Let’s start with a simple statement: Most Landing Pages Suck More Than You Think!
Following the principles of denial, the first step in recovery is admitting that you have a problem. If you followed my last post about the 4 Truths of Conversion Marketing, you’ll know that there is a fair amount of psychology involved in delivering the best landing page experiences.
To make things easier, I’ve created an interactive scorecard that walks you through the “4 Truths” and allows you to apply them to your existing landing pages in a simple checklist format.
Scoring your landing page
It’s drop dead simple, just walk through the scorecard while observing your landing page. Answer each question honestly and find out how well your page scores.
Note: if a question is not applicable to your landing page, it’s OK to check the box if you think you would have done this were it relevant.
Assessing Truth #1
Are you describing what the page is about?
Remember that Truth 1 asserts that the customer knows nothing when they first arrive at your landing page. Let’s see how well your elevator pitch is going at the point of introduction.
Assessing Truth #2
Are you giving visitors a reason to care?
Truth 2 points out that your landing page needs to improve your customer’s work or personal life in some way. How well are you explaining the benefits of your product or service?
Assessing Truth #3
Are you trustworthy?
Truth 3 is about legitimacy. It’s time to test how well you are presenting transparency, integrity and trust to your visitors.
Assessing Truth #4
Is it easy to get started?
Truth 4 is about the white-glove treatment, and leading your customers to the all important call to action. Let’ grade how well your CTA is presented.
Interpreting Your Score
| Score | Rating | What it Means |
| 36-40 | Rock Star Landing Page | Not much left to do here, you’re basically a design and marketing god. The best use of your time would be sipping on a fine wine while you watch the conversions on your iPhone. |
| 31-35 | Second Best | This is a great achievement, but like winning a Silver medal in the Olympics, it’s not quite good enough. Just don’t wait 4 years until you make the necessary improvements. |
| 26-30 | Better than most | Chances are you are converting fairly well. Go back through the checklist and spend a few minutes with each unchecked box to figure out what’s missing. Implement them, and check your score again. |
| 21-25 | Meh | You are very slightly above average. Mediocrity is only exciting for one reason: there are a lot of conversions out there that you’re missing out on. Go get ’em champ. |
| 16-20 | One eye closed | With a score in this range, it’s as if you are trying to ignore half of your potential customers. Imagine yourself standing in the street handing out fliers – everyone on the other side of the street is missing your message. |
| 11-15 | Unmemorable | If you want people to convert, you need to be unique and memorable. If your product or service isn’t all that different, then the least you can do is follow the basic usability principles of smart landing page design. Try reading our 101 Landing Page Optimization Tips eBook for inspiration. |
| 6-10 | The second least popular kid in school | One off the bottom. Way to go. Get back to the drawing board and start applying first principles to your landing pages. A good start would be running through our HOW TO: Create a Landing Page Design Concept in 10 Minutes post. |
| 1-5 | Pathetic | Find a different profession. |
What Now?
What you choose to do with your score is up to you. But if your goal is to convert more customers and be more awesome at landing page stuff, then you owe it to yourself to refine your landing page (through testing, observation, analysis and optimization) until it’s busting above that 36 threshold.
How to get started
The simplest way to get started is to keep a list of all your unchecked checkboxes. Consider this your TO-DO List, and work your way through each point until your page is performing better.
Good luck.
The Unbounce Challenge
Tell us your score
If you use our scorecard to rate your landing page, we’d love if you’d share your score and a URL to you landing page in the comments below. Then you can come back and comment again once you’ve made some improvements.
