Don’t believe us? Listen to this: According to data from HubSpot, 79% of marketers say email is one of their top three most effective marketing channels. Meanwhile, in 2023, 77% of marketers say they saw an increase in email engagement. That’s probably because a whopping 99% of consumers check their email every single day. 

Powerful emails start with powerful subject lines — and even though they should typically be nine words or less, cold email subject lines can be really hard to write. In this article, you’ll learn how to craft cold subject lines that improve open rates, click-through rates, and engagement for your startup. Let’s dive in!

Understanding subject line psychology

While it’s true that we all check our emails every day, most of us aren’t digging very deep. More often than not, we’re skimming subject lines for stuff that looks important or interesting. This means that the best subject lines do two things: They quickly grab your attention AND tempt you to open the email. 

Of course, “attention-grabbing” and “tempting” are subjective. If you want to write compelling cold email subject lines, you’ll first need to understand the mindset of the people opening your emails. Whether you’re writing for a B2B or B2C audience, knowing your recipients’ aspirations, pain points, and preferences is key. Tailoring your subject lines to address their needs can help you make that personal connection and capture their interest.

B2B subject lines

When writing cold subject lines for a B2B audience, make sure you address their specific challenges. By tailoring your content to meet those needs, you’ll demonstrate knowledge of their industry and make it clear you understand their concerns. Another way you can improve your B2B subject lines is by including industry-specific language that your audience is familiar with. (Not jargon — more on that later!) Doing this will help you build credibility and reinforce the idea that your product or service is a tailored solution designed to solve readers’ specific problems. 

B2C subject lines

If you’re writing for a B2C audience, you’ll want your subject lines to align with what your customers are already looking for. Does your product make life easier? Does it help save time or money? No matter what your specific value proposition is, make sure you incorporate it into your subject line. With this approach, it feels less like you’re selling something and more like you’re building a relationship based on common ground. Consumers have all sorts of reasons for purchasing a product or service, so make sure your messaging authentically speaks to pain points. 

Where curiosity meets authenticity

When it comes to cold email subject lines, balancing intrigue with authenticity is an art form. We’ve all received promotional emails that overpromise and underdeliver, like: 

• Subject Line: SAVE UP TO 70% SITEWIDE!
• Fine Print: Discount only valid on last-chance clearance items. ALL SALES FINAL.

While sparking your recipients’ interest is essential, it’s equally important to respect their time and stay transparent. Attention spans are constantly shrinking, and your prospects are likely getting burnt out on sifting through countless emails every day. Therefore, crafting subject lines that invoke curiosity without resorting to misleading tactics requires some finesse (and commitment).

The good news: There are several transparent subject line strategies that can pique your prospects’ interest without compromising authenticity. Try some of these on for size! 

• Tease valuable content: Hint at valuable content that the recipient can access by opening the email. 
  • Example: “Unlock Our 5 Secrets: Your Access to Exclusive Insights Inside!”
• Offer exclusive insights:  Make it clear that your email contains unique and/or exclusive information. 
  • Example: “Insiders Only: What the Competition Doesn’t Want You to Know”
• Pose intriguing questions: Engage your recipients by asking a thought-provoking question. 
  • Example: “Customer Engagement: What if Your Strategy Could Double Interaction Rates?”
• Highlight real results: Provide concrete examples of how your product or service has helped other people.
  • Example: “Real Results, Real Impact: See How Our Solution Transforms Businesses”
• Tell a story: Share a narrative that clearly illustrates the problem your product solves. 
  • Example: “Journey to Success: A Tale of Overcoming Challenges with Our Product”

Make your email interesting enough to grab attention, but make sure the content matches the subject line to avoid disappointing your readers. If you consistently oversell in your subject line, your readers will stop opening your emails — or worse — unsubscribe.

Power words and powerful tools

Language is an important tool in the world of cold emails. There are several “power words” that resonate with both B2B and B2C audiences. These carefully-chosen words evoke emotion, convey value, and encourage action. Putting these keywords in your subject lines can help your emails stand out in crowded inboxes. Some examples of power words startups can (and should!) use include: 

• Innovative: Show prospects that your startup is forward-thinking and cutting-edge.
• Exclusive: Create a sense of exclusivity and importance. 
• Revolutionary: Convey a groundbreaking and game-changing impact.
• Proven: Highlight the reliability and success of your product or service.
• Tailored: Emphasize personalized solutions for your prospect’s needs.
• Transformative: Suggest significant positive changes or improvements.
• Strategic: Position your startup as having a well-thought-out plan.
• Results-driven: Focus on the tangible outcomes or benefits.
• Efficient: Highlight time-saving or resource-saving aspects.
• Insider: Imply access to insider information or exclusive opportunities.

Remember to use these words sparingly and genuinely. Overusing them can quickly diminish their impact.

Speaking of impact, you’ll also want to avoid buzzwords and jargon as much as you can. Buzzwords tend to lack substance, while jargon might not be entirely clear to your audience. Instead, use simple and straightforward language that everyone will understand. (Here’s a tip: Read your subject line out loud. If it doesn’t sound like something you’d say to a friend, give it another pass.) 

If you’re still not 100% satisfied with your subject line, try using a subject line checker. Tools like SendCheckIt, Omnisend, and CoSchedule will analyze your subject line for factors like length, clarity, and emotional appeal — then provide suggestions for improvement. This information is (usually) free and can help your startup refine your email strategies.

A/B testing your cold email subject lines

It’s no secret that we LOVE A/B testing here at Tuff. A/B testing involves sending different versions of an email to a subset of your target audience, then analyzing which version performs better based on open rates and engagement. This process can be incredibly helpful for startups. A/B testing makes it easy to collect data, fine-tune your subject lines, improve open rates, and increase engagement. 

There are several ways you can execute an email A/B test — so for the sake of simplicity, here’s how to do it specifically for cold email subject lines. 

1. Define your goals. Are you aiming to improve open rates, engagement, or click-through rates?
2. Create variations. Develop two different subject lines. Use the information above to keep them concise, compelling, and relevant to your audience. 
3. Assign your audiences. Randomly assign your email list into two groups and make sure you have a representative sample for each subject line variation.
4. Send your emails. Send out the emails to their respective groups on the same day, at the same time, and under similar conditions. 
5. Analyze open rates. Identify which subject line performed better based on higher open rates. Numbers are important here, so make sure your sample size is large enough for reliable results.
6. Iterate and repeat. Use the subject line with higher open rates in future email campaigns, and continuously test new variations for improvement.

Takeaways

Writing compelling subject lines is vital for email success. Whether you’re targeting B2B or B2C, understanding what piques your audience’s interest is key. Power words, used sparingly, evoke emotion and encourage action. Balancing curiosity with authenticity ensures lasting engagement. Tools like subject line checkers and A/B testing refine strategies. Experiment with different approaches to discover what works best for your business.

To find out what works best for your business, get creative and start experimenting with some of these tried-and-true strategies. And if you’d like some help from the email experts, don’t hesitate to book a strategy call with Tuff.

Lauren Keene

Hi! I’m Lauren, a copywriter based in Chicago, IL. I’ve been writing professionally for over seven years and have worked alongside SaaS startups, ecommerce brands, and newspapers. (Yes, they still exist.) When I’m not at work, you can find me searching for vintage vases at the nearest thrift store or singing my heart out at karaoke.

The post Cold Email Subject Lines That Get High Open Rates appeared first on Tuff.

It’s always important to make sure you’re investing every marketing dollar in channels that yield the best return. But during periods of economic uncertainty, efficiency becomes more important than ever. To do that well, marketers are asked to leave no stone unturned when analyzing their marketing strategies. This often includes finding ways to make the traffic you are sending to your site convert at a higher rate with conversion rate optimization strategies. 

How you approach website testing is often referred to as conversion rate optimization (CRO). This methodology helps make sure you aren’t leaving potential revenue on the table when you are investing in new customer acquisition. 

If you’re spending time, money and resources driving traffic to your site, you want to make sure they convert when they get there. A nicely sharpened CRO strategy can help improve your return on ad spend. In this post, we’ll explore different methods for website testing to maximize your media dollars. First, let’s dive into what website A/B testing is. 

What is conversion rate optimization? 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is essentially a marketing experiment that involves splitting your audience into at least 2 or more variations to see which campaign or website change performs better. Many businesses turn to A/B testing when they are looking for ways to maximize conversions like revenue, transactions, leads, and more. 

There are several ways to set up a conversion rate optimization test for your site, and we really get into the nitty gritty details in this post. You can use tools like Optimizely to construct true A/B and multivariate tests, or you could lean on A/B experiment features that are native to almost every ad channel. The way that you logistically build your test is unique to each scenario. What you want to learn, the variables you can control (and the ones you can’t), and the amount of traffic you get to your site are all common factors that help determine how you’ll set up your A/B test.

No matter the tool or how you build a conversion rate optimization test, three things should remain top of mind: 

1. Start with a hypothesis. To build a strong experiment, go back to your 3rd grade science fair project and start with a hypothesis. “If I change X on my website, I think that X more users will sign up for a free demo.” Orienting your CRO plan in an hypothesis will help make sure that your experiment is structured around a problem, the solution, and the intended result.
2. Always have a control in every experiment. You need a baseline to compare test results to, and you do that by testing one variable at a time against the control – which is usually a page or website element that’s been in use for at least 3 months and has seen a significant amount of traffic already. 
3. Minimize the amount of variables that could cause any change in data. If you test too many things at once, you’ll never know which change caused the biggest lift. It’s important to make sure that you’re focusing on one or two variables at a time to know what really works. This includes keeping your traffic mix similar across tests. If you were to suddenly invest 3x in paid search campaigns, you’d see a higher proportion of your traffic coming from a high-intent channel, which would likely skew on-site behavior metrics and conversion rates. 

What are the benefits of conversion rate optimization (CRO) testing? 

There are several reasons why brands should consistently adopt a testing-first mentality. We’re going to dive into some of the most important benefits, specifically when it comes to CRO testing on your site.

First, it helps you minimize risk. Instead of designing and developing a significant change to your website and implementing it across 100% of your site, you get to test it with a smaller portion of your traffic. Rolling out a new change to all users without knowing how it will impact them is swimming in dangerous waters. 

In fact, publishing a new website experience on your site without testing it could hurt your ROI. Let’s say you’re redesigning the form flow on a webinar sign up landing page. If this change DIDN’T work and you changed the landing page so that 100% of traffic saw the new version, you could have tanked cost per sign up.

With data-backed A/B testing, you only show a small number of users a CRO experience change. Once this runs for a few weeks and reaches statistical significance, you’ll know whether or not you should go ahead and add those changes for all users. Without sacrificing results while you test.

Common website testing misconceptions

One conversion rate optimization misconception is that you need lots of traffic. That doesn’t always have to be the case. There are methods for testing on low-traffic websites where you can still obtain valuable results. You shouldn’t be discouraged from testing just because you overall site traffic is low.

Another misconception is that everything on your site should be tested. If you take that approach, you’ll muddy any key learnings. It’s critical to know your business needs, and prioritize pages and website elements that will help improve your main objective. Do you want to increase purchases? Focus on the product pages and checkout funnel. Are you trying to increase qualified leads that sign up for a product demo? Prioritize CTAs on your homepage, pricing page, and other high-intent pages on your site. 

Prioritizing conversion rate optimizations based on impact to revenue

When you have limited resources and are focused on driving efficiency across all of your marketing touch points, it can be overwhelming to decide what to focus on. That’s where a prioritization framework comes in. 

First, outline your main goal. Then, define the website elements you want to test. There may be many places on your site to test that can help increase your main goal, so which one should you start with first? The one that will have the most impact on revenue, and with the fewest resources. If most of your new customer acquisition strategies rely on paid media, we recommend optimizing those landing pages first to eliminate wasted spend. Then, we focus on top direct and organic pages. 

How we use the ICE prioritization model

Here at Tuff, we use the ICE prioritization model to build a CRO testing plan. Let’s say you’ve identified an opportunity on a paid landing page. You saw that it wasn’t bringing in many qualified lead gen form submissions, so you decided to test a different CTA copy on the form and change the hero image. Which of these should be tested first? 

Let’s use ICE model to answer this question. ICE stands for Impact, Confidence, and Effort. For each experiment, you rate each of those three elements on a scale of 1-5 based on how confident you are on the potential impact of the experience, and how much effort it will take to build.

You rate each test and add the sum up. The test with the highest score should go first. Now that we have defined it, let’s answer the question of which one should we test first. 

Based on this example, the CTA copy change is the first test that should be implemented because it has a higher score. This is because the impact on the main goal, lead gen form submissions, is much higher than changing the hero image. 

Beyond incremental CRO tests: user flow experiments that nurture users

Not all users are ready to take that high-intent action like reaching out to sales, attending a demo, and purchasing that product or service. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t find ways to capture their information to nurture them through the funnel. That’s when adding new funnel entry points should be a larger part of your website strategy.

Take Slido for example. You can find five different entry points. You have a contact sales entry point, a signup entry point, a join-a-meeting entry point, a get started for free entry point and a schedule a demo entry point.  These entry points benefit Slido as it opens up more opportunities to get leads. They may lead users in different directions but the objective is the same: obtain leads. The approach Slido takes is very subtle and not overbearing with the same CTA or CTA copy. 

To build out a lead gen website like Slido’s you have to start by analyzing your user flow. 

What is currently working and what is stopping users from moving forward?  Answering these questions with data can help you come up with the perfect testing strategy.  Let’s analyze two user flow types: eCommerce and lead generation. 

Typical eCommerce User Flow

An eCommerce user flow usually begins on the homepage. Does your homepage push users to where you want them to go like a product collection page? The homepage’s only purpose is to push users to other pages so if you’re not contributing to the visibility of your products, you are already negatively impacting your conversions. 

eCommerce Homepage

Let’s take a look at Prime Shrimp as an example. On the homepage, there is a section after the value props that categorizes their product based on diet. This is unique because most e-commerce sites categorize by product types/flavors.

eCommerce Product Pages

Once a user visits your site and navigates to the right products, the next action is to add a product to their cart. Based on the content on the product pages, are you convincing users enough to add that product to their cart? Are you explaining why you’re different than competitors? Why should the user buy your product over someone else’s? 

This is when you should lean on audience research to understand buyer motivations, and find ways to incorporate those reasons to buy in your product pages. Are there positive reviews that can motivate the user?  Are CTAs clearly visible? 

With Prime Shrimp, we saw that including reviews (4.7★ in this case), improves the add to cart rate on product pages. 

We also tested adding different product guarantees to quickly illustrate other important value props that help differentiate from competitors, like: 

• 100% satisfaction guaranteed
• No need to thaw before cooking
• No antibiotics ever

Add to Cart ➡️ Checkout

Once a user adds a product to their cart, are you making it clear that you want them to checkout? When a user is checking out, are you making it easier for them to move to the next step or actually pay? Is it easy for the user to add their information on any device they might be on?

 Are there exit opportunities, like a navigation bar that can prevent a user from completing their purchase?  These are all example user behaviors that you can construct CRO tests around.

Common Lead Gen User Flows

Every lead gen flow is different. Some are longer than others but the goal is the same: obtain leads. There are many ways to optimize your lead generation flow. You have to first look at the page or set of pages that take users to fill out the form. Does it give users the proper amount of information that they need to convert? How about the form itself? Does it contain unnecessary fields that can be removed? 

Remember, the more fields a form has, the higher the chance that a user bounces. Does the CTA outline what’s happening next or is it very broad like “submit”? 

One of Tuff’s partners, Tony’s Acoustic Challenge (TAC), does very well in showing the proper amount of information, keeping their form short with only two fields, and having a clear CTA outlining what’s going to happen next. 

You can test your entire user flow at once or start page by page to obtain page-specific results. This can help you optimize your site from the homepage all the way to the thank you page. 

4 additional CRO tests that drive meaningful results

There are some experiences that, across multiple industries and business models, tend to have a dramatic impact on conversion rates. We’ll dive into some of our go-to conversion rate optimization experiences to test in the first 3 months of a new partnership, all of which can be applied to an e-commerce or a lead generation funnel. 

1. Test social proof or security measures in visible areas and throughout the user funnel. 

Social proof has always done well on websites, but do you have them located in the right place? The most common place one can find social proof is at the bottom of the homepage where visibility is less than 30%.  You want to place it where you want a user to take action whether it is close to an add-to-cart CTA or the submit button of a lead gen form.

After you have placed social proof in a visible area near the main action, test multiple social proof types throughout your funnel. For example, if your lead gen form is multiple pages long, test videos, reviews, ratings, and featured in logos throughout that funnel. This will help strengthen a user’s trust in the brand. If this is an e-commerce site, show a featured section on the homepage hero, add reviews on the product pages or product category pages, and in the cart, show the number of users who have purchased a product or show a very positive review. 

Continuous display of social proof will encourage a user to convert. Xendoo for example has a lead gen form that is several pages long. Throughout it, there is social proof and security measures communicated. These are used to strengthen trust in the brand. 

2. Set expectations for the next steps in CTA

If your landing page is from an ad, it’s important to make the entire user journey is cohesive. A way you can do that is to make sure the CTA copy that was on the ad is the same on the landing page. For example, let’s say you are doing lead gen and the ad’s CTA  says “book a 10min call” and when the user clicks on the ad, the landing page’s form CTA says “submit”. This copy doesn’t match up with the ad and it may confuse users about what will happen next. If you use the same copy, you are setting expectations for the user and you are helping them establish trust with you. They came to book a 10min call and they expect that to happen when they add in their information 

CTA best practices

Even if you are not running any ads, this still applies. It’s important to be as clear as possible about what will happen when a user clicks on any CTA. Will they be contacted soon? Are they booking a call? Will they get a callback? Or start a free trial? Using CTA copy like “next” “submit” or “contact us” is too vague and doesn’t tell a user what will happen next when they submit a form. For eCommerce CTA copy is usually clear like “add to cart”, view products”,  or “checkout”. There are, however, opportunities to make this kind of copy clearer. 

Overall, your CTAs should have three things: be specific, convey benefit, and contain a trigger word. We want our CTA to be specific meaning define what will happen after a user clicks the button. It should also convey benefits. How will clicking on the CTA benefit the user?  Lastly, it should contain a trigger word, one that will push a user into clicking. A great example is Slang who advertised a 10 minute call on their ads. Their landing page contained the same objective and this helped increase form submissions by triple digits. 

3. Test fewer form fields and autofill

Interested in having more users purchase or lead form submissions? Try reducing your form fields. If there are optional fields of information you don’t need, then try removing them. This is the easiest and most impactful change as each form fill removed will reduce friction. Remember to always test this best practice as sometimes, reducing form fields can have a negative effect on the form itself. It may be considered “spammy” or less legitimate. 

Another best practice that goes hand in hand with reducing the form fills is offering autofill the fields that allow it. For example, most addresses can be fully filled by just typing part of it. Doing so encourages the user to continue and brings them closer to submitting the form whether it’s lead gen or a purchase. Using TAC as an example again, we see that they only need two things: a name and an email address. This helps reduce hesitation and increases the likelihood that the user will submit the form. 

4. Offer an incentive to encourage users to complete the main goal

Do you want users to sign up for your email, purchase, or fill out a form? If so, you should know that users are usually hesitant to fill out a form or purchase to begin with but if you offer something in return, you increase the possibility of them completing it. 

This can either be a discount on a product for an eCommerce site or offering a free download for a lead gen form. Offering an incentive helps answer a user’s “what’s in it for me” question and goes hand in hand with reducing exit and bounce rates. A great example is StyleMe who offered a discount when a user tried to leave the checkout. You ask them for their email address and in return, they receive a personalized discount. 

Interested in learning more about how a growth marketing agency like Tuff can help strategize conversion rate optimization opportunities on your website? Hit us up! 

The post Cracking the Code to Conversion Rate Optimization: A/B Testing Strategies to Maximize Revenue appeared first on Tuff.

For so many businesses, Paid Search Ads are one of the most profitable and reliable marketing channels to activate. This makes sense. Users tend to be high intent and ready to make a decision. You’re looking to buy a new pair of shoes? Google is one of your first stops. We are limited however, in how much search volume is out there. Ads can only serve as much as users are searching. Of course there is seemingly unlimited volume for our shoes example, but that isn’t the case for most products or services. As a growth marketing agency, we’re constantly evaluating how to use conversion rate optimization to grow the right channel mix. 

To make the most out of the search terms that are relevant to your business, there are a few things to keep an eye on. For starters, budget plays a big role. Scaling can be as simple as allocating more spend. How about additional Keyword Research? That will certainly help when you are looking to scale and create efficiencies with your ads. What Tuff has found is that the main driver of success on Google Search Ads is leaning heavily on CRO. 

When we talk about CRO, it means much more than just Conversion Rate Optimization. A/B landing page testing? Check. Ad Copy development? Definitely. Expert web design? Of course! If budgets are appropriate and keyword research is robust, CRO is your next step to success as a Google Ads agency. Let’s dive head first into what this looks like.

What is CRO? 

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is taking action to directly impact the amount of users converting on your website or within your applications. The intent is to increase the amount of users taking desired actions. 

What usually comes to mind when thinking about CRO are forms and CTA buttons but when put into practice, CRO goes well beyond this. When you’re going to launch CRO efforts, you need to start with your audience. Understanding what your audience needs and what you have to uniquely offer helps to determine the journey your website should offer and what the ultimate goal is. 

Understanding your audience and their needs

To better understand your audience, CROs leverage 4 key data points: behavior metrics, path exploration/user flow, heatmaps, and surveys. 

Behavior metrics

• Bounce rate: This number tracks the percentage of users that enter the site and don’t go beyond that one page. High bounce rate can be a key indicator of whether your site offers the right information at the right time to keep the user on your site. If you’re visible for the wrong searches or possibly serving content that doesn’t align with the answers the user needs, you will see a high bounce rate.
  *Note: Some pages may be built for higher bounce rates like a Contact Us page. Consider the intent of the page itself before determining if optimizations are needed.
• Exit rate: This is the percentage that defines how often a page is the last page in a user’s visit. Again, depending on the intent of the page, you’ll want to make a hypothesis around why a user might exit (slow loading, navigation/linking faux pas, etc.). From there you can create informed tests to keep the user there and ultimately push them to convert. 
• Time on site: The length of time a user spends on your site. This can inform you of the quality of the users coming to your site.
  *Note: Account for how much of your audience is mobile. Mobile users tend to have quicker sessions but it can also indicate mobile speed or usability issues.
• Pages per session: The amount of pages users visit per session. The more pages, the more we find a user is getting what they need and is being served an optimized user journey on your site.
• Conversions (obviously 😏): We often like to review conversion patterns, pages with high or low conversions, and what (if any) micro-goals are excelling (micro-goals = Newsletter sign-ups, webinar attendance, etc.). These things can help us determine the time a user spends in the funnel and underperforming pages to find where we should focus on a site first.

Path exploration

Above we discussed more of a birds-eye-view of your overall site data. The metrics above will lead us to individual pages that will require a more granular analysis. At page-level for data, we look at things like where the user usually enters the site and where they go next.

Looking into where the user often lands can tell us what pages have the best visibility and make the first impression with the user. 

The next pages a user visits can help us determine where a journey might be broken and give us insight into what the user really needs during their time on your site. 

Heatmapping

Leveraging a tool like Hotjar, we can get a better look into user behaviors page by page. Heatmaps can show us where users are clicking, how much of your page is actually seen, and we can even watch live recordings of a user’s journey and how they engage throughout your site. 

These 3 heatmap features allow us to determine things like page layout when we see most users drop from a page after viewing only a third of its offerings. Or, we can see points of friction during user recordings to truly pinpoint why someone may have dropped from your site without converting. 

Heatmaps are the real crystal ball. 🔮

Surveys

Surveys are given to both new, potential customers or current customers. This is something we usually recommend for brands that see a good amount of traffic and/or have a stable customer base. 

Within CRO, surveys lean more qualitative and serve open ended questions to receive honest feedback we can’t get from the data. They can be leveraged post-purchase/sign-up or when a user shows intent to exit so we can better understand the ‘why’ behind winning or losing conversions. We can even serve them according to time on site or pages per session depending on what the goal is. 

How to do CRO on low-traffic sites

Thinking about how to test on a low traffic site is tough. How can we get impactful results when there’s not a lot of traffic going to a site? Without traffic, we won’t have enough folks to split to gain true insight in an efficient timeline. But, as you now know, CRO isn’t just CTA buttons and form fills. 

Here are some strategies we recommend for low traffic sites:

• Improve the customer journey. A major part of conversion rate optimization is user research. This is the area of CRO where surveys can be introduced to a site to better understand the audience. These surveys can inspire big changes to navigation, user flow, and even language on the site. It may not be traditional testing, but it can be a big win for younger companies who haven’t had the time or resources to define their brand and its relationship to their audience.
• Include “micro-conversions” into the testing process. Define other ways your company names success in the funnel beyond form fills to chat with a sales team. Can we improve newsletter sign-ups? Can we get more engagement on a webinar? Some companies have excruciatingly long sales processes. So, highlight the success of getting folks into the funnel even if they’re not ready for the hard sell just yet!
• Create tests that make a big splash! If you don’t have a ton of traffic, a small CTA button test might not be the most lucrative. Go for a big layout change. Make sure there’s a stark difference in the control and the variant that has a major impact on the experience. 
• Focus on a match made in heaven ♥️ Paid & CRO. When Paid Media is being leveraged, it can be a big traffic booster. Focus on creating a landing page that will win big with the audience. Go into testing your CTA copy or keywords! There’s a lot you can do to improve how you serve your ads to your audience.

Leveraging conversion rate optimization efforts on Paid Search

Tuff audits accounts for incoming clients. It’s one of our first steps when working with a new business. During this process, we take a look at every level of a Google Ads account. Keyword targeting, ad copy, bid strategies, etc. Here are some findings we discovered for a prospect recently that are VERY common to come across during our Audit process: 

• 71% of ALL ads Ad Strength can be improved with additional Ad Copy.
• In the last 30 days, $43,000 was spent on keywords with 0 conversions. This is over 20% of the total budget spent during this time period.
• 30% of all active keywords have a below average Landing Page Experience

We see numbers like this all of the time, across all sorts of industries. Thousands of dollars of wasted spend for low quality ads, keywords, or landing pages. All of these things, with the right intentional effort, are fixable and will have long lasting effects on performance. Utilizing conversion rate optimization to focus on Quality Score, Ad Strength, and Landing Page Experience, will yield cheaper clicks, higher conversion rates, and many other long term benefits. Let’s dive in!

Quality Score

The ever mysterious Quality Score is first up in our assessment. This is one of the main tools Google uses to compare your ads to your competitors. Influencing everything from CPC to where you show up in search results. Here’s how it’s calculated, according to Google:

• Expected clickthrough rate (CTR): The likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown.
• Ad relevance + Ad Strength: How closely your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search.
• Landing page experience: How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad.

Even though it seems fairly straightforward, improving your Quality Score is harder than it looks. There are lots of factors to consider when testing. All of which are important to focus on. 

Ad Strength

This is a metric that has become paramount in the last year where Google Ads removed extended text ads and replaced them with Responsive Search Ads. Now, all ads have the ability to include 15 headlines and 4 descriptions for Google to optimize towards. Combinations will be created based on what works best for the users. This allows for the algorithm to assign a “strength” based on the perceived quality of the ad. 

Google uses 4 areas to determine the Ad Strength:

1. 1. Add more headlines – Make sure you utilize all the options available to you. This helps with the ability for Google to test and experiment with what copy works best for your audience. 
   2. Include popular keywords in your headlines – This is the most important of the 4 variables. It is important to match your ad copy to the keywords being targeted. For example, if you are targeting the keyword, “financial advisors near me,” this phrase should be directly in one of your headlines. This gives a signal to Google that your ad is highly relevant to the user searching for that phrase. Tip: Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion to automatically insert users’ search terms into your ads. 
   3. Make your headlines more unique – Unique headlines that are varied throughout will drastically improve your Ad Strength as well as the ability to test and learn what language has the best performance. Tip: Give your users value props, competitive differentiators, and all relevant information about your product or service. 
   4. Make your descriptions more unique – Similar to the above with headlines. Descriptions have a 90 character limit so you will be able to tell a more detailed story here. Tip: Utilize all 90 characters and include a CTA in this section. 

Ad Strength has 4 tiers: Poor, Average, Good, and Excellent. The aim is to have ALL ads achieve a Good or Excellent rating by implementing all of the best practices above. 

Landing Page Experience

Landing Page Experience may be the most impactful metric to look at through the lens of conversion rate optimization. As the name of the metric suggests, this is a measure of how a user experiences your webpage once landing on it through a Paid Search ad. We can see a score for this on a keyword level, which means each keyword will have a specific landing page experience. There are three scores here:

• Below Average
• Average
• Above Average

We aim to have every keyword in an account reach an Average or Above Average score here. It is one of the first things we focus on when onboarding a client. It’s easy to forget sometimes, but Paid Traffic is PAID. It is paramount to be as efficient as possible when targeting these users. You can truly affect a business’s bottom line with the right conversion rate optimization.  

Simple enough right? Well, it may seem simple on its face, but there are so many variables to keep in mind when looking at landing page experience. Here’s how Tuff utilizes our CRO team for creating highly converting landing pages for paid media traffic. 

Building landing pages for high quality keywords

When we think about scoping CRO to build new landing pages, we do this by narrowing down which keywords we want to focus on. Landing pages are resource heavy. Of course we cannot build a landing page targeting every single keyword relating to the business. So we have to prioritize. We categorize the keywords we want to focus on in two main buckets:

1. High value keywords that are converting, but have room for improvement
2. High volume keywords that historically have converted poorly, but have room to scale

Let’s start with keywords that have been converting, but have room to improve. It’s incredibly important to maximize the performance of these terms. If they work for you now, there is typically a way to supercharge them. Improvement can come through all of the quality metrics mentioned above by implementing a proper landing page. 

Since these keywords are already converting somewhat frequently, we focus on adding additional CTAs and including more copy that matches the targets. When Google deems the landing page is more relevant than your competitors, in turn impression share, CTR, and all other metrics can see a lift. 

The other keyword bucket is what we like to refer to as “tier two” keywords. These have volume, but historically have high CPAs. These may be broader in nature and tempting to go after because of the volume potential. Lots of partners run into high costs here though. This is where a CRO landing page comes into play. It is a perfect opportunity to lower costs and ultimately scale. With these keywords we focus on website copy, path exploration, and exit rates to see what may be driving traffic to leave before converting. 

Here are some general tips we recommend when aiming to improve Landing Page Experience with your CRO team:

1. Use a CRO tool like Hotjar to heatmap paid traffic → As mentioned above, this tool can help you understand the behavior of your users. Specifically for Paid traffic, use this technique to gain insight into the most compelling areas of your landing page. Paid traffic tends to behave differently than organic or direct traffic, so keep in mind the stage of funnel your paid users are coming from. For example, lower funnel traffic may be more inclined to read competitor comparison sections or value props. 
2. Conduct an in-depth path exploration → Paid traffic by nature will behave differently than other sources. A deep path exploration to follow Paid users across your site gives you valuable insight into where you can improve. For example, if paid users tend to navigate to blog content after landing on the site, this can indicate that it’s worth testing additional content links on your paid landing pages. 
3. Lean on a/b testing to properly test Landing Page Optimizations → We can use tools such as Google Optimize to 50/50 split test all sorts of variables on a new landing page. Maybe this is as simple as the color of the CTA button. It could be something more drastic like a hero section change. Regardless of the variable, a/b tests are invaluable when combining the power of CRO with Paid Traffic. Google Ads has the ability to a/b test landing pages right in the platform with their experiment function. Tuff uses this function on a weekly basis to continually optimize our paid search campaigns. 

How to measure the effectiveness of CRO efforts on Paid Media

There are multiple metrics, not just conversion rate, that are indicators of success between PPC and CRO collaboration. Of course conversion volume and conversion rate are large components of all testing, but we can go further with our evaluation. Here are some additional KPIs we track when we are making changes to landing pages, testing ad copy variations, or anything else CRO related for Paid Search. 

• Cost per Click – Seeing a decrease in CPC can be a sign that your Quality Score has improved. Google favors the most relevant ads and landing pages, so if there were changes to a landing page that made it more relevant to your users, CPC can decrease.

• Average Session Duration – This metric is one of the strongest indicators of Quality we have at our disposal. The longer a user spends on your site, the higher quality they are to your business. All CRO efforts look to improve this metric if possible, especially when looking at Paid Media. 

• Pages/Session – Similarly to Average Session Duration, this metric indicates a highly engaged audience. More relevant landing pages, optimized for conversions and SEO, will have a high likelihood of improving pages/sessions for each user. CRO testing that includes additional internal sitelinks is one way to improve this KPI.

• Bounce Rate – Another site metric that we use to measure the success of landing page content. This is calculated by looking at the people who land on your website, take no action, then leave. The lower the Bounce Rate the better. CRO efforts based on optimizing landing page copy and function help lower Bounce Rate by engaging users with more CTAs, additional content to read, and helpful internal links. 

• Click Thru Rate – Any improvement in CTR can be an indicator of a successful conversion rate optimization test test. Ads that are most relevant to your audience receive a higher expected CTR, improving Google’s Quality Score. 

1. Impression Share – This KPI is one that many marketers might not directly associate with conversion rate optimization testing, but it is very helpful at defining success for Google Ads. Conversion Rate improvements made on a website can indicate to Google’s algorithm that your business is higher quality than other competitors, therefore allocating more impression share to you when users are searching. 

When you can match the intent of the search with the right destination, not only will your CPC go down and CTR go up, but you will see engagement metrics improve along with conversion metrics. Measuring success is never linear though. That’s why Tuff looks at data using multiple forms of attribution. This gives us a holistic view of all Digital channels. Social, Organic Traffic, or direct traffic, all can see lifts from improving the quality of your paid ads. 

Supercharge Paid Media with CRO opportunities

Remember, Google, and most other advertising channels, want to serve their users the most relevant and high quality ads possible when they are searching for something or browsing the internet. Paid traffic is paid. Nowhere in your marketing mix is it more important to be as efficient as possible. This is why we keep conversion rate optimization top of mind when creating a Paid Media Strategy. Improvements in website navigation, relevant content, and calls to action have long lasting effects. Ready to accelerate your paid media budgets with CRO? Let’s talk. 

Chris Alarcon

Chris is a PPC Strategist based in Nashville, Tennessee. When he’s not scaling Google Ads & YouTube campaigns, he enjoys longboarding, tinkering with automation tools, and a little bit of gaming.

The post Using Conversion Rate Optimization to Maximize Your Paid Media Dollars appeared first on Tuff.

We have a client at Tuff that leverages a webinar as their primary lead funnel. It’s so successful, in fact, that almost all of the brand’s media budget is allocated to optimize this user flow and their conversion rates are some of the best we’ve ever seen. 

They had been considering changing their webinar software for months to a solution that promised to be more agile and effective. However, before making such a significant change, we wanted to do a landing page test to see how this update would impact conversions. This is standard practice when it comes to conversion rate optimization and a process that allows us to validate quick wins before implementing something at a larger scale. 

To test this quickly and intentionally, we decided to execute a split URL test using different webinar softwares. We wanted to confirm that by switching webinar softwares and offering a slightly different user experience, that we wouldn’t see a decline in results. The primary KPI for this page is form submissions to watch a webinar.

Here’s Levi, CEO of Tony’s Acoustic Challenge, explaining the CRO process and experience with our CRO team:

CRO Strategy 

The difference between control and the variant was that the control had a different webinar hosting and the form on the page was hidden behind a CTA. You can see how the page looked here.

Control: Stealth Seminar hosting + the form hidden behind a CTA

The variant which also had a different webinar hosting, took part of the form and pulled it outside of the CTA. This gave users a glimpse that they were signing up for a webinar. You can see how the variant looked here. 

Variant: eWebinar hosting + part of the form outside of the CTA

For this CRO testing plan, we started by looking into the behavior of the page that had the current webinar hosting software as this would give us an idea of the overall health of the page. This is what we found:

Looking at the data, we identified that the bounce rate for this page was over 63%. On average, users also spent about 56 seconds on the page. While this is a significant amount of time compared to the average of 52 seconds, our hypothesis was that we would see these metrics improve, as well as conversions, if we provided more information to make a decision or were not convinced enough to convert. 

We wanted to make sure our strategy was going to aid in more form submissions, the primary goal for this page, so we set up a redirect test. 

Activation 

Once the planning process was complete, it was time to execute on the strategy. We were able to set up a split URL or redirect test. This meant that each variation had their own changes in separate URLs. Here is how our control and variant looked like: 

Control: Existing landing page: https://tonypolecastro.com/start-playing/ 

The control with a different webinar software contained the form hidden behind a CTA titled “WATCH NOW FOR FREE”. When clicked on, a form would appear asking the user to sign up for the free webinar. 

Variant: Landing page with new webinar software: https://tonypolecastro.com/start-playing-now/ 

The variant with a different webinar software as well contained part of the form outside the CTA. You would have to select a session first, then click on the “Watch Now for Free” CTA and it would ask you for your name and email address. 

We ran this test until it reached 95% significance.  What does this mean? Statistical significance is a way to prove that a certain statistic is reliable. When decisions are made based on the results of the experiment, we want to make sure a relationship exists. For meaningful results, we want to be 95% confident that our outcome is valid. 

Results and Insights

Winner: Landing Page with New Webinar Software variant with a 219% lift in conversions.  

This version had part of the form out and displayed to the user with the same WATCH NOW FOR FREE” CTA. It gave the impression that the user was signing up for a webinar. In other words, the look and feel of the form set expectations of what was happening next. 

When we looked at the control, the form was hidden behind a CTA that says “WATCH NOW FOR FREE”. This indicates that when a user clicks on the CTA, a video will play. However, when you actually click on the CTA, a form appears for a user to fill out. A user may feel deceived and this may cause them to leave. 

Takeaway and Learnings 

Our biggest takeaway here is that it’s always important to set expectations for the user. 

What does this mean? 

This means that if you are transparent about what’s going to happen- in this case sign up for a webinar- then the chances of a form filler being negatively surprised will be low. As a next step, we’ll continue to A/B test different optimizations to find and verify new ways to grow the business. 

The post Small, Fast, and Intentional Experiments: Using CRO to Grow Sign Ups by 219% appeared first on Tuff.

At Tuff, landing pages are a go-to growth marketing tactic for generating leads and increasing sales. But not all landing pages are created equal. One of the most critical parts of high-converting landing pages is their design. 

In this post, we’ll walk you through each component you need to include on your landing page, so it looks great and turns visitors into customers. 

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a web page distinct from your homepage. You can think of your homepage as a catch-all location made for exploration and a landing page as a goal-focused location made for conversion. Visitors are directed to landing pages when they click on a link from a specific source, like an ad on social media, Facebook, or Google. In fact, landing pages are a common conversion rate optimization tactic for paid campaigns to help get user’s to take a specific action more often. 

The conversion goal

Landing pages are designed around a single conversion goal, such as downloading a free guide, purchasing an item from your store, or getting visitors’ contact information so that you can market to them in the future. 

Focus on one conversion goal per landing page. If there are multiple goals at play, it can confuse visitors and make them less likely to convert.

Types of landing pages

As a growth marketing agency, we think about landing pages in two categories: click-through landing pages and lead-generation landing pages. A click-through landing page is a page where the conversion goal is presented as a stand-alone call to action button which prompts visitors to click through to another page. A lead-generation landing page includes a form to capture visitors’ contact information, usually in exchange for a reward (e.g., a discount code or free download).

Why use landing pages?

Effective landing pages capture leads, drive conversions, and generate revenue. When done correctly, landing pages can be one of the most effective tools for driving conversions and increasing your return on investment.

The Navigation Bar

A navigation bar allows users to access different website or application sections quickly. It usually consists of a horizontal bar containing links to the various pages of a website or application. The navigation bar typically appears at the top of a web page and can include interactive elements like links, drop-down menus, and search boxes.

You don’t want to distract visitors from your single conversion goal, so you will want to do one of the following:

• Simplify the navigation bar by removing any distracting links that would typically be present on a website.
• Remove the navigation bar. 
• Only use anchor links.

Simplified navigation bar

A simplified navigation bar should not contain links to other pages but can include the company logo and a call to action button. One exception for linking is linking your company logo to your main website. This single link gives visitors easy access to your website if they want to learn more about your company before deciding to purchase.

Remove the navigation bar

Removing the navigation bar helps to focus the visitors’ attention on the main call to action button in the hero section. If you decide to remove the navigation bar, you will need to find a new place to put your company logo. The company logo is usually placed in the hero section of the page, along with the copy and main call to action button.

Use anchor links

Lastly, you can add anchor links to your navigation bar. Anchor links, also known as jump links, are links placed on a web page that point to specific sections of that same page. They are excellent for pages with lots of content because they allow visitors to quickly navigate to areas of the page that interest them most without needing to scroll down.

The Hero Section

The hero section is the primary area of focus at the top of your landing page. It is designed to be visually appealing and capture the attention of visitors. It typically includes a headline, a short description, and a call-to-action button. It can also include your company logo if you opt to remove the navigation bar. The main goal of the hero section is to explain the product or service, highlight the key benefits, and encourage visitors to take action.

Copy

Hero section copy should be short, attention-grabbing, and conversion-focused. Large amounts of text can be overwhelming and cause visitors to leave. Use words specific to your visitor’s needs and explain how your product or service can help them. At Tuff, we create value propositions to guide strategic messaging for landing page designs.

Imagery or Video

You will want to include an eye-catching image or video that speaks to the copy and aligns with the brand’s aesthetic. Imagery or video that can evoke an emotional response in visitors is always best.

Call to Action Button

The call to action button should stand out, be descriptive, and communicate what users will get or where they will go after clicking it. Avoid generic button copy like “Submit.”

You can also use a secondary call to action button to show additional information or play videos on the same page. Since you don’t want to distract visitors from your single conversion goal, secondary buttons should never link to other pages.

Forms

As mentioned earlier, a lead-generation landing page will typically include a form. Ensure you only ask visitors for essential information to identify and contact them. Forms with the highest completion rates only ask for a name and email address. 

You can incentivize visitors to complete an opt-in form by offering them a reward like a free download, trial, or discount. It’s best to keep your form above the fold in the hero section, although you can also place it lower on the page. If placing your form lower on the page, use a call to action button with an anchor link that brings visitors directly to the form section after clicking.

The How It Works Section

Not all landing pages need to explain how it works. Sometimes, the reader can gather details about how the process or product works from the benefits section.

However, if your product requires visitors to understand the process before they use it, then a more detailed how it works section can be helpful.  The how it works section should ideally be three or four numbered steps and formatted into columns.

The Benefits Section

The benefits section should focus on the product or service’s benefits and how it will positively impact the customer. While you can add a few notes about the product’s features, it’s best to keep this section centered around the benefits, as the key benefits they’ll get from their experience with the product/service are often more appealing.

Social Proof

Social proof is evidence from other users who’ve purchased a product or service and found it valuable. It helps increase conversions by providing reassurance and helps build trust, as visitors are more likely to buy from you if they see that other people have had positive experiences with your brand.

New or early-stage companies will usually have to launch landing pages with very little or no social proof, but established companies should have many options for social proof. Typical forms of social proof on high-converting landing pages are client logos, testimonials, reviews, press mentions, and statistical data.

Client Logos

Software companies often display customer logos on their landing pages to show visitors that many well-known companies use their products. Service-based businesses often place high-profile client logos on their landing pages to attract similar clients. Placing client or customer logos underneath or inside the hero section is common and helps to increase the chance that visitors see them without needing to scroll.

Testimonials

Testimonials are statements from customers or clients who have had a positive experience with a product or service. When using testimonials on a landing page, include the name and photo of the customer. Visitors will question their credibility when testimonials do not include names and pictures.

Reviews

Reviews are usually in-depth, unsolicited evaluations of your product or service written by the customer. You will often see companies display reviews on their landing pages from places like Trustpilot, G2, The App Store, Google Play Store, and social media.

Press Mentions

Press mentions are when a publication, website, or other media outlet mentions your business or product. They can help to build your brand’s reputation and visibility, which can help to attract more customers.

Statistical Data

Statistical data is often used on high-converting landing pages to provide potential customers with a visual representation of the success of a product or service or the impact it has had on other customers. Frequently used data includes total registered users, number of downloads, and user-generated content statistics. An example of statistical data would be a headline that reads “Trusted by millions” or “Over 200,000 projects funded”. Another option for statistical data is to display your total number of positive reviews.

The FAQ Section

FAQs, or frequently asked questions section, helps to handle visitor objections by answering any questions your landing page copy still needs to address. It is best to place FAQs near the bottom of your landing page after visitors have explored most of the page.

The Final Call To Action

Provide a final call to action section at the bottom of the page to provide a straightforward way for visitors to take their next steps toward conversion. The components of this section are similar to the hero section and contain copy and a call to action button. Optionally you can add imagery. It is best to reword the messaging here so that it isn’t identical to the hero section or focus on highlighting a different value proposition.

The Footer Section

Similar to the navigation bar, the footer section should be simple. Only add what is necessary, like your company’s terms and conditions, copyright information, and privacy policy.

Bonus Tips

Mobile Design

Landing pages should always be mobile responsive. Currently, about half of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Mobile responsive pages automatically adjust their layout and content to fit any screen size, allowing visitors to easily navigate and interact with your landing page on any device. Ensuring your landing page is easy to read and navigate on any device is the optimal user experience and leads to better conversions.

CTA Buttons

Repeat your call-to-action buttons throughout the page. You’ll want to evenly spread them apart down the page to provide ample opportunities for visitors to convert. For example, another great place, to add call-to-action buttons is underneath each benefit in the benefits section.

Microcopy

Microcopy is a great way to highlight specific benefits or ease visitor worries. The best place to put microcopy is near the call to action buttons. Here are a few examples of microcopy: no credit card required, 14-day free trial, 30-day money-back guarantee, or 4.9 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot.

Scannability

As evidenced by Nielsen Norman Group’s eye-tracking studies, visitors are far more likely to scan than read word for word. To increase your landing page’s scannability, use more prominent, bolder headlines to break up your page’s body copy, and use whitespace to show a clear division between sections. You can also add “eyebrow” text – a descriptive keyword or short phrase placed above headlines – to highlight key takeaways on the page

Testing

A/B test your landing page. A/B testing works by randomly assigning different users to different versions of your landing page and then measuring user behavior on each version to see which performed better. CRO tests commonly include variations to your copy, images, layout, and colors. Test each element individually, so you know which variation affected your conversion rate. 

Conclusion

So, is there a one-size-fits-all solution to building landing pages? No, but a high-converting landing page will always adhere to the same basic structure mentioned above. Each business has a different audience with unique motivations and values. When building your landing page, focus on your customer’s wants and needs and test to discover the elements that work for your business.

Do you need help writing, designing, and testing landing pages? We’d love to work with you. Schedule a call with our team to talk about conversion rate optimization.

The post The Anatomy of a High-Converting Landing Page appeared first on Tuff.

Having a powerful SaaS tool that virtually nobody else can compete with sounds like a huge advantage. That is, until you realize you need to articulate that advantage to users who have never heard of you.

When it comes to building your homepage, how do you get right to the heart of your offering, while still taking the time to explain exactly what that offering is and why it’s so useful? This was the challenge we wrestled when working with bit.io.

In this post, we explore a valuable landing page test we ran for bit.io to make sure that we were offering the best possible experience for new users who were interested in the platform. We’ll walk through just how we got our conversion rate increase by more than 100% and why conversion rate optimization is critical to any long-term growth strategy.

Showcase the platform or showcase its benefits?

There are a lot of SaaS homepages out there that get right to the point and funnel users to immediately get to work. That kind of straightforward and efficient experience is probably welcomed by returning users of a given platform, but what about users who are visiting the site for the first time? Will those users know exactly what to do when their only knowledge of the platform is whatever ad copy they just read (or more likely, skimmed)?

When we first partnered with bit.io, we learned that their homepage immediately prompts users to start building a database with their platform. Our primary KPI for growing the platform was to generate 7% growth in signups. After thoroughly looking through existing ad campaigns and the homepage itself, we decided we wanted to funnel paid media users through an alternate landing page, one that highlighted the platform’s features and prompted signups rather than immediate platform usage.

Knowing that these users were coming from paid ads and were most likely brand new to the platform, we curated a landing page that offered talking points we knew would resonate with our audience, and highlighting the most powerful components of the platform. Let’s dig into what was our recipe for success with this landing page.

Ingredients for a powerful, conversion-minded landing page

Consistent Call-To-Action 

We realized that the existing homepage offered a lot (maybe too much) for the user to choose from. We knew we were aiming for signup growth and created an experience to foster just that. All of our CTA text was consistent and concise: “Try bit.io free”. Using words like “try” and “free” immediately creates the perception that no risk is involved.

This consistent message gave the users one choice to continue down the funnel: sign up! By reducing the decisions the user has to make, we created a landing page that streamlined users down our desired path.

Scannable, Short Headlines

Again, it’s easy to overload your audience. We took an existing homepage that had lots of content for the user to digest, and distilled our new landing page into quick hits that new user would be able to instantly digest. We also made the body text larger in order to do everything we could to allow for a quick and easy read. By allowing for a speedy overview of the platform, we helped remove a barrier to signing up.

Color Contrast

The right color scheme and contrast still packs a punch when creating an optimal experience for any user, especially when you’re making a first impression. We altered the new landing page to include bit.io’s original color palette, but in a way that allowed the imagery to stand out with better contrast. Avoiding white-on-yellow and favoring dark navy on yellow made for a stronger, more alluring page.

Social Proof

Social proof is essential to any landing page to increase trust and demonstrate credibility. We made sure to place extra emphasis on social proof. Near the top of the page, we placed logos of well-known companies that use bit.io, paired with a heading that communicates the large number and types of users. We gave user testimonials a dedicated section, styled them with larger fonts, and highlighted compelling words so users could quickly scan for the main features and benefits that customers loved.

FAQ Section

While bit.io already had FAQ’s, we listed them directly on our new landing page. This allowed us to handle objections head-on by immediately answering questions the landing page copy may not have addressed.

Landing Page Test Methodology

We had ourselves a page we were ready to test, but how exactly should we test it? CRO testing can be incredible simple if you structure the test correctly. Our solution was a Google Ads experiment for a small handful of existing Google Ads campaigns. This allowed for a true A/B test, where all other variables were consistent and we could have a clean and direct comparison between the two landing pages. There are other methods of conducting tests like ours (Google Optimize for example), but we wanted to make sure we had a landing page alternative that would perform well with paid ads users.

Results

We ran our experiment for just a week, and the results were conclusive. Our alternate landing page converted at a whopping 11.84% while the existing home page had a conversion rate of 5.59%. We had a clear winner and we started to push more campaigns towards our new landing page.

So what comes next? Well more of the same! We now have a roadmap for future landing page considerations: keep your messaging short and sweet, only offer one simple path for the user, and create a visually compelling page. This knowledge has us eager to keep refining our landing page and find more ways to appeal to new users by offering them a more tailored experience that addresses their questions. A SaaS homepage has its own place and purpose, but for brand new users who are hearing about you for the first time, a tailored landing page might just be what propels your conversion rate.

The post Give SaaS Landing Pages Some TLC: How We Doubled Our Conversion Rate For bit.io appeared first on Tuff.

CRO testing helps us identify the best outcome of a website change based on our main goals. It also serves as an analysis of user behavior that can give us valuable insights. But how can we ensure we are following the CRO process correctly and setting up our tests for success? We are going to dive right into the essentials that you need to know prior to making your test live. 

First, we need to determine if you actually need CRO testing. Ask yourself the following questions,

1. Is there a change that I want to implement that can affect user behavior?
2. Am I redesigning my website? 
3. Are my conversion rates low that I want to try different approaches to increase them? 
4. Do I want to increase revenue?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you need CRO testing. 

Identify areas of improvement within your analytics

Before you decide if you need to test, your main goal needs to be defined. You can do so by diving into your data to see if there is an area of opportunity to improve your website. From there, you can define your main goal. 

Data analysis can come in many different forms. Examples include heatmaps, customer surveys, session recordings, funnel analysis, Google Analytics, user testing and more. 

A look into your analytics can help you discover what you should focus your efforts on. 

Identifying areas of improvement by assuming or guessing may do more damage to your business than good. It’s important to know what needs change and only data can give you the answer. 

Learn to plan your experience 

Properly identify your main goal

As mentioned above, having a main goal is one of the first things you should have outlined prior to deciding to test. Main goals for CRO testing can be the following but are not limited to:

• Form Submissions
• Purchases
• Average order value
• CTA clicks
• Visits to certain pages like a product, cart of checkout
• Reduction of bounce or exit rates 
• Interactions with elements that exist on the page
• Increase or decrease a behavioral metric 

Let’s dive into an example of a proper CRO test vs one that isn’t. Let’s say you are planning to optimize a hotel website and you want to test out an interactive map on the homepage that shows all the resorts from your chain. You say that your main goal will be map interactions. But if we think about it properly, interactions will only be measurable on the variation. Why? Because you cannot measure map interactions on your control where a map will not exist.  You must have a main goal that is measurable in both the control and the variant.

If you do decide to move forward with a main goal that is only measurable on the variation, your data will look like the following. 

It will contain no valuable insight for you or your hotel website. Now, let’s revisit this example with a proper main goal. 

Let’s say you want to CRO test an interactive map and you want to see if this feature encourages users to start a booking. You select your main goal to be visits to the booking page. This can be measured in both your control and the variation because a booking page exists for both variants. 

Always select a main goal that is measurable in both variants. This will ensure that you are getting the best out of your CRO testing. 

Now that you have identified your main goal properly, let’s move forward with designing your hypothesis. 

Design your Hypothesis

Your hypothesis serves to define what you hope to accomplish in your test. It states what is being tested and what you think the outcome will be. This 1-sentence statement typically follows an If and Then approach. 

If _(we try x approach) _ then___we will increase or decrease main goal

Let’s try one for the hotel example:

If we add an interactive map on the homepage, we will increase visits into the booking page. 

Simple as that. Looking back at your hypothesis as you plan can help you focus on your objective. As your test runs, it will either prove your hypothesis right or wrong. 

It’s important to note that having a hypothesis in your CRO test will not guarantee your test will win. It does promise a great learning experience and an opportunity to iterate if necessary. 

Design your Strategy

What is exactly that you want to do on your CRO test? Following our interactive map example, what we want to do is create an interactive map below the homepage hero that will encourage a user to visit the booking page.

The strategy portion of your planning involves sharing as much detail as possible about what you want to test. 

Rank your testing ideas with the ICE Model

If there is a list of ideas that you want to test, and don’t know which one to start with, then you must prioritize them. The ICE Scoring Model is a relatively quick way to assign a numerical value to different potential ideas to prioritize them based on their relative value, using three parameters: Impact, Confidence, and Ease.  Let’s dive into each of them. 

Impact. Impact helps you define  how impactful the idea is going to be based on the main goal you have set up. Ask yourself: how impactful will this experience be on the main metric?

From a scale of 1-5 rate the idea: 

5 –  Really impactful   

1 – Not so impactful 

Confidence. Confidence is certainty that the experiment will perform well based on the data analysis or industry data that was gathered. 

Ask yourself: how confident are you that this experience will perform well based on industry data or partner data? 

From a scale of 1-5 rate the idea: 

5 –  Really confident   

1 – Not confident at all 

Ease. Ease is defined by the amount of effort that it will take to build out this CRO test. 

Ask yourself: how much time and effort will go into building this experience? Is it complicated? Will it need more resources than usual? 

From a scale of 1-5 rate the idea: 

5 –  Little to no effort  

1 – Lots of effort

Make sure you get an extra set of eyes when ranking your CRO testing ideas. Now, that you have planned your experiences, designed your hypothesis, created your strategy and ranked your ideas, you are ready to set this experiment up. Remember, the more detail your planning has, the more refined your testing will be. 

Know your way around your optimization tool

Setup

If you have chosen an optimization tool to run your experience, the first thing you should do is install it correctly. It’s important to have the appropriate team to do so if you can’t. Installing your CRO tool incorrectly can lead to improper or no data collection. It can also cause your changes not to show up on the site.  We want to receive as much information as possible about our tests and it starts with the proper installation. Always follow the directions on installation from the testing tool that you are using. 

Types of CRO testing

By the time you get to the set up of your CRO test, you must know what type of test you’d like to perform. There are several types of CRO test types that you can set up depending on the tool that you are using. We are going to cover three common ones. 

A/B testing

A/B testing involves testing multiple variations of 1 element on your webpage at a time. It can be as simple as a button color change, image change, copy change, new element addition and so on! The variations help you gather valuable insight on the user’s reaction and can show which one gains the most interactions or conversions. 

Using the resort example, an A/B test would be creating the interactive hotel map and comparing the visits to the booking page against the control. 

Multivariate testing

Multivariate testing involves testing several different elements on your webpage that work towards the same goal. Think of it as performing multiple A/B tests on a webpage at a time. 

Going back to the resort example, let’s say that apart from adding an interactive map on your homepage, you also want to test out the hero image. This is still part of the same objective of pushing users into the booking page so this would work as a multivariate test. What your optimization tool will do when you run this test is that it will create different combinations of the elements 

The beauty of multivariate testing is that the tool you run your test on will tell you exactly which element contributed positively or negatively to your testing goal. 

Multivariate testing is recommended on websites that have high traffic as multiple versions are created that split traffic up. 

Split testing or redirect test 

Split testing involves testing multiple variations of your test but on different URLs. This is typically done when you are redesigning an entire web page or having major changes. 

Your website traffic is divided into the control URL and the variation URL. Depending on you main goal, your optimization tool will tell you which URL lead to higher conversions 

Peeking back into the resort example, let’s say you want to change the entire homepage and compare visits to the booking page. Big changes like these should lean towards split testing. 

(example image)

Define your target audience/segment 

When setting up your CRO test, it is important to know who your target audience will be. Do you want to target all users that enter the website? Do you want to target specific users coming from an ad, users from a specific geographic location, users who use a specific device or engage in certain behavior etc.? Depending on your optimization tool, your audience targeting can include the following but are not limited to:

• Data analytics service audience 
  • Google analytics audience
  • Google Ads account
• Device Category
  • Mobile 
  • Desktop 
  • Tablet
• Geography
  • Country
  • Region
  • City
  • Metro 
• Behavior
  • New or returning user
  • Users who try to exit the webpage
  • Users who are on the webpage for x seconds/minutes
  • Users coming from specific referrers 
• Technology
  • Browser
  • Mobile device version 
  • Operating system 
• UTM parameters
  • Users from specific UTM parameters 

And so much more!

Traffic split has been configured 

It’s important to know how you want to split your traffic on your CRO test. Depending on the tool, that is done for you based on how many variants you add. It’s always recommended to split your traffic evenly between your variants. This assures that users have an equal chance of seeing them. 

You can edit the traffic for each variant based on your needs but keep in mind that if you do, more or less traffic will go to one of your variants. 

Add your Metrics

This routes back to what your main goal is. Your main goal must be measurable. That way you can obtain valuable insights from your test.

Some optimization tools already have built in metrics you can choose from but some require creating custom metrics. A developer or someone who knows their way around the tool should be the one to set these up. 

It’s important that the main metric is set up correctly. The last thing you want to happen is to have a live test not capturing data. 

Device Compatibility

If your test is targeted to all devices, make sure that it is compatible with the user and that they won’t have trouble viewing your experience. 

Your optimization tool should have a preview mode where you can view the test in different sizes that would fall under desktop, mobile and tablet.  

If your test looks off in one of your device previews, then it must be addressed as soon as possible as that is exactly how it will look to the user once it is live. 

QA your Test Before It Is Live

QAing can decide the success or failure of your test. Right before you set your test live, it is important to preview it and check if there are functional or visual errors. Like mentioned in the device compatibility section, your users will see it and it can decrease the chances that they will convert. 

Your optimization tool should have a preview URL that lets you see how the experience will look once it is live.  

Sharing this link with multiple team members will give you an extra set of eyes that can point out possible errors. 

Once your test passes QA, you are ready to set it live! 

Capabilities

As you or the developer is setting up the test, it’s a good time to reflect on the importance of knowing your way around the optimization tool. 

Tool training is essential for your CRO team. Even if your colleagues do not plan on setting up the tests, they should at least know their way around the testing tool. This can help avoid simple mistakes that one can make when setting up a test. 

There are so many benefits of knowing how to use your tool. It can help you expand on your testing and take your business to the next level. Having that knowledge can help you run successful tests. 

If you do end up making a mistake on your setup, use it as an opportunity to learn and expand your tool knowledge. 

Reporting: Monitor the leading variant

Hooray, your test is now live! Now comes the fun part: monitoring the leading variant. At this stage you should be receiving valuable insight from the tool. But what do these numbers mean?

Depending on the optimization tool, you should see the control vs the variant on the left side and metrics on the right focused on your main goal. Pay attention to the statistical significance being measured on the test. This will tell you the likelihood of a result being caused by something other than chance. The lift is there to tell you the difference in the control and variant. Usually when the variant is leading your KPI will contain a positive lift. When the control is leading, you will see a negative lift. 

It’s important to understand what the test is telling you. Doing so will help you decide the next steps for the running test. 

It’s important to set up your CRO test for success. Doing so will help you elevate your testing and reduce any chances for error.

The post CRO Testing: Expert Guide to Setting Up CRO Tests appeared first on Tuff.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated with new links and examples for you to use! 

Despite the importance of eCommerce conversion rate optimization, in our experience, the tactic can get overlooked. Simply put, eCommerce CRO is a tactic that can make tremendous improvements to your bottom line, without acquiring additional traffic than what you’re bringing in today. An improvement in eCommerce CRO from 1.5% to 2% could lead to a 33% increase in sales – all without adding additional traffic.  

When you sell services, products, or platforms online one of the most important metrics is your eCommerce conversion rate. It tells you what percentage of your site visitors are converting to customers. 

As a growth agency, when we onboard a new partner, eCommerce conversion rate is one of the first tactics we want to tackle head-on when working with a new partner. 

Whether you’re a subscription-based business converting Free Trial Users to Paid Subscribers, a brand selling your product online, or a SaaS platform looking to grow – we undoubtedly will look at your eCommerce conversion rate. 

The reason: you don’t need to increase your ad spend to convert more. You just need to know how to optimize your conversion rate. 

At Tuff, a tactic called Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is at the heart of everything we do. From constantly testing paid ad campaigns across the internet to figuring out why more leads aren’t turning into customers, CRO is at the forefront of our learning and results.

What is eCommerce CRO? 

Ecommerce CRO is the process of making continual changes to your ecommerce website to improve the rate of users visited to the number of purchasers (ecommerce conversion rate). The easiest way to track ecommerce conversion rate is to divide the number of purchasers by the number of total site visitors. 

The simple formula of (purchasers) / (site visitors) = ecommerce conversion rate is the north star for all ecommerce CRO efforts. 

Whether it’s making stylistic changes to your product pages to cut down scroll rate, adding an exit intent pop-up to convince users to make a purchase, or improving the visibility of reviews on your site to influence potential customers into making a purchase, ecommerce CRO is an ongoing process with the intent of making continual improvements.

eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization

For eCommerce businesses we typically look at the eCommerce Conversion Rate to tell us how traffic is interacting and converting through the eCommerce sales funnel.  

When our eCommerce clients at Tuff ask us how they can grow their online business without increasing their budget, we usually take a deep dive into what’s driving their eCommerce conversion rate. 

For starters, take a look at the table below showing how much you can increase revenue when the only metric that is increased is eCommerce Conversion Rate.

In the above example, our client can increase revenue by 110% by simply optimizing their conversion rate from 0.19% to 0.5% (a 163% increase). 

That’s a $120,115.95 revenue increase from pure optimization – no additional resources or ad spend needed!

How to Tackle Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization with 72 Hour Sprints 

To increase your conversion rate you will need to learn what factors contribute to your existing CVR.  

At Tuff, an analysis we might use to learn more about your current CVR is to find out what percentage of your website visitors are getting to your checkout conversion funnel, which traditionally has three stages:

1. Added to Cart
2. Initiated Checkout 
3. Purchased

By analyzing your checkout funnel, we can use our analysis to make a series of hypotheses about what is preventing a higher conversion rate – we then use those hypotheses as frameworks for our tests. Maybe there are frictions in your checkout process that stops visitors from purchasing or maybe it can be increased with a different type of product or service page or completely different user journey. 

Let’s pretend this is your checkout funnel for a month’s worth of visitors.

Based on this data, we know that a low percentage of total website traffic ends up adding a product to their cart, which will effectively produce a low number of conversions. 

In addition, the amount of visitors decreases by 10% between Added To Cart and Initiated Checkout stages in the funnel. Between Initiated Checkout and Purchase, the decrease is 20%. 

Therefore, hypothetically a solution for us to increase the conversion rate with the above metrics is to increase the initiated checkout percentage.  

Now that we have our hypothesis, we must find a way to test it. 

Developing a Test 

Our hypothesis is – if we increase the number of visitors adding to cart then we will increase the conversion rate. 

A simple way to find out if this is true is to run a test that gets more people adding to cart by providing users with a discount code in exchange for information that is valuable to you. 

For many eCommerce websites, a piece of information that is extremely valuable is an email address. 

To find out if our hypothesis is correct, a lean and easy to implement 72 hour CRO Sprint test would be to ask for an email address (or other desired action) in exchange for an offer code. 

This type of test’s results are easy to track because you can see how often the promo code is used through your eCommerce platform. Removing this test is also easy should you find that it’s not working or is causing more problems than it’s solving in your customer checkout funnel.

Implement The Test

To implement, the test needs to contain a time-sensitive offer, which will increase the likelihood that the offer is used at a faster pace than one that is not time-sensitive. 

Here are two examples of time-sensitive offers:

• 15% off your purchase when you order in the next 10 minutes. 
• Limited Time Offer: Free 2 Day Shipping Today

Create the pop-up through your email service provider (ESP) so that it is triggered when a visitor has been on a specific product page for more than 50% of the average page session duration.

If your average product page session duration is 30 seconds then the offer should open at 15 seconds. 

Do not set it to trigger when someone lands on the homepage. You want the visitor to be more qualified than a unique visitor. 

The offer should contain an email signup field and clear copy that compels the potential customer to use the offer within a specific amount of time. 

Best Practices

Be advised that a best practice for this is to provide the promo code to the customer on the form after they provide their email address and click submit. You can provide it in a separate email as well, but you want to make it as easy as possible for the customer to get the code and continue on their customer journey. 

Once you have the test launched, then set it to run live for 72 hours, but don’t just forget about it. 

Monitoring

You’ll need to closely monitor it. You must make sure that the test is either perpetuating your average conversion rate or increasing it. If it decreases your conversion rate then you will want to abandon the test and return the variables back to their original flow. 

Once your split test is complete then you can take your learnings and create a new test to run. Remember, you only want to run one test at a time or else you risk changing too many variables at a time and not being able to point to what works. Realistically, you don’t want to run more than 2 tests per week. 

Ecommerce CRO Test Examples

Here is a list of 7 more ecommerce CRO tests you can do to increase the percentage of visitors converting to customers:

Landing or Product Page Offer

If you’re using Shopify, an easy way to test pricing as to how it affects ecommerce conversion rate is to add a “compare at” price field and show that the product is “on-sale”, even if it truly isn’t. Doing this periodically will help you guage your pricing and how your audience responds to deals. 

Navigation Header Menu Organization 

Test changes in your navigation by prioritizing your top selling products and categories. Or, alternatively, push seasonal products by prioritizing them in the navigation structure as well. 

Homepage copy change

Using Google Optimize, you can test updated homepage content to see which copy variations speaks best to your target audience. Test, analyze, rinse, repeat. 

Homepage creative change 

Like a homepage copy change, you can test updated creative assets (images, featured products, etc.) to see what imagery works best for your site visitors. Is it product photos? Is it use-case photos? Does your audience want to see reviews above the fold? Test it! 

Increase Site Speed 

Site speed is directly correlated to conversion rate. If you have beautiful product photos on your site, make sure they are sized properly. A good CRO strategy will make sure the technical elements to the site are in good-standing. 

Exit Intent Offer Popup 

One quick test to implement for your ecommerce CRO efforts is to put an exit intent popup on your site with an offer to persuade users who may be on the fence. Even a small discount such as 10% off has been shown to improve ecommerce CVR. 

Referral Widget  

Have an engaged customer base on your site? Encourage them to share the good word! Many programs such as a “Give 10%, get 10%” encourages existing customers to share referral links to friends and family so they get a reward as well.

Ecommerce CRO can lead to big wins

If you’re curious to learn more about our ecommerce CRO process, or want to chat about your CRO potential, let’s talk!

The post A Complete Guide to Improve Ecommerce CRO appeared first on Tuff.

You can have a website that is 100% optimized for search engine ranking, but what if that comes at the expense of your site’s user experience? Well, you could actually be holding yourself back from ranking for your target keywords.

Tuff’s SEO team works with our UX designers to publish SEO-friendly landing pages with great user experiences. This collaboration has boosted our SEO team’s results for Tuff’s clients. So what is the link between user-experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO)?

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) involves making it easier for people to find your business online. You can achieve this by making changes to your website to make it easier for search engines to understand your content. You’ll also need to upload new pages and content to your site to answer people’s questions. And finally, drive traffic back to your site through links and mentions from other sites.

What is UX?

User-experience (UX is how people interact with and experience a product, website or software tool. For websites, it encompasses how users navigate the site, how quickly they find what they’re looking for, and how intuitive the design is on the page.

Is SEO a part of UX?

SEO focuses on aligning your content with the questions people are searching for on Google. After someone clicks on your webpage in the search results, it’s important to make it easy for them to find the answers to their questions. Having a good UX design for your landing pages and blog posts will make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for.

There is no reason why you can’t optimize your site from a UX and SEO perspective at the same time. In fact, working to align your SEO and UX efforts can actually boost your results in both areas.

Your SEO efforts will drive traffic to your site, while UX will make sure the information on your site is easy to find.

SEO content that is written only for search engines will be hard to read and not very useful. A website that isn’t designed for PEOPLE will be difficult to navigate and understand.

Why is UX Important for SEO?

UX and SEO Are Both About Making Your Users Happy 😃

The goal of SEO is to bring users to your site to give them the information they are searching for. The goal of UX is to make it easy to navigate the page on your site to find that information. One important aspect of SEO is looking at user-intent and aligning your content with that desire or motivation. Improving the UX design on a page can help meet that user intent faster.

Making your website search engine-friendly is key for driving organic traffic. However, if you want to maximize the impact and reach of your content, user-experience is just as important.

UX Makes Your Website Sticky

A good user-experience will keep people on your website for longer. This can encourage them to visit more pages on your website and can even make the call-to-actions on your site more enticing. 

Optimizing your site’s user experience can make it easier for your visitors to navigate to other pages on your site that interest them. This helps increase the time that visitors spend engaging with your content.

Good User Experience is a Ranking Signal for Google

Google says that “when ranking results, Google Search evaluates whether webpages are easy to use and promotes more usable pages over less usable ones, all other things being equal.”

Google’s RankBrain algorithm looks at “behavior metrics such as the site’s bounce rate, organic CTR, pages per session, and dwell time.” In addition to looking at the quality and structure of your website, it’s also important to look at your site’s user-experience to give your content the best chance of ranking in Google Search.

UX Impacts How People Perceive Your Brand

Your website’s user experience (UX) is partly driven by search engine optimization (SEO). The two work together in the sense that both affect how users perceive your site.

The most prominent component of your website’s UX is, of course, your content. If you want to write SEO-friendly content, you need to make sure that your writing is structured well and easy to understand. If people view your site as a trustworthy source of information they will be more likely to return to your site, or do business with you.

On the other hand, if you write content that reads like it was written for search engines, your users will find it difficult to read and not very useful. This could turn them away from your site and lead to them doing business somewhere else.

UX Helps Improve Your Conversion Rate

While SEO focuses on bringing users to your site, UX focuses on how to best keep those users on your site and how to increase the conversions you get from that traffic. By placing CTAs throughout your pages and by making your site easier to navigate, UX designers can play a key role in conversion rate optimization.

6 Steps to Improve Your Site’s UX and SEO

• Make your site responsive: This improves user experiences for visitors on mobile devices like phones and tablets. Google predominantly uses mobile versions of content for indexing and ranking, even if your visitors are exclusively on desktop.

• Break up your content: Use headers, bulleted lists, and graphics to break your content into smaller, easier to read pieces. Avoid large chunks of text, which can cause users to look for the answers to their questions elsewhere. This will keep visitors on your site longer, which can be a strong signal for Google that your content is valuable.

• Improve your site speed and page load times: When your site loads quickly, visitors won’t have to wait around for your content to load. This allows them to jump right into your content rather than potentially clicking the back button.

• Make your site easy to navigate: Once users land on your site, it should be easy for them to navigate through your content to find what they are looking for. If you have other pages that they might also be interested in, you should make it easy for them to find those pages as well.

• Minimize your bounce rate: A high bounce rate indicates that users can’t quickly find the information they are looking for, or they are running into another issue that is causing them to leave your site immediately after arriving. Improving your pages’ UX can help decrease your bounce rate.
• Improve your site’s hierarchy: By organizing your pages on your site in an intuitive way, you make it easier for users to navigate through your site. The navigation on your site guides users from one page to another, so making this as intuitive as possible will improve user experiences.

Do UX Designers Need to Know SEO?

Not necessarily, but it’s certainly a valuable skill for anyone to have when making changes to your website. If the UX designer isn’t knowledgeable of SEO principles, they can still work alongside an SEO specialist to make sure that their changes are having the intended impact on your site, and that your site is search engine-friendly.

What are Best Practices for UX and SEO?

A strong user experience and search engine optimization are two of the most important aspects of managing a website.

Users and search engines alike benefit from the following practices: 

• Make your content easier to digest by breaking it down into smaller sections
• Use bullet points and numbered lists
• Use more images and illustrations to communicate your message
• Write content that aligns with your users’ intent
• Test your pages on different devices (desktop and mobile) and different browsers
• Minimize your CSS and JavaScript

• Make your site load quickly
• Publish content that is user-centered and easy to read

Integrate Your UX and SEO Practices

Rather than publishing SEO landing pages on your site and then trying to go back through them and optimize them from a UX perspective, you should try to implement UX best practices at all stages of the development process.

If your UX and SEO teams can collaborate and exchange constant feedback, you’ll end up with a much better end product.

Conduct a UX/SEO Audit to Find Opportunities to Improve Your User Metrics

• Look at time-on-site metrics like average session duration or bounce rate. Pages on your site with a low average session duration or high bounce rate, could likely benefit from a UX redesign or content update.

• Monitor your site for broken links or slow loading pages. Slow loading pages and broken links are frustrating for the people visiting your site. Redirect or replace your broken links and speed up your page load times to improve your user experience.

• Check for pages with low conversion rates. If certain pages on your site are getting a lot of traffic but aren’t driving conversions, you may need to adjust the CTAs on the page to make them more relevant.

Here’s how our SEO and UX teams go about developing new content for our clients:

• We identify a need for a certain page on the website. This typically comes from keyword research, if we notice that a relevant term for their business has a high search volume or is especially valuable for our client.

• Our SEO team creates an outline for the page and works with our writers to source the copy. The outline is where we determine the direction and the structure of the page. We then make sure that the copy is clearly written and aligns with our target keyword and search intent.

• The SEO team formats the brief and hands it off to our UX team. When providing our UX designers with the copy for a landing page, our SEO team formats it in a way that makes it easy to understand the structure of the page, and the important sections that need to be included.

• The UX designers create mock-ups of the new landing page. Our UX team creates wireframes and mockups in tools like Figma or Adobe XD, for the client to approve. This step makes sure that the new pages are optimized from a UX and CRO perspective.

• We present the designs and walk the client through the mockups. After putting together the mockups, we share them with our clients to walk them through the new content and give them a chance to provide any feedback.

• Then, we hand off the mockups to the developer to implement and push live. Once we’ve received approval, we give the mockups to the developer to implement on the site.

• The last step is to make sure the page was implemented properly and optimized. We make sure the focus keyword, meta description and other SEO data are set correctly and that the page doesn’t have any bugs or broken links.

How We’ve Combined UX and SEO for Tuff’s Clients

For new landing pages on our clients’ websites, our SEO team works closely with our UX team to produce landing pages that are optimized from both an SEO and UX perspective.

Landing Page for Visory’s Bookkeeping Service

Tuff worked with Visory, an online bookkeeping service, to create landing pages around bookkeeping for specific industries. Our SEO and UX teams collaborated to create pages that were optimized both for ranking on Google and for providing great user experiences.

This landing page, for example, is targeting keywords related to “bookkeeping for eCommerce”. We looked at the top ranking pages for our target keyword and identified what we needed to include on our page to match the search intent for our target keyword.

Our UX team also considered how we could make this page intuitive to navigate and easy to read. We also looked at how we could make the calls to action (CTAs) more enticing for users to click on, to optimize the page’s conversion rate.

Footer Navigation for Salams

Tuff worked with Salams, a Muslim dating app, to increase organic traffic to their website and to drive organic app installs. We were able to increase organic traffic by 117% in 90 days by publishing new content on their site and making technical SEO optimizations.

Beyond just publishing this new content, we also redesigned the footer on the Salams website to improve both SEO and UX.

As we started publishing new landing pages, we noticed that many of these new pages were “orphan pages” and weren’t linked to from other pages on the site. Our solution was to add these new pages to the footer so that they would be linked to from every page on the site. This helps show Google that this content is important and is worthy of ranking.

This also helped improve the UX on the Salam’s site. By having these pages linked in the footer, users can easily navigate to other pages that they might be interested in on the site. This helps keep people browsing on the site rather than clicking the back button and looking for more information elsewhere.

The post How UX and SEO Can Work Together to Increase Organic Traffic appeared first on Tuff.

When working with a growth marketing agency like Tuff, you can expect that we’ll tackle all kinds of growth marketing strategies, from CRO and SEO to Social Media Ads and PPC.

But none of those strategies can happen without the help of the simple landing page!

Whether it’s using one to collect email addresses, encourage downloads, make an order, or set up a demo, landing pages are an essential building block to every marketing funnel.

And while there is no perfect formula to writing landing page copy that converts, I’m going to share some of the key elements required to write landing page copy that will make your Stripe account sing. 

Let’s dive in!

1. Know your audience.

It’s one of the basic tenets of marketing: know your audience. 

But instead of talking about whether or not your target demographic is a mom between the ages of 35-40, with a preference for lattes, bulldog videos on TikTok, and drives a minivan, I want to talk about understanding what’s going on in her mind—specifically, her stage of awareness.

Touted by the copywriting great, Eugene Schwartz, your prospect’s stage of awareness refers to how much they know about a problem they’re experiencing, what options they have to solve it, and why your product is the one they should pick. 

The 5 Stages of Awareness are:

• Most Aware: At this stage, your prospect already knows everything about your product and is 100% ready to convert. They just need to be told where to punch in their credit card number so that they can buy.
• Product-Aware: At this stage, your prospect has a clear idea of what you sell, but hasn’t decided to go for it. They’re on the fence and need a bit more information to help them over the line.
• Solution-Aware: When your prospect is solution aware, they know what kind of result they want, but have NO CLUE that your product can help them achieve it. 
• Problem-Aware: When your prospect is problem aware, they understand that they have a big problem, but they have no idea how to solve it or that a solution might exist.
• Completely Unaware: At this point, your prospect has no idea who you are, what you sell, or that there’s even a problem that they should worry about.

So when it comes to writing landing page copy that converts, take time to consider what stage of awareness your prospect is in when they land on your page. 

What do they already know? 

What do they need to know in order to make an informed decision? 

What are their hesitations about buying and how can you speak to them directly?

The more you can understand the stage of awareness your prospect is in—by asking questions like the ones above—the higher your chances of hitting the conversion rates you’re looking for. 

2. Limit your requests

The internet (and life!) can be full of distractions. Going back to our bulldog-watching, latte-loving mom from earlier, let’s say that you sell a jitter-free coffee alternative and want to create a landing page that will drive her to opt-in and request a free sample. 

If you use your landing page as an opportunity to also barrage her with “download this free report on the negatives of coffee” or “sign up here for a 10% off coupon” or  “learn more about our company” or “check out our latest arrivals,” you run the risk of:

1. Overwhelming her into INaction 

…and…

2. Could drive her away from your landing page altogether—distracting her from doing the original action you hoped for.

If you were to thumb through a stack of high converting landing pages, you’d see that most stay very focused.  Because trying to do otherwise will leave you with an overwhelmed prospect and a conversion rate that falls flat.

Which leads me to…

3. Make your Calls to Action (CTAs) strong & clear

You’ve experienced it before. You see an ad while scrolling through Facebook and you click through to its landing page. Except, as you start to read down the page, you can’t figure out how to order because they’ve buried the “Buy Now” button and their messaging is more clever than clear. So what do you do? You leave.

The reality is, confused people don’t buy. 

In order to write landing page copy that converts, you’ve got to make it crystal-clear what you want your prospect to do. You can’t expect them to just know, so feel free to spell it out for them in detail. 

Consider your own CTAs. How can you make them more specific? How can you make the path from point A to point B, even more clear?  

Pulling it all together

The secret to writing landing page copy that converts is that it helps lessen friction and uncertainty in your prospects. By joining the conversation already taking place in their mind, you can create a solid bond and increase that know, like, and trust factor that’s an essential part of conversion.

Then, drop in a clear and strong CTA and get ready—it won’t take long before your pipeline is flushed with paying customers.

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