Inbound marketing funnels use landing pages during the conversion phase to improve conversion rates. These are extremely important inbound marketing, so I was excited to read the 2021 Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report. It's full of useful points that businesses can apply to their landing pages.
As a company providing inbound marketing support to our clients, we paid a little attention to this report. But we recognize that not every small marketing team or business owner can do the same thing. In this blog post, we'll break down key research implementation results and share a range of quick, easy-to-implement tips for creating great landing pages that maximize conversions.
The Unbounce report is definitely worth reading since it covers a huge amount of data and a wide range of industries. For this year's report, we looked at a whopping 44,000 landing pages and over 33 million conversions.
And good news for small businesses. This report shows how cheap and easy it is to create high-converting landing pages in a short time. These are usually some of the biggest obstacles that discourage small businesses from improving their landing pages. You don't need much inbound marketing expertise to optimize your site. You or a small team can do it yourself.
What is particularly prominent in the report is the length of the landing page just a year ago, which is 7% higher than last year's figure. Currently, the median word count across all landing pages is 331 words, and the average is 445 words. This shows that marketers are experimenting with new ways to get conversions on long landing pages.
You can also check your industry rankings and performance in this report. Let's take a look at median and average (average) conversion rates across 16 different industries.
(graphic by Unbounce)
Of course, these benchmarks are important, but keep in mind that they're not one-size-fits-all. In fact, we usually recommend that our customers first build their own benchmarks before putting too much emphasis on comparing them to other benchmarks.
So how do you compare these benchmarks on your landing page? Here are tips you can put into practice to improve your landing page conversion rate.
The fundamentals of landing pages with high conversion rates are also kept in check. These elements, or components, work together to persuade viewers. It might be counterintuitive to do what everyone else is doing, but this model has a solid track record. As is often said, “if it's not broken, don't fix it.” Here are the core group elements every great landing page needs:
Before adding the basics above to your landing page, check how users are currently using your site. Insight tools like Hotjar and Fullstory can help you understand how visitors use your website and get valuable feedback.
They're powerful tools marketers use, and the best part is that they're free to use. Hotjar offers a 15-day free trial, while Fullstory also offers a free forever plan where you can take advantage of limited editions. You can find out where visitors are confused on your landing pages and how you can make them more user friendly.
You can figure out which pages are performing well (and which aren't). It helps support marketing funnels by directing users to the highest-performing landing pages and encouraging them to take action. Pages with lots of organic traffic and high conversion rates also increase search engine optimization (SEO) scores.
A buyer persona is a personal description representing your target audience. These are behavioral characteristics, demographic details, and interests of potential customers. These people are people who download your content or buy products and services. So, you'll want to create a landing page that caters to such people.
Think about what you want to see and how you want people to feel when they land on your landing page. For B2B companies, it might be better to consider the various people influencing purchases rather than the people making the purchase. If you need more help creating or modifying buyer personas, read this blog.
It's only natural that you want to tell your audience who you are and what you do. Unfortunately, it's wasting valuable landing page space. You only have a few seconds to make a great first impression. If they don't immediately understand how your offer can help them in their lives, they'll move on.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't tell them who you are and what you do. Just make sure they don't see it first. Putting profit at the forefront simply and clearly leads to an increase in conversion rates. If you're interested, scroll down and check out the details.
Keep it interesting, short, and brief, given that most people only read headlines these days. In fact, you don't even need to be polite and sweet. Your partner only needs to sum up your value proposition in a way that stirs up emotions. People tend to rely more on emotions than information when making purchasing decisions.
You can create headlines that make you feel appealing, reinforce assertiveness, acceptance, and express a variety of feelings, such as a sense of belonging or safety. If the headline is off the mark, the site is often overlooked. This is because 8 out of 10 people read only a copy of the headline, and only 2 out of 10 actually read lower case letters.
If a picture conveys a thousand words, then a video must tell a million words. This must be true since videos have proven to be extremely beneficial to landing page conversion rates. According to the 2021 Business Video Benchmark Report, it seems that people who incorporated video into their marketing campaigns had a 34% higher conversion rate. If you're not selling yet, know that 60% of B2C and B2B marketers use video. Your competitors are probably using video, and if not, you'll have even more opportunities to gain a competitive advantage on your landing pages.
When you have a large marketing team or huge resources to invest in marketing, there are endless ways to test, optimize, and improve your conversion rates. However, for small businesses with few resources, this is a great starting point for reviewing implementation results.
There's great value in taking these simple steps because increasing your conversion rate increases your lead pipeline and ultimately your revenue. Also, keep in mind that conversion rates vary from industry to industry and even from company to company. Take it easy when comparing your conversion rate to other conversion rates.