As with most things there are sets of rules when it comes to building landing pages. But, sometimes things need to be tweaked. With inbound marketing in particular, testing of your different marketing strategies is encouraged.
If you find that one of your landing pages is working better than another you may need to do some testing of different aspects on that page. Many things can contribute to some landing pages working better than others; different images, better use of color, less text, more text, shorter form, social share icons, the way you follow up once they have downloaded the offer, etc.
We often create many different versions of our landing pages and test to see which one people respond to best. It’s amazing to see that the way things are shown on the page and formulated really do make a different. One color change or different wording can be the difference to whether someone decides to download that offer.
The list can go on and on. If you have found that you’re having issues with landing page performance or just want to conduct some testing (which is a smart idea!) then I suggest you take a look at a post written by HubSpot that lists 13 different experiments you can run. Having the very best landing pages you can means following the basic rules but also conducting testing and continuing to improve!
Posted by Ginny Soskey, HubSpot
13 Quick and Easy Landing Page Experiments You Can Run
1) "Pay With a Tweet" Instead of a Form
Most landing pages are created to help you generate leads. People come to the page, fill out a form, and get a piece of content ... and ta-da! You have a new lead!
But what if most of the people downloading this piece of content are already leads? They've downloaded another piece of content already but haven't done anything since then. What's the use of having them fill out another form?
If you're using progressive profiling, you can try replacing a form with a "Pay With a Tweet" button -- basically, people have to tweet the link to the landing page to get access to the offer. That way they're helping you bring in more people who might be new leads in your database.
2) Thank You Page vs. Follow-up Email vs. Combination
What happens after someone fills out a form your website to download a piece of content? Do they get the piece of content via email? Are they taken to a thank you page to download the content directly? How about both?
How you choose to deliver the content to your leads could affect how likely they are to read that offer ... and then convert to the next step in your marketing funnel.
3) Short Forms vs. Long Forms
There's a lead generation tradeoff when it comes to form length: Usually, you'll get more people to fill out a form if it's short, but they won't be as qualified as those who filled out a long form (because only the people who really want that piece of content will fill out a long form). So on the one hand, you'll have lots of leads coming in the funnel ... but they may take longer to close as customers. The other hand? A few people who are actually really qualified potential customers.
Figure out which is better for your business by testing the form length on a few landing page and tracking those customers through your buying cycle. Who knows -- maybe having really long forms could help your bottom line?
[Read more of the original: 13 Little Landing Page Experiments That Can Make a Big Difference]