How to test your landing page concept the right way

There are so many ways a customer could enter your website: an email, a Google search, or an ad in their Facebook mobile feed, to name a few. With all of these hard-earned (or just plain expensive) sources of traffic, you want to make sure you put your best foot forward when a customer interacts with your site.

After all, you never get a second chance to make a first impression—or avoid a bounce! While you can always drive customers to your company’s home page, a focused landing page could more effectively communicate your message and optimize conversion.

Concept testing through surveys can help you hone and optimize your landing page before it goes live. Surveys are a cost-effective way to drive enough traffic to landing page concepts to make decisions without burning through your media budget. And you’ll be able to get qualitative data to understand what clicks with your CPC customers.

The goal of a landing page is to drive action—to get someone to do something—so think about what you want a customer to do before you begin testing your design.

Once you’ve nailed down your objective and know what you want the customer to do once they’ve landed on your page, you’ll want to test different landing page concepts. Surveys are a great way to narrow down your ideas before doing live A/B testing.

Let’s say the goal for your landing page is to get someone to sign up for your email newsletter. You can use concept testing to determine the best landing page to increase sign-ups. Landing pages vary greatly but often share the following elements, some of which you may want to consider testing before you launch:

Tagline or headline: You only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention. Headlines could range from emphasizing quality, “Our customers rank us #1,” to more promotional, “We have the lowest prices.” Through a survey, you can ask customers what they believe is the most compelling reason to sign up for your email newsletter.

Descriptive content (e.g., text, imagery, video): You’ll also want to figure out what additional content people might need to know before someone signs up. Test and see if customers want to see testimonials, videos, or images of people using your product. Think about how this pairs with your headline and you can test the best combination of the two.

Call to action: This element is really important since this is the action you want your customer to take. If you want to know how people will react to the messages on your buttons like “Sign Up Now,” “Get Started,” and “Join our Newsletter List,” you can ask them! The survey question could prompt them to rank the button 1) they’re most likely to click, 2) in order of preference, and/or 3) that would most likely to cause them to sign up. Or you could just show them designs with different buttons and ask which design they find most appealing.

Layout: Once you’ve nailed all of the graphics and copy, play around with the layout. What happens if you place the sign-up form on the top of the page versus the bottom? What if you remove/add other content? You can test things like page appeal and comprehension through concept testing.

Last but not least: don’t forget screen size! If you are promoting your landing page through email, keep in mind that over half of emails get opened on a smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Your landing page that looks gorgeous on a PC may be illegible on a tiny screen. Be sure to test mobile-optimized landing page concepts if mobile advertising or email is part of your marketing plan.

Surveys also allow you to test your landing page concepts with multiple audiences to gauge impact on conversion rate.

Ready to go? Here are a couple more resources to help you get started on your landing page test:

If you need to find the right people to test your landing page—or need help creating a survey and analyzing results—SurveyMonkey Audience can make it easy.