Blog
Unique Trick to Maximizing Landing Page Conversion Rates
Landing page conversion rates typically hover around 2.35%. But here’s the thing, you ain’t a typical marketer.
You don’t care about the average, you are on the hunt for an unfair advantage. You want to take your landing page conversion rates WAY above 2.35%. Good, read on.
The job of a marketer is to design an irresistible sales pitch and ensure it’s consumed. This second part is key.
Once the sale pitch is designed we have 2 new goals:
Goal 1: creating a system to know if the most important elements of pitch are seen
Next, Goal 2: if an element is skipped bringing it back into the reader’s focus
Goal 1: creating a system to know if the most important elements of pitch are seen
The trouble with placing content on a page is we don’t really know if it was consumed.
Our hero may have scrolled past it. Not because they didn’t think it was important, but because they didn’t notice it.
Shoppers notice only a fraction of what’s on the page. Around 20%.
There are ways to use scroll speed tracking to know if a piece of content was actually consumed, but that requires coding knowledge.
A simpler solution is to house the most important elements behind clickable buttons (CTAs).
Now when the user clicks the CTA we know they at least saw our message.
Examples of important elements
Your sales pitch could have many important elements. Here are 2 that are always important:
1: “Why we exist” story
The “why we exist” story is designed to poetically explain what makes us the best in the world at what we do.
When our hero first lands her focus is on quickly determining if our solution is a good fit. She isn’t thinking about our “why we exist” story. But you’ve been doing this a long time and know shoppers who hear your “why we exist” story convert at a much higher rate. You need to get this content in front of our hero.
2: Knowing if buyer is in research mode
As a seller, I need to know if my shopper is in research mode or here to buy today. If they are in research mode I’ll naturally tweak my selling approach since I know they don’t plan to close the deal today.
A 2017 Baymard Institute study found that 57% of visitors who abandon shopping carts do so because they are in research mode.
Add to this the fact that the average site visit is 2 minutes and 32 seconds (source). That’s not a lot of time to welcome shoppers, educate them on our novel solution, and convince them to buy today.
Don’t try to force a sale. You will fail (personal experience).
Instead, do this: for visitors in research mode shift the focus to getting permission to keep in touch. We have a case study about this lower in the article.
Goal 2: if an element is skipped bringing it back into the reader’s focus
This can be achieved with Choreographed Experiences.
Definition: Choreographed Experiences maximize marketing message visibility while minimizing repetition. That’s what makes them so powerful.
How Choreographed Experiences work
Let’s say we place our “why we exist” CTA at the top of the product page. We then repeat it in paragraph 2. Finally, we mention it one more time at the bottom of the description.
If our hero misses the first mention they have a chance to notice the second mention in paragraph 2.
If that one is missed they have a final chance to see the mention at the bottom of the description.
However, if our hero does click the first mention of “why we exist” then the 2nd and 3rd links are automatically hidden. If they ignore the first link but click on the 2nd link then the 3rd link is made invisible.
How do the links get hidden?
Choreographed Experiences are tracked using cookies. The cookie value stores the data in yes / no format to indicate if a particular element was interacted with. If the value is yes the CTAs related to that element are made invisible.
Choreographed Experience Case Study
We were working on optimizing the bestseller sales for BakingSteel.com. One critical question was knowing if the visitor was here to buy or simply to research. Our strategy would have to change based on which bucket the visitor fell into. We knew people in research mode would not buy today, no matter what. So, instead of pushing to close the sale today, we shifted focus to getting their permission to keep in touch via email. But we had to know their intentions first. In this case study, you’ll see how we asked the question at 3 separate locations, but the visitor only saw it once. Case study: Popups Suck; This Technique Is 6.7x More Effective.
Choreographed Experience: make your own rules
The example above talks about using “why we exist” and “are you here today to research/buy?” but it’s very possible there is another CTA on your site that’s more important to you. Don’t just follow our formula, build your own process for choreographed experiences.
Here is an example from hydroslife.com (not a client):
FURTHER READING
We hope you enjoyed this article on how to maximize landing page conversion rates.
We’ve spent the last 13 years in our marketing lab, experimenting with ways to optimize conversion rates and grow sales. If you’re interested we’d like to share our key lessons we’ve learned:
— The most important page on your site is the product page. Why is that and why focus on product pages?
— On the product page (also called PDP) the most important element is the product description. This is where we present our product sales pitch (also called product story). This product story presentation needs to be perfect. We have just one chance to convert this visitor (only 15% of visitors ever return). This is the article you need to read next: How To Develop A Product Story
— The Myth of the Perfect Product Page
— Once the basic product story has been developed you need to rewrite it to influence the psychology of the buyer you are trying to convince. Because shoppers are exposed to so many ads they rely on a mental checklist to decide if they should consider a brand, or not. We’ve identified these 9 checklist items and developed a conversion copywriting process to influence them. That knowledge is revealed (with examples) in our most important article of all: Conversion Copywriting: How to Craft a Product Story That Converts.
ABOUT FRICTIONLESS COMMERCE
Product pages matter because that’s where our prospects make the crucial buy / no-buy decision.
We specialize in Shopify product pages. Watch your bestseller convert 20% better in 90 days. Our process.
If you like doing the hard work yourself, our founder Rishi shares conversion ideas on LinkedIn every day. Connect with him here.
If you want to make your life easier and still increase conversions, jump on a call.
Comments 2
Thanks for the easy to read and insightful article, Rishi.
I’d be interested to know if Shopify’s recent 2.0 release of “sections everywhere” could aid in implementing choreographed experiences across multiple page templates at a time, while playing nice with cookies.. For example, if you have a higher-ticket collection such as Pool Heaters which has 20 products, making a new section which adds this experience to all “Pool Heater collection templates’. Something to ask our MSM.
Question, beside Hotjar (or Hotjar if there is something I am missing), are there any low cost-to-entry tools you recommend off the bat to measure interaction and conversion results? So far I’ve come across paid tools like AB Tasty, and Convert, with Google Optimize being the non-paid popular choice, requiring a bit more engineering effort than a paid service.
Cheers!
ReplyRishi Rawat
Hi, Natalie. I’m not terribly familiar with Shopify’s latest updates but we work with Shopify clients are have no difficulty hardcoding this on the product page. But we do work on one page at a time and not a series of pages.
As far as testing is concerned Google Optimize is the cheapest way to get started. VWO.com is great once you have traction. VWO.com is what we use.
Reply