If there’s anything top online courses have in common, it’s a great marketing strategy and a seamless website experience. These two factors ensure that potential leads face as few bumps in their customer journey as possible, like a picture not loading or having to scroll through an entire page to get directed to the registration page
These efforts are made so the traffic you gain is maximized, with most of the leads converting. We talked about small tweaks that can drastically improve subscriptions and conversions in last week’s newsletter. In this two-part series, we’ll be discussing what makes for an effective website experience.
To examine the effectiveness of landing page strategies, we first need to know the goals of website visitors–what makes them click a link, what makes them browse, and finally what makes them convert.
Hotjar provided a broad typing of website features and the actions they cause your website visitors to do. Here’s their full list:
- Drivers – what brings traffic to your website
- Barriers – what makes these visitors leave
- Hooks – what prevents them from converting
Landing Page Types
As the very first thing that potential customers see, landing pages help make sure web visitors stay on the page and continue exploring–with the eventual goal of conversion.
Registration
Online platforms like Coursera, Skillshare, and Code Academy usually direct leads to registration or sign-up banners. This works if you want learners to convert using the shortest step possible.
Coursera even incorporates a call to action that says “Join for Free” which prevents budget-conscious learners from dropping out of the customer journey.
Course Exploration
For websites such as edX, Udacity, and FutureLearn, a landing page that invites viewers through their catalog of lessons can be an effective strategy especially for educational organizations that boast numerous subject offerings.
A search function is common for these top MOOCs but it can be used by niche online platforms to break down their courses’ content. They usually do it through website tiles that show different topic categories.
For Users
What the landing pages of both Udacity and Khan Academy have in common is having different buttons that link to different pages, depending on what the visitors are looking for. For Udacity, they categorize it as: “For individuals; For enterprise; For government”, while Khan Academy have buttons for: “Learners; Teachers; Parents”
By appealing to their needs, the visitors won’t lose time struggling to find the information they need and won’t be tempted to just exit the website out of frustration when their needs aren’t met.
