Conversion rate optimization was once complicated for marketers looking to improve the performance of their landing pages. Fortunately, you have some of the best landing page optimization tools to create a landing page, perform A/B testing, and use heatmaps, clickmaps, conversion reports, and more to maximize their conversions.
In this article, I’ll take you through the best landing page optimization tools that can significantly up your conversion rate. However, before that, let’s quickly understand some best practices for landing pages.
Related: Best Landing Page Software
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Components Of Landing Page Optimization
Certain things make your landing page effective such as captivating headlines, social proof, clear CTA, etc. You can self-optimize them before looking for landing page optimization software.
- Eye-catching headline and subheadline: The title of your landing page must be relevant and exude positive emotions from customers. Think about the pain point or ambition of the customer and turn it into a headline.
Trello does it exceedingly well as their headline gets straight to the point explaining the use of the product, and the subheadline gives information about the features and sub-features of project management.
- Compelling and clear landing page copy: Eliminating the visual clutter draws attention to your CTA button, and so does add urgency or scarcity to your page. You can offer a lead magnet such as an e-book and activate a limited-time offer to compel your visitors to take action.
Kiss metrics suggest that using the word ‘you’ makes the copy feel intimate and encourages the visitors to engage in a personal conversation. The term ‘because’ explains why the visitors take action, and that is where you can introduce a lead magnet.
Talk less about yourself and more about what you can do for them because people care more about what they’re getting from signing up on your page.
- Clean and professional design: Choose a sleek yet simple design that includes playing around with contrasting colors, textures, and white spaces. Remember, less is more because your landing page concentrates on a sole goal.
Having a single form field like Slack’s landing page makes it easier for visitors to fill that form. On the other hand, Masterclass uses relatively more minor copies but keeps it informative with a video as its primary media.
Another thing to keep in mind is that navigation should be simple and present no obstruction between visitor and conversion. If possible, make sure the conversion is a one-click action.
- Social proof: There are different types of social proof that you can add to your page, such as industry expert quotes, recognized customer brands, peer reviews, short testimonials, media mentions, and so on. All of these add high value to your page, and the visitors are more likely to convert.
- A clear call to action (CTA): Your CTA shouldn’t confuse the visitors, and it should be right on the nose. Do away with elaborate and decorative language, present a direct offer such as Download now, sign me up, join now, etc.
Make the button begging to be clicked by either using contrasting colors like green or red or any different color from your background. Paul Olyslager’s guide on CTA buttons may help you understand CTA design better.
Why Landing Page Optimization Software Comes Handy
Landing page optimization tools can do all the heavy lifting for you in a short amount of time and give you a complete set of tools to measure, analyze and improve your pages.
- Data-backed intelligence on what’s working and what isn’t: An optimization software lets you perform multiple tests such as A/b, split testing, etc., and provides data via heat maps, click maps, keyword analysis, etc.
- Quantitative and qualitative insights:
Qualitative research offers numbers, and qualitative research gives insight into user behavior or why certain visual combinations work better. It could also provide you a direct way to fix bounce rates.
It gives you a clear picture of what a customer wants by conducting surveys, which you can use to affect the conversion rate positively. Optimization tools let you perform these actions and produce desired results.
- A/B testing: All the landing page optimization tools would have native A/B testing features. However, the best ones let you perform more tests like multivariate testing, split testing, heatmaps, etc. Using these features, you can tweak parts of your landing pages and let the results show what works better.
With that, let’s look at the best landing page optimization tools of 2021.
1. Unbounce
Unbounce remains undefeated as the best optimizing tool with no bounce rate and easy to churn automated landing pages. It also has many optimization tools like A/B testing, heat maps, and more.
Their native A/B testing is decent, and popup tools help increase conversions on your landing pages and websites.
Unbounce also has a landing page analyzer that you can use to test your landing page across categories like design, industry, copy, advertising & SEO, and page speed.
Key Optimization features:
- You can access a range of reports and stats on traffic, generated leads, conversions, and views.
- Smart Traffic feature uses AI-powered optimization and matches each visitor to the page where they’re most likely to convert.
- Dynamic Text replacement allows you to match your landing page text to your visitors’ search terms.
- It’s possible to add custom scripts and pixels.
- Launching A/B tests is easy and happens with a few clicks.
Pricing: There’s a two-week free trial that requires credit card details to sign-up. It has a three-tiered pricing plan starting at $79/month, billed annually with 75 landing pages, eight popups, and sticky bars.
2. Visual Website Optimizer
VWO is an A/B testing and conversion optimization platform that focuses on user research and optimization. It lets you perform the following tests and tells you the time to complete them based on traffic results.
- A/b testing
- Multivariate testing
- Split testing
- Geo-behavioral targeting
- Usability testing
- Heatmaps & click maps
The UI is intuitive and straightforward, and you do not need technical experience to split test headlines, copy, images, etc. VWO gives you one-click access to comprehensive reports and tracking along with individual test reports.
Unfortunately, only the higher pricing plans allow you to edit mobile and tablet displays.
Key optimization features:
- The testing tools are simple to use and effective.
- You can choose from 21 sample questions or add a custom question when running a visitor survey on your site.
- The click map data is invaluable as it tells you if your CTA should stand out more or if there are some confusing links etc.
- VWO also integrates with web analytics tools and shopping carts like Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, Clicky Stats, BigCommerce, Magneto, etc.
- It also has developed plugins for popular CMS such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
The sample question feature comes at the cost of $1 per credit (response), which is disappointing as you’ll have to pay quite a bit to display your survey.
Pricing: There is a 30-day free trial that allows you to test 1000 visitors, and there are four pricing packages, including VWO testing, which asks you to get a custom quote based on the number of monthly visitors.
3. Google Analytics
Many business owners still use Google Analytics to track their conversions. It shows you which pages are frequently landing on, the average time spent on the site, the number of pages viewed per visit, the percentage of new visitors, and the bounce rate.
By focusing on the visitor behavior on your landing page, you’ll likely find out if first-time visitors click over to your main feed. The multi-channel funnels have grouping dimensions and metrics that let you view a set of acquisition, behavior, and conversion metrics. You can also scan for conversion trends by custom segments such as Converters Vs. Non-converters.
Google Analytics highlights navigational problems that you should avoid right from the entry point. Even static content pages should include a call to action and direction to the rest of the site. It also provides real-time user analytics to ensure proper QA on your website.
Key optimization features:
- It allows you to set up custom reports that display specific routes through your site that produce the most conversions.
- Reverse Goal Path works well in places when you can’t predict the steps leading to a goal.
- You can see conversion stats for each of your web pages.
- There are endless possibilities to track any metric or dimension.
- Advanced segments let you zoom in on particular search terms on landing pages or a stream of traffic.
- The analytics blog site helps to optimize your landing pages via Google Analytics.
Pricing: It is free to use until you upgrade it to Google Analytics 360, which costs $150,000 per year.
4. Wynter
Wynter is primarily a messaging and copy-testing tool; however, it provides critical insight into the most overlooked conversion factor: messaging.
Asking customers for feedback could result in hours spent convincing customers to set up calls and review your page; Wynter eliminates this process and provides professional input on demand. It lets you set up a messaging test in minutes and shows results within 12 to 48 hours.
You get an understanding of how your shoppers make purchase decisions. Wynter delivers data on where your messaging misses the mark and helps you improvise conversions.
Key optimization features:
- It allows you to toggle between overall page feedback vs. granular areas.
- You can see the age and job title of each respondent.
- It’s possible to choose specific areas for feedback.
- The B2B research panel lets you target audiences by job title, industry, and company size.
Pricing: It costs $99 per value proposition test and $249 for a full-page message test.
5. Qualaroo
Qualaroo is designed to get customer feedback, and is perfect for market research or to review your products before and after you launch them. The software supports 21 languages, and you can translate forms in over 80 languages.
It has advanced targeted questioning features that target and trigger surveys based on several variables such as behavioral data, demographic data, etc.
However, it has only five templates that are average in look and feel, and it also doesn’t support mobile-responsive forms.
Key optimization features:
- The nudge feature allows you to survey customers while they’re performing an action.
- It lets you create forms targeted to specific audiences to gather data that you can quickly analyze.
- You can also use sentiment analysis to analyze customer feedback, such as negative feedback gets flagged for urgent follow-up.
- It integrates with many powerful websites; however, you’ll have to reach out to their support team to enable a few integrations.
Pricing: It has a free trial, and the pricing plan starts at $100/month.
6. HotJar
It’s a low-cost optimization tool and is effective in understanding user behavior. The analytics tools like heatmaps and session recordings help you understand the problems faced by customers on your site, such as a confusing design, broken links, etc.
Feedback tools like on-site surveys and incoming feedback give you the voice of the customer feedback to help you gain insight about your site from real users.
Key optimization features:
- You have access to form analytics and session replays that come in handy for optimizing your landing page.
- It lets you visualize the user journey by using heatmaps.
- You can use it along with Google Analytics to get a greater level of insight that Google Analytics can’t provide.
- It’s possible to trigger surveys after specific user interaction.
Pricing: They have a generous free plan, and their pricing plans start at $39/month.
7. WordStream’s Landing Page Grader
The landing page grader uses your AdWords PPC account to examine your landing pages based on factors such as form length, the number of clicks, keyword relevancy, spend, conversions, and more. It’s a landing page quality score checker.
Wordstream landing page grader also tells you the number and percentage of conversions you lost in the past 90 days. Moreover, the landing page grader compares your performance to other businesses in your industry and helps you identify the problems with your landing page.
Key optimization features:
- They score the landing page on crucial criteria, including lead form optimization, header tags, unique landing pages, etc.
- You can find out the relevancy of your landing page content based on your spend.
- It checks if your page is following the PPC practices.
- There’s another option to check if your landing page is optimized for mobile.
- You also get a free landing page report that gives you a deep insight into the post-click scenarios.
Pricing: It is a web-based, free-to-use software.
8. Usability Hub
Usabilityhub by name is a far-reaching user testing and usability research platform that is helpful to find design issues quite early on in the landing page creation process. You can design surveys for participants, validate their assumptions to avoid missteps.
By using the First Click test feature, it’s possible to assess the effectiveness of the links and content hierarchy by measuring how people complete your tasks by using your designs. It’s also possible to tag open text to analyze and identify common themes in your data.
There’s also something called a five-second test useful in optimizing messaging on landing pages and reducing bounce rates by measuring people’s first impression of your design.
Key optimization features:
- It lets you split test the audience to ensure each participant is unique.
- The heat maps let you visualize user clicks.
- You can use per question filters to drill down on participants’ answers and task completion.
- It allows designers to get feedback on images, videos, and audio files.
- You can customize your tests to suit your brand.
- There is no limit on the number of responses that you can collect from your participants.
Pricing: Their free plan allows you to conduct basic tests for up to two minutes and occasional research. The pricing plans start at $79/month, and collecting responses are priced separately on each plan.
9. Instapage
Instapage is a well-known landing page builder with a drag and drop editor and over 200 ready-to-use templates; however, it offers so much more than that, especially for PPC marketers. There are multiple personalization options that you can use to change the funnel and detailed analytics of your campaign to track conversions.
You also have AD maps that let you experiment on a series of pages and heat maps with 3 in 1 tracking functionality to gain better insight into the elements that draw the most user attention.
Key optimization features:
- The AMP & Thor Render Engine eliminates the pain of slow-loading landing pages.
- You can use heatmaps to track mouse movements, clicks, and scroll depth to visualize and analyze user behavior.
- It’s easy to make mobile responsive landing pages with the ability to add custom codes.
- Instapage is well suited for teams as it allows real-time visual on-page collaboration.
Pricing: Instapage has a 30-day free trial that requires credit card details to sign up. There are two pricing plans, and the business plan starts at $199/ month with a 33% discount if billed annually.
Final Thoughts
All the tools mentioned in this article are useful in one way or another to optimize your landing pages. I hope the features help you understand which landing page optimization tool is best for your business to boost conversions and gain profit.