Designing a landing page (or any page for that matter) should be something that you take your time on to make sure it is perfect. Some people just toss up a sales page with some decent sales copy and hope for the best. If they start making sales, they assume that the page is working well. The fact is, however, that they should be trying to improve that page at all times. Even a small bump in the conversion rate can lead to huge increases in profit. This is why the page should always be in a state of being tested and improved as often as possible.
Another mistake marketers often make is focusing all their efforts on the text of the sales or landing pages. While using the right words is critical, everything else on the page needs to be factored in as well. Including the colors on the page. There have been my psychological studies that show that different colors cause different feelings in people, so take advantage of that.
This chart should be looked at whenever designing a page. Think about who your audience is and choose a color scheme that will optimize your results. Of course, if you’re selling to young girls, that doesn’t mean you want a solid pink page with some white letters. Picking colors should be done in a way that will keep the site looking good, while also drawing out the desired emotions.
Split Testing Colors
After your initial design is up and running, you should start performing split tests to attempt to optimize the results. The following simple tips can help you split test colors effectively:
- Choose Something Small – Typically when you’re split testing, you don’t want to make changes all over the site. If you do that, you won’t really know which change caused the improvement (or harm). Instead, choose one small element of the page to test. Changing the color of the headline, for example, is a good place to start. Split test a pink headline vs. a purple one and see which performs better. Once that is done, split test the ‘buy’ or ‘add to cart’ button with different colors.
- Never Stop Testing – As mentioned above, even small improvements in conversion rates can lead to huge profits over time. This is why you should ALWAYS be testing your page and making improvements. After you’ve gone through each element on the page, go through them again making less drastic changes. If in the first test you found that pink outperformed all other colors, start tweaking the shade of pink you’re using. See if you get any changes. Every change can help, as long as it tests well.
Even testing different call to action buttons with different colors can lead to surprising results. - Check Your Branding – Most successful businesses have some sort of branding strategy in place, and one of the most important parts of any brand is their color scheme. Imagine, for example, the “Golden Arches” of McDonalds in any other color but gold, or the Google logo with another color scheme. Make sure you’re designing your brand color scheme with your customer in mind. If you’re early on in the brand, you can do some split testing with this as well.
- Run Some Direct Surveys – If you want to get some fast and direct results, consider directly surveying your audience. Running tests this way can get you a lot of information quickly. There are many companies out there that will run online surveys that can test almost anything, including color choices. If you’ve got the budget, this can be a great way to start off a new landing page with already optimized colors.
