One of the most widespread best practices in the creation of a landing page Effective is the absence of outbound links, especially links within a website's navigation menu.
Among the reasons underlying this principle is the very nature of the landing pagewhich should have one goal and be made for do not distract the user to perform other actions other than those of conversion the page itself.
Although the absence of outbound links and more specifically the navigation menu is a widespread best practice, according to a statistic from Sherpa Marketing only 16% of the landing pages are without the navigation menu.
Not only that: according to a study by Crayonperformed on over 5000 landing pages from Alexa ranking domains, currently used for direct response marketing initiatives, from over 35 industries and all with traffic from advertising tools:
- 96% of landing pages have at least one link that leads off the page
- the 14% of landing pages have 10 or more outgoing links
- the 33% of links go to social profiles
- the most popular destinations for an outbound link from a landing page are Logo, Privacy, Contacts, About Us and Twitter
Statistics aside, the impact of the presence or absence of outbound links on the conversion rate of a landing page should be tested with a A/B TestLet's see 5 of them together.
Landing Page: to link or not to link? The answer of 5 A/B Tests
Amerifirst: conversion rate between 30% and 40%
AmeriFirst Home Mortgage, as the name suggests, is a mortgage company that has seen an increase in the conversion rate of its landing page:
- reducing the options available of the visitor of the page
- by focusing their attention on the important points of the page: offer and contact form
- removing links from the navigation menu
Result? A Increased landing page conversion rate between 30% and 40%:
Hubspot: from 16% to 28% increase in conversion rate
Hubspot,, the well-known software for inbound marketing, tested 5 landing pages among those that received the most traffic, in 2 versions: one, version A, with outgoing links and the other, version B, without any outgoing links.
The result of theA/B testing noted that removing links from landing pages led to an increase in conversion rate, which was particularly significant, however, for landing pages dedicated to MOFUwhich is the middle phase of the funnelwith a Increase from 16% to 28%.
On the other hand, landing pages dedicated to the TOFU phase (top of the funnel) recorded a conversion rate increase of only 0.4%.
Yuppiechef: from 3% to 6% of conversion rate without menu
Yuppiechef, a ecommerce which sells high-end kitchenware, did a A/B test with VWO, to test the removal of the navigation menu from the landing page.
Although this is an ecommerce, the macro conversion goal in this case consisted of a Lead Generation, using different traffic sources including: Google Ads (Search & Display), Facebook Advertising, Organic traffic (SEO).
Yuppiechef has tested 2 versions of the same landing page, one with and one without navigation menu, starting from an assumption: that the links in the navigation menu provided more distractions and their consequent removal could help the user to focus on the objective of the page.
As expected, version B (without menu navigation) saw an increase in conversion rate from 3 to 6%, with an actual jump of 100%.
Career Point College: +336% of CR by removing the menu
Career Point College has increased the conversion rate of the 336% by removing the navigation menu and changing its layout.
The A/B test, published on Unbounce by Dustin Sparks, describes an increase in the landing page conversion rate from 3.12% to 13.64%:
- removing the main navigation
- changing the layout of the contact form and placing it above the fold
Before and After: Layout and Form Changes
Beyond the increase in conversion rates, changes to forms and layouts:
- have led to a lessening bounce rate from 32.50% to 28.70%
- 88% of visitors to the page went down to the area below the fold, to the Testimonial section: a sign that they were probably users in the middle phase of the sales funnel (the aforementioned MOFU) in search of elements of social proof.
What do you think?
What do you think about it? What opinions and experiences have you had about removing the navigation menu and more generally about outbound links on a landing page? Let's talk about it in the comments.
