Marketers should never be completely satisfied with their strategy or websites because there’s always room for improvement. When it comes to inbound marketing, you should learn how to pick out the kinks in important aspects of your campaigns, like your landing pages, and then optimize them to ensure you’re consistently reaching your potential customers in the best way possible.

Landing pages are the main gateways to get your customers to fill out forms and convert, so having them in top shape is essential to your marketing success. Kinks in landing pages create page friction and act as barriers that keep your visitors from completing the action that you want them to take. Fixing these vital pieces of your marketing is a strategic process that will keep visitors reading, ensure that more prospects complete the action and improve the conversion rate on each page. Here are some guidelines to help you identify any issues with your landing pages, and then fix them to maximize their effectiveness:

Zero in on What’s Happening

First, you need to identify the parts of the landing page that are preventing quality leads from entering your sales funnel. How do you zero in on what’s happening? The surefire answer is testing. There are many things on a landing page that can be tested, such as:

• Security
• Imagery
• Visual triggers
• Persuasive copy
• Form design

Get Started with Testing

Once you decide which aspects of your landing pages you’d like to focus on, you can begin a testing process that will allow you to optimize your pages for improved results. If you have low conversion rates or unqualified leads, ask yourself some questions to figure out where you should start. For instance, is your copy giving the right message and explaining the value of your downloadable content or offer? Does your form ask for relevant information? Do you have a visually appealing design that leads visitors’ eyes around the page effectively?

Establish a set of priorities based on these questions, rework elements of your pages that might be the problem and then measure the new conversion results to determine if your changes were effective.

Reconsider What’s Working

Maintaining a strategic outlook is key to devising a successful marketing process, so don’t give up if your fixes don’t work automatically. Testing is a constant aspect of marketing, so even after you nail the copy on your landing page, you might need to tweak the design a bit more to ramp up your conversion rates. Here are some additional testing ideas to consider if you’re struggling to boost your results:

Test 1: An Indicated Reading Time Test

Many longer pieces of digital content, like those often delivered on landing pages, have an indicated reading time to set the reader’s expectations before they commit to downloading it. Consider running a 50/50 A/B split test to determine if visitors are being driven away because they’re unsure of how extensive your deliverable is. Add an estimated reading time to one version, and keep the other version the same. Compare the results and see which had more conversions.

Test 2: A Form Redesign Test

A form redesign test is a great way to figure out if your design is grabbing visitors’ attention and prompting them to give their information. Playing with your form fields and coming up with two variations can lend insight into what engages your leads best. Come up with two different forms, and conduct A/B testing to find out which type of form was most effective.

Strike a Balance and Generate Results

Generating leads through landing pages is a tough task for most marketers. However, it’s a task that must be done — don’t let landing page kinks get in the way of your goals. Whether you simply need to draft more persuasive copy, include more relevant images or try something like a form redesign or indicated reading time test, putting the work in is sure to reveal what your visitors want so you can ultimately increase your conversion rates and grab the best leads possible. If you’re strategic about optimizing your marketing process, you’ll get the results you want in the long run.