Every marketer has been there: Spending countless hours learning how to design a landing page with the goal of connecting with your digital audience. When it comes to the ROI of landing pages, how do you know if your hard work paid off?

It’s easy to say a lot of views or clicks count as success, but what if these are only vanity metrics? Is it possible to dig deeper and redefine the success of landing pages?

It’s easy to say a lot of views or clicks count as success, but what if these are only vanity metrics? Is it possible to dig deeper and redefine the success of landing pages?

In order to truly measure the success of your landing pages, you need to understand which analytics count and how to track the right metrics. By actively monitoring the performance of your landing page, you’ll be able to gain a better understanding of which analytics count and how to track them. Once you grasp how to measure the success of your landing page, you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.

To start, Mirabel’s Marketing Manager will cover which metrics you should track to create the best landing page. We’ll talk about how to measure the success of a landing page to generate leads, increase conversion rates, and create clickable content

The Best Metrics to Track Landing Page Success

Let’s take a look at a few metrics that go beyond basic views and clicks, also known as vanity metrics. To measure the success of your landing page, you need to track the following metrics:

Conversion Rate

The main goal of a landing page is to capture a website visitor’s information, so they become a lead. To do so, you include a lead-capture form on the landing page asking for their name, email address, and any other relevant information.

Each time a website visitor fills out this form and clicks your CTA to submit their information, it’s called a conversion. Conversion rate is formally defined “as the rate of visitors that actually take the desired action on your site,” according to Landingi. For landing pages, it’s typically filling out a form and clicking “submit.”

The average conversion rate for a landing page is about 2.35 percent. However, defining a successful conversion rate can differ between companies. A conversion rate is often dependent on your digital presence, which can vary between industries, average website traffic, and more.

If your landing pages are optimized according to best practices, you may want to up your conversion rate goal. About 25 percent of all landing pages convert at 6 percent, which is what we aim for at Mirabel’s Marketing Manager.

Bounce Rates

Google While this Google-specific definition references Google Analytics, bounce rate for landing pages is measured as users who view the page, and then leave without filling out a form or clicking the CTA. This means the visitor hit “go back” or clicked on another link on the landing page (though it’s best practice to exclude other links on landing pages for this exact reason).

Like all marketing campaigns, landing pages have a small window to grab a visitor’s attention and engage them. On average, the bounce rate for landing pages is about 40.5 percent, according to Neil Patel. This metric seems high, but if you want to decrease the bounce rate on your landing page, you can try to optimize it.

• Is what you’re offering on your landing page clear? When a visitor clicks on your landing page, they expect to find a solution to what they searched for.
• Is your call-to-action clear and easy to find? Follow these  CTA design best practices.
• Is what you’re offering relevant to your audience? If you’re a design publication that’s offering a webinar on politics or family relationships, you might be missing the mark of what your audience wants.
• Is your landing page easy to read and aesthetically pleasing to the eye? Use branding guidelines and industry standards when considering your landing page design, color scheme, logos, above- and below-the fold information, copy, and more.
• Is the goal of your landing page misleading or confusing? If the goal is to capture event registrations, your landing page should clearly outline what the event is about, the logistics, speakers, and so on. The form on the page should ask for the attendee’s name, email address, and other relevant information.

The bounce rate can provide a visitor’s view of how relevant, timely, and clear your marketing strategy is. It gives an eye-level perspective into the effectiveness and efficiency of your landing page.

Remember: Don’t confuse bounce rate with exit rate. An exit rate is defined as the “percentage of users who leave a website on that landing page.” Exit rates should be less than 50 percent.

Form Abandonment Rate

Like bounce and exit rates, form abandonment rate measures when users didn’t take an action on your landing page. Specifically it measures how many forms were filled out, fully or partially, but weren’t submitted.

Especially relevant for lead generation landing pages that gather contact information, form abandonment rate is an important metric. While it’s understandable to want as much information as possible, consider how much time it takes a visitor to fill out your landing page form.

“Compare the total number of visitors who visit your landing page against your form abandonment rate. If the rate is high, it might be a sign that you’re requesting too much information from them,” according to Landingi.

Remember: “If you shorten your form … to just the bare basics, you might raise the chances of improving your conversions. … It’s better to get limited pertinent information using a 3-5 question form than no information at all because your form ran too long.”

Average Time Spent on Page

This metric is often misinterpreted when it comes to landing pages. Typically, you want website visitors to spend more time on your page because it indicates that they’re reading and digesting the information you’re providing. It signals that they’re considering you as a solution to their problem, which likely means a high-quality lead is being properly nurtured.

However, landing pages are often a quick snapshot. If a visitor is spending 15 minutes on a landing page, it likely means their browsing became stagnant, and the chances of conversion are low. The average time spent on a landing page is two minutes.

Sessions by Source/Traffic Source

It may not seem like the best metric for measuring landing page success, but traffic sources tell you something very important: Where your landing page is most connecting to your audience.

If you promote the link on social media or through an email marketing campaign, this metric will tell you which was more popular with your general audience. If organic or paid SEO is leading the traffic sources, it indicates the landing page is successfully optimized for keywords.

Looking at this metric can help you determine if certain traffic sources should be more targeted than others. As a marketer, the goal is to put your digital efforts where you’ll get the highest ROI for the least amount of money.

The Best Tools to Measure Landing Page Success

Crunching these numbers by hand is nearly impossible with how quick visitors come and go in the digital world. To ease the burden of calculating analytics, the Internet offers a few tools to measure landing page success and improve existing landing pages:

• Mirabel’s Marketing Manager not only lets you create landing pages through the Landing Page Builder, it also comes with an analytics dashboard to view your conversion rate.
• Databox offers a drag-and-drop analytics dashboard that shows real-time assessment, monitoring, and sharing.
• Google Analytics is the tried-and-true landing page measurement tool, offering robust dashboard templates to analyze nearly any organic or paid metric.
• HubSpot offers landing page creation and analytics tools that show a handful of proper landing page metrics.
• The Five Second Test measures how clear and relevant your landing page is. Your landing page is flashed for five seconds, and random users take a quick quiz to see what they can remember. If your copy isn’t clear, go back to the drawing board.

‍Measuring Landing Page Metrics Equates to Success

Without proper measurement, marketers don’t have the definitive data to prove their strategies are working. The key to understanding the effectiveness and success of your landing page is to learn about the metrics that matter most before keeping track of the numbers.

It’s also important to consider the type of landing page you’re measuring. A landing page that offers blog or newsletter subscriptions is a long-term analytics project. However, a timely free-trial period is going to have an immediate positive impact on most of these metrics. Comparatively, those landing pages won’t have similar conversion rate goals.

Consider your industry and current digital presence, too. If your online audience posts shallow numbers across your website, social media, and other content, your landing pages won’t be your Holy Grail of Marketing. Take the time to create the best landing page, view the metrics, adjust accordingly, and revamp your strategy.

Carena Marchi contributed to this blog.