Optimizing your landing pages is absolutely essential to boosting your conversion rate — the number of website visitors who ultimately become your customers. A landing page is a specific web page on which your prospects “land” after clicking on one of your ads.

Each landing page must be congruent with the source of the traffic (e.g., paid search, email, social media), use an intuitive design and layout, and encourage the sale every step of the way. Meeting all of these goals can be complicated and confusing, but a variety of tools are available to help.

Landing Page Creation

Creating a landing page can be hard work whether you are new to the task or a seasoned pro. From layout to wording, every decision you make can have lasting consequences on your conversion rate.

While no tool can replace your own creative instincts, there are numerous options for streamlining the actual building process, freeing you up to focus on exactly what you want the page to say. The best landing page creation tools also have powerful built-in functionality for tracking and changing your landing pages on the fly.

Three of the most popular and most useful landing page creation tools are Unbounce, Lead Pages, and InstaPage. Each has a unique feature set, and I recommend taking a look at all three to see which one best meets your individual needs.

Landing page creation tools such as Instapage provide advanced functionality, mobile-responsive templates, WordPress integration, and testing options.

Each tool provides advanced functionality, such as mobile responsive templates, WordPress integration, and testing options. Any one of them will help you get your page up and running in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Popup Tools

Popup ads have a rather odd reputation among web designers. There is a lot of evidence that they work well in driving conversions, but many people find them annoying. Whether or not to use them can often be a personal decision rather than a business one. If you do use them, sort through the various types of popup ads and choose the tool that best meets your needs.

Popup ads appear on top of the web page that the user is currently browsing. At one time, they were easily defeated by popup blockers. Today, they are more typically built into the page and not subject to popup blockers. They can emerge anywhere on the page and can be triggered in three main ways:

  • Behavior-driven popups appear when the user performs a particular action, such as opening a specific page on your site or scrolling down to a certain point on a page;
  • Time-driven popups surface after a specified period of time has elapsed;
  • Exit popups make one final offer when the user attempts to leave your site.

Different popup tools have differing focuses. Here are four of the most popular:

  • Bounce Exchange is a fun tool that uses intelligent behavioral technology to predict when and why prospects are ready to leave your site. The tool then displays different popup ads based on the results of its analysis;
  • OptinMonster is a plugin for WordPress, making it very easy to use. You can choose from a broad range of popup types and display unique ads based on a particular visitor’s behaviors;
  • PopUp Domination is an excellent all-around popup tool. You can choose from a variety of templates or build your own, and the level of customization you can achieve is impressive. If you want to test several different types of popups, this may be the right choice for you;
  • Hello Bar displays a popup bar at the top of a web page. You can decide whether users have the option to turn it off and whether it scrolls to remain at the top of the page as users scroll down. Hello Bar is a nice tool for those who are not completely sold on popups as it gets strong results without being quite as “in your face” as other options.

Popup Domination is an all-around popup tool.

Split-testing and Analytics Tools

Split-testing and analytics tools let you experiment with different versions of your landing page and track the results. This is an important key to optimization because it teaches you what works best for your selected market. While Google’s free tools can put you on the right track, dedicated split-testing and analytics tools allow you to dig a bit deeper. Here are three of the best:

  • Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) can grow with you as you become more comfortable with analytics. The A/B testing tool is simple to use, with no HTML knowledge required. VWO also provides a host of statistical data analysis features from heat maps and revenue analysis to customer segmentation and full multivariate testing. If you plan to rely on a single testing and analytics tool, this is among the best;
  • Optimizely is an easy to use tool that works across multiple platforms, including desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps. From simple A/B testing through complex analysis, Optimizely can also integrate with tools that you already use;
  • Crazy Egg is a wonderfully-detailed option that lets you dig deep into your users’ unique behaviors. You can learn such useful information as how far visitors scroll on your site and where they click. You might even discover that people tend to click on something that is not actually a link. This tool helps you see your website as others see it, and can guide you toward a more effective and better-converting redesign.

Optimizely works across multiple platforms.

Optimizing your landing pages can be a challenge, but using the right tools will help. Some business owners stick with a single tool, while others use a variety of resources to build a complete picture of their landing pages and how to improve them. Whichever direction you take, these tools will set you on the road toward a higher conversion rate.

This post, Top Landing Page Tools for Small Businesses, was first published on WebMarketingToday.