitor trust may result in higher abandonment.
While I certainly can attest to the conversion lift trust marks can provide for widespread (but tasteful) use on an ecommerce site, landing pages are somewhat different. In most cases, broader phrases that ensure security that link to your trust marks or certificates can be more powerful to win prospects over and convert.
In B2B campaigns, association between large-scale brands that you do business with can definitely touch a nerve with prospects, especially for smaller start-ups. Make sure you’ve done due diligence in establishing good relationships with your partners and seek written approval for logo usage. The worst thing a marketer can do is include a logo on a landing page meant to generate interest that ends up causing turbulence with a long-term lucrative client.
While these tactics can elicit a strong reaction to first time visitors, it can also have very undesirable effects on lead quality. Many visitors are conditioned to fill out forms and commit to agreements without reading anything else on a landing page. Sometimes it’s worth it to lose a few people on your landing pages than to sacrifice your overall profitability.
The key to any good experiment is strong analysis. Ensure you closely monitor the net effect landing page tests have on the rest of your website’s performance.