Landing page templates, such as those offered by Instapage, are a great starting point for your page design. But sometimes, you need more than a pre-designed template to get the engagement and conversions you want.

When you are looking to add an element or functionality, and you can’t find a landing page template that has everything you need for a personalized page experience you can use custom codes to add elements that might make a difference between a conversion and a page bounce.

Today we’ll go over landing page elements and functionality that you can add to your pages via custom code features and how many of these are available for you to do inside the Instapage builder.

Note: While adding custom code to your pages might feel intimidating, you don’t need to do all the work yourself. Need help? Our Instapage customer success team can help you implement your custom code designs.

What is a custom code landing page?

Think of a custom code landing page as a landing page that’s been turbocharged. It is a landing page that allows you to add custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code to enhance the page’s functionality and customize the design beyond what standard drag-and-drop builders offer.

Marketers opt for custom code landing pages when they want to:

• Deliver an elevated or unique user experience
• Want the design of their page to stand out
• Need advanced functionality that typically can’t be found in standard templates
• Run A/B tests to determine which variants help drive conversions

Custom codes can be used for a variety of landing page upgrades. Here are some examples.

Adding a personalized greeting to your landing page

Adding a personalized greeting to your landing page helps visitors feel noticed and valued right from the start. It creates a friendly, welcoming vibe that encourages people to stay and explore more. Plus, when visitors feel the page speaks directly to them, they’re more likely to trust your brand and take action.

Animated elements and CTA buttons

Adding animated elements and clear CTA buttons to your landing page can make it more engaging and easy to navigate. Animation helps grab visitors’ attention in a fun way, while well-placed CTA buttons guide them toward the next steps. Together, they make the page more interactive and user-friendly, helping keep visitors interested and ready to take action.

Interactive animations, demos, or carousels on landing pages

Adding interactive animations, demos, or carousels to your landing page can make it more exciting and easier for visitors to learn about your product or service. These features let people explore at their own pace, making the experience more enjoyable and memorable. Plus, keeping visitors engaged this way can lead to more time on your page and better chances they’ll take action.

Custom loading screens

Custom loading screens make waiting more enjoyable for visitors by adding something fun or visually interesting while the page loads. Instead of getting frustrated, users stay engaged and are more likely to stick around. Plus, a unique loading screen adds a bit of personality to your site, making it feel polished and memorable.

Dynamic content based on user’s location

Adding dynamic content based on a user’s location makes the experience feel more personal and relevant. For instance, it can show local deals, nearby store locations, or content specific to their area, making it super useful. This little touch helps users feel appreciated and understood, which can lead to them staying longer and taking action.

Instapage custom code landing page features

Instapage is designed to drive conversions for your marketing campaigns, it powers your campaigns and turns more ad clicks into customers with experimentation, optimization, reporting, and growth tools. Although all Instapage customers get access to hundreds of pre-built templates, Instapage does allow for custom coding when users want extra functionality from their landing pages.

Instapage allows you to add customizations with Javascript, HTML/CSS, or third-party scripts. You may use custom coding to add custom widgets to your landing page or to add tags for remarketing, analytics, and conversion tracking.

The intuitive page builder makes it easy to integrate custom elements into your page by following a few simple prompts.

Some custom code features include:

Range slider

A two-handle slider control is useful when you want your page visitors to select between a range of values, such as prices, times, dates, and more, by dragging the slider handles from left to right. This adds an interactive element to a user’s experience on landing pages and helps elevate standard lead capture forms.

Range sliders allow your prospects to compare multiple options that are relevant to them without having to submit more than one form. It also provides a great mobile experience since dragging a slider is easy to do on a mobile device.

Expandable sections/accordions

Expandable sections are popular because they allow you to put a lot of content on a page in a contained way. Users will not be able to see the content until they expand the section, and each section can have its dedicated headline to let the user know what information to expect.

This type of feature is often used for something like FAQs, where a lot of information can be conveyed without cluttering a page.

Google Analytics event tracking

For those who want to collect enhanced measurements and data, you can use scripts to set up custom tracking. Doing so will allow you to track things like conversions triggered by button clicks, conversions triggered from form submissions, conversion events from multiple platforms, deep A/B testing insights, and more.

Here are ways you can personalize your landing pages even further using custom codes:

• Use HTML to format fonts, text styles, background colors, and more to your liking
• Add progress bars that tell a user how close they are to completing a form
• Add social media widgets that update in real-time so users can understand what kind of content to expect from you
• Embed interactive elements to your landing page to give users an idea of what the product experience would look like
• Create custom form validations that communicate error, completion, or thank you messages or anything that would enhance the user experience
• Create an interactive experience with elements that animate, transition in unique ways, and are visually appealing

Create customized landing pages to boost your ad campaigns

Custom tailored landing pages are a powerful way to boost conversions and get a higher return on ad spend (ROAS).

Instapage is an easy-to-use, intuitive landing page platform that comes with a drag-and-drop builder, hundreds of templates, multi-step forms, A/B testing, AI assistance, built-in analytics, and more to help marketers get more out of their campaigns without relying on big teams, costly marketing tools, or coding experience.

Features like sticky bars, image carousels, text formatting options, popups, and custom forms are built into Instapage, but you can use custom codes to customize your landing page even further.

Our robust documentation and customer success managers can help you implement custom codes and make the most out of your landing pages.

Want to see if Instapage is the right fit for you? Try a free 14-day trial of Instapage today.

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Highlights

• A formal product strategy acts as a north star for your product development
• It includes a product vision, clear goals, user personas, and USPs
• Learn the four business models that drive product strategies
• Find out how to pair your product strategy with a conversion-optimized marketing strategy

A product strategy is a high-level plan that defines what your product does and identifies who it will serve and how it will benefit them.

Not only does a product strategy define the direction of your product, but it also helps your team stay aligned with the company’s goals and customer needs and explains how your product will achieve those goals across its entire lifecycle.

In this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into how to craft an effective product strategy, discussing its fundamental components and different business models that support successful strategies.

What is a product strategy?

A product strategy is a blueprint for how the product will fit into the market, what its unique value proposition will be, and how it will evolve over time.

A product strategy defines clear goals, a target audience, and unique selling propositions (USPs) that users will find beneficial.

For example, a product strategy for a company that sells solar panels will outline how solar panels will reduce homeowners’ energy consumption, what impact that will have on the environment, and how much customers can expect to save in costs over time. It would specify the USPs that set this company’s solar panels (or business model) apart from others, such as specialized technology, a green manufacturing process, or a competitive pricing strategy.

Why do you need to have a product strategy?

A product strategy serves as a helpful guide for organizations and is essential for long-term success. Here are the reasons why:

• Gives you alignment across the team: A product strategy provides clarity on the product’s vision, goals, and initiatives for the entire organization. It ensures that everyone, from the product team to marketing and sales, is aligned on the product’s purpose and direction. Without a product strategy, teams may be unfocused and unable to make impactful decisions.
• Prioritizes your roadmap: When resources are limited, it’s hard to decide how to allocate your budget. A product strategy allows product managers to make informed decisions on which features to prioritize.
• Helps with decision-making: Using the product strategy as a reference point, teams can make better tactical decisions throughout the product’s lifecycle. When internal or external changes occur, the strategy provides a framework for adjusting plans while staying true to the product’s core objectives.
• Magnifies customer focus: A product strategy grounded in user research and insights helps ensure that the product is designed to meet customer needs. It also allows the team to develop features that address specific pain points and differentiate the product from competitors.
• Increases likelihood of market success: By defining the product’s unique value proposition, target market, and goals, a product strategy increases the likelihood of achieving product-market fit. It guides the development of a product that resonates with the right audience, solves user problems, and is positioned well against competitors.

Key elements of well-crafted product strategies

Effective product strategies have several key elements in common. The best product strategists accomplish the following:
1. Define your product and market vision: First and foremost, they define a clear product vision about your product’s long-term mission. The vision should be aspirational and static, serving as a guiding light for your team. For instance, a fitness company may have a fitness app with a vision to “empower users to lead healthier lives through tailored fitness and nutrition insights.”
2. Understand your target market: Before developing a product strategy, market research must be conducted to identify and understand your target audience. Gather insights on user needs, preferences, and pain points. Create user personas to connect and empathize with your customers and tailor your product to meet their specific requirements.
3. Set clear product goals: Develop specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals that align with your product vision. Your goals need to address key problems and provide a tangible way to measure progress. For example, a clear goal could be to increase customer retention by 20% year over year through improved onboarding and user experience. These goals not only guide your team but also provide a straightforward way to measure success.
4. Identify unique selling propositions (USPs): Determine what makes your product different from competitors in your space. Highlight your USPs that attract your target audience. This could involve innovative features, a superior user experience, or better pricing strategies.
5. Develop the right product initiatives: Translate your goals into actionable initiatives. These initiatives should be significant objectives that your team can break down into smaller tasks. For example, to improve the onboarding experience and achieve higher customer retention, you might introduce a rewards program or in-app incentives to encourage loyalty.

Product strategy business models

There are various business models that can inform the direction of your product strategy and drive growth and revenue. Companies may use one business model or a combination of two or more.

Let’s take a look at four different business models and the characteristics of each:

Product-led growth (PLG)

In the product-led growth (PLG) model, the product itself is the main driver for acquiring and retaining customers. The focus is on making the product so valuable and easy to use that it attracts users without significant marketing and sales efforts.

Key elements of PLG include:

• A frictionless user experience
• Popular, viral product features that are easily shareable
• Self-service onboarding and learning
• Product improvements based on user feedback

Companies like Dropbox, Slack, and Zoom have successfully used PLG to quickly scale their user bases and revenue.

Slack became a go-to tool for businesses and organizations by offering a user-friendly, feature-rich platform with a seamless onboarding process. Its success stems from a product-led approach, allowing users to explore most features for free while ensuring that large enterprises still receive hands-on support from Slack’s sales team when making big decisions.

Product segmentation

Product segmentation involves tailoring your product into different versions to satisfy specific user personas. Doing so allows you to optimize each version of your product to meet the unique needs of those specific customer segments.

Key elements of product segmentation include:

• Identifying different, specific user personas
• Tailoring product features for each segment/user persona
• Offering customized pricing models

During the pandemic, Zoom’s targeted segmentation helped it thrive by catering to diverse groups, from individuals and SMBs to large enterprises, education, and healthcare sectors. Its seamless integration with third-party apps made it a vital tool for remote work, virtual classrooms, and maintaining business productivity.

Freemium Model

Offering a free basic version of your product, also known as a freemium model, is a popular strategy for driving adoption, especially for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.

It’s a way to attract customers to your product without risk. Users will get value from a basic version of your product and will be incentivized to upgrade to paid plans with premium features.

Many, many companies have used the freemium model to grow their user bases and convert free users into paying customers – a few examples include Spotify, Dropbox, and Slack. This model is best suited for products where the incremental cost of adding a user is low.

Since its launch in 2008, Dropbox reached 100 million users in just four years. Today, it boasts 700 million users and generates $2.5 billion in annual revenue. Dropbox’s pricing strategy, centered on the freemium model and a customer referral program, fueled its growth in the SaaS industry. By offering a free plan with generous storage, Dropbox attracted millions of users and turned them into advocates through word-of-mouth referrals, driving rapid user acquisition and brand growth.

While the freemium model attracted a large user base, Dropbox’s tiered pricing plans helped monetize and retain customers by offering different features and storage capacities.

Bundling

Bundling is a model where you package your product with complementary offerings to create a more compelling value proposition. Using this model can increase customer value, encourage cross selling or up-selling, and help you reach new audiences.

Key elements of bundling include:

• Identifying synergistic products or services
• Offering a discounted price for the bundle
• Ensuring that the combined offering creates a 1 + 1 = 3 effect for customers; in other words, the bundle should add value for the customer

You can bundle hardware with software or multiple software products together. For example, Microsoft bundles its Office 365 productivity suite with cloud storage, video conferencing, and other tools to drive awareness of and adoption of its broader ecosystem.

Previously, Windows was the go-to platform for running Office, but now users want flexibility to work on any device—whether Android, Mac, iOS, or the web. Microsoft’s focus has shifted to offering a cloud-based ecosystem through Microsoft 365 (M365), which combines management, security, and productivity features using Azure Active Directory. M365 also integrates with third-party solutions, managing devices like iPhones and Androids, while securing data with tools like Azure Information Protection.

Market your product strategy with conversion-optimized landing pages

Once you’ve created a solid product strategy, you’re ready to go to market. One of the most powerful ways to market your product strategy is through conversion-optimized landing pages.

These pages should be tailored to specific ad campaigns and should clearly and captivatingly highlight your product’s key benefits, USPs, and features.

If you start an ad campaign offering 10% off your product, you’ll want to link to a dedicated landing page with similar messaging and imagery to elaborate on the value of your product and make it easy for users to sign up. A well-designed landing page can significantly boost conversions.

Instapage is a leading landing page builder and is popular thanks to its drag-and-drop builder, intuitive interface, pre-built templates, powerful A/B testing, and plenty of customization options.

With a 14-day free trial, you can dive right in and see how easy it is to design conversion-optimized landing pages and increase leads. Start a 14-day free trial of Instapage today.

FAQs

1. What’s the difference between the product strategy, product roadmap, and product backlog?

A product strategy outlines high-level visions and goals for the product. A product roadmap breaks down a timeline for the product’s specific features. A product backlog is a list of tasks and improvements that the development team will work on.

2. How can product managers build effective product strategies?

Product managers need to invest time and research into building effective product strategies by understanding customer needs, defining clear goals that align with the company’s overall vision, conducting market research to understand the competition, building user personas, and involving cross-functional teams to ensure buy-in.

3. What should a product strategy include?

A product strategy should include the product vision, target audience, key goals and timelines, unique selling propositions, and actionable initiatives to guide the development of the product.

4. What are the different types of product strategies?

There are different business models that inform product strategies, including product-led growth (PLG), product segmentation, freemium models, bundling, and more. Teams can choose to use one business model or a combination of two or more.

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Highlights:

• The right CRO tool can help you optimize your website and increase conversions
• Find out which CRO tool is best for B2B brands, enterprises, or small businesses
• Narrow down your CRO search with our guide, where we evaluate cost, integration and support capabilities, and more

Let’s say you own an online store that sells indoor plants. Your website gets plenty of traffic, but only a small percentage of visitors actually make a purchase. You’ve invested in digital marketing and stuck to a defined marketing strategy, but your conversion rate is still too low, and not enough visitors are becoming customers.

What’s the deal?

This is actually a common challenge for many businesses, and it’s something that Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools address. CRO tools help you break down the barriers that keep visitors from converting. Using CRO tools boosts conversion rates, increases revenue, and helps you understand your website traffic.

In this post, we’ll evaluate 23 of the best CRO tools on the market, so you can decide which one will make the most sense for your business needs.

What is a CRO tool?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools are software solutions specifically designed to help businesses drive website conversions and turn visitors into customers.

CRO tools help optimize user experience (UX), analyze user behavior, test whether changes to your website affect conversions, and gather feedback to help you make data-driven decisions that influence your conversion rate.

Let’s take a look at the top CRO tools and how they can help your business.

Best CRO tools

For the purpose of this post, we’ll be evaluating each CRO tool based on the following criteria:

• CRO functionalities: What are the features that each CRO tool offers for optimizing conversion rates?
• Cost: What pricing plans are available, and how affordable are they?
• Ease of use: What’s the UX like? Is the tool user-friendly and can you work on it easily even if you don’t have a technical background?
• Integration capabilities: Does the tool integrate well with other popular software?
• Customer support: How satisfied are users with the level of support, and what kind of support does the CRO tool offer?

1. Google Analytics

• CRO functionalities: One of the most widely used tools available, Google Analytics, provides insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and conversion paths to help you determine which channels bring the most traffic to your website and where visitors stop engaging with it.
• Cost: Free. Premium options are available.
• Ease of use: Google Analytics is generally user-friendly and relatively quick to learn. Some training may be beneficial for those needing advanced analytics.
• Integration capability: Seamless integration with all other Google products such as Google Ads, plus a wide variety of third-party apps like Salesforce, Ahrefs, Shopify, Mailchimp, and many more.
• Customer support: Free support includes online documentation and community forums—premium users have access to priority support features.

2. Hotjar

• CRO functionalities: Known for their insightful visuals, Hotjar tracks user behavior via heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, and polls, so you can get granular details into how users engage with your website.
• Cost: Free with limited features. Paid plans start at $32/month.
• Ease of use: Simple, intuitive, and quite user-friendly.
• Integration capability: Hotjar integrates with popular tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Slack.
• Customer support: All users can access an extensive knowledge base, webinars, and email support.

3. Crazy Egg

• CRO functionalities: Crazy Egg helps you analyze visitor behavior and test website variations via heatmaps, scrollmaps, A/B testing, and session recordings.
• Cost: Starting at $99/month, with a 30-day free trial available for all plans.
• Ease of use: Crazy Egg is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive for everyone, regardless of technical background.
• Integration capability: Integrates with popular third-party tools like WordPress, Optimizely, and Google Analytics.
• Customer support: Well-rated customer support through live chat, email, and documentation.

4. Optimizely

• CRO functionalities: Optimizely is a popular CRO for A/B testing and experimenting. It is often used by businesses that need to run complex multivariate testing.
• Cost: Custom plans and pricing depending on business needs.
• Ease of use: Technical expertise is beneficial when using Optimizely, as it is known to be complex and not very beginner-friendly.
• Integration capability: It integrates with many tools, such as Microsoft Office 365, Adobe Ads, and Salesforce.
• Customer support: All enterprise clients receive a dedicated customer success manager, plus all clients have access to user guides and a developer community.

5. Heap Inc

• CRO functionalities: Heap captures all user interactions on your site without needing to set up manual tracking, with deep insights that help you understand user journeys and any bottlenecks.
• Cost: Four tiers of plans, including a free version.
• Ease of use: It is easy to set up and start, and advanced features may require additional learning.
• Integration capability: Integrates with many popular platforms, like Salesforce, AWS, and Optimizely.
• Customer support: Heap offers a dedicated support team and comprehensive online resources.

6. VWO (Visual Web Optimizer)

• CRO functionalities: With VWO, users can conduct A/B, multivariate, and split URL testing; the tool also provides heatmaps, session recordings, and insights captured from forms.
• Cost: Free versions are available. Paid plans start at $81/month.
• Ease of use: Customers like the visual editor that simplifies the testing process.
• Integration capability: VWO integrates with Google Analytics, WordPress, Marketo, and many more.
• Customer support: 24/7 customer support available via email, chat, and phone.

7. HubSpot

• CRO functionalities: HubSpot is known for A/B testing, analytics, user feedback, and lead generation and nurturing.
• Cost: Free version available with a wide range of paid plans starting at $15/month.
• Ease of use: Known for being intuitive and easy to use, even for beginners.
• Integration capability: HubSpot integrates with thousands of apps, including Mailchimp, Google, Databox, and much more.
• Customer support: Email, chat, and extensive community support, with phone support available on premium plans.

8. Instapage

• CRO functionalities: Specializing in landing page creation and optimization, Instapage offers A/B testing, heatmaps, and analytics to help increase conversions.
• Cost: Free trials available, with paid plans starting at $79/month.
• Ease of use: User-friendly UX with a drag-and-drop builder and many customization options.
• Integration capability: Instapage integrates with HubSpot, MailChimp, Google Analytics, and many more major apps.
• Customer support: 24/7 chat support available, as well as extensive online resources.

9. Fullstory

• CRO functionalities: Designed to give a deep understanding of your website’s UX, Fullstory provides session recordings, heatmaps, and analytics.
• Cost: Plans are custom-built based on usage.
• Ease of use: Powerful features require minimal setup and are intuitive to use.
• Integration capability: Integrates with popular tools like Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Optimizely.
• Customer support: Responsive support is available via live chat, email, and an online knowledge base.

10. Mixpanel

• CRO functionalities: Focuses on product analytics and tracks user interactions on your site or app.
• Cost: Free plan available with paid plans starting at $25/month.
• Ease of use: Relatively user-friendly, with advanced features requiring some additional training.
• Integration capability: Integrates with many tools, including HubSpot, Google Ads, and Marketo.
• Customer support: Email support and an online library of resources.

11. SurveyMonkey

• CRO functionalities: A survey app which allows you to gather user feedback, helping you understand why visitors might not be converting.
• Cost: Free plan available, with paid plans starting at $25/month.
• Ease of use: Very user-friendly for anyone, with a simple process for creating surveys.
• Integration capability: Integrates with many tools, like Microsoft Teams, Zapier, and monday.com.
• Customer support: Support is offered via live chat, email, and a comprehensive knowledge base.

12. Unbounce

• CRO functionalities: A landing page optimization tool, Unbounce offers A/B testing, analytics, and a drag-and-drop builder for creating pages.
• Cost: Free trials available, with plans starting at $99/month.
• Ease of use: Built for non-technical users, Unbounce is very user-friendly.
• Integration capability: Integrates with popular tools like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Zapier.
• Customer support: Responsive customer support via chat and email, with an extensive online help center.

13. Hello Bar

• CRO functionalities: A lead generation tool that focuses on pop-ups, banners, and sliders to capture leads, with A/B testing and analytics for optimization.
• Cost: Paid plans start at $49.
• Ease of use: Free trials available, with plans starting at $29/month.
• Integration capability: Integrates with popular platforms like WordPress, MailChimp, and Shopify.
• Customer support: Support is available through email and an extensive online help center.

14. Adobe Experience Cloud

• CRO functionalities: Ideal for large enterprises, Adobe Experience Cloud offers a suite of tools for A/B testing, personalization, and analytics.
• Cost: Custom pricing based on a business’s needs.
• Ease of use: A complex tool with powerful features built for users with a technical background.
• Integration capability: Integrates seamlessly with Adobe products and other major enterprise platforms.
• Customer support: Enterprise clients get a dedicated customer success manager.

15. LeadPages

• CRO functionalities: Designed for creating and optimizing landing pages, LeadPages offers A/B testing, analytics, and a drag-and-drop builder.
• Cost: Free trials available, with plans starting at $37/month.
• Ease of use: Meant to be very user friendly, made for non-technical users.
• Integration capability: Integrates with many popular tools like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Shopify.
• Customer support: LeadPages offers 24/7 support via email and chat.

16. Mouseflow

• CRO functionalities: Mouseflow helps you understand user behavior and optimize conversions via heatmaps, session recordings, and funnel and form analytics.
• Cost: Free trials available, with plans starting at $31/month.
• Ease of use: Mouseflow is easy to set up, navigate, and use.
• Integration capability: Integrates with many popular tools like Shopify, HubSpot, and Optimizely.
• Customer support: Support is available via email and a comprehensive online help center.

17. Firebase

• CRO functionalities: An AI-powered solution from Google designed to help developers build and improve apps that offer a great user experience.
• Cost: Firebase offers free and paid plans.
• Ease of use: Generally intuitive for users who are already familiar with Google Analytics, though advanced experiments may require technical expertise.
• Integration capability: Meant to work seamlessly with Google products such as Google Analytics.
• Customer support: Free support includes online documentation and community forums; premium users have access to priority support features.

18. AB Tasty

• CRO functionalities: Designed to help you optimize your website via A/B and multivariate testing, personalization, and user segmentation.
• Cost: Custom pricing based on business needs.
• Ease of use: A visual editor makes testing easy and user-friendly.
• Integration capability: Integrates with popular tools such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Salesforce.
• Customer support: Provides responsive customer support via email, chat, and phone.

19. Buzzsumo

• CRO functionalities: BuzzSumo is a media coverage and content research tool that offers some features for optimizing content to increase engagement.
• Cost: Free trials available, with plans starting at $199/month.
• Ease of use: Has a simple and intuitive interface that is easy to use.
• Integration capability: Integrates with social media platforms and content management systems.
• Customer support: Support is available through email and an online help center.

20. Lucky Orange

• CRO functionalities: Lucky Orange offers heatmaps, session recordings, live chat, and conversion funnels to help users optimize their website for better conversions.
• Cost: A free plan available, with paid plans beginning at $32/month.
• Ease of use: The Lucky Orange interface is intuitive and straightforward. It is designed to be user-friendly, making it relatively easy to navigate and access various features.
• Integration capability: Integrates with Google Analytics, HubSpot, BigCommerce, and more.
• Customer support: Support is available via an online help center, with email and chat support also available.

21. OptinMonster

• CRO functionalities: A lead generation tool that allows you to create pop-ups, floating bars, and forms to capture leads and boost conversions.
• Cost: Plans start at $59/month.
• Ease of use: Known to be user-friendly, with a drag-and-drop builder and customization options.
• Integration capability: Integrates with popular email marketing and website platforms like WordPress, MailChimp, and HubSpot.
• Customer support: Support is available via email, chat, and online knowledge base.

22. BDOW! (formerly Sumo)

• CRO functionalities: Best suited for e-commerce sites, BDOW! (formerly Sumo) offers tools for email capture, social sharing, and conversion optimization.
• Cost: Free plan available with paid plans starting at $12/month.
• Ease of use: Easy to install and intuitive to use.
• Integration capability: Integrates with Shopify, Google Analytics, MailChimp, and more.
• Customer support: Support is available via email and an online help center.

23. Typeform

• CRO functionalities: Typeform is a lead-capture platform that allows users to create engaging forms, quizzes, and surveys.
• Cost: Free plan available with paid plans starting at $25/month.
• Ease of use: Typeform is known for being user-friendly, with a drag-and-drop builder and customization options.
• Integration capability: Typeform integrates with many apps, including HubSpot, Slack, and Intercom.
• Customer support: Support is available via email and a comprehensive help center.

Pick the right CRO and start increasing conversions

There are many factors to consider when choosing the right CRO tool, including your budget, the level of technical expertise required, and your specific business needs.

Whichever you choose, a CRO tool is designed to help you optimize your app or website and boost your conversion rate.

With a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder, customization options, powerful A/B testing, and extensive integrations, Instapage is a leading landing page creator that delivers higher conversions. See if Instapage is right for your business with a risk-free 14-day trial. Start now.

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Global Blocks, heatmaps & more.

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Highlights:

• Have your user personas evolved in the right direction?
• Learn the value effective user personas bring to your marketing strategies
• Find out how to craft an effective user persona profile, plus access a complimentary user persona template
• See why user personas + personalized landing pages are a perfect match

Remember when user persona profiles like Outdoor Owen, Busy Betsy, and Techie Tina were all the rage? These buyer persona archetypes once served as a strategy for bridging the gap between businesses and their customers.

They aren’t serving the same purpose anymore.

As marketing has evolved, professionals are finally realizing that user personas like these are too oversimplified and just aren’t effective anymore. To map out user personas that are actually helpful, you need to dig deeper for real customer insights.

It’s less about categorizing potential customers into boxes and more about deciphering the habits, triggers, and values that drive someone’s decision-making. Today’s user personas look more like a Venn diagram, representing the overlap of various customer traits and motivations, rather than a flat, defined character.

Ahead, we’ll discuss the importance of user personas in your marketing strategy and creating user personas that make sense.

What is a user persona?

A user persona is a representation of your ideal customer based on real data and market research, sometimes using fictional personal details. Sometimes known as Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), a user persona encapsulates the behaviors, goals, motivations, and pain points of your target audience, providing marketers with a framework that helps tailor strategies to resonate with your target more precisely.

Unlike buyer personas of the past, today’s user personas don’t simply summarize demographic data – they dive into the “why” and the psychographic details that are behind a user’s behavior.

User personas are often crafted based on the following data:

• Demographic data: While this should not fully inform a user persona, basic demographic segmentation information like age, gender, location, income level, and education are still essential.
• Psychographic data: Information like lifestyle, marital status, values, interests, attitudes, and behaviors provide insight into the emotional and psychological factors that influence purchasing decisions.
• Behavioral data: How do customers interact with your product or service? What do their buying habits, usage patterns, decision-making processes, and social media interactions look like? Knowing this information can offer invaluable insights into how to position your marketing efforts.
• Goals and challenges: What are your customer’s pain points? What are they trying to achieve? How can your product or service make their daily lives better? This is key in creating user personas that are effective.

Some marketers may wonder if user personas are truly needed in a successful marketing strategy. The truth is that user personas may serve several key functions and are worth investing time and effort into. By using personas to drive your marketing strategy, you’ll benefit from:

• Personalization: It helps you understand your customers on a deeper level, so you can tailor your marketing messages to speak directly to their needs.
• Product development: User personas can help improve products because they give insight into features and benefits that are most valuable to your target audience.
• Targeted marketing: One of the biggest benefits of using personas is that you can focus your marketing efforts on audience segments that have the highest chances of converting, which will maximize your ROAS.
• Consistency: It’s always a good idea to deliver a seamless brand experience, and having clear user personas in place ensures that your messaging resonates with them regardless of the platform they encounter your brand on.

How do you create a user persona?

Techie Tina may have been defined by her job title, education level, and years of experience. Today’s user persona needs to be much more detailed and creating it requires research, analysis, and thought.

Follow these steps when creating user personas:

• Gather data: You’ll begin your user persona work by collecting both qualitative and quantitative data about your existing customers. Starting with actual data from real users who are already paying for your product or service will give you a wealth of information about their decision making process, their use cases, their budget, how they first heard of you, and more. Use surveys, interviews, and analytics to gather demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data.
• Identify patterns: What do your customers have in common? Perhaps the majority of your customers work in the Finance or Sales departments. Maybe your product has helped your customers expedite their processes significantly. Group your customers based on similar characteristics, user needs, behavior patterns, and pain points.
• Develop ideal customer profiles (ICPs): Here is where your user personas come together. Based on the data and patterns you’ve identified, start putting together detailed user persona profiles that include demographics, goals, motivations, pain points, buying behaviors, and use cases.
• Validate your personas: Now that you’ve crafted your personas, test them out by comparing them against actual customer data and feedback. Make adjustments and iterations as needed to accurately reflect your target audience and their evolving needs.

Here’s a good user persona example:

Here’s a bad user persona example:

While catchy names and fictional characters are cute, they aren’t really useful.You’re trying to create effective user personas, not video game characters. In the example above, we have some helpful information about this ideal coffee drinker, but it’s limited to superficial information.

It would be helpful to know what this user persona’s ultimate pain point is, what they are trying to accomplish each day, what their buying habits look like, who or what influences their purchasing decisions, when or where they make purchasing decisions, and so on.

This is a good place to start, but to create accurate user personas, it would be quite beneficial to dig deeper.

User persona template

Creating user personas from scratch may feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Below is a user persona template that can help you get started. Feel free to add or remove sections based on your business needs, your marketing approach, and the depth of insight you have access to.

Gathering data to create user personas

Quantitative data gives you hard facts and numbers that are tied to your user persona. Here are some ways to gather it:

1. Surveys: Distribute surveys to your customers to collect essential information like demographics, buying habits, and product preferences. If needed, give incentives to encourage survey participation, and use tools like SurveyMonkey or Google forms.
2. Analytics: Take a look at the analytics you already have access to, as this can inform user behavior. Track website and social media analytics like page views, time spent on site, click-through rates, conversion rates, engagement rates, and more.
3. Existing customer information: Are you using a CRM system like Salesforce? Pull valuable insights from your customer profiles, such as purchase histories, interaction records, and more.

Equally important, qualitative data gives context to the hard numbers and facts and helps you gain a deeper understanding of your customers’ motivations, perceptions, and values.

Qualitative data is crucial for a user persona and can help you connect to your audience on an emotional level. Here are some ways to gather it:

1. Interviews: The best way to gain insights is to spend some time talking to your actual customers. Conduct one-one-one user interviews, ask open-ended questions that uncover goals, challenges, and experiences with your brand, and be open to feedback. Bonus – you can use these interviews to create case studies if your customers are open to it.
2. Focus groups: When you bring together a group of customers to discuss their experiences and opinions, you’ll be surprised at how much insight you’re able to gather. Doing this can also help you identify common themes.
3. Usability testing: Observe how customers interact with your product or website in real-time, which can reveal pain points and areas for improvement that you otherwise would not have considered.

If you’re a new brand and are just getting started, you may not have access to a customer base from which to gather data. Turning to Techie Tina might seem really tempting, but you shouldn’t do that. Instead, consider these ways to gather information for your user persona:

1. Mine reviews: Review sites and social media platforms like G2, Capterra, Reddit, Quora, and even Amazon can provide lots of insight. See what potential customers are saying about your industry or competitors. Frequently asked questions can be eye-opening in terms of what your customer base is looking for.
2. Analyze competitors: Who are your competitors or other brands in your industry? Take a look at their case studies and social media channels and see if you can use those insights to craft your own user personas.
3. Listen on social media: Tools like Hootsuite can help you monitor conversations about your industry or related topics on social media. This can give you insights into sentiments, psychographics, feedback, and general topics your target audience might care about.

Using personas to create tailored landing pages

Any brand who is looking to connect with its audience on a deeper level should be investing time into creating effective user personas. With data-driven personas that are consistently refined, you can execute marketing strategies that resonate, develop stronger products that meet your customer’s needs, and ultimately improve your conversion rates.

One practical application of a user persona is in the creation of landing pages that are tailored to your ad campaigns. By message-matching your landing pages to your ad campaigns and creating personalized experiences, you can speak to the specific needs and desires of each user persona and significantly increase your conversion rates.

Instapage is a leading landing page builder that makes it easy to build optimized landing pages that are tailored to the ad campaigns they came from. Customers love using Instapage because of its:

• Intuitive drag-and-drop builder making it easy to create appealing layouts
• Library of 500+ customizable templates
• AI-assistance for generating headlines, CTAs, and other content ideas
• A/B testing, with insights on variations that work best and automatic routing to the best-performing pages
• Personalizations that dynamically pair visitor intent to a relevant landing page experience for each ad
• Copy-matching based on visitor level data like keywords, firmographics, and demographics

Ready to put your user personas to work with landing pages that drive real results? Start a free 14-day trial of Instapage now.

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Highlights:

• Optimize your homepage for more traffic, visibility, and conversions
• Target keywords that match user intent to attract the right audience
• Сraft keyword-rich, click-worthy titles and descriptions to set clear expectations
• Deliver clear, valuable content that meets user needs and highlights your brand’s unique value
• Ensure fast load times, easy navigation, and mobile-friendliness to engage visitors and signal site value to search engines

When optimizing your homepage, the common advice is to load it up with product features and benefits to attract and convert as many visitors as possible.

But with this approach, you’re setting yourself up for failure—because prospects will only find your website and fall in love with your features if you show up in SERPs.

To do this, you should focus on following SEO best practices.

When you implement homepage SEO best practices it helps you enhance your website’s authority, improve navigation to high-value pages, and help you rank for both target and branded keywords associated with your brand.

Keep reading for more homepage optimization tips.

Homepage SEO best practices

Do keyword research to find your target keyword

Keyword research is the backbone of a successful SEO strategy. It helps you understand what exactly your audience is looking for, so you can create content that truly resonates with their needs. By identifying the right keywords, you can boost your website’s visibility, drive the right kind of traffic, and stay competitive in your niche. Plus, it gives you valuable insights into search trends and your competition, allowing you to tweak your strategy and stay one step ahead.

Here’s how to do keyword research effectively:

• Use keyword research tools: Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and other keyword research tools can help you expand on your initial ideas, find related keywords, and, what’s most important, to assess your competition. When doing your keyword research, look for keywords with high search volume and low keyword difficulty that are relevant to your homepage.
• Focus on a target keyword: Identify your primary keyword that clearly defines your product/service and reflects what your website is about overall. This keyword should be relevant to your overall business goals and clearly communicate what visitors can expect from your homepage.
• Evaluate search intent: Ensure that the content of your homepage matches the search intent for your target keyword. This means understanding what users are looking for when they search for that keyword. If your homepage content doesn’t match their intent, consider targeting that keyword on a different, more relevant page.
• Analyze competitors: Look at what keywords your competitors’ homepages are ranking for. This analysis can offer valuable insights and ideas for keywords you might have overlooked, as well as give you a competitive edge in your SEO strategy.

For example, if you run an e-commerce site selling organic pet food, choosing “organic pet food” as your primary keyword would be a smart choice. While it may not have a high search volume, its low keyword difficulty means there’s less competition. This gives you a better chance of ranking higher than your competitors in Google’s top 10 results.

Keyword research tools like Ahrefs can help you discover related keywords such as “fresh dog food” or “natural dog food.” You can then use these keywords strategically on other pages of your site to enhance your overall SEO.

Craft an engaging title tag

A title tag, also called a “meta title” or simply “title,” is one of the first things people see in search results.

Ensure that your title tag is as compelling as possible to catch the attention of your potential customers.

• Write a title tag that grabs attention and clearly highlights what makes your business special
• Include your primary keyword to help people find you more easily through search engines
• Put your brand name in the title to increase brand recognition
• Aim for a title tag under 60 characters to make sure it doesn’t get cut off in search results and is easy to read

Here are some great title tag examples for a website selling organic dog food:

• Organic Dog Food: Healthy & Natural
• Best Organic Dog Foods 2024
• Best Organic Dog Food

Create your main page copy and design elements

To keep potential customers engaged on your homepage, make sure its content is both informative and compelling. Here’s how to achieve this:

• Clearly explain what your business does and highlight what sets you apart from competitors
• Analyze top-ranking search results to understand what content Google favors for your target keyword. Include similar points to meet user expectations
• Naturally insert your primary keyword into the H1 tag and throughout your content
• Share useful information about your products and services, such as their benefits, features, and helpful how-to guides

Canva is a popular online-based graphic design tool used to create different kinds of design assets by both professionals and rookies. Canva homepage has a clean layout with a headline and sub-headline clearly explaining what the service offers. The top menu sections share useful information about brand’s offers targeted at specific audience groups, plans and pricing, learning resources, and more. The keywords targeted by Canva, such as graphic design software, online design website are inserted throughout the homepage content.

Add intuitive navigation

Intuitive navigation helps visitors quickly find what they need, minimizing frustration and keeping them engaged. This improves the user experience, boosts conversion potential, and signals to search engines that your site is well-organized, which can positively influence search rankings.

Here’s how to make your website’s navigation intuitive:

• Include major sections in the navigation menu: Ensure that key areas of your site, such as “Shop,” “About Us,” “Blog,” and “Contact Us,” are easily accessible from the main navigation menu. This helps users quickly find what they need and improves overall site usability.
• Link to key pages within your site: Create clear pathways by linking to essential pages throughout your site. This not only aids in navigation but also establishes a well-organized website hierarchy, which can boost SEO by helping search engines understand the structure of your content.
• Implement a search function: Add a search bar to enhance user experience by allowing visitors to quickly locate specific information or products.
• Make your navigation mobile-friendly: Ensure that navigation is easy to use on desktop and mobile to accommodate users on the go.

The navigation menu on the Sephora website presents different categories of goods with a dropdown showing under each category and expanding with more subcategories of goods. The navigation section is mobile friendly, and is easy to use on a smaller screen.

Examples of SEO-optimized homepages

Ever wondered why some brands do better than their competition on search engines? A big part of their success is the effort they put into optimizing their homepages for SEO. Tools like the Chrome Detailed SEO Extension are great for this—they quickly show you essential SEO metrics like title tags, meta descriptions, and headings. With these insights, you can see what’s working, what needs tweaking, and stay ahead in search rankings.

AirBnb

Airbnb’s homepage has a clean layout that is easy to navigate. The homepage clearly explains what the service offers—stays and experiences.

The title tag Airbnb | Vacation rentals, cabins, beach houses, & more fits the limit of up to 60 characters and includes the brand keyword “Airbnb” and a brief description of services presented on the homepage. The navigation is intuitive, and the content is well-organized with categories, experiences, and more.

Etsy

Etsy’s homepage has a clear site hierarchy, optimized meta tags, and targeted keyword usage. It features engaging content, intuitive navigation, and internal linking, all of which enhance SEO.

The site is mobile-friendly, has fast load times, and regularly updates with dynamic, user-generated content. These factors together improve search visibility and attract relevant traffic effectively.

Gymshark

Gymshark’s homepage is well optimized for search engines with targeted keywords related to fitness apparel and workout gear. It features a clear site structure with easy navigation to categories like “Men’s” and “Women’s” clothing.

The meta tags are optimized for search, and the content highlights promotions, new releases, and popular items. The site is mobile-responsive, loads quickly, and regularly updates with fresh content and user-generated reviews, boosting its SEO and attracting fitness enthusiasts.

Learning from the world’s most well-known brands and analyzing SEO best practices they use, can help you optimize your homepage to not only attract and convert visitors but also improve your search engine rankings.

Build SEO-optimized landing pages with Instapage

Instapage is a top-tier landing page builder that makes it easy to create SEO-optimized landing pages that perfectly align with your ad campaigns.

Customers love using Instapage because of:

• Intuitive drag-and-drop builder that allows for designing visually appealing layouts without any hassle
• Library of 500+ customizable landing page templates
• AI assistance to generate headlines, CTAs, and more
• A/B testing tool to identify the most effective variations and automatically direct traffic to the best-performing pages
• Advanced personalization features that match visitor intent with relevant landing page experiences, ensuring each ad leads to a customized page
• Copy-matching capabilities that adjust content based on visitor data, such as keywords, firmographics, and demographics

Ready to create your optimized landing page? Start a free 14-day trial of Instapage now.

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Every sales and marketing team focuses on lead generation and ways to bring highly qualified leads into their funnel.

Whether lead generation comes from inbound or outbound marketing, ad campaigns, landing pages, or social media, it’s important to have a unified marketing strategy and understand the differences between MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads).

What is an MQL?

An MQL, or Marketing Qualified Lead, is a potential customer who has interacted with your marketing content (i.e., visited your website, downloaded product information, etc.) and is likely to become a paying customer.

Different marketing teams may have different ways of identifying an MQL, but commonly a marketing qualified lead is qualified as such based on the following factors:

• Web pages visited or the number of times a web page was visited
• Content offers downloaded
• CTAs clicked
• Social media interactions
• Demographic information
• Whether or not they match a buyer persona
• Fit the right profile, but are not quite ready to buy

Once a lead is determined to be an MQL, their information is then passed on to the sales team to further engage that lead and (hopefully) convert them to a customer.

A mattress company probably wouldn’t classify a lead as an MQL if they were a first-time visitor to the company’s website and read a blog called “Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers”. However, someone who is a repeat visitor to the website follows the company on social media, and has downloaded an eBook titled “How to Know When It’s Time to Purchase a New Mattress” can be deemed an MQL.

What is an SQL?

An SQL, or Sales Qualified Lead, is a lead who is highly likely to convert into a customer and is qualified by the sales team versus the marketing team.

Again, what qualifies an an SQL differs from sales team to sales team, but generally SQLs meet the following criteria:

• Having a need for the product or service
• Expressing interest in the company or its offerings
• Repeatedly visiting the website, downloading content, and engaging on social media
• Possessing the budget to make a purchase
• Having the authority to make buying decisions
• Operating on a timeline that aligns with the company’s sales cycle

SQLs are typically vetted and ready to talk to somebody in sales. An MQL will not become classified as an SQL if they are not showing interest in speaking to the sales department.

The MQL for the mattress company in our example above may be classified as an SQL once they download even more content, likely bottom-of-the-funnel content that shows they are serious about making a purchase. This could be content like “5 Mattresses That Fit Your Budget” or “Your Mattress-Purchasing Checklist: Everything to Know Before You Buy”.

When visitors have already made a decision to purchase a product or service like yours, they are likely to download bottom-of-funnel content or click on CTAs that will help them engage with a sales department.

SQL vs. MQL

So, is it actually important to know the difference between an MQL and SQL? Yes, it is, because it all comes down to buyer intent and if you can distinguish between a lead’s intention, then you can nurture them properly and increase your chances of closing a sale. Classifying a lead correctly can have a significant impact on your sales funnel.

The lead nurturing process will vary for an MQL versus an SQL. You will serve up different content at different times, depending on where the lead is in the marketing funnel.

Serving the right content can increase your chance of converting the lead into a customer faster. Not only will correct lead categorization help your pipeline, but it also makes marketing and sales teams more efficient because they won’t be wasting resources on creating nurturing campaigns that are irrelevant.

The chart below explains how you can go about categorizing your leads.

Use it to tighten up your sales and marketing processes and increase your ROAS.

When to transition a lead from MQL to SQL?

The marketing to sales handoff is a critical part of the process. Transitioning a lead from MQL to SQL correctly ensures that the most qualified leads are handed off to the sales team, increasing the likelihood of a conversion.

Marketing and sales teams should be aligned on what they define as an MQL and an SQL to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.
The following set of criteria should be evaluated when transitioning a lead from MQL to SQL:

Engagement level

Engagement level refers to how actively a lead interacts with your content and marketing efforts. High engagement levels typically indicate a strong interest in your product or service. Metrics to consider include:

• Email open and click-through rates
• Downloads of gated content like whitepapers and eBooks
• Participation in webinars and events
• Social media engagement

Monitoring these interactions and aligning on their importance helps identify leads who are more likely to move further down the sales funnel.

Firmographics

Firmographics are the attributes that define the characteristics of a company or organization. These include:

• Industry
• Company size
• Revenue
• Location

Understanding these attributes helps ensure the lead aligns with your ideal customer profile and helps keep your focus away from profiles that would not be worth your time. If your target audience is a mid-size tech firm, then an SMB or enterprise business should not be prioritized as a qualified lead.

Behavioral indicators

How can a sales or marketing team be sure that a lead has intent to buy? Paying close attention to behavioral indicators will help as they can suggest whether or not a lead is ready to make a purchase. These can include:

• Visiting pricing pages
• Requesting product demos
• Viewing case studies
• Repeated visits to the website
• Clicking a “Chat with sales” CTA

These behaviors indicate a higher level of interest and intent, suggesting that the lead is ready for a more in-depth conversation with the sales team.

Lead score threshold

Lead scoring assigns numerical values to various actions and characteristics of a lead. When a lead’s score reaches a certain threshold, they can be considered ready to transition to an SQL. Factors contributing to lead scores include:

• Demographic information
• Engagement level
• Behavioral indicators
• Past interactions with the company

Establishing a clear lead score threshold helps automate the transition process, ensuring no promising lead is overlooked and no under-qualified lead is handed off.

Steps to transition a lead from MQL to SQL?

To make a smooth transition from MQL to SQL, follow strategic steps to refine the lead nurturing process and ensure that the only leads that are passed off to the sales team are those that are most likely to convert.

Lead scoring

Lead scoring is a systematic approach to evaluating leads based on their behavior and characteristics. With lead scoring, a marketing and sales team would need to align on specific actions that indicate intent to buy and how much weight to assign to each of those actions.
For instance, points would be assigned for:

• Website visits
• Content downloads
• Event participation

By accumulating points, leads are ranked based on their likelihood to convert. Leads that fall within a predetermined scoring range will then be prioritized and handed off to sales for further engagement.

Define clear criteria

This can’t be overstated: it is incredibly important to establish clear criteria for what constitutes an MQL and an SQL. Doing so ensures that marketing and sales teams are working optimally and efficiently as one. The criteria includes:

• Engagement metrics
• Firmographic data
• Behavioral indicators
• Lead score thresholds

Having clear criteria ensures consistency and objectivity in the lead qualification process.

Align sales and marketing teams

As we have stated, sales and marketing alignment is crucial for a seamless transition. Without regular communication and collaboration, there will be inevitable bottlenecks and lower conversion rates. Teams must continually work together to:

• Define and refine qualification criteria
• Share insights, feedback, and metrics
• Ensure both teams are working towards common goals

Alignment helps in understanding the quality and readiness of leads, reducing friction, and enhancing efficiency.

Monitor lead behavior

Continuous monitoring of lead behavior is necessary to identify when a lead is ready to be transitioned. CRM tools, marketing automation platforms, and data analytics tools can help track:

• Website interactions
• Form fills
• CTA buttons clicked
• Downloaded content
• Email engagement
• Social media activity

Monitoring helps you identify signs of increased interest and intent and makes it more likely for sales teams to go after leads who are ready to take action.

Nurture leads

Especially after a lead is qualified as an MQL, nurturing remains critical to ensure the lead not only stays in the funnel but continues to move through it in an effective way. This involves:

• Sending targeted content
• Engaging through personalized emails
• Providing valuable information
• Demonstrating the product at the right time
• Providing the right support for leads who have questions

Nurturing helps in maintaining engagement and moving leads closer to a purchasing decision.

Feedback loop

A feedback loop between sales and marketing teams makes the lead generation and nurturing process stronger, more effective, and more precise. A consistent feedback loop involves:

• Sales providing feedback on lead quality
• Marketing adjusting strategies based on feedback
• Regular meetings to discuss outcomes and insights

Feedback helps in refining the qualification process and improving lead quality over time.

Example: transitioning a lead in a B2B SaaS company

Consider a B2B SaaS company offering project management software. Here’s how they might transition a lead from MQL to SQL:

1. Lead scoring: A lead signs up for a free eBook on project management best practices, earning them 10 points based on a predetermined scoring system. They then sign up for and attend a webinar, adding another 20 points.
2. Criteria definition: The marketing and sales teams have defined that a lead with over 50 points, who has also visited the pricing page, qualifies as an SQL.
3. Monitoring behavior: The lead visits the pricing page twice and requests a demo, signaling high interest.
4. Nurturing: While the lead is engaging, they receive personalized emails with case studies and user testimonials.
5. Transition: The lead’s score reaches 60, and they are handed off to the sales team with detailed notes on their interactions and interests.
6. Feedback loop: Sales provides feedback that the lead was highly engaged and prepared for a purchasing discussion, helping marketing refine their future lead nurturing strategies.

By following these steps, companies can ensure a smooth and effective transition from MQL to SQL, maximizing the potential for successful sales conversions.

Strengthen your lead generation process with personalized landing pages

The first step in getting the right leads into your funnel is creating the right marketing content. Personalized landing pages are a powerful way to speak to your target audience in a way that is relevant, convincing, and conversion-focused.

Instapage is a leading landing page builder that makes it easy to build optimized landing pages that are tailored to the ad campaigns they came from. Customers love using Instapage because of its:

• Intuitive drag-and-drop builder making it easy to create appealing layouts
• Library of 500+ customizable templates
• AI-assistance for generating headlines, CTAs, and other content ideas
• A/B testing, with insights on variations that work best and automatic routing to the best-performing pages
• Personalizations that dynamically pair visitor intent to a relevant landing page experience for each ad
• Copy-matching based on visitor level data like keywords, firmographics, and demographics

Using Instapage has helped some customers achieve 90% better engagement, resulting in higher-quality leads and improved conversion rates.

Ready to see how Instapage can boost your marketing and sales strategy? Try a 14 day free trial today and let the results speak for themselves.

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CRO audit checklist

• Identify the conversion actions that matter to your business
• Focus on the touchpoints that matter
• Understand user behavior with heat maps and A/B tests
• Gather voice of customer (VoC) data
• Put your data into action

As marketers, we often find ourselves scratching our heads over insufficient conversions.

Imagine an e-commerce website with 20,000 monthly visitors but only a 1% conversion rate. It means only 200 of its visitors become paying customers each month. A CRO audit can help reveal hidden issues with the website, such as unclear call-to-action buttons, non-intuitive navigation, distracting elements, and more.

Did you know that the average conversion rate for a website is 2.3%? If you’re below that benchmark, it’s probably time for a CRO audit.

What is a CRO audit?

A conversion rate optimization audit is an in-depth examination of your website, landing page, or app that aims to uncover any barriers in the way of conversions.

Are you getting adequate traffic, but the conversion numbers are down? Are visitors abandoning their carts? Is your bounce rate high?

These questions can keep marketing teams wide awake at night.

In fact, according to research, only 22% of companies are actually satisfied with their conversions. The rest of us mortals are on a perpetual optimization quest for conversions.

By systematically analyzing user behavior, website performance, and conversion paths for page visitors, a CRO audit provides a roadmap to improving your website’s effectiveness and ultimately boosts your bottom line.

Why your business needs a CRO audit

Having a website or landing page that looks good is no longer enough. To thrive, your business needs to ensure that visitors are converting into paying customers. This is where a CRO audit comes into play. It helps you:

Maximize your ROAS

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is a crucial metric for any marketing campaign. A CRO audit helps you maximize your ROAS by pinpointing areas within your website or marketing funnel that need improvement, such as a broken thank you page link. When you optimize these areas, you get more value from every marketing dollar spent, driving higher revenue and making more efficient use of your budget.

Improve user experience

A thorough CRO audit evaluates the user experience at every funnel touchpoint, from landing pages to checkout processes. By identifying and rectifying issues that come in the way of a seamless user journey, you can significantly enhance the overall user experience.

Smoother navigation, faster load times, and intuitive design all contribute to keeping visitors engaged and moving them toward conversion. Here you can read more about conversion rate optimization.

Clean up your marketing pixels. Ensure you are using the latest versions of tracking scripts and remove those you don’t need anymore. Keeping outdated pixels can not only cause page-loading delays but also create vulnerabilities and security risks.

Uncover conversion barriers

One of the primary goals of a CRO audit is to uncover factors that prevent users from converting, such as:

• Non-responsive page design leading to poor user experience on mobile devices
• Underwhelming product images or descriptions
• Lack of clear and compelling calls to action
• Hidden or complex checkout processes
• Limited payment options
• Lack of trust signals, such as customer reviews or security badges
• High shipping costs or long delivery times
• Mandatory account registration for checkout
• Overwhelming amount of choices which can cause decision paralysis
• Intrusive pop-ups or advertisements that disrupt the user experience
• Poorly designed forms

By identifying and addressing these issues, you remove friction points that could cause potential customers to abandon their journey, thus increasing your conversion rates.

Evaluate your landing page value proposition to make sure it is not only in alignment with the ad but also with your target audience. When crafting a value proposition, try answering these three questions for your target audience:

- Relevance: What is the customers’ problem?
- Define Value: How do we solve that problem? What are the benefits of our service?
- Differentiator: Why do they want to choose us over our competitors?

Gain insights into marketing campaign effectiveness

Analyzing conversion rates at different stages of the customer journey can provide answers to numerous questions.

Are your ads bringing in traffic but failing to convert? Is there a particular stage in the conversion process where users drop off? A CRO audit provides the data needed to understand these patterns, allowing you to fine-tune your strategies for better results.

For example:

• A clothing brand runs multiple marketing campaigns across different channels. A CRO audit reveals that while social media ads drive significant traffic, email marketing campaigns have higher conversion rates.
• By reallocating more budget towards effective email campaigns and refining social media strategies, the company improves overall campaign performance and ROI.

Identify industry best practices and competitive benchmarks

By understanding where you stand and what top-performing companies are doing right, you can implement strategies that differentiate your brand. This drives greater conversion success and positions your business as a leader in your field.

Example:

• A travel platform wants to improve its booking conversion rate.
• A CRO audit reveals that the platform lacks personalized recommendations compared to its competitors. Implementing this feature and adding dynamic pricing on top allows the travel platform to boost bookings and gain a competitive edge.

Stay agile and responsive to trends

By continuously assessing and adjusting your website and digital marketing efforts, you ensure that they remain aligned with the needs and expectations of your target audience, stay on top of trends, and maintain relevance and effectiveness over time.

Consider the following CRO audit scenario:

Prioritize your optimization efforts

Finally, a CRO audit provides actionable insights and measurable results, allowing you to focus on areas with the most significant impact and leading to more efficient use of resources. This targeted approach ensures that your optimization initiatives yield tangible outcomes and sustainable growth.

5 steps to performing a conversion rate optimization audit

Step 1: Identify the conversion actions that matter to your business

Setting clear conversion goals and defining your micro and macro conversions provides a solid foundation for a proper conversion audit.

Understand which conversions to track and set clear goals

Pinpoint which conversions are the most valuable for your business. This step involves analyzing your business model and customer journey to determine the actions that lead to meaningful outcomes.

Clear conversion goals help measure success and guide your optimization efforts. Imagine you run an online bookstore. Before starting a CRO audit, you need to decide which conversions to track. For instance:

• Primary conversion goal: Completing a purchase
• Secondary conversion goals: Adding a book to the cart, signing up for a newsletter, or creating a user account

Setting these goals allows you to focus on optimizing actions that directly influence revenue while also nurturing potential customers through secondary conversions.

Define micro and macro conversions

Micro conversions are smaller, preliminary actions that indicate a user’s interest and engagement but do not immediately result in revenue. When optimized effectively, micro conversions often lead to macro conversions.

Macro conversions are the primary, high-value actions that directly contribute to your business’s objectives, such as sales or lead submissions.

Continuing with the online bookstore example:

Micro conversions:

• Clicking on a book’s detailed description
• Adding a book to the wishlist
• Downloading a sample chapter
• Signing up for a newsletter

Macro conversions:

• Completing a purchase
• Subscribing to a monthly book club membership
• Referring a friend via a referral program

You can better understand user behavior and optimize the entire conversion funnel by prioritizing and tracking micro and macro conversions.

Step 2: Focus on the touchpoints that matter

With clear goals in mind, it’s time to evaluate the touchpoints where users interact with your brand. These include your website, landing pages, social media channels, email campaigns, or any other touchpoint relevant to your customer journey.

Audit the pages with the most potential to impact your conversions

Not all pages on your website are equally important when it comes to driving conversions.

To make the best use of your resources, concentrate on auditing the pages that have the most significant impact on your conversion goals. These typically include landing pages, product pages, checkout pages, and other high-traffic areas of your website.

Let’s go back to the travel booking platform from our previous example. The key pages they’d want to audit are:

Ensure that the landing page clearly articulates and focuses the visitor on the value proposition and call-to-action. Does your call to action clearly convey the next step a visitor is taking when they click? Avoid generic CTAs such as “Learn More”. Use the blur test to determine which areas on your landing page are highest in the visual hierarchy. Are there items pulling attention away from your primary CTAs?

• SEO pages: Users often decide to book based on search results—improving the usability and relevance of your top-ranking pages can go a long way.
• Booking pages: This is where the final decision is made. Ensuring a seamless experience here can significantly boost conversion rates.

Narrow down the list of pages you need to audit

To efficiently allocate your optimization efforts, consider two main factors: the amount of traffic a page gets and its role in the user journey.

• Traffic volume: Pages that receive a significant amount of traffic present more opportunities for optimization. High-traffic pages have more data for analysis, providing clearer insights into user behavior and potential issues.
• Role in the user journey: Always prioritize pages that lead directly to conversions. Understanding the user’s path to conversion helps you identify which critical touchpoints.

Returning to the online bookstore example:

• High-traffic pages: The homepage, popular book categories, and bestsellers pages.
• Critical pages in the user journey: Product detail pages and checkout pages.

By focusing on these pages, the online bookstore can work on optimizing areas where users spend the most time and are most likely to convert.

Step 3: Understand user behavior with heat maps and A/B tests

To make informed decisions during a CRO audit, it’s vital to gain deep insights into how users interact with your website. Tools like heat maps and A/B tests provide invaluable data on user behavior, helping you identify what works on your landing pages and what doesn’t.

Heat maps

Heat maps (or heatmaps) visually represent how users interact with your web pages by tracking where they click, how they move the pointer, and how far they scroll. This data helps you understand which elements attract the most attention and which areas are ignored, allowing you to identify potential issues and opportunities for improvement.

Instapage provides built-in heat map tools to help marketers measure visitor interactions with landing pages and optimize user engagement by tracking:

• Mouse movements: To identify the elements that captivate visitors the most.
• Clicks: To discover the key elements that inspire action on a page.
• Scroll depth: To help you understand when visitors leave and how to keep them engaged longer.

Use your heat maps to answer the following questions. Are visitors clicking on elements with no action? This can cause frustration. Either add an action or provide clarity on the page to direct the visitor’s attention to the priority elements. Are the majority of visitors scrolling to the bottom of your landing page without taking action? This could indicate that they are not being provided with enough information to help them make a decision or the right information to motivate them.

A/B tests

A/B testing involves comparing two versions of a landing page or its specific element to see which one performs better. By systematically testing variations (e.g., different headlines, images, or CTAs), you can determine which changes lead to higher conversion rates.

When commencing an A/B test, keep the following in mind:

• Before starting, ensure you have a clear hypothesis on what change you expect and why
• Test one change at a time to accurately determine its impact
• Make sure your test runs long enough and reaches enough users to collect statistically significant data
• Segment your audience when possible
• Look beyond the surface-level metrics and understand the deeper implications of your test results
• Learn from every test: regardless of the outcome, every test provides valuable insights

Instapage’s A/B testing tool allows you to compare landing page variations with alternative page elements, layouts, or designs. In addition, you can leverage
AI and machine learning to run A/B tests and dynamically route ad traffic to top-performing versions.

Step 4: Gather voice of customer (VoC) data

This step involves collecting feedback directly from your customers to gain insights into their needs, preferences, and pain points. By understanding the customer’s perspective, you can make informed decisions that align with their expectations and improve your website’s conversions.

Why gather VoC data?

VoC data provides a qualitative view of the user experience, complementing quantitative data from analytics tools. It helps you understand why users behave the way they do and uncover issues that may not be apparent through data alone.

Let’s imagine your online furniture store struggles with high cart abandonment rates. While analytical data highlights the issue, it doesn’t explain why customers abandon their carts. By gathering VoC data through surveys and feedback forms, you discover that customers find the shipping costs unexpectedly high at checkout.

Armed with this insight, you can address the issue by clearly displaying shipping costs earlier in the process or offering free shipping for orders over a certain amount.

Methods to gather VoC data

• Surveys and questionnaires: Ask customers about their experience on your site. Questions can range from overall customer satisfaction to specific elements such as ease of navigation, page load times, and checkout processes.

• Feedback forms: Implement feedback forms on key pages, such as product and checkout pages, to capture real-time user insights. Simple prompts like “How can we improve this page?” can provide valuable feedback.

• Customer interviews: Conduct one-on-one interviews with a selection of customers to learn more about their experiences and gather detailed insights that surveys alone may not capture.

• Exit intent pop-ups: Exit intent pop-ups are targeted messages that appear when a user shows signs of leaving your website, such as moving their cursor toward the browser’s tab panel. Use these pop-ups to ask website visitors what frustrates them.

• Social media and review analysis: Monitor social media channels and review sites to gather spontaneous feedback from customers. This can reveal common concerns and areas for improvement.

Step 5: Put your data into action

After gathering and analyzing all relevant data during your CRO audit, the next crucial step is to implement your learnings into actionable changes to your customer touchpoints. This involves making informed adjustments based on your findings and continuously iterating to refine your strategy.
These changes could involve redesigning pages, refining calls to action, or improving content based on user feedback and user behavior analysis data.

Example

A SaaS company identifies through its CRO audit that customers are dropping off at the pricing page due to confusion over the subscription tiers. Based on this insight, the company decides to:

• Redesign the pricing page: Simplify the layout to make it more user-friendly
• Refine messaging: Provide clearer explanations of each pricing tier’s features and benefits
• Add testimonials: Include customer testimonials to build trust and demonstrate value

By implementing these changes, the company improves the clarity and appeal of its pricing page and brings in more trial users.

If you don’t get the desired results, gather more data and create a new hypothesis

Implementing changes doesn’t guarantee immediate success. If you can’t achieve the desired results, take a step back to gather more user data, analyze it, and develop a new hypothesis for testing.

Conversion rate optimization is an iterative process, so be ready for continuous adjustments and occasional hit-and-miss situations.

Ready to kick off your conversion audit?

Optimizing your website and landing pages for conversions is an ongoing process that requires a blend of strategic analysis, user insights, and iterative improvements.

Tools like Instapage make obtaining the necessary metrics and user behavior data easy with features such as heat maps, A/B testing, AI experiments, conversion analytics, integrations with Google Analytics, and more. Start your 14-day free trial today and explore the platform.

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From looking for a man in finance, Cillian Murphy moments, and all those Stanley cups—Instagram Reels have proved to be an extremely popular video format in 2024 for all industries and business verticals.

Instagram Reels help you showcase short, captivating videos brimming with entertainment and ingenuity to show off your brand personality, promote your offers, and, if you have luck by your side—go viral.

To make the best use of the video format, you need to make sure you choose the right Instagram Reel size and your video dimensions are perfect.

Why do Instagram Reel sizes and dimensions matter

Creating an Instagram Reel takes a lot of work. You have to find an attention-grabbing hook, set up characters, act it out, select catchy background music, and add other enhancements like text or stickers.

All of your prep can go to waste if your Reel images or videos look stretched or distorted because you uploaded the assets with the wrong dimensions or size.

If the Reel video is too large, you could experience an awkward crop, or if you have low-resolution assets, your final Reel could look pixelated or blown up to fill the screen.

If you want your Reel to fulfill its reach potential and attract attention, you need to be mindful of the Instagram reel sizes and dimensions in 2024.

Also, be mindful that Instagram goes through regular updates so these specs could change.

Instagram Reels dimension and size specs 2024

Instagram Reels currently accept video uploads in MP4 or MOV file formats. Both allow for easy, high-speed uploading without stripping detail and compromising the quality of the video.

Instagram Reel cover size

Recommended upload size: 1080 pixels x 1920 pixels
Aspect ratio: 9:16

This vertical aspect ratio is ideal for viewing Reels on mobile devices. Here’s how to select your Instagram Reel cover:

1. Create an Instagram Reel and tap Next
2. Go to the share settings. Tap on the preview image (the one that says Cover)
3. Add a frame from your video, or tap Add from the camera roll to browse through your photos
4. If you want to crop the image, just tap Crop profile image on the Share settings screen and then reposition or zoom in or out

Instagram Reel Thumbnail size

Recommended upload size: 1080 pixels x 1920 pixels
Aspect ratio: 1:1
Display size: 1080 pixels x 1080 pixels

Once you’ve selected your preferred image for the Instagram Reels cover, you can crop it for a grid-worthy thumbnail for your main feed.

While the cover is in 9:16 proportion, the thumbnail visible on your feed crops is a 1:1 square. So, to get the best visual results you should select an image that’s 1080 pixels x 1920 pixels but has a 1080 pixel x 1080 pixel area so you have enough room for a comfortable crop.

Instagram Reels compression size

Instagram will automatically size down any visual asset over 1080 pixels wide to 1080 pixels. Your images and videos also need to be a minimum of 320 pixels wide; if you upload something smaller, it will be resized up to 320 pixels automatically.

When you upload a photo with a width between 320 and 1080 pixels,
Instagram keeps the photo at its original resolution as long as its aspect ratio is between 1.91:1 and 4:5 (e.g., a height between 566 and 1350 pixels with a width of 1080 pixels).

However, if your photo’s aspect ratio isn’t supported, it will be cropped to fit a supported ratio. If you share a photo at a lower resolution, the platform enlarges it to a width of 320 pixels. If you share a photo at a higher resolution, they size it down to a width of 1080 pixels.

Instagram Reels size ratio: 9:16

In full-screen mode, the Reels appear in a 9:16 ratio.

However, when an Instagram user looks at your Reel in their main feed, the video is cropped to a ratio of 4:5. That’s almost two-thirds of the size of a full-screen viewing experience, so it’s best to keep the vital parts of the video away from the edges of the frame.

Instagram Reel length

Instagram allows your Reels to be from 15 to 90 seconds long when you’re recording your Reel directly from Instagram’s camera.

But if you upload Reels through a third-party tool, like CapCut or VEED, your Reel can be anywhere from 3 seconds to 15 minutes long.

Instagram Reels caption length

Adding a caption helps you add context to your reel. You can include emojis for visual engagement and hashtags for visibility. You can type a caption up to 2,200 characters (including spaces and emojis) to describe your Instagram Reel.

Use Instagram Reels to engage audiences

Instagram Reels allow you to hop on trends, entertain prospects, and show off the bits that make you different.

If you want to use the engagement from the Reels to help you with conversions, start setting up Instagram ads and connecting them to dedicated landing pages.

Sign up for an Instapage 14-day free trial and start converting more ad clicks into customers with all the intuitive experimentation, optimization, reporting, and growth tools you need—all in one place.

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