How to optimize your event landing page for more conversions

Are you wondering how to get more people to attend your next online event? If so, you're in the right place.

Online events are essential for business leaders across all industries. Consumers around the globe follow their favorite brands and keep an eye out for upcoming product demonstrations, live video announcements, and more.

You can use this chance to connect with your customers and show them that you're here to help. If done correctly, you can turn between 20-40% of attendees into qualified leads, which will likely improve sales and engagement across all marketing platforms.

Sounds like a fantastic plan, right?

Despite the advantages that come with this strategy, many are still hesitant to make it a consistent part of their marketing plan. This hesitancy is mainly due to the effort it takes to convince qualified prospects and existing customers to register.

In my experience, the best way to secure more signups is to create an eye-catching event landing page. Today, I will share several strategies you can use to optimize your event page for maximum conversions.

Choose Relatable and Compelling Headlines

First, let's talk about the headlines. Before a user clicks on an event landing page, they will see your headline immediately. Engagement and signups will suffer if you can't capture your audience's attention during this pivotal moment.

The mistake many marketers and leaders make is they focus too much on the technical aspect of their product or presentation in the headline. Consequently, people new to the industry or those simply looking for a refresher might get discouraged and leave.

Instead of writing complex headlines that are jam-packed with jargon, keep your message simple. A clear, compelling, and relatable message is the best way to start connecting with visitors.

Tie Pain Points to Event Benefits

Next, let's talk about the body text of your landing page. Odds are, there's a list of topics you'll discuss during the event on your page.

It's important to go over the topics you'll discuss, but that's not enough. You'll have a much better chance of improving your conversion rate if you tie the talking points you'll discuss to your audience's pain points.

In other words, people want to know what's in it for them.

Discussing the benefits of your event will show users why they should sign up. For instance, instead of listing "Grow your email list" as a general topic, you may want to say, "Learn how to build an audience for your small business with email marketing."

Do you see the difference? The first example tells users what you're going to discuss. The second example explains the topic, but it also shows how your presentation will benefit the user.

If you don't know enough about your customers to create segment-specific landing pages, I suggest doing more customer research. Build strong buyer personas by sending out feedback forms, engaging with your audience on social media, and keeping track of reviews.

Create a Sense of Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency with fear of missing out (FOMO) marketing is an excellent way to optimize your landing page.

As the name implies, FOMO is when shoppers choose to engage with a business specifically because of a limited-time sale, event, or inventory. There's an excellent chance you've experienced this phenomenon yourself.

Do you remember the last time you made a split-second purchase during a flash sale? If so, you remember a time when you experienced FOMO.

This feeling is way more common than you might imagine. Research shows that 7 out of 10 millennials have experienced FOMO in the past, which makes sense. For comparison, around 60% of online shoppers say they've made an impulse buy within 24 hours because of FOMO.

There are a few easy ways to add FOMO to your event landing page. The first way is with a countdown timer. Simply adding a countdown timer could be just the thing to convince visitors who are thinking about procrastinating to take action.

You can also limit the number of people who can attend each event. This is extremely common due to program and engagement limitations. It's much easier to make a conversation personal when talking to 50-100 people. The same can not be said for an audience of 5000.

Don't Forget to Show Social Proof

Social proof is another powerful way to convince visitors to sign up for your next event. Essentially, social proof is evidence that your business is trusted and respected by customers and other well-known brands.

User reviews are the most common form of social proof. I believe this is tied to the fact that 92% of online shoppers seek out reviews before buying a product or offering sensitive information (like names and email addresses) to a brand.

If you've held similar events in the past, you could consider sharing feedback from previous attendees on your new landing page. When new users see that other people loved your presentation, they are more likely to register.

Brands without event reviews should consider reaching out to attendees with a feedback form after the event. Ask your audience to share their honest thoughts, and you're bound to find positive reviews that will amplify your on-site reputation.

This same principle applies to brand endorsements.

Trust badges are an effective form of social proof that can help you boost your conversion rate. You're likely familiar with trust badges. They are seals of approval that are usually listed on contact forms or at the bottom of landing pages. Globally recognized companies like Norton, McAfee, and PayPal have options for obtaining and showcasing trust badges.

Keep Your Signup Form Short and Sweet

Now, let's talk about your signup form. Short and sweet forms are a must if you want people to register for your event.

Research shows that forms with 3 fields have an average conversion rate of 25%. Now, compare that to the 15% conversion rate of forms with 6 or more fields, and it's easy to see why shorter is better.

I limit all of our forms to 2-3 questions. The first two are mandatory and include the first name and email address of the person attending the event. The third question is optional but can be super helpful, especially if you're a new marketer or entrepreneur. I mix it up, but generally, the third question I ask boils down to one of the following questions:

• What do you hope to learn?
• How did you discover our event?
• What topic would you like to see discussed next?

These questions can provide you with a wealth of information about your audience's goals, pain points, and opinions of your brand.

Use Split-Testing to Fine-Tune Your Landing Page

Split testing (also known as A/B testing) is a great way to gradually optimize your event landing pages over time. Split tests are experiments designed to encourage users to take a specific action. This strategy is used on social media, email marketing, and directly on websites.

Let's say your conversion rate is currently mid-level. You're not doing bad, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. You could choose to make adjustments to your call-to-action, headline, text body, or even specific color patterns.

As a general rule of thumb, keep your changes active for at least two weeks so you can gather enough actionable data to make a decision. You don't want to have a knee-jerk reaction and remove something that may actually work.

Subtle design changes could convince otherwise skeptical users to stick around and continue interacting with your brand, which includes signing up for your event.

Final Thoughts

There you have it!

Online events will continue to soar in popularity for years to come. You can convince more people to interact with your business if you're patient, persistent, and willing to learn from your successes and failures. If you need a little help getting more people to sign up for your next presentation, feel free to implement some of the tips I've presented today.