Optimizing Landing Page: Important step in Conversion Optimization

Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash

Optimizing landing page is an important and key element of conversion rate optimization.

The article is based on the learnings at CXL Insititute.

I highly recommend to anyone who is serious in a career in digital marketing.

Let's start by defining the landing page.

Landing page can be understoond as:

A page the visitor land on.

Or in other words, the entrance page.

It can also be the page user comes to after clicking an ad source.

Landing page can also be desined independently of the website or app.

It is not a generic page.

But a specific page, with a clear conversion goal.

Key Features of a Landing Page

Landing page should shorten the journey of the visitor from click to conversion.

Along with shortening the journey, it also creates a clear path to the conversion goal.

It should have a clear follow up on the promises made to the visitors on the ad source.

Landing page should cater the motivation of the users.

It creates clarity by answering the important questions.

Next, we will explore the psychology elements in landing page design

Psychology considersation for Landing Page

Our brain has generally two types of thinking - fast thinking and slow thinking.

Fast thinking is the intuitive thinking and slow thinking is analytical thinking.

Fast thinking is like somthing happening to you.

While, slow thinking is something you do.

Fast thinking was categorized as System 1 and Slow thinking as System 2 by Daniel Kahneman.

So, system 1 is categorized as automatic, emotional, subconscious, and in the moment.

While, System 2 is identified with effortful, logical, conscious, and planning ahead.

System 1 is fast and is kind of a machine for jumping to conclusions.

While, System 2 can be said to be the lazy controller.

System 1 or fast thinking happens when the brain is at ease.

System 2 or slow thinking happens when the brain is strained.

Cognitive load is directly proportional to cognitive strain.

It means that, higher the cognitive, higher will be the cognitive strain.

Our brain ususally makes the questions of if it is worth my energy.

In other words, it make the cost/ benefit analysis.

Cognitive biases to consider in Optimizing Landing Page

For the discussion of landing page, we discuss two types of cognitive biases:

Priming

Framing

Priming is the cognitive bias that says that exposure to one stimulus influences response to a subsequent stimulus.

In a landing page scenario - it means that

the content and images we show on our advertisements should match with the ones we plan to show on our landing page.

In this way, the visitors do not get lost and left wandering if they are on the right page.

This leads to friction and increased bounce rate.

Next is Framing.

Framing is the cognitive bias which says that the way you deliver a message has a direct impact on how it is perceived.

This talks about the way we present the information to our audiences which may lead to a wrong decision.

Digging Deeper: Role of Dopamine

This discussion will help us understand the effect brain chemicals have on human user experience.

We can consider this factor while building our landing pages.

The discussion is a part of neurosciene.

But understanding it, will help us better understand the user experience and hence the landing page.

In brief, dopamine drives us towards the rewards.

It is our reward mechanism.

It produces the job of finding things that meet our needs.

More of dopamine lead to habituation or making the situation neutral.

And a dip in dopamine leads to disappointment and even anger.

This particular understanding of human brain can help us.

Particularly a lot to uncover the reality of our landing page and how it fares with users.

If we are providing some reward stimulus,

we are making the use to expect a reward, and if there is no reward on the landing page, there is disappointment.

Hence, we have to very careful about disappointing our users.

Similar thing also happens with the Value Proposition.

We promise something, that helps release dopamine.

And, if we do not deliver as per the value proposition, we make people feel bad, and disappointed.

The most extreme form of disappointment leads to stress reaction.

This causes release of Cortisol.

Role of Cortisol

It is also known as the human stress hormone.

Cortisol lets us know about the danger ahead.

It is the built-in alarm system in human body.

So, cortisol surge leads to fear or getting overwhelmed.

And, cortisol dip leads to stress or anxiety.

Cortisols leads to feelings that endure.

Hence, even if the situation is not that life threatening, one feels threatened.

Even a small set back makes us feel this way.

That is the reason it is all the way very important to avoid the bad experience of our users on the landing page.

So if we want to keep the cortisol level of our users at check,

we should ensure that we do not trigger any of the following:

Violating expectations - We show something on the ad and something different on the landing page

Ambiguity - we do not make our landing page clear and it lacks clarity.

too much pressure - when we force our users to make a decision

Conclusion

To conclude, we can say that:

In the process of optimizing landing page, we should disappoint our users by failing to deliver on a promised reward.

We should avoide triggering cortisol of our users.

It is better to be aware of the obvious backfires.

And of the best advice would be:

to be clear, transparent, and honest with your users right from the start of the funnel to the end of it.

In this article, we started with the definition of landing page.

Then we explored the key features of a landing page.

After that we explored the psychology considerations while designing the landign page.

We the finally saw how brain chemicals affect the user experiences and why it is important to consider them while designing the landing page.