Most landing pages suck.

So we asked Tas Bober—an expert in landing page optimization—to share her best advice.

(And her advice is really, really good. We’ve spent decades doing this ourselves and agree with everything Tas preaches. This is rare. Adam was so excited, he even did a 360 during the interview.)

Q. What are the key mistakes B2B SaaS companies make with their landing pages:

  1. 44% of B2B SaaS companies drive users to the homepage. They’re missing a landing page strategy entirely. This leads to wasted spend. 
  2. 70% of users will never scroll down. Each section’s job is to drive users to the next section. 
  3. Messaging first: Being clear with your offer. Knowing when to gate vs not. 
  4. Not taking care of the foundations – slow speeds, accessibility. If the site doesn’t load, you won’t get any conversions. The benchmark is 3 seconds before a user bounces. 
  5. Setting and forgetting: creating the landing pages and never looking at the data to improve the experience 
  6. Too many CTAs 
  7. Adding a lot of distractions (navigation links)

Q. What key elements should a high-converting landing page include?

  1. They’re not over-designed 
  2. Delivering what was promised in the ads …which means (next point) 
  3. Remove exit points and distractions (nav bars, unnecessary links)
  4. Problem-first messaging with your unique POV (why you built the product) 
  5. Call out your ICP 
  6. Focusing on one desired action (one CTA) aka promising the users what was in the ad. 
  7. As little friction as possible (shorter forms, not too many questions, making each step easy and convenient) 
  8. Being clear about what to expect if you’re asking for information 
  9. Continuous iteration. 

Q. How do you approach aligning landing page content with the ad’s messaging for better conversion rates?

It’s quite simple. If the user searches for “your brand vs your competitor” but you take them to a page that talks about your product or worse, your homepage, that’s a disjointed experience. That’s like you searching for pants and Old Navy drops you on their homepage with ALL the clothing and accessories you offer. 

Talk about on your landing page what you talked about in your ad that got them there in the first place. 

Q. What role does user experience (UX) play? Any specific UX strategies you employ?

UX has a huge part to play, right after messaging. UX answers the simplicity of the experience. Outside of the elements I mentioned, some other considerations are: 

  1. Eye-tracking: users predominantly read webpages in an F format (source: Nielsen Norman group study of 232 recordings) 
  2. With the F format in mind:
    1. Your H1 (heading) needs to be remarkable with the H2 (subhead) providing additional context. 
    2. Effective use of font-sizes (don’t go crazy. 3 levels is sufficient – Headings, subheadings, paragraphs) 
    3. Strategic use of white space for separation of each section: Typically, the rule of thumb is to allow each section to be the ONLY section within a viewer’s screen. Like you’re taking bites of the entire candy bar. 
    4. Group content together visually so the brain can register that they go together: text coupled with visual aid like a background, border, icons, whitespace) 
  3. Use relevant imagery – Lots of wasted space with the use of stock imagery irrelevant to the content. This is an opportunity to showcase the product. 
  4. Moving elements: while sometimes this can make something visually interesting, I recommend against them because they are distractions and some users with accessibility issues may have issues seeing them. 

Q. Can you discuss your approach to creating compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) on landing pages?

Pick one CTA. Some companies do a double CTA as a soft second but I tend to stay away. You want it to be extremely focused. 

Use the same language for the CTA all the way through the page. You don’t want to confuse them and make them think they’re all different CTAs. 

If you want to test CTA copy, do them in different iterations rather than multiple on the same page. 

Q. How does research and analytics play a role in landing page optimization? 

Research

My frameworks were developed using 3 things: 

  1. My experience running millions in paid ads internally at companies 
  2. Actual data of what works and doesn’t from heatmaps, website analytics, and user-reported feedback 
  3. Peer-vetted. I ran the frameworks by top industry peers to make sure I wasn’t missing anything 

Analytics 

The frameworks give you the best shot chance of success to start with. Then it’s a matter of: 

  • Frequently reviewing the data. 
  • Understanding the friction points users are feeling 
  • Removing friction points as quickly as possible 
  • Adding tests every 2 weeks or so

You would never throw away a half-squeezed lemon. The biggest issue is moving on to the next campaign and project without shaking the existing one out first. 

Q. What was your biggest a-ha moment with landing page optimization? 

It’s not the largest changes that always make the largest impact. Something as small as changing a background or telling people how many of their peers have already interacted with the page can yield 10-20% more conversions. 

Q. How do you measure what works and what doesn’t?

Carefully reviewing the data. An underrated hack is watching page recordings and seeing where users are: 

  1. Spending the most time 
  2. Getting stuck 

Q. What’s one thing that most people think is useful about landing page optimization, but can skip entirely?

There are a couple of things: 

  1. Focusing too much on design. Yes, visuals are complementary and can help. But I’ve seen what I call “ratchet” landing pages and ads perform way better than an overly designed one. 
  2. Thinking they always need a form at the top of the page. You can have one on the bottom or even link out to it. 

The most important thing is always going to be the messaging AND your offer. 

Q. What should someone do in the next 24 hours to optimize their ads and landing pages?

  1. Run your page through a lighthouse test to see how fast it loads 
  2. Change your messaging to explain exactly what you do and for whom. Can you explain your product in 1-2 sentences? This is a test 
  3. Remove distractions like navigations and a full footer 
  4. Focus on one single CTA and repeat it down the page every few blocks. 
  5. Showcase the product as much as you can – short videos, gifs, or screenshots. 

More about Tas:

Tas Bober is a landing page expert (3x B2B Digital Marketing). After 15 years in the space in-house, she ventured out into consulting B2B SaaS companies on leveling up their paid ads landing page experiences. 

Please help us grow by sharing this on: