If you’ve ever been curious about how well your landing pages are converting when compared to your peers, the conversion experts at Unbounce apparently have the answers.
In travel, any landing page that converts above 19.7% percent is said to be a winner.
Conversion rates above that amount are performing better than 90% of competitors’ pages.
On the flip side of that top percentile, many travel marketers have at least one page that converts below the bottom percentile.
That’s nearly half of all travel marketers that have one landing page converting at under 2.1%.
By that measure, those pages are drastically underperforming and should be looked at carefully!
Many marketers have plenty room to improve, as that leaves 905 missed conversions due to poorly optimized landing pages.
Beyond that industry-wide benchmark, there are also some critical lessons to be learned from the best-performing landing pages.
- In travel, fear performs poorly. Obvious, perhaps. Just remember that using terms of fear or uncertainty don’t convert as well. FOMO, or fear of missing out, has always been a key currency in travel advertising. Just be careful, says Unbounce, “If even just 1% of page copy subconsciously reminds your visitors of feelings of anger or fear, you could be seeing up to 25% lower conversion rates.” A few suggested words to reduce fear: endless, challenge, and fee.
- Count your words, because fewer words work better. Keep the language precise, the imagery vivid, and the call-to-action clear. Unbounce found that shorter landing pages converted better. In fact, the conversion rate drops in half between 100 words and 800 words.
- Keep it simple. The other advantage of counting your words is that it will help you keep the copy at a reasonable reading level. Keep the language easy to grasp. In some cases, copy at a sixth-grade level then led to the most conversions.
- Trust matters. Using words that suggest trust and trustworthiness primes the reader to convert. There is a feeling of trust that must be engendered by any travel provider. After all, the average traveler often spends a lot of money to purchase a travel product. Per Unbounce: “Using at least 7% (and up to 10%) of your copy to establish trust could result in conversion rates that are up to 20% better.” A few suggested words to increase trust: enjoy, perfect, secret.
The full spread of conversion rates for landing pages in travel:
While the report doesn’t recommend comparing conversion rates across industries, the image below is a reminder that travel is well-positioned to benefit from healthy conversion rates.
Click here or on the image for a larger version:
NB1: Download the full report here.
NB2:Landing page image via Pixabay.