7 Universal Conversion Optimization Principles

Based on 350 A/B Tests and 4 Years of Research

What you get for free:

26 pages packed with insights and experience from 4 years of research and more than 350 A/B tests 7 tested and proven optimization principles you can apply to your online marketing funnel and increase conversion 17 real world case studies with before-and-after examples and results from real split tests performed for clients The flexible template for a high-converting landing page Tips and tricks based on years of hands-on experience Inspiration for your next conversion rate optimization project

Table of Contents:
Optimization Principle 1:
It's all about optimizing decisions - not web pages // Page 2

Optimization Principle 2:
The biggest change on the page doesnt necessarily result in the biggest lift // Page 6

Optimization Principle 3:
Value & relevance are king // Page 9

Optimization Principle 4:
Clear outweighs creative // Page 13

Optimization Principle 5:
Ask for the right action at the right time // Page 16

Optimization Principle 6:
Less friction = more conversions // Page 19

Optimization Principle 7:
Dont rely on your gut - Test whether your optimization efforts work // Page 24

About the Author

Page 25

The flexible template for a high-converting landing page

Page 26

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Optimization Principle 1:
It's all about optimizing decisions not web pages.
If you want results, you need to start by setting goals. When your goals are set, you need to find out how to best achieve them. I think we can all agree on the logic behind this statement. And exactly the same logic should be applied to conversion rate optimization. If you want to create a high-converting website or landing page, you need to start by defining the conversion goal. After that, you need to build the best possible website or landing page to achieve that specific goal. A beautiful webpage can be a means to an end but it should not be an end in itself. For this reason, its important that you can leave the artist on the shelf for a while, so you can assume an analytical approach and focus on giving your potential customers what they need in order to make the right decision. From a strictly aesthetic or artistic point of view, the result may not be the most creative solution. But essentially this doesnt matter. What matters is that you get as many potential customers as possible to make the right decision. The goal of CRO is to get conversions not creative awards! If the webpage itself is the main goal, you can easily end up designing something that looks great but doesnt have any effect on the decisions of your potential customers. That may get you a nomination for a creative award, but it wont get you more conversions. Ive been in several situations where we designed an awesome landing page that impressed the client only to set up a split test and find out that it had little or no positive impact on conversions.

To get more conversions, you need to get more potential customers to make the right decision and carry out a specific action on your website. Usually that action revolves around accepting an offer. No matter what you want prospects to accept, the scenario is going to be more or less the same: You offer your prospects something that represents a value to them. In order to get it, they have to give you something in return that represents a value to you. This scenario will invariably start a process in the minds of your prospects where they have to assess and decide whether your offer is worth accepting. And there are really only two possible outcomes: 1. They can say, Yes 2. They can say, No In order to get a conversion, the process has to end with your potential customers agreeing that what they will get in return is worth more than they have to part with. The decision-making process takes place in the minds of your potential customers, and optimizing this process should be the primary goal of any optimization effort - the web page itself is simply a tool to help you achieve your conversion goals.

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Case Study: 31.54% more conversions by tweaking the copy on a sign-up Form
Heres an example of a very simple change that had major impact on the decisionmaking process of the prospects on BettingExpert.com - an international betting community where tipsters can get betting tips from experts. In this case, tweaking the form copy (headline & button text), led to an increase of 31.54% in membership sign-ups. At first glance, the original form copy is pretty decent and does an okay job of clarifying the purpose of the form. The header says, Join BettingExpert, and the button copy says, Sign Up+. However, the form copy doesnt convey any value whatsoever and does nothing to answer the question, What will I get, if I fill out this form and give you my email? When I created the treatment, I focused on increasing the relevance and value communicated by the header and button copy. In other words I focused on giving the prospects a good reason to fill out the form. The main and most tangible benefit of becoming a member of BettingExpert.com is that you can get free betting tips from top tipsters on a daily basis. Based on experience from similar tests, I hypothesized that I could accelerate the decision-making process of the prospects and increase sign-ups by focusing the form copy on the main benefit. In my treatment, the header says, Get FREE Betting Tips, and the button copy says, Sign Up & Get the Best Daily Tips. In order to find out whether my hypothesis would hold water and increase conversions, I set up a simple A/B test with the Control Variant (A) and my Treatment (B). The Treatment increased signups by 31.54%. The treatment form copy wasnt more creative or inspired in fact, I think some would even call it lame. But again the goal wasnt to write sexy copy, the goal was to get more sign-ups, and a 31.54% lift speaks for itself. Get the full case study here >>

Control:

Treatment:

31.54%'more'sign0ups
Sta$s$cal(Condence(99%

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Case Study: How a radical landing page redesign reduced conversion by 30.27%
Heres an example from a case study where my business partner and I optimized and redesigned a landing page for a Scandinavian client that specializes in energy solutions. The control page was pretty boring and very heavy on copy. In previous tests, I had achieved signicant lifts exclusively by optimizing the copy and stating the overall value proposition more clearly. So for the new treatment, our main focus was optimizing the design and creating a more esthetically pleasing variant.

Control:

Treatment:

We were very pleased with our new beautiful landing page design, and hopes were high for the lift it was bound to generate. The test results started rolling in, and from the beginning they were unmistakable our variant performed signicantly worse than the control page. In fact, our treatment decreased conversion by 30.27%. We were taken aback by these results. How could our new variant that looked so much better perform so much worse? Moreover, how could a radical redesign fail so miserably, when minor copy changes could generate substantial lifts? The copy changes were laser-focused on conveying the value of the offer and giving potential customers what they needed in order to accept the offer. In other words, I focused on optimizing the decisions of the potential customers and not so much the page itself. With the redesign, however, it was the other way around. We lost focus on the goal of the page and made the mistake of assuming that optimizing the page itself would automatically result in more conversions. Eventually we did come up with a redesign that worked, and we ended up with a variant the generated a lift of 48.69%, get the full case study here >>

30.27% drop in conversion

The radical redesign reduced conversion by 30.27%

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Case Study: How changing 1 word in the call-to-action increased conversions on a B2B site by 14.79%
This is a test I conducted on MatchOfce.com an international commercial real estate portal through which businesses can nd ofces for rent. Once a prospect nds a relevant ofce, they have to click to the main CTA in order to get more information on the ofce. By changing the button copy from Order Information and Prices to Get information and Prices, we increased conversions by 14.79%. Changing this one word may seem like an insignicant change, but consider how much it changes the message. The word order signies that you have to go through a process who knows, you might have to go through 8 steps to complete the order. Get on the other hand is positive. It emphasizes what you will receive by clicking the button and focuses on the benet rather than the process you have to go through. I conducted the same experiment in Danish on the Scandinavian sister website Lokalebasen.dk. Here it increased conversion by 38.26%. !

Chapter takeaways:
Conversion Rate Optimization is all about optimizing decisions and actions The decision-making process takes place in the minds of your potential customers, and optimizing this process should be the primary goal of any optimization effort - the web page itself is simply a tool to help you achieve your conversion goals

The greater the impact on the decision-making process, the higher probability of conversion

Control:

Treatment:

14.79%'more'conversions
Sta$s$cal(Condence(95%

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Optimization Principle 2:
The biggest change on the page doesnt necessarily result in the biggest lift.
While radical changes often have major impact on conversion, there is no direct correlation between big changes and big lifts. In order for the change to impact conversion, it has to have an impact in the mind of the prospect. Often relatively small but strategic changes to mission-critical elements can have major impact on conversion. Lets look at a few examples from the real world.

31.03% increase in conversion on a payment page by tweaking the button copy

Heres an example from a test I ran on the payment page for WriteWork.com a subscription-based education website for college and university students. In this case, tweaking the button copy and adding the benefit Get started increased conversion by 31.03%. This is the very last step in the conversion funnel, and every single conversion means money in the bank. Customer analyses of WriteWorks target audience have shown that potential customers most often sign up to WriteWork.com when they are in a hurry to get started with their writing process. Previous tests I conducted on the website confirmed that adding a bit of urgency to the CTAs increases CTR on this particular website. Therefore the Get started part represents a tangible benefit to the potential customers. Get the full case study here >>

Case Study: 90% increase in conversion by changing one word in the CTA copy
Oli from Unbounce.com and I recently ran a split test on a click-through landing page that pitches a free 30 day trial of the Unbounce.com landing page platform. The only thing we did was to tweak one word in the copy we changed the possessive pronoun You to My. After running the test for three weeks, the treatment button copy, Start my free 30 day trial had increased the click-through rate by 90%.

Control:

Control:

Treatment:

Treatment:

90% increase in CTR

During the campaign periode, the treatment increased CTR by 90%.

31.47% more payments

Statistical Condence 98%

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Case Study: 18.70% drop in sign-ups by adding a privacy policy

The two next case studies perfectly illustrate how minor changes can have major impact on conversion. Both cases revolve around a series of tests I performed on BettingExpert.com where I experimented with the privacy policy on the sign-up form. The control variant of the sign-up form didnt feature a privacy policy, so I decided to test the impact of adding this privacy policy 100% privacy we will never spam you. I assumed that the treatment with the privacy policy would perform significantly better than the control. So I was pretty taken aback by the test results. The treatment with the privacy policy actually hurt conversion and reduced the number of sign-ups by a staggering 18.70%! My hypothesis is that - although the message revolves around assuring prospects that they wont be spammed - the word spam itself gives rise to anxiety in the minds of the prospects. Therefore, the word should be avoided in close proximity to the form.

Case Study: 19.47% lift in sign-ups by tweaking a privacy policy

The findings and hypotheses from the first test led to a number of treatments where I tested different variations of the privacy policy. The winning variation turned out to be We guarantee, 100% privacy. Your information will not be shared, and it increased sign-ups by 19.47%. Notice that this variant does not use the word, spam, and that it features a guarantee. In earlier treatments the policy only said 100% privacy, whereas the policy here says We guarantee 100% privacy. Personally I find this wording much more credible. Moreover, the second part Your information will not be shared is clearer and more authoritative. Credibility, clarity and authority are really what you want in a privacy policy, and I believe that the combination of those three factors is what made this treatment perform so well. Get the full case study here >>

Treatment 1:

Treatment 2:

100% privacy - we will never spam you

We guarantee 100% privacy. Your information will not be shared.

18.70%'less'sign0ups
Sta$s$cal(Condence(96%

19.47%'more'sign0ups
Sta$s$cal(Condence(96%

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When do minor changes have major impact?

Weve looked at examples from case studies where changing a single word or adding a few lines of copy have had major impact on conversion. But does that mean that small changes always work? The answer is no, definitely not! Small changes are most effective when applied to mission-critical elements. Call-to-action buttons are a great example. While they may seem like an insignificant design element, they play a decisive part in the conversion sequence and have direct impact on the decisions and actions of your prospects. When you ask someone to do something online, they have to go through your call-to-action in order to do it regardless of whether youre asking them to download a PDF, fill out a form, buy a product, or even just click through to another page. This means that your CTA buttons represent the tipping point between bounce and conversion. They tie every step in the conversion sequence together and make it possible to move from one micro yes to the next, and all the way to the final macro yes.

Chapter takeaways:
While radical changes often have major impact on conversion, there is no direct correlation between big changes and big lifts In order for the change to impact conversion, it has to have an impact in the mind of the prospect Small changes to mission-critical elements that have direct impact on the decisions of the prospect will often result in major lifts

The larger the impact in the mind of the prospect, the higher probability of conversion

For more on optimizing buttons - check out this article with 10 call-to-action case studies.

Forms, headlines, and value propositions are examples of other mission-critical elements that have direct impact on conversions, and where small changes can make or break momentum on the path to conversion. A lot of online marketers out there miss out on conversions and leave money on the table because they fail to recognize the significance of the impact that minor changes can have - if they are applied to the right elements. I think it has to do with the fact that tweaking a button or adding a line of copy seems like an insignificant change on the overall page.

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Optimization Principle 3:
Value & relevance are king.
Your potential customers will often go through the entire decision-making process in a few seconds, and lack of value and relevance is a major conversion killer. The more time your potential customers have to spend in order to figure out what your offer is all about, the more likely they are to leave your website and move on to one of your competitors. The more clearly you express the value of your offer, and why its relevant to your prospects, the more likely theyll be to choose it. So dont waste their time with hype, fluff, and over-creative marketese. Tell them clearly how they will benefit from accepting your offer, and give them a good reason to say Yes!.

Case Study: 41.18% increase in conversion by conveying

more value and relevance in the headline

Control: Passionate about betting? We are too

In this example from BettingExpert.com, a simple excercise in making the headline more clear and relevant to the motivation of the prospects increased sign-ups by 41.14%. The control headline asks a very broad question instead of providing prospects with a clear reason to say Yes In fact it isnt really a headline, its more of a statement in the form of an open-ended question to which there really is no answer. The treatment on the other hand is very concrete and provides the prospect with a clear and relevant reason to say Yes.

Treatment: Make More Money on Your Bets Get Free Daily Betting Tips 41.14% more sign-ups
Statistical Condence 98%

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Case Study: 213.16% increase in click through by making

the button copy more relevant

A simple excercise in adding value and relevance

Lets use the button case study from FitnessWorld as an example. The button copy could have said Buy Membership - a very common piece of copy that you can find on tons of websites across the web. The problem with Buy Membership, however, is that its negative in the sense that it focuses on what you have to part with, when you click the button, not what you are going to get.

The client here is Fitness World, a major chain of gyms in Scandinavia. The example is taken from a PPC landing page, where the goal is to get potential customers to click through to the payment page where they can select a gym and sign up for a membership. In this case changing the CTA copy from Get Membership to Find Your Gym & Get Membership increased click through to the payment page by 213.16%. The control version is already pretty good because it conveys value and focuses on what youre going to get not what you have to do to get it. Nevertheless, it is very generic Get membership could pretty much apply to any situation that has something to do with a membership. I did a little research and found out that the location is a very important factor, when deciding on a membership. So, in this case I could make the call-to-action more relevant to the specific conversion scenario and increase conversions by adding Find gym (Step 1 in the checkout flow features a complete list of gym locations).

By changing the copy to Get Your Membership, we can add value to the button copy and give it a positive angle. Now we are focusing on what you will get, when you click the button - not what you have to part with.

So weve gone from a negative message to a positive one by adding value to the CTA copy. Now we need to add relevance in order to make it fit into to the specific conversion scenario were dealing with and support the decision-making process of the prospects. We can easily do that by adding Find Your Gym at the begining of the CTA copy.

Control:

Treatment:

213.16% higher CTR

Statistical Condence 99%

And voil - we have a piece of CTA copy that conveys both value and relevance.
Design your own high-converting buttons for free with ButtonOptimizer.com

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Case Study: 99.4% more conversions by clarifying value

and relevance

In this example, adding clarity and relevance generated a 99.4% lift in conversions on a PPC landing page for Denmark-based Saxo Bank. The landing page pitched a trial account for a Forex trading platform, and the conversion goal was to increase the number of trial account sign-ups. If you compare the two versions, youll see the treatment is super focused on conveying the value of the offer, while the control is much more vague. Where the control asks the question Why trade Forex with Forextrading.com?, the treatment actually answers this question by giving prospects relevant information and credible, solid arguments why they should sign up for the trial. What is more, the control copy didnt follow up on the value promised in the PPC ads that actually did a great job of emphasizing the selling points and value of the Forex Trading demo: free, no risk, no obligations, $100,000 demo account. In the treatment, I made sure to follow up on all the selling points, benefits and features mentioned in the PPC ads. Due to the format of this ebook, Ive only showed the different versions of the headline. However, I did make a few other simple changes to the landing page. If you want to check out all the changes - click the link below: For a full run-down of the case study, read this post >>

Control: Why Trade Forex with Forextrading.com?

Treatment: Get Your Free, No Risk, No Obligation $100,000 Forex Trading Demo Account

99.4% conversions
Statistical Condence 99%

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Case Study: 83.75% more sign-ups by clarifying value and

relevance

Chapter takeaways:
Lack of value and relevance is a major conversion killer The more time your potential customers have to spend in order to figure out what your offer is all about, the more likely they are to leave your website or landing page The more clearly you express the value of your offer, and why its relevant to your prospects, the more likely theyll be to choose it.

Heres an example from the newsletter sign-up form on ContentVerve.com, where I tested two different versions of the copy. The control version is completely generic and only states the obvious: that you can get fresh updates. The treatment on the other hand promises a specific value in return by exemplifying what updates from ContentVerve.com consist of thus answering the question Whats in it for me? This simple exercise in clarifying value and relevance resulted in an 83.75% increase in sign-ups. Think about it this way: Youre asking your prospects to give you their personal information, but what are you going to give them in return? Value or spam? A transaction is taking place, and if your prospects arent sure that they will get something valuable and relevant in return Free Updates just translates into Free Spam. Learn more about high-converting sign-up for copy here >>

The clearer the value and relevance, the higher the probability of conversion

Control:

Treatment:

83.75% more sign-ups

Statistical Condence 97%

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Optimization Principle 4:
Clear outweighs creative
In the more classic marketing and advertising world, there seems to be a consensus that the most creative solution is automatically the best one. While super creative might be the right approach for offline marketing, I have seen very little data indicating that this assumption holds water in online marketing. In fact, I have yet to see a creative message beat a clear and concrete value proposition in an A/B test. Lets go ahead and look at a few examples from the real world.

Case Study: How a concrete headline generated a 38.46%

lift over a creative variant

This is an example from a test I ran for one of my clients, Fitness World, a large Scandinavian chain of gyms. In this case I tested a headline variation on a PPC landing page that sells gym memberships. I challenged the control headline You Work Out Smarter at Fitness World (literal translation of the Danish original) with probably the most uncreative headline Ive ever presented to a client Group Training & Fitness at Your Local Gym (literal translation). Most creative copywriters would probably laugh at my treatment and tell me to go back to marketing school. But the fact is that when we tested the two headlines against each other, my boring treatment outperformed the sexy version and sold 38.46% more memberships. From a creative or aesthetic perspective, my variant sucks! But that doesnt really matter, because the goal wasnt to write sexy copy - it was to sell more memberships.

Control:

Treatment:

YOU WORK OUT SMARTER AT FITNESS WORLD

GROUP TRAINING & FITNESS AT YOUR LOCAL GYM

38.46% memberships sold

During the campaign, the treatment sold 38.46% more memberships

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Case Study: 10.94% lift in conversion by making the button

design less creative

landing page.

The problem with being too creative

As we established in the first chapter, conversion rate optimization is all about optimizing decisions and actions, and the goal is to get conversions not creative awards. Being creative is a powerful tool that can help you find the right solution for the individual optimization project you are working on. However, if creating art becomes the goal, you will in all likelihood do more harm than good to your online business. In online marketing, the more creative solutions have a tendency to backfire because they often become so clever or advanced that regular people have difficulty understanding and interacting with them. As the case studies in this chapter illustrate, being creative just for the sake of being creative can seriously hurt conversion. Im not saying that you should never go down the creative route Im saying you shouldnt do it by default. If data from tests and customer research tells you that the best solution is the creative one, then by all means - go for it! As I mentioned in chapter one, its important that you can leave the artist on the shelf for a while, so you can assume an analytical approach and focus on giving your potential customers what they need in order to make the right decision.

Heres an example from a button test I ran on Freemake.coms YouTube MP3 Converter

As you can see, the control version of the call-to-action button was very nicely designed and represented a creative take on a regular old button. However, I hypothesized that the design made it dicult to decipher as a clickable button, and that plainer button design with relevant copy would convert better. I set up an A/B test and found out that my hypothesis held water - the treament increased the number of downloads by 10.94%. As a follow-up experiment, I tested several other plain button variations, and they all outperformed the control variant.

Control:

Treatment:

10.94% memberships sold

Statistical Condence 99%

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Chapter takeaways:
In online marketing, clear has greater positive impact on conversion than creative The goal is to get conversions - not creative awards Being creative is a powerful tool that can help you find the right solution for the individual optimization project you are working on. However, creating art should not be the primary goal

Clear outweighs creative

Creative Clear

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Optimization Principle 5:
Ask for the right action at the right time.
Essentially, marketing is about making it as easy and attractive as possible for your potential customers to accept your offer. However, as marketers and sales people we have a tendency to focus on what is important to us right now usually thats getting more sales. Unfortunately this also means that we have a tendency to overlook whats important to the potential customers, and what they need to know in order to make an informed decision. If you get too pushy and ask potential customers to accept your offer before they are ready for it, there is an imminent danger that theyll bail on your offer completely. I bet youve been in situations where you felt pressured to make a decision to BUY NOW, SIGN UP or DOWNLOAD before you even really understood what the offer was about.

Control:

Treatment:

Case Study: 17.18% increase in conversion by adding a text

link CTA to product overview pages

This example is taken from a Danish e-commerce site that sells car care products. The site features bundles consisting of a variety of different products. The product overview pages showing the bundle packages only feature an Add To Basket button. This means that potential customers are being asked to add the product to the basket before they really know what the offer consists of. Here adding a text link CTA with the copy View Bundle increased conversion to sales by 17.18%. Its natural that prospects need to have a look at what the offer consists of, before they are ready to make the decision to add it to the basket. Many websites feature super aggressive BUY NOW OR DIE CTA copy by default. In most cases, however, it makes sense to find out where in the decision-making process the prospect is and ask for an action thats timely rather than pushy.

17.18% more sales

Statistical Condence 99%

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Case Study: How a variant with the CTA below the fold generated a conversion lift of 304%
So we all know the golden rule that your call-to-action should always be positioned above the fold. Well, lets bust that myth right away with this example from a test I ran on a B2C landing page. In this case, the a variant with the CTA placed way below the fold at the bottom of a very long landing page significantly outperformed a variant with the CTA at the top of the page above the fold. The increase was 304%. There are several other things going on in the treatment. So the whole lift cant be ascribed entirely to moving the CTA below the fold. However, the fact remains that the treatment with the CTA way below the fold outperformed the control variant something that simply shouldnt be possible if you subscribe to the best practice rule that the CTA should ALWAYS be above the fold in order to convert. Above the fold is not necessarily the best position for your call-to-action. You should place your CTA where it best compliments the decision-making process of your prospects. Ive seen many cases where the CTA has performed well above the fold, just like Ive seen cases similar to this one, where having the CTA below the fold has gotten the best results. My general observation, from a wide range of landing page tests, is that there is a correlation between the complexity of the product/offer and the optimal placement of the CTA. If the product/offer is complex, and the prospect has to digest a lot of information in order to make an informed decision, positioning the CTA lower on the page generally works best.Vice versa, if the product/offer is very simple, and the prospect hardly has to do any thinking in order to make an informed decision, positioning the CTA above the fold generally works best.

Control:

Treatment:

304% higher CTR

Statistical Condence 98%

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The button case study from Fitness World is another good example of asking too much too soon. As the test data showed, the potential customers clearly werent ready to get their membership right off the bat - they had to find a gym at a location close by before they could make the decision to buy a membership. By adding Find Your Gym to the call-to-action copy, we effectively asked for the right thing at the right time, and click through went up by 213.16%.

Chapter takeaways:
To get a conversion you need to ask for the right action at the right time If you get too pushy and ask potential customers to accept your offer before they are ready for it, there is an imminent danger that theyll bail on your offer completely Find out where in the decision-making process the prospect is and ask for an action thats timely rather than pushy

The higher the level of alignment between prospect motivation and call-to-action, the higher the probability of conversion

Control:

Treatment:

213.16% higher CTR

Statistical Condence 99%

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Optimization Principle 6:
Less friction = more conversions.
4 years of research and hundreds of split tests have taught me a lot about conversion optimization. One of the most important lessons is that friction kills conversion. The good news is that reducing friction is one of the most effective ways of increasing conversion. The bad news is that it can be difficult to spot sources of friction if you dont know what to look for. In this chapter, well look at different examples of friction and how to overcome them. But first we need to establish what friction is. The best definition of friction Ive come across is the one MarketingExperiments offers. In their methodology, friction is defined as a psychological resistance to a given element in the sales or sign-up process (Source: MarketingExperiments.com). Friction has a negative impact on the decision-making process of your prospects and will tip the decision towards No. The less friction the prospect encounters, the more likely he or she will be to accept your offer. So the more you can reduce friction, the more youll be able to tip the decision back towards Yes.

A simple example of friction and how to overcome it

Lets use the case study from from the ContentVerve.com newsletter sign-up form that we looked at in chapter three. The lack of specificity in the control version represented a strong element of friction in the sense that it failed to give propspects a good reason to sign up. In this particular case, friction could be overcome by including a few bullet points to clarify what updates from ContenVervecom constist of, and what you get in return for giving up your personal information.

Control:

Treatment:

83.75% more sign-ups

Statistical Condence 97%

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Case Study: 63% more conversions by reducing friction related to landing page length
A very common source of friction has to do with the length of the web page i.e. the amount of content/information you present to the prospect. Friction in this form arises when you have too little or too much content on your page. You can effectively reduce friction by finding the right amount of content for your specific offer. Marketers seem to be divided into two groups: those who swear to long-form, and those who swear to short-form. But the truth is that there really is no one-size-fits-all solution that works every time. It depends on what youre offering, and what you want your potential customer to do. In my experience, short landing pages work well with low-scrutiny offers where there is little commitment and perceived risk related to the conversion goal. Long landing pages on the other hand work well with high-scrutiny offers where there is a higher level of commitment and perceived risk related to the conversion goal. Heres an example from a case study where a long landing page outperformed a shorter variant. Were looking at a PPC landing page of which the goal is to get potential customers to sign up for a home energy audit. The company is not that known, and its a complex offer that could result in a large investment in insulation. So theres a high level of commitment and perceived risk involved which gives rise to friction in the form of anxiety and credibility issues. In this case, the longer landing page got most conversions as it did the best job at mitigating anxiety and reducing friction. Ive performed many tests where short landing pages have outperformed long ones - its all about the scrutiny-level of your offer. As a rule of thumb, the higher the scrutiny level the higher the friction.

Control:

Treatment:

63% more conversions

Statistical Condence 98%

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Friction related to poor layout and organization

Page layout and organization have direct impact on the decisions and actions of your potential customers. If you want a high-converting landing page, you need to organize the page in such a way that it supports the decision-making process and guides the prospect naturally through the content from headline to call-to-action. Good layout creates forward momentum that builds up as the prospect moves through the different parts of the page towards the conversion goal. Poor layout is confusing and interferes with the prospects ability to follow the purpose of the page. It slows down the decision-making process and usually results in a bounce rather that a conversion. Poor layout and organization are major and extremely common sources of friction that you will find on most any website you visit. An eye-path that forces the prospect to zigzag through the content is really bad for conversion. So is a page where mission-critical elements are given a low priority or hidden away.

The flexible template for a high-converting landing page

Ive experimented with lots of different page templates and layouts, and while I cant give you one definitive ultimate version, I can give you the template that I usually turn to as my starting point when I start working on a new landing page. This template helps you organize your landing pages in a logical manner with a clear eye path that is easy to follow. The template is flexible enough to work for a number of different purposes and should go a long way in helping you build pages with a minimum of layout-related friction.

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Case Study: The flexible template for a high-converting landing in action

Heres an example of the landing page template in action. This is a landing page I optimized for a major Scandinavian company that sells satelite tv. The landing page pitches an offer targeted at private home owners who want satelite tv in their vacation homes. The page has two conversion goals selling the product and generating leads for the sales department. In this case we generated a 90.90% lift in sales and a 83.92% lift in leads by adjusting the layout to fit my landing page template and tweaking the copy a little.

Control:

Treatment:

90.90% increase in sales 83.92% increase in leads

Statistical Condence 97%

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Other common sources of friction

Apart from the examples Ive shown you in this chapter, there are a number of different kinds of friction that are widespread across the web. Heres a list of common sources of friction that, in most cases, can be dealt with quite easily: - Complex/lengthy checkout processes - Forms with excessive number of fields - Too many choices - Multiple converging calls-to-action - Slow loading pages - Placing mission-critical elements in sidebar - 3-column landing page design - Tiny product images - Poor visual hierarchy - Inappropriate cross-sells - Complicated navigation - Lack of credibilty and trust

Chapter takeaways:
Friction kills conversion Friction has a negative impact on the decision-making process of your prospects and will tip the decision towards No The more you can reduce friction, the more youll be able to tip the decision back towards Yes.

The lower the level of friction, the higher the probability of conversion

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Optimization Principle 7:
Dont rely on your gut - Test whether your optimization efforts work.
A lot of people ask me why testing is such an important part of CRO. My short answer is: You need to test because relying blindly on guesswork and gut feeling is a dangerous business strategy. Now let me expand on that answer and explain what I mean in greater detail. Marketing is not an exact science. All products, services, offers, and websites are different, just like the motivations of your potential customers are different. Were dealing with real people and real decisions. And frustrating as it may be, the truth is that people dont always act the way marketers want them to. If you dont test whether your optimization efforts are in fact optimizing the performance of your website you are really relying on guesswork and gut feeling. Even with hundreds of A/B tests under my belt, test results surprise me on a regular basis. Sometimes positively other times not quite so positively. A good example is the case study I showed you in chapter two with the privacy policy on BettingExpert.com. All logic would suggest that adding a privacy policy to a sign-up form would increase conversions. Nevertheless, counterintuitive as it may seem, adding the privacy policy actually reduced the number of sign-ups by 18.70%! Had I blindly relied on my experiece and gut feeling, I would have seriously messed up the clients conversion rate - when they were paying me to do the opposite! Testing not only helped me to avoid what could have been an unfortunate outcome (to say the least), it also spurred me on to a series of tests that led to the discovery of a privacy policy that did in fact work really well. As I showed you in chapter two, the winning policy increased sign-ups by 19.47%.

18.70%'less'signups
Sta$s$cal(Condence(96%

19.47%'more'signups
Sta$s$cal(Condence(96%

If you are new to A/B testing, I recommend spending a little time getting the basics down before you get cracking on your first CRO project. A good place to start would be this article that I wrote for beginners where I answer the top 5 questions about A/B testing. It gives you a solid introduction and also deals with more advanced stuff like how to validate whether your test results are reliable - which is paramount to your success because the only thing thats worse than not testing is to rely on bad data. As far as software goes I recommend a simple tool like VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com. Its very user-friendly, and you can set up tests with little or no knowledge of code. You can set up an account for free and run tests on up to 1.000 visitors. Another tool Im a big fan of is Unbounce.com. Unbounce makes it incredibly easy to create landing pages from scratch, and because the system features built-in A/B testing software, setting up tests is also extremely easy.

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-book:

About the Author:

Hi, Im Michael Aagaard - a self-employed, selfconfessed split test junkie, and copywriting fanatic whos obsessed with finding out what really works in online marketing. Im Danish, and I hail from the wonderful city of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Get in touch:
Need help optimizing your website? Want to book me for as a speaker? Interested in a CRO consultation via Skype? Just want to say, Whats up Mike!? The easiest way to get in touch is to shoot me an email: michael@contentverve.com For new case studies, insights, and CRO tips, follow me on:

I have an agency background but opted for a solo career in order to dedicate as much time as possible to conversion rate optimization. Facebook.com/ContentVerve For the last four years, Ive spent about 60 hours a week testing and optimizing websites and landing pages. Im a full-time copywriter and CRO consultant, and when Im not helping clients increase conversion rates, I write about content, copy and conversion on my blog ContentVerve.com. My work has also been featured on websites like MarketingSherpa.com, MarketingExperiments.com, Copyblogger.com, KISSmetrics.com, Unbounce.com, and CrazyEgg.com. I spend a lot of my time teaching and preaching about CRO at events and summits all over the world. Ive spoken at MarketingSherpas Optimization Summit in 2012 and 2013, MarketingSherpas Email Summit 2013, Eliitlager in Estonia, iLive Conference in Latvia, and countless events in Denmark. I will be speaking at the 2013 Conversion Summit in Frankfurt and the 2013 Conversion Conference in London. GooglePlus Twitter.com/ContentVerve

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