Landing Page Optimization - Checklist

By Author: Ravi Pathak
Total Articles: 3
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Are you working in an agency and have lot of clients & New A/B testing tools to handle? Are you Conversion Rate Improvement Specialist who has to keep optimizing pages for better conversions? Are you a designer who doesn't know how to learn users path but wants to design a page with that stickiness factor?

Then here is a list of check you should always use to assess the optimization opportunities of a Landing Page. A list of rapid checks on a landing page, which you can do within 60 seconds, and can give your opinion about conversion rate of a landing page. There are more checks than these, which you can do later. But these are some checks you shouldn't proceed further without, and you can do it really fast! We call it The 60/6 Check. The 6 checks you can do in 60 seconds.

1. Tagline - Tagline is the most important thing to explain the business in fractions of a second. A good Tagline will explain the business to a first time visitor in a snap!

Check - It should be crisp, and simple to understand. Explain the business in one liner.

2. Headline - The Headline is related to a particular page of ...
... a site. How a headline differs to a page from Tagline is, The Tagline talks about the entire website as a product, while the Headline has to explain the Purpose of a particular page. Especially, for a Lead generation page, or a Download page, sometimes, a Headline change can boost the Conversion rate by unbelievable amount.

Check - It should explain the purpose of the page in the simplest manner, and should encourage the user to do the desired activity, e.g. fill a form or download an App.

3. Call to action - The call to action is the most important feature of the page. After all, you want your user to do something, which is always supported by the Call to action. Again, a call to action can do dramatic changes to a page.

Check - The Call to action has to be always on the 1st scroll. It has to be the most prominent among other features of the page. If there is more than 1 Call to actions, there should be one important call to action, which has to stand out among other. So many options always confuse the user. The text on the button has to be simple and short. There has to be a contrast between Button color and the Text color.

4. Background vs Text - The Background and text have always had to be each other's enemy. Their colors can never meet. Normally, A background is always in a light color, and the text on it in a solid color. But still people opposite experiments sometimes which turn out to be good.

Check - Check the contrast between the two. The text always has to be easily readable without any extra effort.

5. Main communication - By Main communication, I don't mean the copy of entire page, but the main communication about the product or the site. E.g, About us. This communication has to be like a woman's skirt. Long enough to cover the essentials, and short enough to look interesting! It has to extend the Headline communication and explain the purpose of the page

Check - If there's a headline, then the main communication has to extend it. If the text is too much, then it has to be broken down in points.

6. What's in it for me factor- Any page has to answer this question, many sites end up boasting about themselves. E.g., You should by our product because we just won an award. But what about their customers? Talk about what are they getting from buying your product or services, and why would they buy them, What's in it from them?

Check - The page should answer one question. What's in it for me?

The most important - How to perform this Check in 60 Seconds?

Now, once we know the importance of all checks and what to check for, We have to start checking it for pages in 60 seconds. Here's how! Landing Page Evaluation Checklist as below

1.Tagline - Crisp, and simple to understand. Explain the business in one liner. Based on that give your rating to tagline of the page.

2.Headline - Explain the purpose of the page in the simplest manner, and encourage the user to do the desired activity, e.g. fill a form or download an App. Based on that give your rating to headline of the page.

3.Call to action - It's in1st scroll of the page. The most prominent among other features of the page. The main call to action stands out among other call to actions. Simple and Short text. Contrast between Button color and the Text color. Based on that give you're rating to call to action of the page.

4.Background vs Text - The contrast between the two. The text is easily readable without any extra effort. Based on that give you're rating to background vs text ratio of the page.

5.Main Communication - It extends the Headline communication. It's broken down it to points if it's too long. Based on that give you're rating to main communication of the page.

6.What's in it for me factor - It has enough to convince the user about the product or service. Based on that give you're rating to whats in it for me factor of the page.

Go through the landing page you want to check, and Start giving ratings for all the Checkpoints above. Give ratings from 1 to 5. 60 seconds over!

Below is the example for landing page evolution check list, comment and ratings by user. Now, since you the check is over. You can prepare table for check points to organize it better way,

1. Tagline - The tagline is very long. Your rating for tagline of landing page is 1/5.

2. Headline - The headline is perfect, no need to change. Your rating for headline of landing page is 5/5.

3. Call to action - It's very prominent, stands out among others. The text needs to be more precise. Your rating for call to action of the landing page is 4/5.

4. Background vs Text - The text color can be more solid, the size of the headline can be increased. Your rating for background vs text of landing page is 3/5.

5. Main communication - The main communication is way to long, it's broken down in points. Your rating for main communication of landing page is 2/5.

6. What's in it for me factor - It doesn't talk about product features. It doesn't talk about the discount which is available. Your rating for what's in factor of landing page is 2/2.

Fill the comments as above and you ready with a list of things you want to change, simple!

Please note one thing, if the user gets lost on your page, or get confused between too many options, he'll always decide to leave the page. Would you buy from a Shopping mall that sells all the items from Electronics to Vegetables on the same shelf? This check will point out all the problems because of which the user gets lost in the all in one Shopping mall.

Author Bio -

Kamaksh is working at Tatvic, a web analytics consulting firm. He looks after user experience, Landing Page Design and conversion rate optimization projects.