Insider tips for testing your Unbounce landing pages

Digital Marketing / October 09, 2017

By now you understand that succeeding at digital advertising means doing more than simply optimizing your keywords, placements and creative. The second (and often more important) piece of the puzzle involves conversion rate optimization: testing and optimizing your landing pages based on how your visitors respond.

Online tools such as Unbounce have created an elegant solution: WYSIWYG landing page editors that track and measure activity to show you which of your tests is performing best. In other words, it allows clever campaign managers who may not have coding or design chops to test and optimize to their hearts’ content.

11 ways to optimize and test your Unbounce landing page

Let’s get into the nitty gritty of clever ways to test your Unbounce landing pages to maximize learnings and improve conversions.

1. Adapt landing page content to each geotargeted region

Are you running multiple geotargeted campaigns? Create identical Unbounce landing pages with unique images that represent each geography you are targeting. And while you’re at it, adapt your landing page copy so it speaks to each region.

2. A/B test your headline

Don’t get too attached to your landing page headlines. Remember, it’s your visitor who decides what they like best. Start by creating variations on your top-performing ad creatives. Once you have found a winner, start testing the font, font size and headline colour.

3. Pay a lot of attention to your call to action

We don’t have to tell you to take your website CTA very seriously. Tie it back to the objective of your campaign and your business, while also tapping into the needs of your target customer. Keep it short. Keep it simple. And give it lots of room to breathe on the page.

4. SEO it

Yes, Google pays attention to whether the copy in your ads matches your landing page content. Include three sentences of SEO-optimized copy on your landing page. And make a point of updating your landing page copy with relevant keywords that give you the best results.

5. Create a clear path to conversion

Part and parcel with testing and optimizing your CTA is making it as easy as humanly possible for your visitors to carry out a desired action. Test ways to make the customer’s first click remarkably easy. Point her in the right direction, and cut out any intervening steps or noise.

6. Test different customer benefits

By now you know that successful landing pages emphasize the benefits (not features) of a product or service. (Pro tip: with a little copywriting it’s easy to flip any feature into a benefit.) A/B test all the myriad reasons why someone may think your product or service is the best: test price, convenience, ease of use, loyalty… You get it.

7. A/B test to reach consensus

“Let’s A/B test it” is a great response to anyone — colleague or client — who has a an opinion on how to manage or optimize an ad campaign. Rather than hauling out best practices or showing him or her what worked last time, simply set up a test and let your visitors decide what’s best.

8. Test different landing page images

Go beyond what your client, designer or CEO things is the best landing page image. Maybe your visitors intuitively respond to clip art. Or maybe they get more excited by an image of your product or service in action. Test a variety of different image types. You may be surprised by which one wins.

9. Test again

Found your winning combination? Don’t assume it’s the best solution for everything, forever. Continually iterate and test on your top performing Unbounce landing page… eventually it may get stale, or become even better thanks to that idea you had in the middle of the night.

10. Get fancy and run a multivariate test

Yes, it’s a big word and it can impress the heck out of your C-suite. Running a multivariate test simply means testing several landing page variables at the same time to come up with the impossible perfect combination of landing page elements. Don’t be intimidated.

11. Test and refine your forms

Test ways you can smooth over your visitors’ reluctance to fill in online forms. Make your form shorter. Change the size of its fields. Test different background colours. Position differently on the page. You get it.

Report your findings

If you conduct a successful A/B test and no one knows you did it, did it really occur? Develop an easy way to share your findings with your team and/or clients. There are two key reasons for this: when you share your learnings, everyone learns; and it clearly demonstrates the value of your work. Worst case scenario: Campaign conversion magically improves and no one knows why or clearly understands your contribution. Don’t let this happen to you.

The more you test, the better you understand your customer

Beyond all the documented tests and results that directly influence the next iteration of your landing pages, the testing process brings about a customer-centric approach to design. This shift is the end result of all testing and optimization: rather than asking your design team, your coders or sales team, you begin to rely on data that reflects your customers’ direct experience.

Yes, you can still build beautiful things. You’ll just be able to build beautiful things that generate better results.