When looking to increase landing page conversions something you have done all you can and have to say enough is enough. At that point, it may be time for a complete refresh.
Today we are going to take a look at a specific case study where we had to do just that plus explain when it is necessary to do a redesign and why it is often a risky decision.
When Is It A Good Idea To Do A Redesign To Help Increase Landing Page Conversions?
A redesign of a landing page or even a full website is often a risky decision due to the fact that you have no idea what changes made will have an impact on your conversions and you risk seeing a big decrease in overall conversions. It isn’t calculated and measurable. Do the new images turn visitors off of the page? How about the new form layout? Does that call to action make sense?
Even based on years of experience and a laundry list of best practices, giving our best effort, we have seen new redesigns decrease conversions 40% or more.
We typically recommend doing incremental changes and slight measurable tweaks to increase landing page conversions.
But sometimes that just isn’t enough to really move the needle.
For that we then recommend doing a “refresh” of the page, implementing the main elements we know increase landing page conversions such as benefit headlines, call to action, clean clear path, and proof elements.
The goal of a refresh is to see a big enough jump in the conversions that it justifies the change so we can then come back and do the incremental changes to increase it even more.
Because it is risky, depending on the volume of traffic, when testing a redesign we often will test it on a small % of overall traffic to mitigate any negative landing page conversions from the new design.
In a specific example, we were working on a series of landing pages for a client, seeing some decent improvements but then we hit a wall.
We tried to work within what we were given for assets on the page but when we started seeing only minimal improvements from our tests we looked to do a redesign.
Above was the original page (elements blocked out for privacy). We had improved the page by more than 40% previously until we hit the wall which led to the redesign.
This particular landing page had plenty of traffic so to make sure we didn’t go the wrong way with this particular landing page conversions we tested it on only 30% of the overall traffic until we gathered some data.
Above is the new design after several mockups. As you can see it is quite a bit different. Since this company markets to various local areas, the map shows several of their locations.
Below on this page are also testimonials and other proof elements.
But what about this particular landing page conversions?
These landing page conversions showed an increase of 25.1%
In this case, it resulted in over 200 EXTRA leads over the duration of the test.
This calculated gamble paid off and increased the landing page conversions dramatically.
Now we are going to go back through the page to do incremental changes and even some more slight layout changes. One of the biggest things we will be testing in the next round is benefit-driven bullets instead of the feature-driven ones on the page now.
But the good news is we got past our wall, showing some great promise in the overall landing page conversions and are looking forward to what is to come on this campaign.
The biggest lesson here is don’t get discouraged by a few “losing tests.” Keep pushing and testing. If you have to redesign then make sure you test the variation and just don’t assume that the new page will show improvement.
If you need help with your landing page conversions and are stuck at what to do next be sure to reach out as we are happy to help.
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