Many marketers believe there is no winning formula to increase conversion rates, decrease conversion costs, improve conversion quality, and reduce conversion cost.
You’re right! It is there, and KlientBoost uses it every day.
These average lifts are supported by data from more than 250+ clients and over 10,000 CRO tests.
- Conversion rates increase by 52%
- Conversions at a lower cost by 33%
- Increase conversion quality by more than 100%
We are sure. It sounds too good to true. *eye roll*
How does KlientBoost do it? Too many conversion-happy marketers rush to split test poor hypotheses before setting up their landing page foundation.
Instead, our agency’s powers are focused on:
- We know that a small number of low-effort tests will have the greatest impact in the shortest time.
- We incorporate structure and control into our process to ensure repeatable, predictable and reliable results.
- Combine Unbounce’s Strong Traffic with Unbounce to increase performance and achieve client goals quicker
KlientBoost is a company that understands the importance of marketing rules.
Landing Page Testing goes wrong
Nearly all articles on landing page testing list the following as main reasons why tests fail.
- Insights are lacking:Too often landing pages don’t collect data via heatmaps or session recordings, form analytics, conversion tracking, or form analytics. This results in ill-informed hypotheses regarding what tests to run.
- Hypotheses that are too weak:Marketers often misdiagnose the problem and propose solutions. Or worse, they rush testing random variables, such as button color, but without any real hypothesis.
- You can’t run an A/B test that is reliable with only 200 visitors. To reach statistical significance, you need volume (multivariate tests require more volume than A/B test). Most landing pages lack volume.
- You don’t have enough time: It is impossible to run an A/B test in one week and expect reliable results. Volume requires time. Time takes money, patience and money.
These articles are not wrong. These articles are not wrong.
How can you do it all?
5 New Rules for Landing Page Testing
Although you can run as many A/B test as you like, we prefer that you use five landing page rules KlientBoost has identified as essential.
- Call-to-action (CTA), intent is required to convert traffic intent.
- Concentrate on the offer.
- Apply the Breadcrumb Method to your forms.
- Do not stop at the Thank You page.
- Smart Traffic is your best bet.
Let’s take a look at each.
1. Traffic Conversion Intent must follow Call-to-Action Intent
Conversion intent is the likelihood that your ideal customer will convert.
Low intent (“cold Traffic”) Visitors who don’t know the brand or who are only looking for information and have not expressed any intent to convert.
High intent (“hot visitors”) = Visitors that most likely know the brand and are ready to buy.
Let’s take a B2B SaaS case.
High-intent visitors are those who visit a landing page by themselves via direct visits, branded paid searches, retargeting ads, or organic search and convert on a “book demo” CTA.
Low-intent visitors are those who visit a landing page via display ads, informational Google searches, or native audiences on Facebook and have no intent to convert.
A CTA that doesn’t align with your visitor’s conversion intent will fail. It doesn’t really matter how you split-test your landing page. Cold display traffic is unlikely to convert on your CTA to book a demo.
Here’s the catch: It’s highly unlikely that a conversion will lead to a sale, even if it does happen.
Why ? Because The higher the visitor’s intent, the more momentum has throughout the sales and marketing funnel. Thisis the key to closing the sale.
Different channels can signal different intent levels when it comes to intent. Landing page testing begins with ensuring that your traffic and CTAs are aligned. KlientBoost calls this the Ice Cube or Volcano Scale.
A person who is passively scrolling LinkedIn (and who isn’t part in any custom audience) clearly has different intentions than someone who searches Google for “Gusto HR Software Demo”
Because social can be used to target native audiences or retargeting audience , and is not an intent channel as paid search. This is why LinkedIn paid campaigns often fail to convert native LinkedIn audiences.
It is not possible to run a “book demo” ad to an Instagram audience that has never heard of you or haven’t indicated intent to purchase.
It’s not going to happen.
A/B testing will be more effective if channel, CTA and intent are in sync. You must first categorize your traffic into conversion intent categories.
In Google, you can, for example, divide up your generic, competitor, and informational keywords into separate campaigns. Separate your lookalike, saved, and custom audiences in Facebook to create different ad sets. Next, you can route traffic to CTAs according to intent.
This will be your foundational landing page victory. Don’t forget, if you have The Iceberg Effect, your traffic splits will not matter.
You should not exclude audiences from one another on social media. This can lead to Venn diagram overlaps which can be very harmful. One way to avoid this is to exempt custom audiences from your lookalike audience.
Similar with paid search. Make sure that your search terms match your keywords.
2. Concentrate aggressively on how the offer is presented
KlientBoost has run numerous tests where everything has been removed below the fold. We have chosen headlines and subheadlines with purposeful and random copy. We’ve seen visitors pay attention to the CTA and its words time and again.
CTA copy to increase motivation
You don’t often need to alter your offer or goal in order to increase conversions. Your CTA copy should be changed to make your visitors more motivated.
We’ve tried five different CTAs, headlines/subheadlines and other marketing strategies for our marketing plan.
- Free trial
- Receive a free audit
- Receive a free proposal
- Get a free marketing plan
- Start my pricing calculation
The offer has not changed, only the headline/subheadline or CTA copy. With each iteration, our CTA copy increased the and conversion rate.
Version 1: 14-day trial
Version 2 – Get a free proposal
Version 3 – Free Marketing Plan
Version 4: Pricing calculation
Although each version is different, they all lead to the same goal: a consultation.
We were able to test different headlines and CTAs without changing the offer and build motivation.
Why should we trust CTA copy? Simple, effective and impactful. Simple.
This is only one example. Let’s assume we are dealing with personal injury attorneys. 99% of them use the “Free Consultation” CTA. If they change their CTA to “See If I have a Case” or “See What My Case Is Worth,” they will get higher conversion rates, while still having a consultation.
This trick is to combine the main questions/objections that your visitors have and make it into a CTA which promises answers.
3. Apply the Breadcrumb Method to Your Forms
Contrary to what you may have heard, fewer fields does not necessarily mean higher conversion rates. It depends on many factors.
Forms can be crucial for landing pages that lead to conversions. But The first impression that visitors get of your form’s fields will make or break conversions.
Form layout, number and order of fields, field labels, field orders, placeholder text, button text, radio button vs. dropped down–the list is endless. Splitting forms should focus on one experiment. Adding multiple steps to the form and changing the order of them.
The Breadcrumb Technique allows you to separate form fields into at most two stages, rather than putting them all together on one form. KlientBoost’s free marketing plan form, for example, has four forms (pictured below).
A standard form may show all fields in one column. Our multi-step form breaks down six fields into four easily digestible stages. Visitors won’t see Step Two unless they have completed Step One.
Multiple steps: Why? There are three reasons.
- Psychology of compliance
- Lead quality
- Results
This is known as the Breadcrumb Technique. It involves persuading people by asking them to agree to a smaller request.
Robert Cialdini, a behavioral psychologist, calls it the “Consistency Principle of Persuasion.” When people commit to something actively, it’s much more likely that they will complete it Simple.
Multi-step forms leverage this principle of psychology by placing the most dangerous form fields (contact information) last and the least threatening fields first. Prospects will be more likely to commit to your form if you ask non-threatening and non-intrusive questions. They are more likely to sign up once they have committed.
Let’s take a look at Lytx, another client.
You will notice that the first two steps ask questions about softball and the final two ask for personal information (email address, phone number, name).
Bottom line: Multi-step forms increase conversions. It’s a lot.
We converted Lytx’s form to multiple steps and asked for names, phone numbers, and email in the last step. This increased conversion rate of Lytx from 1% to 20%, increased their lead volume from 6 to 13, and reduced CPA by 95%. Dang.
4. Do not stop at the “Thank You!” Page
If you have filled out a landing-page form and received the confirmation message, raise your hand.
*All hands up*
Compare that to ChiliPiper’s confirmation page.
DemandScience, like most others, slows down conversion momentum by making it difficult for you to wait for a sales representative to follow up. To schedule a demo?
Similar to ChiliPiper’s calendar, uses your confirmation page/thank you page to get prospects to the next step of the conversion funnel (and closer towards revenue).
“But what about lead scoring/qualifying?”
You listened to Step One (see conversion intent). The only traffic sources who see your “demo” request (or the equivalent “high intent” offer for your industry) is those who are willing to buy. You don’t need to score them. They can be “qualified” right away.
Not all nextsteps toward revenue are meant to be a huge PDF download or resource guide. It doesn’t in most cases. This step is necessary to determine the effectiveness of your funnel.
Make it easy for high-intent buyers to convert on your CTA. You already have the data around the potential to close a lead with less time.
These are some ideas you might try:
- A calendar widget should be placed on your thank-you page. You can also hire an additional sales development rep (SDR), to help you identify high-quality leads. People who aren’t qualified right now will be qualified in six months. All people should have the white glove experience.
- will tell people what email address or telephone number they can reach if you are unable to do so. You’ll be ghosted by spammers or robo-callers, even if you converted. This will help to alleviate the problem.
- Let people know when you can expect to hear back from them. This will give them an explicit heads-up.
It took so much effort and time to convert the lead, so don’t let your thank you/confirmation page ruin the momentum of the deal. Do better.
5. Smart Traffic: Get All-In
Your landing page testing foundations are now stronger than ever. It’s time to call in our AI friends.
Smart Traffic is Unbounce’s AI-powered algorithm which matches visitors to the variant most likely to convert.
Smart Traffic isn’t like traditional A/B testing. It doesn’t choose one variant to be the winner. Smart Traffic analyzes the conversion rates of different groups of people on multiple variants. Smart Traffic then directs each group to the version they are most likely to convert.
In the graphic below, you can see how traditional A/B tests leave conversions unattended, while Smart Traffic does not.
What is the truth? A/B Testing is not going to work for most of you. This requires too much expertise, dedication (duration), traffic volume and ad-budget to be effective. Small businesses don’t have the funds to do this.
They have the resources to create Smart Traffic.
Smart Traffic converts faster with just 50 visitors. It allows you to test multiple variants simultaneously and works with multiple traffic sources simultaneously. It also does all the analysis.
Smart traffic will be more efficient than A/B testing for most people reading this (unless you have the resources).
Better–or better, Yet, Get Smart Traffic
Let’s get to the bottom of it: While you can run as many A/B testing as you like (which many marketers do), landing page testing won’t give consistent or reliable results unless your house is in order.
Prioritization and fundamentals are essential. After you’ve prioritized and built a strong foundation, you can start testing low-effort/high-impact experiments like CTA copy, multi-step forms, and thank you pages.
Even so, it is possible that you do not have the traffic volume, test duration, budget or expertise necessary to conduct effective landing page testing.
Smart Traffic by Unbounce is a great option. This is the ideal starting point for digital marketers and novice CROs to improve their landing pages’ performance.
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