My third week learning Conversion Rate Optimization — Review

So I am now into my third week of learning CRO.

What I did during the past week was Google Tag Manager and Landing Page Optimization. Let me elaborate on both.

Lets start with Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a tool that is used side by side with Google Analytics. What is so different from Google Analytics you might ask? Well, Google Tag Manager only collects data whereas Google Analytics stores it and reports it.

Google Tag Manager is a very effective tool is tagging traffic and being able to know where the data has come from, what campaign brought in the user which helps answer what were the most effective campaigns, which paid media source has been the most beneficial to the organization etc.

This in turn gives the data to Google Analytics which then gives us a detailed summary of our website interactions, which pages were most visited, what is our target user base, which devices do they use the most, where do they bounce off etc.

I am right in the middle of Tag Manager as I write this so I will elaborate more on this next week.

Landing Page Optimization

What is a landing page?

The landing page is the first page people see when they visit your website.

There can be multiple landing pages for various reasons.

If the user visits the website organically or directly through Google, the landing page might be the home page. If, however, the user clicks on an ad and then visits the website, the landing page could be different. This is because of the levels of awareness of the user

There are 4 different awareness levels. Problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and brand aware.

Each of these is a huge factor is determining the length of the landing page, the copy that is written and the end offer.

Problem aware is when the user is motivated by a problem they face because it was pointed out in the ad. This in turn triggers a pain and they click on your ad and land on the website.

Solution aware is when the user knows the problem they face and are in the market looking for a solution. You have to convince them that you offer the right solution and the answer to their problems.

Product aware is when the user knows the problem, solution and the product you offer. You must convince them that your product or service is what they need

Brand aware is when the user knows the problem, solution and your brand. They are very motivated and have already purchased from you before.

The different awareness levels determine the landing page experience. The less they know you and trust you, the longer the page and the more detailed you have to be. You want to eliminate all their objections, fears and doubts to convince them that this is the solution to their problems.

This aids in the design structure and hierarchy. We as optimizers must ensure that there is a direct relation from the ad to the landing page offer. If a user clicks on ad to try a live demo, give them a live demo on the landing page as soon as possible. Make it frictionless, do not make them write meaning less details, they will bounce off without doing anything.

Landing page Optimization is very important. There are so many factors that go into making an effective and compelling landing page.

First, the value proposition needs to speak to the users motivation. This should not be some generic value proposition, it has to speak to the particular user. One way to find these motivations is to look at all the reviews of competitors and competing solutions, listing down the most common 15–20 motivations, then using those as value propositions and then running A/B tests to see which ones converts the highest.

We should also do some user testing on the page to make sure our messaging and information is understood by users. One way to do this is the 5 second test. Users need to see the landing page for 5 seconds and answer the question : What does this website offer? OR What is their main product or service? AND is it easy to use and understand what they are trying to say?

These answers will help in building a much more user friendly website.

The speed of the landing page is also very important. Users attention span these days is very less and if a page takes more than 5 seconds to load, the user will bounce off. Ideally the page should load in under 3 seconds to ensure the user doesn’t lose patience and bounce off.

The design and copy of the landing page go hand in hand. One is ineffective without the other. The best user experience is created with effective use of copy, speaking to the user’s awareness and motivation levels and a beautiful looking website. It will increase trust and credibility of the brand and make the offer more compelling.

Heat maps, scroll maps and click maps are quite helpful too. We can see the amount of clicks on the website, where the user bounces off, how much do they scroll etc.

Another thing to look out for is doing the research and analysis. We need to look at Google Analytics in detail and see what each user is doing. What page do they visit the most, how long do they stay on that page, where do they spend their time the most. These give some very valuable answers and it helps in making more compelling offers.

Google Analytics helps establish the weak and strong points of our website. It shows how different changes affect the performance and user experience. It helps direct our attention to those things and then either fixing those problems or doubling down on the strengths.

As an optimizer, it is all about data and attribution.

I will elaborate on Tag Manager and Landing Page Optimization a little more next week as I am right in the middle of both of them.

Thank you for reading as always,

Rashad