They undertook a variety of research projects, which we’ve written full reports of. You can find their other findings here:

• What makes online marketing work – An Adzooma & University of Cambridge Study
  • A background look into how and why we ended up working with the University of Cambridge
• Why Your Content Strategy Is So Crucial To PPC Success
  • The Cambridge team took a deep dive into sentimentality to help shape how you write your PPC ads
• How To Select The Best Digital Marketing Channel For Your Business
  • We drove into our reams of data to determine whether Microsoft, Google and/or Facebook Ads is the best marketing channel for you

One of the topics they looked at was based on a simple question: What makes a landing page convert?

Now, there are parts of a landing page that you’ll hear marketers talk about time and time again. You need relevant keywords to bring in the right kind of traffic to your website. You need good copy to sell your product and convince customers to cross the line.

All of this is still true and you can read more advice about it in our guide to creating landing pages that convert better than your website.

But it’s not the only contributing factor. And so, part of the research between Cambridge University and Adzooma was to understand how website quality can have an impact on conversion rates.

*Disclaimer – All campaign data provided to study participants was selected at random and anonymised.

Increasing conversions with landing page performance

For this study, the Cambridge students were given access to an extract of campaign data from Microsoft, Google and Facebook advertising that was being managed through Adzooma. These businesses were selected at random from a variation of industries to keep the study unbiased.

In terms of landing page conversions, one of the tools that was invaluable for this research was Lighthouse. The Google automation tool checked the quality of the landing pages from the data sample in terms of performance, accessibility and other best practice guidelines, delivering numerical values for each key area. The students then compiled this data, measuring performance scores against conversion data.

Out of all the data submitted, only 5% of websites came back with a perfect score. For 95% of businesses in the sample, there was room for improvement in their landing pages.

When analyzing the data, the Cambridge students didn’t just find a direct correlation between landing page performance and increased conversion rate, but also what aspects of landing page quality are the most important.

We’ll outline all of these aspects in order of importance, starting with best practices.

1. Best practices

Google Lighthouse best practices check to see that your website is built and formatted in the best way. They don’t check the content or copy of the page. If you’re interested in seeing the best practices for this, head further down the article.

Some of the checks that run under best practice are:

• Using HTTPS
• Displaying images with correct aspect ratios
• Serving images with an appropriate resolution for clarity
• Avoiding a request for location when the page is loading

Most of these practices are about building trust with the user. An HTTPS is a secure protocol connection for users that are becoming standard for websites, whether or not sensitive data is shared. If your landing page is driving users to a payment gateway or collecting information, users will need the security for extra peace of mind.

Similarly, if a notification box pops up asking for someone’s location without context, users will become suspicious or mistrustful of the website and why they would possibly need this information. If you operate a landing page that has users search for the nearest store, make sure this request is tied to the action and not page load.

More trust means more conversions.

Out of all the landing pages analysed for this research, 0% of them had a perfect score for this particular section.

2. SEO

The Google Lighthouse SEO section makes a number of checks to see if your page is optimised for Search Engines.

This includes factors such as:

• Having meta titles and meta descriptions
• Making sure the page is indexable with a valid robots.txt
• Ensuring that the links used on the page are crawlable

The Cambridge researchers found that 3. SEO factors are the second most important quality element that impacts conversion rates.

Considering that organic clicks are not usually the main source of traffic towards landing pages, this one may come as a surprise for having a direct effect on conversion rates.

SEO and CRO are different disciplines, but they overlap in key areas of putting users first and providing quality content that answers questions. Therefore, making sure that your page is optimised for SEO is a good way of ensuring that your page is optimised for users generally.

3. Performance

Performance for the Google Lighthouse refers to how well the page physically performs, rather than any conversion goals or metrics you might be personally monitoring in Google Analytics.

It checks factors such as:

• Load time, which can have a direct impact on conversions
• Ensuring there’s no unused JavaScript or elements on the page slowing it down
• Avoiding excessive DOM sizes to reduce memory usage

I’m sure you’ve heard stats about how load time can affect conversions and performance before. But to hammer home the point of why this is so important, let me remind you that 40% of customers won’t wait more than 3 seconds for a website to load.

1, 2, 3. If your page takes longer than that to load, nearly half your audience has already left.

Even a 1-second delay on your website can reduce customer satisfaction by 16%. Even the BBC loses an additional 10% of users for every extra second it takes for its site to load.

4. Accessibility

Google Lighthouse accessibility checks how accessible your page is. Accessibility on the web is massively important for conversions and usability as if your site isn’t accessible for all, you’re automatically discounting part of your audience.

It’s equivalent to building your store on top of a steep set of stairs with no handrail. Not everyone will be able to climb them and make it to that final stage.

Although Google Lighthouse doesn’t provide a complete check of a website’s accessibility, it does check for factors such as:

• Making sure images have alt attributes for visually impaired
• Any lists are formatted correctly for screen readers
• Buttons have accessible names

In addition to these checks, you will want to think about how accessible your landing page is on different devices. Does it work as well on mobile as it does on desktop? Can someone load it on older browsers and systems?

The more accessible you make your landing page, the wider you open the door for people to convert.

What other factors influence landing page conversion rate?

Landing page quality has an impact on conversion rates, but it’s not the only factor going on. Customers aren’t going to buy your project just because the website has a great build.

These are some of the other factors you need to consider to improve landing page conversions.

1. Content

Content is the big one here. All the words, images or videos on the page should all be working together to guide your user to take action.

If users are landing on your page and you’re not experiencing any technical problems highlighted above, then it’s your content that will need looking at.

The best content will:

• Be engaging and relevant to your target audience
• Answer any questions or reassure any doubts about your product. Give them exact sizes or dimensions, mention your return policy, talk about your guarantees. You want to remove any hesitations your users will have and give them total faith in your product.
• Promote your USP. Your USP (Unique Selling Point) is the thing that makes your business different from the rest. It’s the reason users should buy from you, and not from your competitors. It’s that extra ‘Thing’ that will help you beat the competition and it should be there, loud and clear in your content.

Not a writer? There are thousands of freelancers or agencies that can turn your copy into solid gold. Find exactly who you’re looking for here.

2. CTAs

A CTA (Call To Action) is a short, direct message that tells your users what action they should take. Most commonly, they appear as buttons such as “Buy Now” “Add to basket” or “Book your place”.

CTAs are a fundamental part of a high converting landing page because they push users into converting. Without them, you could have an excellent page with a brilliant copy. Your users could be hanging off every word and have their credit card ready to sign up right now. But without a CTA… they don’t know what to do.

If you can’t direct them at that exact moment, you’ve lost them.

3. The PPC to landing page journey

Landing pages don’t work in isolation. Users don’t stumble across them by accident – there are campaigns or PPC adverts that are guiding users to that page.

To improve conversions, you need to make sure that every stage of your user journey is lined up and working together.

If people are clicking on an advert promoting the softest, comfiest mattress in the world, they don’t want to be taken to a landing page advertising every mattress type that your business offers. They want a relevant, ultra-targeted and specific page promoting your softest boys.

To help identify if this is a problem with your landing page, you’ll want to use PPC software such as Adzooma. When linked up with your Google Analytics, it will be able to identify what campaigns are performing well and getting a lot of clicks, but aren’t converting so you can go in and make necessary changes. It’s free to use for as many accounts as you wish.

Check the quality of your landing page

Want to check the quality of your own landing page?

There are dozens of tools that you can use to get a handle of your own website. To get you started, we’ve listed some tools that you can use to check your performance.

Google Analytics

If you’re not already using Google Analytics, then it’s time to change that. This tool will show you how users are using and interacting with your website, giving key metrics such as bounce rate for your landing pages.

Lighthouse

As explored earlier, Lighthouse can provide key stats on the quality and performance of your landing page and checks that you might be failing.

To run your own Lighthouse check, load up your landing page. Then, right-click and choose the ‘inspect’ option. This will bring up a screen with a lot of code, but don’t worry – we’re not going through that. You just need to click Lighthouse at the top of this screen.

If you can’t see it listed, press the >> button.

Once loaded, click the ‘Generate Report’ button and wait for your results to come back.

Semrush

When you enter a URL into Semrush, you’ll be able to access reports and insights for SEO, PPC, Social Media, Content Marketing and Market Research. Although not all of these will be immediately useful for checking your landing page quality, you will be able to see:

• Keyword analysis and ideas for your PPC campaigns or to gain more organic traffic
• Competitors SEO/PPC strategy to see if there are any gaps you can target
• Questions that your audience might be asking – and that you can address with the content on your landing page

To access all of these features, click here for your 14 day free trial.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is another tool that, like Semrush, is primarily based around SEO. But, as we discussed earlier, knowing the SEO shortcomings of your landing page can help you build a better experience overall, increasing the number of conversions.

Screaming Frog provides in-depth SEO reports and site maps which aren’t necessarily needed for your landing page. However, some checks such as broken links page titles and metadata checks will come in handy.

You’ll be able to test for these checks using the free version of their tool.

Adzooma

What can we say, we left the best for last. The Adzooma platform is designed to make your PPC management easier and more efficient. AND, we have just launched Adzooma Plus. Adzooma Plus is more than just an add-on or paid platform. It’s your new growth partner to help take your business to the next level. 

It comes with all the features of the free Adzooma Essentials platform, PLUS more advanced tools, insights and optimizations specifically designed to achieve results.

Our landing page opportunities check factors such as your: 

• Page speed, as slow websites can kill sales. The longer it takes to load, the more customers you’ll lose. 
• Landing page experience, which is a measure of the quality of the page that your customers are taken to. If a page isn’t relevant, is hard to navigate or doesn’t provide the right information, it will be seen as poor quality. Poor quality landing pages don’t just harm your sales, but also impact where your adverts are placed in the search results page. 
• Mobile experience, which measures how user friendly your landing page is. 
• Broken landing pages or errors, giving you reassurance that your pages are always working. 

What’s more, we’re also going to use the results from the Cambridge study to improve the platform and bring you more Opportunities to improve your landing pages.

You can access these features and more for free. Sign up today.

Need a whole new landing page?

Found that your landing page isn’t up to scratch and need to rebuild? Or just want an extra hand increasing conversions?

Head over to the Adzooma Marketplace. We’ve got all the web developers, CRO agencies and copywriters you’ll need to increase your conversions and draw in more profit.

Find what you’re looking for on the Adzooma Marketplace.

So we’re at hand to give you 10 free CRO tools that’ll help you boost your conversion rates in 2021.

What is CRO?

CRO stands for conversion rate optimization. Your conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who complete a valuable action. For example, a valuable action could be buying a product, filling in an online form, or subscribing to a service. Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving your content and website to increase your conversions.

Example: you have 10,000 website visitors in a month and 7,000 email sign-ups. Your conversation rate would then be 7,000 ÷ 10,000 = 0.7 or 70%.

What can a CRO tool do?

CRO tools offer a range of useful features such as:

• Generalised page optimisation
• Access to page speed data
• Monitoring user behaviour
• Heatmapping
• Survey and form building
• Landing page building
• User analytics
• AI chat capabilities
• Split testing

Many of the best premium tools offer all of them while others focus on certain areas of CRO. Our list of free tools will show a mix of these features.

Why do you need a CRO tool?

Online marketing will bring users to your site, but this is of little use if visitors are not converting. With a CRO tool, you have access to data that you can use to enhance user experience. CRO analytics can identify issues like why so many users abandon their shopping carts, or why your bounce rate is so high on PPC landing pages.

Adzooma is no stranger to offering free tools so enjoy our list and get high-performing solutions without the price tag.

1. MobileMonkey

Founded by Larry Kim, MobileMonkey is a Messenger marketing platform that helps companies connect with potential leads through the use of its chatbots. The software then nurtures and convert leads. Messenger is used by over 1.3 billion people around the world, making MobileMonkey a lucrative and easy way to build chatbots and automate your Facebook marketing strategy without writing a line of code.

Key benefits

• Optimized service: MobileMonkey uses Messenger-based chatbots to deliver your customers a fast and convenient service 24/7.
• Extend reach: You can utilize the popularity of mobile devices and social media to extend your reach.
• No coding: Create AI chatbots with ease and without no coding required. It’s the perfect platform for small businesses and marketers to boost their conversion rates.

Other features of MobileMonkey include chat automation and building conversion funnels.

2. Hotjar

Hotjar is a CRO tool that analyses user behaviour and gives feedback in the form of heatmaps, surveys, and session recordings. These analyses help businesses to gauge deeper understandings of their site users and pinpoint where improvements should be made.

Key benefits

• Analyze web visitors: Hotjar lets you deploy testing and identify the stages of the funnel that are losing your conversions.
• View user behaviour: Hotjar provides a full picture of where your users scroll, tap, click and linger. Combined with Google Analytics, site owners gain great knowledge of their sites
• Heatmaps: Hotjar is best known for its heatmaps which are graphical representations of data using colour to depict site interactions.

Hotjar also deploys feedback and analysis using session recordings to help improve your conversion funnels.

3. TypeForm

TypeForm is a platform where individuals and businesses can create and manage forms and surveys. It does this by removing the challenge of obtaining feedback with more engaging forms. With Typeform, the average completion rate of its forms is 57%.

Key benefits

• Customized forms: Create the forms you need including opinion scales, multiple choice questions, and rating scales.
• Free API: This feature lets you integrate your forms with the other applications to automate your processes.
• Logic Jumps (available in paid subscriptions): use the Typeform tools in unison with your very own survey logic. Logic Jumps allow you to respond to people’s answers.

With the free plan, you also get templates, reports and metrics, and the ability to embed your typeform.

4. SurveySparrow

SurveySparrow is another survey platform, allowing brands to collect answers and opinions, and transform insights into actionable data. That user feedback contributes to boosting conversion rates as businesses enhance their website.

Key benefits

• Subaccounts & multiple users: You can manage multiple accounts, for different teams in your company under one single parent account.
• Multi-language surveys: SurveySparrow allows you to collect feedback from around the globe, in any language, using multilingual surveys.
• Visual workflows: Automate actions based on the survey triggers. When responses clock-in, set conditions and perform tasks. Configure once and forget.

With SurveySparrow, businesses can gain top insights and supercharge their CRO.

5. CrazyEgg

When it comes to free CRO tools, you can’t get much better than Crazy Egg. It’s a top website optimization platform, used to monitor user behaviour.

Key benefits

• Heat mapping: You can see where your customers are clicking, and discover which parts of your site are performing the best.
• Origin tracker: Gain insights about where your users have landed from and whether that needs to improve.
• Interactive analytics: Instead of reports, you can view your analytics with a fully interactive and intuitive UI.

Crazy Egg boasts a range of other appealing features including design testing, CRM (customer relationship management), A/B split testing tools, and scroll maps.

6. Unbounce

Unbounce is a drag-and-drop landing page builder for individuals and businesses. The platform allows users to design, test and publish landing pages in a quicker, more efficient way. Your company can improve marketing, increase leads and enhance your connection with customers.

Key benefits

• Unlimited testing: There’s no limit to the pages you can create and test with this CRO tool.
• Design assistance: Unbounce comes with a wide range of different design templates to assist you with your web pages.
• Client management: You can organize leads and manage your clients.

Regardless of your business size, Unbounce makes things simple with easy management, the ability to set permissions for each user and replicate the success of your best-performing landing pages between different accounts.

7. WebWave

WebWave’s free website builder allows you to create amazing websites effortlessly with their drag and drop tool.

Key benefits

• RWD – responsive website: You can precisely tell how a user will see your website on a computer, tablet and mobile phone.
• Animations: You have full control over animation, its direction and duration. You can add animations to every element of your website and present it in unique ways.
• Image feature: WebWave offers a range of image features, including parallax effect, ken burns effect, free stock photos, and dynamic elements size and alignment.

Their range of features gives you a range of possibilities when creating your website.

8. GTMetrix

GTMetrix analyses the performance and speed of your page plus offers valuable advice on how to make improvements. For WordPress users, you may recognise GTmetrix as a free plugin to optimise your site’s page speed.

Key benefits

• Advanced testing: GTMetrix allows you to test your website at different connection speeds, in various countries and on a range of browsers. You also get a score based on Google PageSpeed Insights and YSlow metrics.
• Page insights: GT Metrix tells you why your page is slow, so you can make changes accordingly.
• Different devices: you can see how your site loads depending on which device is being used.

Speed is an important factor in CRO so a tool like GTMetrix is worth using.

9. Google PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights offers data on the speed and performance of your web pages.

Key benefits

• Suggestions: the software offers suggestions to help you improve speed and performance.
• Performance score: with a performance score, individuals can track the performance of their site, and aim to boost that score.
• Classification: find out if your site is deemed slow, moderate or fast.

If you don’t use GTMetrix, it’s essential you at least use PageSpeed Insights. It’s a valuable tool for CRO and all aspects of online marketing.

10. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most popular analytics platform out there, it’s also one of the best free CRO tools. This Google software tool summarises data and utilizes several funnel visualization methods.

Key benefits

• Top analytics: analysing data is imperative to marketing optimisation, so let Google do what it does best!
• Advanced reporting: Google lets you know the who, how, and what of your audience, in detail.
• Budget allocation: Google separates your working site practices, from those that are not working. Using this data you can improve budget allocation.

Google Analytics is one of the main CRO tools you need in your arsenal. It gives you important insights into how your users operate and the data you obtain can be used in other tools via its dedicated API.

If you are just starting out then you may find it all a little confusing, but don’t despair as we’re going to explain a few of the best options to you right now.

To begin with, you have 2 main options: 

• The service-hosted options such as Wix are like renting your house instead of buying it. You can still decorate to your taste and run it day-to-day, but your landlord will take care of the maintenance.
• The self-hosted options such as WordPress are more like buying your house, as you get complete control. But if you have any problems, your hosting company will often help you via live chat.

Drag and drop website builders are great, but getting your website online is only half of the story, as you need to attract targeted visitors to spend money with you.

Although you get some visitor attracting tools with the website builders, they are not as fast and efficient as the more established, popular and proven methods such as high-visibility online advertising, which is included in our done for you option.

You’ll soon see how easy it is to build a very professional and stunning website, without spending 1000’s on having a website designed and built.

Webflow – Service-Hosted

Founded in 2013, Webflow has grown to have over 2 million users and was named the 2nd ‘Most Innovative Company in Design’ in 2020 by Fast Company.

Similarly to Weebly and Wix, Webflow is a drag-and-drop tool for creating responsive websites and apps without the use of coding. It attempts to fill the space between DIY software, content management systems and front-end web development.

The Good

• No coding experience required – Webflow translates your design into clean, semantic code that’s ready to publish.
• Access training materials – They offer hundreds of in-depth videos, courses and guides to get your website up and running fast.
• The Showcase – Their very own gallery showcasing websites built by members of the community.
• Over 500 templates to choose from – Which you can customize with Webflow’s code-free design tools.
• Webflow Community – Their community allows you to connect with members who are contributing to Webflow’s mission and building the future of visual development.

The Bad

• Although they pride themselves on being a free platform, you have to pay extra for their plans which are fairly expensive
• No live chat or phone support.

Prices

Webflow is free, however they also offer account plans that you can upgrade to, so you can access additional features. Upgrading ranges from $16 to $35 a month. You can view the pricing in full here.

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Learn more about Webflow

Weebly – Service-Hosted

Weebly allows you to design your sites using the drag and drop editor and it has lots of tools and resources to ensure you get your site looking and functioning how you want.

If you understand HTML or CSS, Weebly allows you to use them more than its rival Wix, as it has a built-in code editor for added customization to your needs.

The Good

• Simple to use with drag and drop editor for standard customization options such as adding text, images, file uploads, slideshows, membership and advertising options etc. This makes everything easy but with a more limited choice than Wix.
• 40 pre-designed page layouts including landing pages for PPC, contact pages, portfolios and sitemaps.
• Good support. No live chat but plenty more including an online help centre, a forum, ticketing system and phone support.
• Free email account.

The Bad

They don’t have as many templates as other website builders such as Wix and they don’t seem quite as special looking. However, it completely depends on your tastes and needs. The limited available apps to increase functionality will mean it’s not as powerful in that regard.

As with Wix, you’ll need to learn the best ways to get plenty of visitors to your site, as there are only limited resources for this.

Prices

Weebly offers a free option and three paid options. The free option has limited space, can only be used with a Weebly sub-domain, not your own, and your site will have Weebly ads on it. The Business package is aimed at small businesses and ecommerce sites and at an affordable rate. You can view the pricing in full here.

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Summary

To be fair, for the majority of users, the resources they choose will depend on the price and probably the templates. Weebly isn’t as strong as Wix template-wise but the cost is competitive and there is that free option if you want to test the water.

Learn more about Weebly

Squarespace – Service-Hosted

Squarespace is similar to Weebly as it’s drag-and-drop-based and very easy to use. Their tagline is ‘Build It Beautiful’ and their focus is on stunning themes, relying heavily on high-level photography.

So if the look of your website is everything to you, Squarespace is worth a closer look.

The Good

• The most design-conscious of the options here, there’s a huge selection of professional and stunning photography based design templates, or you can upload your own design.
• Clear and simple management area makes working on your website a breeze.
• There’s a ton of help on offer with 24/7 customer support, live chat and email tickets and a complete knowledge base of walkthrough videos and guides, along with a high-quality customer forum.

The Bad

A bit expensive for what you get in comparison to the competition. As with the others, it’s not great for advanced marketing tools, so you need to keep in mind you’ll need something else to really bring in the visitors.

Prices

Packages range from $12 to $40 a month, depending on the package and when you pay. You can view the pricing in full here.

As mentioned before, there isn’t a massive difference between these brands as they have to offer similar things to remain competitive.

Squarespace isn’t the most cost-effective here but they do offer what is widely judged to be the most attractive templates of all website builders, so if that’s very important to you, Squarespace will do you proud.

Learn more about Squarespace

Wix – Service – Hosted

Launched more than a decade ago, Wix has become one of the most popular website builders with over 125 MILLION customers.

Popularity is comforting when you are in the market for something, and that number of people trusting their online presence to Wix is a great accolade for their service.

One of the main reasons for its popularity is its Drag & Drop ease of use and the great templates you can use to make your site look amazing.

The Good

• Very simple and easy to use with around 500 customisable templates suitable for all kinds of businesses. Most changes can be made by clicking on a site element and adjusting it to meet your needs.
• Includes Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI), which is perfect for beginners as you just answer a few simple questions and Wix will design your website for you. Obviously, you can tweak the design as much as you want.
• Very reliable with fast load times and a reputation for minimum downtime.
• Template Gallery has over 500 designer-made templates, making it easy to find a design you love.
• Build and host multiple different websites without restrictions on time or being forced to upgrade.
• In the Wix App Market you can access a ton of useful add-on apps, including bookings & payments facility, professionally designed marketing emails, contest apps to engage your visitors and the ability to offer live support

The Bad

If you need to add an online e-commerce store, it’s only available on the more expensive package and email accounts cost £5 extra each.

You’ll also have to decide how to get visitors to your site, as although there are a few tools for this included, you may find they’re not enough to offer a real boost to your site.

Prices

Packages range from £3 to £18 a month, depending on your needs. You get a free domain name, £75 of advertising vouchers and you can remove the Wix ads, on all but the cheapest package. You can view the pricing in full here.

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Summary

Wix has one of the most intuitive user interfaces in the website builder market which makes it great for beginners and you can easily have your site up and running in hours rather than days. Perfect for small firms.

You even get a tool to edit your images with Wix, there are help buttons for virtually everything and a vast Online Help Centre if you have any questions.

Learn more about Wix

Elementor – Service – Hosted 

Founded in 2016, Elementor is now used by 6% of all the world’s websites (yes, you read that correctly). A WordPress website builder, has become a go-to tool for SMB owners who lack traditional coding chops but who are (justifiably) unwilling to compromise on a comprehensive WordPress website. Boasting a powerful WooCommerce builder, Elementor can be leveraged towards creating online stores, as well.

The Good

• WordPress without code: The world’s leading CMS for a reason, WordPress can be a channeling platform for those lacking considerable technical expertise. Elementor empowers web designers to create stunning WordPress websites without having to touch a single line of code.
• Kits Library: Elementor’s Kits Library contains dozens of complete, designer-made website kits. These kits include all the elements and attributes a website needs in one single kit. With just a few clicks, you can customize a kit to fit your needs and vision, and, voila, you’re up and running with a complete website!
• Perfect for SMB online stores: Users can display their products in the exact way they’d like with Elementor’s drag-and-drop editor, 90+ widgets, and pre-designed templates. Users can boost sales with pixel-perfect product landing pages and popups, tailored to every type of customer.
• Powerful community and academy: Elementor users (dubbed Elementorists) can seek inspiration from the website builder’s vibrant community. Additionally, they can find any and all information pertaining to Elementor’s features and functionality on the website builder’s newly minted academy.

The bad

Elementor offers hosting services. However, these offerings need to be worked out somewhat. By the halfway point of 2022, Elementor users should be able to rely solely on Elementor to host their website.

Prices

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In addition to an extensive free plan, Elementor offers four subscription packages. Prices start from $49US per year.

Summary

If you have your heart set on a WordPress website and want an intuitive, code-free user experience, Elementor is your tool of choice. With a constant roll-out of features and tools, Elementor will become even more dynamic in the coming years, and SMB owners should explore its free plan.

Learn more about Elementor

Conclusion

If you’re brand new to business website building don’t worry, all of these options make it easy to get started quickly and before long, confidently. That’s the whole point after all.

The great thing is that you can get started with these services in no time at all and you won’t have to mess around with lots of code.

So in this article, we will show you how to use analytics to improve lead conversions, with the help of some of the best analytics tools available.

Lead generation: statistics

1. 61% of marketers say that the traffic generation and attraction of potential customers is the main problem.
2. Content marketing is a lead generation tactic for 88% of B2B marketers [PDF].
3. Converting leads into customers is a top priority for 74% of companies.
4. Marketing automation to potential visitors attracts 451% more customers.
5. Landing page tests are used by only 17% of marketers as a tool to increase conversion rates.

Increase lead generation with Google Analytics

It is the world’s largest e-commerce metrics analysis tool. Provides a lot of information about the target audience. For example, habits, behaviours, and browsing history.

Getting started with Google Analytics is easy. You need to register an account, get a tracking ID and add it to the site. This will ensure that the data is sent. The identifier is added by inserting a code into each page of the site (the <head> tag is added).

Some metrics that can be learned from Google Analytics and where to find them (in bold and italic):

1. New User Conversion – the number of people who buy on their first visit. Tracking and analysis will help you determine which marketing channels are attracting quality users. Traffic Sources -> All Traffic -> Channels
2. Price per action. Shows how much money a company spends to bring a user to a conversion. Includes the price of interaction at different points. We recommend segmenting the received data. The CPA of regular and new customers varies.
3. Output. Improve conversions by eliminating the reasons for leaving the site. Exit page analysis will reveal weaknesses in the funnel. Behavior -> Site Content -> Exit Pages
4. Goals. Identify the ones, that users want to complete and track the path to them. It is recommended that you create goals that are not directly related to purchases. Better to tie them to, for example, shipping tools or sizing charts. Here you can also find out the conversion rate of the goal and then increase it through small site improvements. Conversions -> Goals -> Overview
5. Search. It considers the queries that users enter into the search bar of a resource. To improve results and quickly get users to the desired product, it is worth creating fix proposals. Behavior -> Site Search -> Searches
6. The length of the path to conversion. A lot of time passes between the first interaction with the company and the fulfillment of the goal. By reducing it, you make the customer journey shorter. This is valuable. Conversions -> Multi-Channel Funnels -> Time to Conversion

Read: The 6 Best Lead Gen Strategies for Startups

5 analytics tools to improve lead generation

The most effective activities are achieved through a good understanding of the target audience. The more you know about the priorities, desires and preferences of your customers, the easier it is for you to offer them the corresponding benefits.

We decided to help you to save time. To do this, we have selected the best services that analyse various indicators and are suitable for any marketing activity.

1. Lead Forensics

The program allows you to track the behaviour of site visitors comprehensively. Gives an understanding of what content the audience values. Collects information about visitors. In particular, IP address, contact and demographic information.

Each interaction session forms a “trace”. Receiving the visitor’s IP address, the program gives information about who exactly visited the site. You don’t even need to fill out a request form for this. From that moment when a visitor enters the site, the program determines the IP address, further linking actions to a specific guest.

2. Hotjar

The software analyzes user behavior, but it is much more detailed than the previous tool. Also provides feedback. It is a great addition to web analytics data.

Hotjar is good at visualizing user behavior. In particular, through heatmaps showing clicks and actions. Supplemented with surveys and session recordings, they provide insight into how and for what purposes the audience uses the site.

Program tools:

1. Heatmaps. The longer and more often you interact with a specific page / section of the site, the brighter they are displayed.
2. Entries. You see, the entire user session so you can easily fix the flaws. Perhaps some button is not working. Also, sometimes the content on the page may not display correctly. Maybe it’s the UX. Now there is nothing to make assumptions about. The entire session, from the moment you enter the site until you close the tab, is visible in the recording.
3. Polls, feedback forms and reports. A simple tool that demonstrates the benefits that a person receives from visiting a site. It shows where engagement is dropping. Provides an opportunity to correct shortcomings by making such pages more useful and interesting.

The program is easy to configure. Integrates with Google Tag Manager. Easy installation allows it to be hosted on almost any platform including Shopify stores.

Read: 10 Free CRO Tools To Use In 2020

3. Leadfeeder

An excellent assistant for companies operating in the B2B market. It is a sales tool. Allows you to find out about the companies visiting the site, as well as the products they are looking for. Identifies the organization precisely. The tool integrates with your Google Analytics to provide company identification. It can also connect to CRM and email components to provide additional information and improve the management process.

Visitors are tracked through:

• Google Analytics
• offline tracking codes.

In the first case, it connects to your site’s Google Analytics. After that, it is possible to generate network reports. The companies that visited the resource are indicated in them. The service also provides additional information that appears on your control panel.

For the second method, the program generates offline tracking codes for site visitors. Determine the IP addresses of the visitors. Such a small detail opens up wide possibilities of types and methods of company search for a guaranteed and correct identification. The program also uses additional databases.

Leadfeeder will tell you:

• how the visitor found the site;
• location of the client;
• which pages of the site were viewed;
• contact information for communication.

This information can help you to understand and research your target audience better. Data is powerful. In particular, the information can be used to develop marketing activities, generate leads and direct sales.

4. SE Ranking

A great tool that allows you to find the keys to get leads. It will delight you with a friendly interface and efficiency. You can use it to find keywords that meet the goals of your advertising campaign and business and will also lead you to deals. Thanks to the multifunctionality of the service, you can not only receive orders but also evaluate your effectiveness. You will be one step ahead of the competition with it. The work algorithm is:

1. Identify the main players in the market using the competitor research tool.

2. Find and analyze your competitor’s paid keywords with the tool. Filter and remove “free” (those that suggest something free), irrelevant keywords and queries that don’t match your geolocation.

3. Choose the most relevant and profitable keywords (the ones with the best CPC metrics).
4. Study SEO keywords and remove unnecessary ones.
5. Cluster your SEO keywords.
6. Create a pivot table of intersections of SEO keys and PPC keys. See which clusters were involved.
7. Use the resulting clusters in your work.

5. Google Optimize

This tool will be useful for companies that are already generating traffic but want to increase conversions. The service allows for A/B and multi-channel interface testing. Provides information about the behaviour of visitors. If you don’t know where to place a button or how to make a background, then Google Optimize will be very useful.

Opportunities:

1. A/B/N testing. Allows you to create several variants of one page and determine the most effective one to achieve your goals.
2. Testing related to forwarding. In this case, the behaviour of visitors on individual pages is tracked. Each is identified with a unique URL.
3. Multivariate testing. The number of tracked pages is represented by several sections of the site at once.

Conclusion

A business doesn’t exist without clients. For the success, promotion and growth of a company, you need a following in the form of loyal customers. At the same time, few marketers pay due attention to analytics. Although it demonstrates real customer preferences.

We have selected the lightest and most effective lead generation analytics tools. We hope they will help you to improve your results. Get to know your customers, and then there will be no problems with lead generation, conversion, or other tasks.

• How do you measure bounce rate?
• Is it an accurate metric?
• Should it be used in reports?

While we won’t be diving into those questions in this article, it is important to consider them as part of your strategy to ensure your reports give optimal data to your colleagues or clients. For this article, we’ll look at what makes a good bounce rate according to industry benchmarks and why, as well as that all-important definition.

What is bounce rate?

In her article “So Let’s Talk About Bounce Rate as a Ranking Factor”, Jess Peck asked colleagues on Twitter for their definitions of bounce rate and there were some critical nuances in the responses, relating to 3 general definitions:

• A bounce is when someone enters your site and immediately leaves
• A bounce is when a visitor only visits one page on your site
• A bounce is when someone enters a page and takes no action on that page

Jess goes in-depth into the pros and cons of each, which I won’t do, but Google’s official definition is the following:

“Bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server. These single-page sessions have a session duration of 0 seconds since there are no subsequent hits after the first one that would let Analytics calculate the length of the session.”

There’s also a variation of that on the Tracking Code Overview page for Google Analytics:

“Bounce rate is referred to as a single-page session to your site, but is strictly defined as a single interaction request during a user session. For this reason, a bounce rate for a page is also affected by eCommerce transactions and event tracking requests. This is because these features co-exist with page tracking and, when they are triggered, they result in additional interaction requests to the Analytics servers.”

As for Jess, I will use the above definition, defining bounce rate as a single-page session where someone leaves immediately without any additional page interaction. Think of it like picking up a magazine in a newsagent after checking the cover and putting it straight back without opening.

How to measure bounce rate

Bounce rates are a percentage of the number of one-page sessions over the total number of visits. So if there were 100 visits to a page and 90 of those were one-page sessions, the bounce rate for that page would be:

90 one-page visits ÷ 100 total visits = 0.9 or 90% bounce rate

Is bounce rate an effective metric?

Now, there is a lot of debate on whether bounce rate is an effective traffic metric. The point of a bounce rate is to track site engagement—are people accessing multiple pages on a site as part of their site visit. That’s where pages per session would come in as an additional metric.

But bounce rate comes with an unintentional bias towards information sites. In an era of “zero-click Google searches”, the perception is that people search for queries and want immediate answers. Someone looking for a definition of bounce rate may come to this page, find a satisfactory answer and leave without reading the rest. Does that make my page “bad” or did I fulfil the requirement? Bounce rate can’t necessarily tell you.

That’s why bounce rate on as a sole metric isn’t as effective compared to it being part of related metrics, like pages per session and session duration, especially if a bounce counts as a single-session visit with no activity for 30 minutes. By that, you could read a page for 30 minutes and leave, which would be amazing but count as a bounce, which wouldn’t.

Average bounce rate by industry

I’ve gone into the philosophical aspects of bounce rate but in order to define a “good” bounce rate, we need to look at averages across different industries as every site is different. As the owner of a cooking supplies company, you can’t compare yourself to a news site as they serve different intents.

By comparing a site with another one within the industry, you can judge the bounce rate more efficiently.

A general range for all satisfactory bounce rates is between 30%-70%.

However, finding accurate benchmarks is difficult due to the age and quantity of studies trying to find them. There are also different segments used for benchmarks such as device type, channel, and website type. For the purposes of this article, I will be listing the two more commonly cited benchmark studies so you have a range to compare your bounce rates.

Note: as there aren’t any additional statistics such as variance to go with these averages, don’t treat them as hard-and-fast rules.

CustomMediaLabs

• 20% – 45% for e-commerce and retail websites
• 25% – 55% for B2B websites
• 30% – 55% for lead generation websites
• 35% – 60% for non-eCommerce content websites
• 60% – 90% for landing pages
• 65% – 90% for dictionaries, portals, blogs and generally websites that revolve around news and events

Kissmetrics [link to PDF]

• 10%–30% for service sites – self service or FAQ sites
• 10%–30% for portals such as MSN, Yahoo Groups, etc.
• 20%–40% for retail sites driving targeted traffic
• 30%–50% for lead generation – services for sale
• 40%–60% for content websites with high search visibility
• 70%–90% for simple landing pages with one call-to-action such as “add to cart”

What to do when your bounce rate is “too high”

Now that you have a range to work with, it’s time to measure yourself amongst your industry peers. There’s always room for improvement but if you’re in the middle, improving bounce rate isn’t a high priority. The issue comes when you’re way over the upper limit—it could be a sign of underlying problems.

Here are 3 diagnostic techniques to find the root cause:

1. Run a heatmap

A heatmap is a cool (pardon the pun) way of observing user behaviour on a site by showing the most commonly visited sections of a page with a warm/cool spectrum:

• The most visited sections are redder or warmer
• The least visited sections are bluer or cooler

By running a heatmap, you will be able to use the warm/cool spectrum to see which parts of the page got the most attention, and identify potential underlying issues that your page might have.

Read: 10 Free CRO Tools To Use In 2020

2. Try split testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is the process of conducting testing in a bid to lower and improve your conversions, which go hand-in-hand with bounce rate.

The basic idea here is that you publish two versions of a page, with slightly different variations, and analyse the differences in your chosen metrics (in this case, the bounce rate). This can indicate what might be lacking that is impacting your bounce rate.

3. Improve page speed

Page speed is a big indicator that you might have issues; a slow and unresponsive page is not going to see many page conversions, and will lead to a high bounce rate. There are a few things you can do to improve your page speed, and some of the best ways include reducing redirects, enabling compression, improving your server response time, and optimizing any images you might have.

You can use Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report to test the speed of your website and you’ll receive a list of actions you can take to prevent anything slowing your website down.

Just login to your Adzooma account and under Reports at the top, click SEO Performance Report to get started. If you’re not an Adzooma user, you can sign up for free here and access this feature.

Further resources

• 11 Reasons Your Website Can Have a High Bounce Rate
• Bounce Rate: Everything You Want to Know and More
• Predicting bounce rates in sponsored search advertisements
• Session Duration, Avg
• How to Optimise Your Site with Google Analytics Data
• 6 Tips To Create The Best Landing Page

Conclusion

There is a lot to think about when it comes to bounce rate. But once you’ve settled on a definition and used it with other meaningful metrics as part of your reporting and overall strategy, it can become more useful.

What is a conversion funnel?

A conversion funnel is an eCommerce term used to describe a consumer’s journey from the first interaction with your advertising or organic campaign to the final point of conversion – the sale. The “funnel” gradually gets smaller as a customer travels through.

Why is it important?

Understanding the conversion funnel is crucial in understanding a consumer’s thought process. If you can think like a customer, you’ll know what kind of habits they have and can use more targeted and personalised marketing techniques to guide them to those final conversions.

A successful conversion funnel translates into a healthy profit for your business.

How to create and optimise your funnel

1. Outline the process

The conversion funnel can be thought of as having three divisions: the upper funnel, middle funnel and lower funnel.

• Upper funnel: This describes users who have just searched for a product and don’t know a lot about it. They search through several brands as they try to figure out what exactly they need.
• Middle funnel: These consumers know more about the product and even know about popular brands and technical features of the product. They know what they want and will turn away from brands that do not meet their specifications.
• Lower funnel: These potential buyers are ready to purchase but might need a nudge. They have favourite brands and look for more specific information about the product from customer reviews about it. Consumers at this stage of conversion can be triggered to make a sale through remarketing techniques that get them off the fence.

To be efficient at every stage of the conversion process, aim to convince your customer to go a step further in each stage of the conversion funnel. The popular AIDA model is an excellent tool to divide and conquer the funnel at each stage.

AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. These are the responses you want to evoke from your consumers at specific stages of the conversion funnel.

• Awareness

For Upper Funnel consumers, you want to create Awareness of the product. There are several ways to achieve this, including social media, organic search, blogging, and pay per click (PPC) campaigns.

• Interest

Now your consumers have made it to your landing page. What measures have you put in place to keep them there? What stops them from tagging out as soon as they arrive? Some strategies include offering consumers a discount or special offer in exchange for their contact information. For instance, they can sign up for an account on your site to benefit from free shipping. These techniques are also known as lead magnets.

• Desire

By this stage, you need to convince your consumer to trust your brand. The aim is for them to desire to choose your brand over others’. Customers can be described as being in the ‘Middle funnel’ during this process; they would value more information about your brand, which you can provide through email marketing. This marketing technique is more targeted to your consumer’s needs and will keep them engaged.

• Action

This is when you want to provide a trigger which pushes your customer to take the final step of making a purchase. That ‘push’ is usually described as a Call to Action or CTA for short. It could take the form of an attractive discount or giving the user a limited amount of time during which they can benefit from a special offer.

This creates a sense of urgency that can be hard for them to resist.

2. Set up conversion goals

Now that you’ve laid out a plan for guiding your users through the conversion funnel, you want to know how well those plans are performing. An excellent tool for evaluating your funnel is Google Analytics. Use this tool to set conversion goals to give you a good idea of whether your conversion strategies are succeeding or not.

To be thorough, set up goals for each stage of your funnel and significant conversions. Conversion goals could be anything from signing up for a mailing list to downloading resources.

After setting up your goals, your site will accumulate user information for analysis in Google Analytics, allowing you to figure out where you can make improvements.

3. Identify weak points to optimise

Another useful feature of Google Analytics is the “Funnel Visualization” report. It helps you to analyse exactly which parts of your funnel are causing your customers to abandon the funnel altogether. In other words, it gives you information about your site’s abandonment rate. Furthermore, it shows you where they go next.

This will show you what might be distracting your users from going through the next stage of your funnel so that you can determine what needs fixing and how to fix it.

4. Use data to justify changes

Evidence-based action is the way to go to ensure optimisation of your conversion funnel. A heat map is a great way to visualise where most of your visitor traffic is going. It helps you to make informed decisions concerning what to change on your page to direct your visitors to the desired destination.

5. Use split testing

Split testing – also known as A/B testing is a neat way to test your conversion techniques by creating two varying forms of a page and analysing them to see which one is more successful at conversion.

6. Consider automation to improve efficiency

Autoresponder emails help you to remind your customers to revisit your page. It’s an efficient way to maintain a lifeline of communication with your buyers to encourage them to repeat purchases in the future. Avoid bombarding them with excessively frequent emails, and they will be less likely to unsubscribe from your mailing list.

There are numerous strategies available for optimising your conversion funnel. Depending on your business, tailor your conversion path in response to how well it leads to conversions to yield valuable increases in your conversion rates. The more users that convert at each stage of your funnel, the more buyers you obtain at the very end.

7. Let an Adzooma Marketplace agency take care of it

Sometimes, you just don’t have the resources to tinker with your conversion funnel and we understand. It’s at times like that why we created Adzooma Marketplace—to provide a connection between potential clients and agencies who can help them. Our list of agencies that specialise in CRO are at hand to get your funnel into shape and get those conversions flowing through.

Let me be blunt here. Pain points are killing your conversions, which mean fewer sales and less profits. If you don’t identify these pain points, you’re going to continue losing conversions.

Ready to do something about it?

Read on to find out how to identify your pain points, the most common reasons customers might not be converting and how to fix these problems.

How to identify your pain points

To identify your conversion pain points, you need to set up tracking and analytics for your website. Without this data, it will be impossible to pinpoint exactly where your customers are dropping off and where you need to focus your attention on.

If you’re not already using Google Analytics, this is the first place to start as it gives you data such as:

• Who is visiting your site
• Which pages people are looking at
• Where people are leaving your site
• How long people are spending on your site
• And much more

Programs like Hotjar are also incredibly useful here, as they literally show you what your users are doing on your page. You can see where they click, which bits they spend the longest on and how they scroll through the page.

This allows you to literally see where people are stuck on your website, showing your conversion pain points first hand.

Ask your customers

Looking at the data is always the first step to identifying your conversion pain points. But if you’re still not sure what it is that is preventing your customers from converting, you can always ask them.

Setting up a survey is a good way to get feedback directly from your customers and getting them to tell you what they don’t like, what’s stopping them from buying and what you can do better.

These surveys can be triggered when users go to exit your site, meaning you can literally stop someone who hasn’t converted and find out why.

Test new changes

Once you’ve identified where your customers are dropping off, it’s not good enough to just guess the reason why and mark the situation as fixed.

Any changes that you make need to be tested. It’s how you can see if what you’re doing has made a difference, or if there’s something else that’s causing customers to drop off.

Split testing (or A/B testing) is a way of testing these changes against the original version. When visitors come onto your site, they’ll be shown either the old or new page to see which of them perform better.

VWO has written a guide on split testing which you should definitely check out.

Common pain points and how to fix them

When it comes to conversions, there isn’t really a perfect formula. It’s about seeing where your customers stumble and doing everything you can to make the conversion journey as smooth as possible for them.

Most of it relies on using your own data and testing changes to see if they improve your conversion rate.

However, there are a few common pitfalls that your website might be falling into. To make sure you’re not suffering from them, we’ve listed some of the most common conversion pain points that you need to keep an eye on and how to fix them.

1. Not enough information

85% of people research a product online before making a purchase.

The internet is not always a good place. For every business, there’s another fake website and scam that can offer similar items to yours. Before making a purchase, your customers need to know that you’re selling the real thing.

Even if people trust your company, they’ll want to know that your product is the best place to buy it online. If they can’t get the details they need, they’ll go somewhere else.

The good thing about this conversion pain point is that it’s an easy one to fix. Just make sure you’re including the information that your customers will need. This can include:

• Product dimensions or sizing
• Product images
• Testimonials and reviews from other customers
• Materials/ingredients
• Return information
• Guarantees/warranty information

Reviews and testimonials shouldn’t be ignored here. They are a fantastic way of building trust and easing any lingering doubts about your product that customers will have.

2. Too many checkout stages

Cart abandonment is a real issue in eCommerce. For some industries, the cart abandonment rate is as high as 75%.

One of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment is a complicated checkout process. No one wants to jump through several hoops just to buy one item. The longer and more complicated a checkout process is, the more chances you’ve giving your customers to turn away.

Thankfully, checkout customization is one of the key features that leading website builder solutions offer, as blogger Kaleigh Moore points out.

The checkout process should be as streamlined as possible. Take a look at Amazon’s checkout as inspiration. Their checkout is easy, simple and has very little steps involved. Even better, if you’ve got your information saved you can buy it in a single click. That’s efficient.

If you don’t have a guest checkout option, this might be the first stage. Having an account with a company is great if you know you’re definitely going to be coming back. But if this is a one-time purchase, it’s a hassle creating passwords and submitting all your information for this.

Not everyone wants to give this information over. They just want to pay and go. Not giving them this option is just inviting them to buy elsewhere.

3. Slow page speed

Slow page loading times may seem like a little annoyance, but they can literally kill your sales. Each year, slow-loading websites cost retailers $2.6 billion in lost sales.

Your users are impatient and expect your website to load instantaneously. In fact, 47% of users expect a maximum of 2 seconds to load a website. 2 seconds. Wow.

If your page takes too long to load, people will leave. That means you’re losing people before they’ve even had a chance.

You can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test the speed of your page and see what is slowing your website down.

If you’re an Adzooma customer, we’ll automatically check the site speed of all your landing pages to keep an eye out for this conversion pain point.

4. No upfront pricing

In a study about cart abandonment, the biggest reason that people abandoned their carts is because of extra costs such as shipping, taxes or fees being too high.

I’ve been there before. One time, I found a perfect notebook that would make an excellent present for my writer friend. I was sold and went straight to checkout. But, after entering all my details I found out that shipping cost more than the item itself, leading to a very speedy exit there. This perfect item was no longer worth it for me because of hidden costs.

Although you might not be able to lower these fees, one way to counter the drop off in customers is to be transparent and open about these prices from the very beginning.

When researching your product, your customers want to know exactly how much it will cost them. They shouldn’t have to go through the entire checkout process just to get an estimate on shipping and taxes.

So, include messaging about these costs on your website. There are some apps that will allow users to enter their postcode and calculate shipping costs on the page, helping to cut your cart abandonment rate.

That’s not the end

Increasing your conversions is never a one-time fix. It’s a continuous cycle of optimisations and fixes to keep beating your personal best and get the best conversion rate for your business.

There are countless CRO tools that you can use to help you with this. But if you’re lacking the time to learn and implement all these changes, you can always trust a local agency to help.

At Adzooma, we’ve got the perfect place for you to find them.

Our Marketplace is an independent directory of agencies ready to help your business. Just search for the service you need to see your next agency or freelancer in the list.

Find your agency today.

Unless you read the copy that comes before “click here”, you’d have no idea where you’ll be taken when you click there. As a call-to-action (or CTA), there are better alternatives.

In this article, I will look at what CTAs are and ways to improve under-performing ones.

What is a CTA?

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are special types of anchor text links that direct visitors to take a desired action on your page. They can be as simple as a text link like this:

Try Adzooma for free today.

Or take the form of a button like this:

As the name suggests, a CTA calls the visitor to perform an action. But not all CTAs are the same. Here are some brief examples of what you might want from a CTA:

• Submitting an email sign up form
• Registering for an event
• Downloading content
• Complete an order
• Sending a user to a lead capture page
• Push a user further down the conversion funnel

But not all CTAs work as well as they should and it takes time and tweaking to get them right. So let’s look at what to avoid in creating CTAs and how to improve their performance.

1. Don’t make your CTA’s difficult to read

If people can’t read your CTA, how can you expect them to click it? You need them to be accessible to all users or you run the risk of alienating a large number of potential customers.

Do consider accessibility and colour contrasts

According to AFB, 3.5% of the world’s population live with vision impairment (that’s about 253 million people). Accessibility is important to them as well as millions of people with hearing impairments and other disabilities that would affect their ability to engage with online content.

So make sure the colour of your anchor link text doesn’t clash with your button or background colour. Don’t prevent it from being readable for a screen reader. And if you use images, don’t forget to add keyword-rich alt text.

2. Don’t use complex language

Would you click on a CTA that says “Implement Posthaste!”? I know I wouldn’t. People won’t engage with a CTA they can’t understand. The same can be said for paid ads. Your headline is a CTA and you need to use your character limit effectively.

Do keep your CTA snappy and contextual

Consider plain language. It’s a way of writing that allows your audience to understand your words without further explanation. Plain language mixed with short and contextual words leaves no room for ambiguity (or, in plain language, confusion).

It’s also important to watch out for spelling mistakes. There are tools, like Adzooma’s Opportunity Engine, that can spot errors you may have overlooked from staring at the same words for too long.

3. Don’t over or undersell

Effective CTAs are all about balance. You don’t want to harass a user but you also want them to click. Aiming for either side of the spectrum ends up with the same result: no click.

Do give exactly what the visitor wants

Think about a CTA you clicked, what the anchor text was, and the reason why you click it. Examples that work for me include:

• Sign up
• Try for free
• Download
• Discover more
• Join today
• Our work
• Claim your free X

A lot of CTAs depends on the strength of actionable copy but brand awareness can go a long way. For example, Netflix CTAs would perform better than a video streaming startup on reputation alone.

4. Don’t fill your page with CTAs

Imagine a page full of CTAs that all read ‘click here’. You’d get confused about what you were clicking and why. Now picture a page full of different CTAs, possibly in different colours and different text. It’d be a sensory overload. And don’t forget mobile devices – it’s not a good idea to fill a small screen with loads of buttons.

Do place your CTAs strategically

Less is more when it comes to CTAs. The more you use, the more it appears you just want clicks rather than providing users with helpful information. Let your copy do the heavy work so the CTA can feel like a natural progression through the funnel.

5. Don’t link them to your home page

Avoid linking your CTAs to your home page. Whilst there are exceptions (e.g. a brand awareness for social media campaigns), your aim should be to send visitors to landing pages that can convert quickly. If users start on the home page, they may browse different pages and not the one you want them to visit.

Do link them to purposeful landing pages

If you want visitors to fill a form for a free downloadable white paper, sending them to your home page to find it themselves will kill your conversion rate. That’s why you should create a bespoke landing page with purposeful copy and an effective CTA button/link.

Also, don’t default to using “Submit” for forms. It might seem strange as, if they’re filling a form, they should know why they’re submitting their details. But by using a phrase like “download your free eBook”, it will remind them why they’re filling the form and entice them more knowing what the end goal is.

6. Don’t overcomplicate the design

Do you need jQuery animation, CSS animation, and SVG gradients for a Download CTA? The answer is no. Again, less is more, and in many cases, you can get away with a simple text link.

Do keep your CTA lightweight

There’s nothing wrong with using JQuery, CSS, or SVGs but consider things like page load speed for the former and ease-of-use for the latter two. Of course, a single CTA won’t cause significant lag but if there are loading issues already, making your CTAs more lightweight can shave off a few seconds overall, especially if you’re only loading one library for the sake of one CTA. It’s recommended that pages display content in no more than 2-3 seconds before users begin to abandon sites. And if you use a button, think about your use of negative space–don’t cramp your text into a small space.

7. Don’t stick to the same formula for every CTA

“Click here” stopped being effective because it wasn’t meaningful and it was formulaic. The CTA examples above might not work for you, so it’s important to A/B test your CTAs.

Do use tools and split testing

There are a variety of CRO tools that can help assess the performance of CTAs, including split testing tools. Changeable factors include:

• CTA text
• Colours
• Whether to use a button or a text link
• Animation or no animation?
• CTA placement
• CTA size
• CTA shape

We have a great selection of 10 free CRO tools to try and test your CTAs.

Don’t struggle—do use Adzooma

CTAs are small in size but large in importance. They come in many forms and they’re the last port of call for a user – either they click on them and they don’t.

One way to enhance the performance of your CTAs and your associated landing pages is to use a platform like Adzooma. With the Opportunity Engine, you can work through a wide range of opportunities to improve your ads and pages including:

• Check Low Performing Landing Pages
• Improve Landing Page Mobile UX
• Fix Broken Link
• Fix Landing Page
• Add Site Links Extension

The tool use machine learning, your campaign data, and best practices to offer optimal suggestions.

Now, don’t read anymore—do try Adzooma for free today.

In this article, I will look at what CRO is and the best metrics to track and analyse your conversion rate.

What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?

Conversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the number of site visitors who you want to take an action (which would result in a conversion). This can include:

• Signing up to a newsletter
• Creating an account
• Completing a form
• Downloading a white paper
• Making a purchase

Much like SEO, CRO is an optimisation process and requires constant improvements and maintenance. You need to understand the user experience (UX) of your website, the actions that visitors take, and what might be stopping them from converting.

Have you been using Google Analytics for your CRO?

Google Analytics is one of the most important CRO tools out there and if you’ve been using it, you will know how essential it is for CRO-related analytics. Insights from the platform can go a long way to helping you find areas for optimisation and split testing and with a basic knowledge of analytics, you can find great opportunities.

Top CRO analytics to track

But what do those opportunities look like? Here are 6 CRO analytics you can monitor and use in your optimisation efforts.

1. Conversions by Browser & OS

Not all browsers and operating systems are built the same; the experience on Windows 10 using Microsoft Edge is very different to someone using Safari on macOS Catalina, for example. That’s why the Technology reports in Google Analytics are a hotbed for CRO insights.

In the Browser & OS report you can find the following data categories (which you can set as Dimensions):

• Browser
• Operating System
• Screen Resolution
• Screen Colors
• Flash Version
• Java Support

Why this is important: When it comes to browsers, are there any that convert lower than the rest of them on your site? If you find that is the case, then you can click on that specific browser to see the different versions. Then you will be able to see if there are some versions that are particularly hindering the conversion rate.

How to track in Google Analytics: You can produce a report for this by going to the Audience > Technology > Browser & OS. Set your date range and look to the third set of columns under the heading, Conversions.

Note: Make sure you’ve set up conversion goals!

2. Mobile conversions

You might find that there is a particular mobile device that represents a large percentage of your website traffic. But if there is a bug in that mobile system, then it means that you’re losing a big opportunity. It could also be worth seeing if there are any differences between smartphones and tablets, and compare to desktop. If you find that there are some discrepancies, then you know where to look next.

Why this is important: The most common mobile devices you’re likely to find are iPhones, Samsung Galaxy’s, and Pixel phones. But only optimising for these is alienating a large pool of potential customers. 72.6% of smartphones worldwide use Android compared to 26.72% using iOS (as of May 2020). As there are millions of different Android devices around the world, you need to take them into consideration. You can’t optimise for all of them of course but completely ignoring them isn’t advisable either.

How to track in Google Analytics: You can produce a report for this by going to the Audience > Technology > Mobile > Devices. This gives you a list of known mobile devices that have been used to access your site. Set your date range as normal and check the Conversions section against other metrics.

3. Site speed

There will be a much better user experience if you have a site that loads quickly. The longer people stay on your site the more likely they’ll convert. The general rule is to aim for 3 seconds or less to avoid the risk of visitors becoming bouncers.

If you are interested in the user experience, then you need to care about the speed of your site. Check if there are any browsers that have slow load times, and then you can go from there.

Why this is important: Site speed is not only a UX necessity but it’s also a ranking factor (according to the mercurial John Mueller). It’s also linked to revenue—a 2017 study by Akamai showed that “a 100-millisecond delay in website load time could hurt conversion rates by 7%”. A slow site costs you money in the long run.

How to track in Google Analytics: You can produce a report for this by going to the Behaviour > Site Speed. From there, you can check an overview of your site speed data, analyse Page Timings, Speed Suggestions, and User Timings.

4. Site Search

Site search is an underrated tool for CRO. It cuts out the middle man of navigating through a site to find something. It’s either there or it isn’t and that’s down to the efficacy of your copy, internal linking, and general site architecture. Using data analysis, you can see behavioural aspects of your site searchers compared to the visitors that don’t search, and then use that to your advantage. 

Why this is important: According to a study by Screen Pages, visitors who used internal site search contributed to 13.8% of the revenues generated. It can also give you content ideas. If you have an e-commerce site and someone searches for something that generates a 404 page (meaning there wasn’t a page the matched their search), you might need to create that page and meet the demand.

How to track in Google Analytics: This can be found by navigating to Behaviour > Site Search. From there, you can get an overview, analyse Usage, Search Terms and Search Pages.

5. Traffic by Hour of the Day

People search at different times. The assumption is traffic is highest after 5pm on a weekday in your local area but that’s not the case for all sites. Viewing your site data by time can give you quite a variety of insights. This can be about what site visitors are buying at certain times and what they are searching for at certain times. Not only that, but you can also compare it to marketing campaigns, and the times and days that offers and promotions went out.

Why this is important: When is the best time to release a special offer to customers to generate the most revenue and gain the most traffic? It’s not going to be same for all sites and the only way to know is with an analytics report. You also need the data to plan for potential server overloads. If everyone accesses your site at the same time, it will cause slower speeds for other customers, lose money, traffic, and potential repeat custom.

How to track in Google Analytics: To find site traffic, navigate to Acquisition > All Traffic. From there, you can check the Channels tab, Tree Maps, Source/Medium, and Referrals. For each one, you can analyse your data by Day, Week, and Month. But for hourly data, you can find this under Behaviour > Overview.

6. Behaviour funnel

If your site has a lot of content, then you need to think about what the content does to help, or possibly hinder, conversion. You might find that some content brings in more conversions than others, whereas others that get a lot of traffic don’t convert. Then you can see what pages of content have the biggest business value.

Why this is important: To build the best funnel, you need to know how site visitors behave and navigate your site. A funnel analysis, for example, can show the exit rates on landing pages and if they’re particularly high, a place for necessary optimisation.

How to track in Google Analytics: You can set up Funnel Visualisation in Google Analytics by going to Conversions > Funnel Visualisation. Then you need to set up your goals. You can also analyse your Multi-Channel Funnels from the same section to see how your marketing strategy is working together to create conversions.

Conclusion

Using web analytics is essential for CRO.

But it’s also important to remember what CRO entails. It requires user data research to draw logical conclusions and form better lead gen strategies. The combination of Google Analytics can give insights into your target market, user behaviour and the potential to improve your site structure if necessary.

And never forget to set your goals and keep in mind the CUTE model:

• Clarity – make your site clear to understand for all users
• Urgency – site visitors want results immediately—it’s your job to give them that to the best of your ability
• Trust – offer users security and trust when they use your product or service
• Evidence – before you make a change to your site, ensure you have social proof that this is necessary

Keep it CUTE and let CRO lead the way to more sales and conversion.

• ‘Do I need a website or just a landing page?’
• ‘Is a landing page part of your website?’
• ‘What is a website landing page?’

Then you’re in the right place.

The only difference is, we aren’t just going to answer those questions. We’re going to tell you exactly how you can create a high-converting page that stands alone from your website.

Our tips won’t just help you boost your traffic, but will make sure you’re targeting the right people, with the right content, at the right time. It’s all about convincing them to take action, which we explain in detail throughout this article.

The browser and the buyer

There is a major difference between the people who visit your website and the people who click through to your landing page – one comes to browse and one comes with something specific in mind. The intent is different.

For instance, if you use PPC advertising, someone might find your website on Google when they’re looking for a product or service. At this stage, they would be aware that your brand exists and probably want more information.

However, they won’t be convinced just yet. Since they’ve found your website by chance and clicked on it to browse, they’re only in the first and second stages of the consumer buying process.

On the other hand, your landing page visitors are much further along this cycle. They have already shown interest by actively clicking through to your landing page, most likely from one of your CTA buttons telling them to ‘find out more’.

They are convinced your business can help them, and they are already deciding whether to make a purchase. You can even follow these 6 best practices for landing pages to make them convert.

But that’s not all.

Your landing page needs to have a specific purpose or function for it to work. It can’t just be better, bolder, or more colourful than your website, it needs to push the particular product or service you are offering. It’s like taking part of your website and putting it under a microscope.

Here is one of our landing pages at Adzooma, based around PPC optimisation

Every user who has clicked through to that page is looking to improve their website, and all our landing page needs to do is make them want our offer.

Sounds easy right?

Well, here are the 4 best practices we use on all of our landing pages. If you want to speed up the process, the Adzooma platform can alert you of suggested improvements to help increase your conversions.

For example, if you’re running several landing pages and don’t have time to check the loading speed of each one, Adzooma will let you know if there are any problems. It saves you the time and effort of analysing every single page – freeing up time to knuckle down on these important elements.

4 best practices to increase your conversions

1. Make your site ultra-specific

Your landing page needs to have an objective.

The whole point in creating one is to reach a particular goal, so it’s best to start from fresh if you’re trying to sell your entire inventory. Focusing on a certain product, service or campaign will convert visitors faster as there is much less choice.

Plus, according to HubSpot, companies get 55% more leads when they increase their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.

If you’re worried you’ve stripped it back too much, you can monitor your landing page performance in our platform and make small changes as you go. It’s the easiest way of getting great results.

Want to push your furniture upholstery? Use that keyword in your headline and highlight your impressive experience in that area. Showcase captivating before and after pictures of your work, tuning in to the finer details customers will love.

Above all, avoid making your landing page your homepage. It’s a common pitfall of many businesses, but one you definitely want to avoid.

2. Use killer CTAs

Landing pages are designed to convert users, so they need to be action-orientated. This means big and bold CTAs.

Depending on your business, your CTA’s could be based around anything from getting more sales, hitting more Ebook downloads, or increasing your number of enquiries. If you want to really ramp it up, you can use benefit-driven text that’s personalised to your product or service.

For example:

Balance Meals, a bespoke meal prep company offering personalised plans.

Weight loss program BellaBeat, designed to help women reach their fitness goals.

Creative Asset, a web design company specialising in ‘future-proof’ websites.

Use these examples as inspiration to create your own CTAs, and remember…

If adding CTAs to your Facebook page can increase your click-through rate by 285%, your landing page can’t afford to be without them. If you take one thing from this article, let it be that.

3. Include a captivating form

If you’ve got a form on your website, the biggest mistake you can make is copying and pasting it over. It might save you time, but no one will use it.

Why? Because most website forms are made for general enquiries. And in this case, general enquiries don’t convert. You want to make your visitors feel like your business is doing something for them, that they aren’t just giving away their details for nothing.

If you can make them feel like they’re getting more out of it than you are, it’s a win-win.

To do this, you need to make sure your form is there for a reason, and that reason is obvious to your users. It’s all about balance – you don’t want people creating random accounts for the sake of it, but engaging forms, such as pop-ups, have been known to achieve 1,375% more sign-ups. Do your research first.

In addition, make your form as short and snappy as you possibly can. If you want to capture emails to use for retargeting, don’t even think about asking for their age or home address. These are the small elements people begrudge on websites, and the easier it is to fill out, the more emails you will get.

See Crazy Egg’s for inspiration:

4. Hammer down on relevant testimonials

92% of customers read reviews before buying, and 88% of consumers trust online testimonials and reviews as much as recommendations from friends or family. It’s such a big number that it does all the talking for us.

Don’t get us wrong, positive testimonials on your website can drive more sales. But if you’re offering a 50% discount on handmade anniversary gifts, your visitors want to know more about that than your colourful embroidery.

For example, which testimonial do you think has the most impact?

1. “Great customer service, really friendly and fast delivery. Will definitely buy again”.
2. “The thought and care put into my gift is one in a million. It’s exactly what I envisioned gifting my partner and have never received a personalised item with such stunning details. Beautifully packaged too!”

Of course, it’s number two.

They are both impressive, but the edge of the second one fills you with hope and excitement for your own special order.

Landing page builder tools

There are a load of tools that you can use to create landing pages that convert. Here are some of our favourite platforms:

• Simvoly
• Zyro
• Webnode
• Web.com
• VEVS
• TemplateMonster
• Squarespace CPL

Ready for more customers?

Go ahead and use our tips, tricks, and 3 best practices to create a high-converting landing page that works alongside your website. Keep your audiences in mind and remember their intentions, and you should see conversions in no time.

For a little bit of inspo, here are 15 of the most inspiring landing pages.