The LIFT Model: The Six Landing Page Conversion Rate Factors
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This article is an introduction to the Landing Page Influence Function for Tests™ (or LIFT™) Model, a framework I developed for WiderFunnel to use to analyze conversion pages and develop test hypotheses. We have used this tool as part of a structured process to lift each of our clients’ conversion rates by between 10% to 277%.
Methodology Is More Valuable than Tips
We are often asked to share tips or “best practices” on how to improve conversion rates on landing pages and website conversion funnels. While tips provide some value, their usefulness is limited outside of the appropriate context. You’re always left wanting more.
As examples of tips for hypotheses that will lift your conversion rates:
- Enlarging your action buttons
- Including your value proposition in a high-contrast, left-justified headline of two-lines or less
- Cutting your copy in half (in general)
- Reducing the number of form fields
- Minimizing the number of layout columns
But what do you do when you’ve done that and more?
Many of our clients come to us after running out of ideas on what to test. In each case, the structured methodology we use to evaluate pages and develop valid test hypotheses has played an important role in that conversion rate lift.
The Six Conversion Factors
The LIFT Model provides a framework showing the Six Conversion Factors that allow you to evaluate landing pages from the perspective of the page visitor. See Fig. 1 below for the conceptual graphic of the LIFT Model.
Fig. 1: The LIFT Model
1. Value Proposition
The model shows that the vehicle that provides the potential for the Conversion Rate is the Value Proposition, making it the most important of the six conversion factors. The other five factors are either conversion drivers or inhibitors.
The conversion drivers are:
2. Relevance
Does the landing page relate to what the visitor thought they were going to see?
The Relevance of the value proposition and context of the source media is critical. Your page must use terms your visitor relates to and be consistent with the incoming link or your visitor will be disoriented and leave the page
3. Clarity
Does the landing page clearly articulate the value proposition and call-to-action?
Clarity is the most common of the six that we find marketers struggling with. The two aspects of Clarity that must be analyzed are Design and Content. Designing for Clarity creates an unimpeded “eyeflow”. Content clarity ensures the images and text combine to minimize comprehension time.
4. Urgency
Is there an indication that the action needs to be taken now?
Urgency has two components: Internal (or how the visitor is feeling upon arrival) and External (or influences the marketer can introduce to the visitor). While Internal Urgency is generally pre-existing when the visitor arrives on the page; the tone of the presentation, offers and deadlines can all influence External Urgency.
The conversion inhibitors are:
5. Anxiety
What are potential misgivings the visitor could have about undertaking the conversion action?
Anxiety is a function of the Credibility you have built with the visitor and the Trust you are asking them to have.
6. Distraction
Are there items on the page that could divert the visitor away the from the goal?
The more visual inputs and action options your visitors has to process, the less likely they are to make a conversion decision. Minimizing distractions like unnecessary product options, links and extraneous information will increase the conversion rate.
Within each of these six factors are the many tips and sub-factors that are used by the skilled conversion rate expert to develop hypotheses to be tested
A Landing Page Evaluation Example
WiderFunnel recently began working with Rudder.com, a free personal financial management service. In our first experiment on their home page we ran a LIFT Model evaluation. Below are the 18 factors we identified as priorities for testing.
Fig. 2: Rudder LIFT Analysis
We then selected several of these factors to turn into hypotheses to test against the original page. We ran an A/B/n test using Google Website Optimizer as the statistical testing tool. The result was a 45% increase in new customer registrations from the home page. For more details on the experiment methodology, check out the case study.
The LIFT Model can deliver results for everyone
A professor at Eastern Michigan University, Bud Gibson, has recently developed a Conversion Optimization University course using the LIFT Model to teach students how to improve Pay-per-click landing pages. He is also running his own tests and has blogged about his results using the LIFT. His results were also mentioned on the Google blog.
It can work for you too!
For more information on how to get a guaranteed conversion rate lift contact a Conversion Rate Optimization expert.
March 16th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
This gives a great summary of the LIFT model. The description really shows the depth of your understanding of the issues and relevant experience.
We’ll use this with the class, and I’m interested to see some of your case studies.
April 10th, 2009 at 8:59 am
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April 10th, 2009 at 8:59 am
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April 13th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
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May 19th, 2009 at 11:46 am
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June 4th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Great presentation yesterday and some of the tips shared under the LIFT model were really useful. I am going to try them on my blog.
-Subraya Mallya
June 4th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Thanks Subraya. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Good luck with your conversion optimization!
Chris
July 9th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Love this advice! Great insights which I’m sure to use for our company. Thanks!
August 23rd, 2009 at 10:13 am
Very interesting! The LIFT model sound very interesting and something worth trying out!!
September 20th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Certainly this LIFT concept is indeed an eye opener for all. I’ll certainly love to see some of your case studies.
October 1st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
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October 14th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Many thanks for sharing these insights. Very useful, will definitely use the LIFT concept in the future.
Thanks!
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November 10th, 2009 at 9:34 am
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January 10th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
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January 11th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
[...] using an image or graphic treatment to communicate the idea. Web optimization experts WiderFunnel use a proprietary framework for analyzing conversion pages, the L.I.F.T. (TM) Model, that includes [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Hi
I have just seen this and think it’s great! I’m planning to use it in a presentation on Google Analytics & Conversion.
It is the way that I analyse a site but put down as such a simple model-centric fashion is wonderful.
Am I being dumb? Does LIFT stand for anything?
Nikki Rae
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Thanks for the feedback, Nikki. Let me know if you’d like to use one of our case study examples in your presentation showing how we’ve implemented the LIFT Model.
LIFT stands for “Landing page Influence Function for Tests”.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:20 am
Hello Chris,
Really smart work here. The WiderFunnel LIFT model seems a must for all CRO checklists. Just wanted to add one thought. While Internal Urgency is pre-existing, the LIFT model shows it does increase chances of conversion. So this can be considered when someone’s buying PPC/Adwords or writing Ads. Targeting keywords that have some signs of Internal Urgency can bring more qualified traffic that’s likely to convert, resulting in higher conversion rates for PPC campaigns.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:35 am
@Affan Laghari
You’re absolutely correct. The Ad Group segments, top keywords and ad content is very important for conversion optimization. It should be evaluated especially with respect to the Relevance and Urgency factors.
Internal Urgency is also affected by seasonality. For example, we’ve seen significant differences in the relative conversion rates of variations during peak shopping seasons like Christmas, Valentine’s Day and limited time promotions.
If you run tests during and outside of peak times and compare the results, you’ll be surprised at what you learn.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:33 pm
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March 12th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
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April 14th, 2010 at 6:34 am
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May 3rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Brilliant. Nice to read a holistic approach to improving conversion rates that digs much deeper than the usual material. Well done.
May 3rd, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Thanks Ben!
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May 6th, 2010 at 7:13 am
Very interesting article, I think I have to ran an A/B/n test by using the Google Website Optimizer too. Thx, for sharing your knowledge!
May 13th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Agree with Nikki, it's a methodology, hopefully, we all try to follow!
What you have done is neatly simplified the basic areas that should be addressed into an appropriate & relevant acronym when remember will remind us of these 6 important conversion factors.
May 24th, 2010 at 6:45 am
Thanks. I hope to take enough time soon to analyze these factors and implement them on my commercial sites. Sales go in line with amount of visitors, but the conversion rate is still so low.
June 16th, 2010 at 3:02 am
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August 22nd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
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September 5th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Great post, it's a refreshing way of showing the strategy behind A/B or multivariant testing plans. So often companies will just product variations of content at random.
Can I be really cheeky and ask if you have larger versions of the Fig 2 images please? I'd love to use them in presentations (will link/credit your site of course).
Thanks, Dan
September 5th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Thanks Dan. True — the random variation syndrome is too common.
I'll email you about the graphic.
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October 12th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
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January 9th, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Urgency in our case increased site conversion by 23 percentage point net. This is a fantastic article btw. I will review it with my entire team. Thanks a MILLION!!!
January 10th, 2011 at 10:30 am
Thanks for the kind feedback. It's great to hear that you've found the LIFT Model useful and are getting positive results!
January 24th, 2011 at 2:22 am
Hi,
I would like to take a moment to congratulate for a wonderful blog and the unique and interesting content.
Thanks for the Information.
March 7th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
You picked the letters L-I-F-T and worked backwards for that acronym, didn't you? LOL. Well, despite the plethora of unintelligible trademarks, your analyses make some sense. What kind of volume were you running through the Rudder tests?
March 7th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Thank you Sean. The LIFT Model actually makes everyone's life easier (not to mention it improves the conversion rate).
Unfortunately, the Rudder volumes are confidential. But rest assured the test reqached statistical confidence, and that is what matters, right?
May 19th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
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June 27th, 2011 at 10:34 am
I like the LIFT Model. I think, I'm gonna follow it. thanks for sharing I really came across this article in the right time. Definitely bookmarking… Thanks
June 27th, 2011 at 11:27 am
Thanks Sam! I'm glad you found it useful.
August 25th, 2011 at 8:20 pm
I've never seen this broken down in such a way before or at least not with some of these terms. Usually trust is strongly displayed as its own bullet, perhaps anxiety is a better way to put it as it doesn't make someone want to buy more, it only makes them comfortable about going through with the purchase.
August 26th, 2011 at 6:53 am
Trust is certainly an important component, Anthony. Thanks for leaving your comment.
There are two components of trust and, you're right, part of it does affect Anxiety. There's also trust related to the Value Proposition. For example, good graphic design can enhance credibility and trust, which in this cases would be part of the perceived Value Proposition.
September 9th, 2011 at 8:13 am
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October 14th, 2011 at 4:45 am
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October 14th, 2011 at 6:43 am
Not always, @reginout.
You should read this: http://www.widerfunnel.com/conversion-rate-optimi…
October 25th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
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November 4th, 2011 at 8:54 am
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November 20th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
I've read a lot on increasing conversion rates and this is by far the best out there. Thanks.
November 20th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
Thanks!