You have a landing page. No, you have an AWESOME landing page. You’ve written some killer copy, found an inspiring image, and have ads directing tons of traffic to your landing page.
And it just isn’t working. You wait a day or two, increase the ad budget, but still there’s nothing. Zip. Nada. Your company hasn’t received a single lead from your landing page.
Want to know why?
Because of the #1 reason landing pages don’t work.
So what IS the #1 reason your landing page does’t work?
Testing.
You may know the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall. The story goes that a pedestrian in Manhattan, stopped Jascha Heifetz and asked him “Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?” “Yes,” said Heifetz. “Practice, practice, practice!”
The same goes for creating a successful landing page. “Hey Avi,” you ask, “Can you tell me how to make a successful landing page?”. “Of course,” I answer. “Test, test, test.”
But what can you test on a landing page, you ask? Just about everything.
Don’t forget to test just one thing at a time. Changing the messaging, buttons, images, or product features all at once won’t help you see where the problem is and how to increase the conversion rate. It will just confuse the matter further.
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Have you tried using different colours?
Something as simple as changing the colour of the button can have a huge impact on the number of landing page conversions. While the convention calls for a green button (and the bigger the better), some pages work better with red buttons. But what about purple ones? Or no button, and just having a clickable link? Or a drop down menu to choose the next stage?
The button isn’t the only thing to make a difference. As you can see in this handy chart, a page’s colouring also affects people’s decisions. What sort of audience are you looking to attract? Will a pink page work better than a black one?
You won’t know until you start testing.
Is that really an awesome image?
We are moving towards a much more visual age in today’s digital market, with images creating a lot more traction on social networks like Facebook. But still, the awesome image that you’ve picked for your landing page just isn’t paying off. YOU know that you picked an awesome image. WE know that you picked an awesome image. But the traffic coming to your landing page seems to disagree with you.
So change it. Use a stock image that everyone uses. Try an image that is closely related to your service or product. Use an image of your product. Use an image that isn’t related at all, but is clear and striking.
Or you can also try losing the image altogether, and use a video instead. It comes down to what medium gives you a higher conversion rate.
Change the marketing message
Your marketing message is ‘Use our SafeGuardExtractor 2000 to defend your home and family’. That is a great message, but it might not be what people are looking for. Maybe they want a specific number – Your family will be 83% safer with our SafeGuardExtractor 2000. Or perhaps they want to see the SafeGuardExtractor 2000 in action, with the message ‘The SafeGuardExtractor 2000 makes sure that no one bothers you twice’.
In addition to trying out different marketing messages to see what gets your target audience to convert more, there’s also the side benefit that the marketing team has. They can try out different marketing messages in a medium that is far easier to control and monitor than the company website, and once the winning message is chosen, they can use it on the main website as well.
What else can you test in Your Landing Page?
Look at your landing page elements. We’ve talked about colour, images and marketing message. But there are more elements on your landing page, and you can (and should) test them all to see how they make a positive or negative impact on your conversion.
For example, what about the features that you’ve written for the SafeGuardExtractor 2000? Maybe they should be written in a different order, or you should choose different features?
How about that call to action that you’ve added? Did you try a different call to action? Did you add a value-driven call to action, as opposed to a verb-driven call to action?
And what about the traffic coming in to your landing page? Can you change the ads, or use different traffic sources?
Test, Rinse and Repeat
The process for creating a truly successful landing page is simple. Test it by changing different elements. Keep the elements that work. Make the most successful landing page. Then, and this is my favourite part of the process, you start the whole thing again, to make your landing page even better.
So what are you waiting for?

Avi Kaye is a social media marketing consultant for software startups. In addition to PageWiz, he also writes for himself on his own blog, in between numerous cups of coffee.