BY LAUREN SMITH
You’ve spent time getting your email just right. Have you given your landing page the same attention? A great landing page can make the difference between a successful email marketing campaign and a wasted opportunity.
In our webinar with Unbounce, How to Design Email Landing Pages That Convert, we highlighted the elements of a high-converting landing page. We also covered how to fix clarity problems in your copywriting and design visual experiences based on proven principles.Check out the slides and recording so you can start delivering delightful campaign experiences from start to finish.
During the webinar there were tons of questions and we didn’t have time to get to them all. Luckily, Oli Gardner, Co-Founder of Unbounce (and certified landing page maniac!), has graciously agreed to answer them here on our blog.
LINKS IN EMAILS & LANDING PAGES
IS THERE AN IDEAL NUMBER OF LINKS IN THE EMAIL OR ON THE LANDING PAGE?
At every level of your campaign (both the email and the landing page), you should try and keep the number of links down to the absolute bare minimum. Resist the urge to include incongruent links—it’s just distracting your subscribers from the action you want them to take.
DO NAVIGATION/MENU BARS COUNT AS “DISTRACTIONS” AND INCREASE THE OVERALL NUMBER OF LINKS?
Do not use your site’s navigation bar on your landing page—it’s a distraction and takes them away landing page itself. Don’t even link the logo on your landing page!
If you’re going to use a navigation bar make it “sticky” and use internal anchor links. When users click on an item in the navigation bar, it will auto-scroll them to the location of that content on the landing page. This is beneficial because it gives you the ability to break down the content with signals in the navigation without having the user leave the page.
In addition, a sticky navigation bar is great for heat mapping—you can see which content on the page people are most interested in. Nix everything they aren’t clicking on or scrolling to.
HEAT MAPPING + “THE FOLD”
WHAT RESOURCES DO YOU RECOMMEND FOR HEAT MAPPING AND USER TESTING?
IS THE FOLD STILL A CONCERN?
Scroll maps are a great way to test whether the fold is relevant to the people viewing your landing page or website. Are people even scrolling far enough to see the important content or to take the action you want them to take? Often you’ll find that the fold isn’t a big concern—people aren’t afraid to scroll. But sometimes you’ll be shocked by the behavior on your pages.
Interestingly, the fold does matter when it comes to video engagement. Data from Wistia has shown that as soon as you move a video beneath the fold, engagement drops in half. Conversely, we’ve found that forms perform better—on average—when they’re placed below the fold, possibly because it allows you to tell your story before asking for something.
HTML VS TEXT EMAILS
DO YOU PREFER HTML EMAILS OVER TEXT-ONLY? OUR A/B TESTS HAVE SHOWN US THAT WE GET HIGHER CONVERSIONS WITH TEXT-ONLY EMAILS. HOWEVER, WE CAN’T CARRY THE VISUALS FROM THE EMAIL TO THE LANDING PAGE WITH TEXT-ONLY EMAILS. WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?
Cohesion between emails and landing pages is important. However, there must be a balance between what the data tells you and what your gut tells you—especially when your brand is at stake. Sometimes you can’t just rely on data alone. The important thing to keep in mind is that every piece of data, or insight you gather—from any source—is merely an input into the hypothesis you develop en route to a new solution.
Design and message match are an important signal that connects pre and post click experiences. However, an interesting delineation from—and exception to this is—is that the visual context between emails and landing pages becomes less important with those that are customers who know your brand very well. In this context, they already know who you are, what you do, and thus need fewer signals that they are in the right place. They don’t need to be coddled as much as new subscribers, or new customers.
OPTIMIZING CALLS-TO-ACTION (CTA)
HOW WOULD YOU RECOMMEND B2B SENDERS WITHOUT AN ECOMMERCE PRESENCE OPTIMIZE THEIR CTAS (I.E. TO CONTACT A SALESPERSON OR STAFF MEMBER)?
When you have a form for a call back or the like, be sure to include expectations in close proximity to your CTA. When will you call them back? Will it be within one business day? Or within one hour? Your potential customers are going to be looking at other alternatives to your business so you want to set them up with accurate expectations.
FORM LENGTH
IS THERE A BEST PRACTICE FOR THE NUMBER OF FIELDS ON A FORM?
Not really. There’s the predictable outcome, that one form field will convert higher than 11. But some of the data we’ve analyzed from Unbounce customer landing pages has shown that there is a point where the number of form fields, and the corresponding conversion rate, flattens out. Strangely, we saw that the average conversion rate among forms with 4, 5, 6, or fields didn’t change. What does this tell us? That you should try adding a few form fields to test if the amount of extra data collected even impacts conversion rates.
WEBINAR RESOURCES
Numerous attendees asked about resources mentioned during the webinar. Well, here they are!
- Unbounce ebook: “Attention-Driven Design: 23 Visual Principles For Designing More Persuasive Landing Pages”
- Float label pattern
- Slides & recording
GET LANDING PAGE ADVICE
For more inspiration, we’ve organized a thread in the Litmus Community for you to submit a landing page you’re proud of to gather feedback from others. Oli Gardner from Unbounce is even dishing out advice!
Join the conversation, or simply lurk, to discover real tips and feedback for creating landing pages that lead to increased conversions.
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