A/B Testing: The Pro Secret to Converting More Customers on Your Product Landing Page

Experiments aren’t just for people in white coats. If you’re a marketer looking to boost your product landing page conversions, A/B testing your landing page can have a massive impact. Take HubSpot, for instance. The popular CRM software company increased its blog subscribers by a whopping 128% simply by testing a new checkbox on their landing page forms. That’s a huge payoff from such a small change.

The concept of A/B testing is simple. It involves displaying two versions of the same web page to visitors to determine which converts better. More often than not, marketers don’t take the time to experiment and run A/B tests on their landing page. According to HubSpot, “Only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.” That’s a surprisingly low number when you consider that landing pages have the highest conversion rates of any type of sign-up form (23%).

Because A/B testing can have such a tremendous impact on lead generation and conversion rates, here’s how to optimize your product landing page, along with some highly effective A/B tests you can use right away.

What Makes a Great Product Landing Page (and Why They Matter)

Research by Omnisend reveals that landing pages are the least popular type of sign-up form with marketers, yet they have the highest conversion rate (23%). Meanwhile, pop-ups, the most popular type of enabled sign-up forms, have really low conversion rates (only 3%).

This leads to two important conclusions:

1. Your product landing page represents one of the most powerful tools in your customer conversion tool kit and is worthy of your time and investment.
2. Every single element on your product landing page should be carefully considered and, ideally, tested for its effectiveness.

While every landing page is different, there are five basic elements that go into every successful landing page.

An Eye-catching Graphic or Video

Your landing page image, aka hero shot, is a high-quality image, video, or animation that clearly and immediately conveys the core message of your product or service. While landing page images are often a product photo, they don’t need to be a literal image. For example, a picture of a cheetah sprinting could convey the speediness of a file transfer service far better than a ho-hum picture of a server could.

An Attention-grabbing Headline

Your headline is a short, attention-grabbing statement that aligns with the message of your campaign. They’re to-the-point messages designed to provoke thought or empathy or matter-of-fact statements, like this one: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less—or it’s free.” As a marketer, it’s important to master the basic principles of headline-writing. Here are some helpful suggestions for writing better product landing page headlines.

Clear Value Propositions for Your Product or Service

Your value proposition is the problem your product or service is designed to solve. It’s what makes you better or different than the competition and explains the exact benefits consumers can expect to receive. Landing page value propositions should be succinct and easy to scan and absorb. When creating a value proposition, always focus on the benefits your product or service offers, not the features.

Social Proof From Your Customers

Website visitors frequently look for social proof before making purchasing decisions. Statistics from HubSpot show that a whopping 88% of consumers trust user reviews as much as personal recommendations, which means you can leverage social proof and testimonials to great effect. Forms of social proof include online reviews, customer testimonials, industry certifications and logos, ratings (four out of five is best), and celebrity or expert endorsements.

A Compelling Call to Action (CTA)

Last but not least, your CTA is the critical touchpoint of your landing page, the place that encourages your visitors to click and take the next step. Usually, a landing page CTA is an easy-to-find, colorful button with copy that ties into your original value proposition, such as, “Build my pizza” or “Start my free trial.” Avoid generic words like “Submit” or “Go.”

Here’s an example of a landing page using all five key elements:

Check out HubSpot’s 19 examples of landing pages to see more on how to craft a compelling message that engages consumers and increases conversions.

How to A/B Test Your Product Landing Page

To get started with A/B testing, just follow the five steps below. Keep in mind that you’ll need an experimentation platform like Taplytics, which enables you to set up and run your A/B tests as well as analyze the results.

1. Analyze Your Current Performance.

How well is the landing page performing, and where would you like to see improvements? For example, you may want to increase your CTA button conversions by 20% or get more people to download your ebook.

2. Create a List of Elements you Want to Test.

This might include new writing copy for a button, changing the color of a button, adding a new checkout feature, etc. To identify which element is driving the results of your A/B test, test only one element at a time.

3. Set up Your Version A and Version B.

Version A is your normal landing page with no changes, and Version B is the test page with the new element you want to test. Version B should contain only a single changed element. To test additional elements, create a new test page for each one.

4. Run Your A/B tests.

To run your A/B test, you’ll need experimentation platform, like Taplytics. Taplytics enables you to set up your landing page experiments over web, mobile, and cross-channels and track the results in real time.

4. Analyze the Tesults.

Again, you’ll need software to do this. Taplytics software enables you to track your A/B test results as they happen and provides a suite of comprehensive tools so you can analyze the results and schedule rollouts of the best variants.

Now that you know the basic steps of setting up an A/B test, here’s a list of some of the most popular landing page tests you can run.

What Elements to A/B Test

CTA (Call to Action)

• Change your CTA button color. Test different colors on your CTA button. Red, orange, and green are favored by marketers, but which color is best is still open to debate.

• Change your CTA button text. Experiment with different CTA messages. Try to avoid generic messages, such as “Submit” or “Go.”

Copy (Headlines, Subheads, Descriptions, Etc.)

Source: HubSpot

• Try different headline text. Test out different headlines. Here are five landing page headline formulas from Unbounce you can try.
• Add a subhead. Try adding a compelling subhead under your main headline. Here are some pointers for writing subheads with your headlines.
• Update your product descriptions. Update your product descriptions to include more compelling value propositions. Here are some tips from HubSpot on how to write better value propositions.

Offers and Incentives

• Test different shopping incentives. These might include free shipping, a money-back guarantee, a more generous return policy, etc.
• Experiment with different offers. Some options include free business templates, free samples, a complimentary ebook, a free white paper, etc.
• Add a limited-time offer. Create a sense of urgency by offering a benefit for a limited time only.

Checkout Options

• Add new payment options. Make it easier for customers to check out by offering a range of mobile-friendly checkout options — for example, PayPal, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, cryptocurrency, etc.
• Offer a guest checkout option. Make it easier for new customers to check out with a guest checkout option. Research shows customers are 1.2 times more likely to choose guest checkout than logging in.
• Add a security badge. A recognizable security badge can help reassure customers and push them over the line into a purchase. Here are the top five types of security badges for websites.

Imagery

• Change up your images. Experiment with different image types (photos, graphics, diagrams), sizes, and locations on the landing page.
• Compare an image vs. a video. Test the difference in effectiveness between a static image vs. a video or animation.

Iconography

• Change your icons. Experiment with different symbols. Icons should be instantly recognizable (not too cryptic) and help customers to navigate better.

With Taplytics A/B testing, you can easily set up tests for all of the above variants on your product landing page, track the results in real-time, and analyze the results — all without writing a single line of code. We make it simple to measure the impact of your experiments with flexible goal-tracking and integrations, while our AI assistant can suggest areas for improvement.

How to Go Beyond the Landing Page A/B Test

While A/B testing your landing page is important, it’s only a part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Today’s marketers require a fully integrated and automated marketing system that covers every aspect of their campaigns and consumer touch points. For those interested in expanding their reach beyond the landing page, Taplytics’ solutions have you covered. We offer cross-channel testing, A/B testing for your email campaigns, adding personalization and segmentation to your campaigns, and much more.