You can’t optimize what isn’t built yet, so the first step is to build the landing page with the key elements we discussed in How To Create A Landing Page For Your Kickstarter Board Game.
If you’ve completed that step then great! Let’s move to optimize your landing page.
First of all, it’s totally OK if your landing page starts off less than perfect. In fact, it should be.
The sooner you can get a first version up and running, the sooner you’ll be able to collect data to see what works (and what doesn’t work). In marketing lingo, we call this first draft an MVP, which is short for Minimum Viable Product.
Optimize Your Page For Email Captures
The next step to optimizing your page is to ensure that you are able to capture as many emails as possible from the traffic that arrives at your landing page. We want to test whether a particular change on your landing page drives the conversion rate up or not.
To get us started, you should look to test all five key elements that make up the section above the fold on your landing page.
This can be simple (or more complicated) depending on which platform you use. The platform that I’d recommend, Clickfunnels, offers a simple feature to clone your existing page, make a change and quickly launch a second version.
The page above is a screenshot of the landing page for my free 80-page handbook about how to get funded on crowdfunding (you can get it here!). You’ll see that at the time I was testing two different headlines on the page.
The platform also automatically diverts traffic to the two pages whether it be 50/50 split testing (which I’d recommend) or some other form of testing that you’d like to understand more about.
Now, let’s dive into what else you can do to optimize your landing page.
Below are the topics we’ll cover today:
- Create A Landing Page That Works On Desktop And Mobile
- Looks Matter When It Comes To Email Capture
- Ensure Your CTA Is Crystal Clear
- Include The Most Important Elements Above The Fold
- Make Your Page Load Fast Or Lose Web Traffic
- How To Measure Landing Page Success
Create A Landing Page That Works On Desktop And Mobile
People will arrive on your Kickstarter board game landing page from various sources. Therefore, your landing page should also look equally good on a screen of any resolution and any device.
As people begin accessing sites from devices beyond the desktop computer, “responsive design” has become critical to converting page visitors into email opt-ins.
This is especially important if you’re running any online ads on Facebook and Instagram to bring traffic to your landing page. These users surf the platforms on their mobile device so they’ll see your website for the first time on their phones. They will need to be able to experience the same high-converting structure and design as those coming to your website via desktop.
Here’s a quick little trick on the Google Chrome browser to see what your landing page looks like on desktop vs mobile.
Steps:
- Right click on your landing page
- Click “Inspect”
- Make sure “Device Toolbar” is toggled on (it will be highlighted)
- Change to different types of devices to see how your landing page performs
- Note: if it looks a little funky at first, it’s worth refreshing your browser. Sometimes the browser is a little slow to understand what is happening.
Looks Matter When It Comes To Email Capture
Design plays a huge role in the board game industry.
You can always find people raving on and on about different games they’ve played and also ones with strikingly beautiful design. I have a copy of Tokaido that I constantly show off to new gamers interested in the hobby.
Karmaka, a game I backed years ago on Kickstarter, has a special place on the shelf just because I love the artwork so much.
When it comes to landing pages, design has the ability to convey a very high level of trust. Therefore, your landing page should look clean, professional and put together.
No one really wants to give their email to someone with a page that looks like it’s been hacked together by a 3-year old. To get emails on your Kickstarter board game landing page, take the time to create the best presentation.
Not only are plain, text-heavy landing pages boring, but they also don’t tell anyone about what they can expect about your game. Colors, typography and consistently branded design elements are critical. Use a contrasting background and clear fonts. Both of these factors increase readability, making it easier to study the details of your project.
And lastly, make sure that no one has to squint in order to read the text on your landing page; it’s been proven to decrease conversion.
Ensure Your CTA Is Crystal Clear
Do your website visitors know exactly what you want them to do on your landing page?
Oftentimes I see landing pages that cram multiple CTAs into one tiny space. In these sites, I’ll see buttons that say “CHECK OUT THE BLOG”, “SUBSCRIBE TO THE EMAIL LIST”, “WATCH OUR PLAYTEST VIDEO”, “DOWNLOAD THE PNP”, and more.
Imagine walking into a game cafe and having three different people come up to you. All three of these people are simultaneously asking you different questions: would you like a drink before you sit down and play? What game would you like to play today? How many people will you have at your table?
Oomph. No thank you. I’d prefer to get one question at a time, in a logical order.
Back to your landing page. Remember that the one (and only) goal of a landing page is to capture the email of someone who might potentially be interested in your game. Multiple buttons above the fold will draw attention away from that main goal.
Think about your landing page as the first step. Once someone does subscribe to your email list, you know for sure they’re interested in learning more and potentially backing your game in the future. Now you can take them through the next part of the journey as you build up to your Kickstarter board game launch.
You can read more about this process in the article How To Market A Board Game For Kickstarter.
Include The Most Important Elements Above The Fold
People spend the majority of their time on this first screen. The further down the page you put information, the less likely people are to read it.
We talk about this in detail (including the exact elements you must include above the fold) in How To Create A Landing Page For Your Kickstarter Board Game.
So here’s a little check in: are the important elements above the fold on your landing page?
I can’t emphasize this enough. It is absolutely critical to optimize this section on your landing page since everyone who arrives will see this section.
Make Your Page Load Fast Or Lose Web Traffic
A critical element of your landing page is that it loads quickly.
Amazon, the eCommerce powerhouse, found that it was able to increase its revenue by 1% for every hundred milliseconds of improvement and load time. Sure, this is retail giant Amazon, but it still makes sense when you’re trying to capture someone’s attention and email. Essentially, attention spans are shorter and shorter and no one wants to wait for a page to load; they’ll just close the browser window or navigate away.
Right off the bat there are two options for you to speed up your website. If you’re a software engineer (or know some coding), you can go through to edit the code of your website to trim the fat.
However, for non-coders (like myself!), there is one quick trick which will take care of a good portion of loading issues. The easiest to solve and often the largest reason for slow load time is large images.
If you have beautiful, high-quality images for your game (I’m sure you do), then it probably means that the files are really large. Large files on websites take some time to load. Enter an easy, free way to reduce image size. Go to the website tiny PNG and reduce the size of all images you use on your website.
How To Measure Landing Page Success
What use is any of this if you don’t know how to measure success? There are two numbers you need to be aware of for your landing page: the number of visitors and conversion rate.
That number of visitors is how many people you send to your website. The conversion rate is how many people actually decide to go through with the CTA that you’ve outlined (aim for at least 20%). The higher the numbers, the better since that means more people coming to your page and more people signing up to your list.
There are various ways to measure success, but my absolute favorite is by using Google Analytics. If you haven’t installed this on your landing page yet, do it now!
With this installed, you’ll be able to see everything from where people are finding your website to your website conversion rate is to which sources are bringing you the best email leads. This is truly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google Analytics.
Example Data From Meeple Marketing
From here, you have data in your hand to make decisions about your game and how you continue to market it. This next example isn’t a game per se, but I wanted to show you the real power of Google Analytics using my own Meeple Marketing website.
I started this blog in April 2020. This screenshot below is data from May 2, 2020 – June 2, 2020.
It’s apparent to me that people are interested in articles about Facebook Advertising and building an email list. With this information, you bet I’m going to go hard on these topics in the near future.
It’s also clear to me that people do go to the main Meeple Marketing homepage before making their next decision on what to read. With that said, I will also soon be rolling out a new homepage that makes it easier for you, reader, to find exactly what you’re looking for when you come to the website.
Now that you have your landing page and know how to measure success, be sure to check out how to drive traffic there in the article How To Use Content To Market Your Kickstarter Board Game Launch.
Before you go, be sure to join the Kickstarter Board Game Marketing Facebook Group to learn the most up-to-date marketing methods for your board game!
Nalin is a tabletop gamer and marketer. She’s here to give you the tools, training, and resources to market your game. In her free time, you can find her playing games, reading books or running around the soccer field.