Landing Page Funnel Optimization: Why It Matters for Product Growth

February 21, 2025 Tuba Mertayak

Landing Page Funnel Optimization: Why It Matters for Product Growth

Introduction

In product management, every interaction a user has with a platform shapes their perception and decision to engage. One of the most critical touchpoints in this journey is the landing page funnel—the first step in turning visitors into active users or paying customers. Optimizing this funnel is not just about aesthetics or copy; it’s about conversion science, reducing friction, and guiding users seamlessly toward action.

At my company, our ongoing effort to enhance user acquisition and retention led us to revisit our landing page strategy. Here’s why optimizing the funnel became a top priority and how we are approaching it.

Why Optimize the Landing Page Funnel?

1️⃣ First Impressions Matter

A landing page is often the first interaction a potential user has with a product. A cluttered or confusing experience increases bounce rates and diminishes trust.

2️⃣ Higher Conversion Rates Mean Lower Acquisition Costs

When users find the right information, feel engaged, and take action, we increase conversions without needing to spend more on acquisition.

3️⃣ Aligning User Intent with Product Offering

Many landing pages fail because they don’t effectively communicate how the product solves a user’s pain point. Optimization ensures messaging, CTAs, and design all drive clarity.

4️⃣ A/B Testing Reveals Hidden Opportunities

Assumptions don’t convert—data does. Through systematic A/B testing, we can experiment with different CTAs, headlines, form structures, and visual elements to find the highest-performing combinations.

Key Areas We Focused On

✅ User Journey Mapping for a Frictionless Experience

Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, we mapped the ideal user journey to ensure a smooth transition from landing page to sign-up.

📍 Example User Journey:

1. Discovery: User clicks on an ad or searches for “best AI coding tutor.”

2. Landing Page: Engaging headline, clear value proposition, and interactive CTA.

3. Engagement: User watches a demo video or tries a free AI-assisted coding task.

4. Conversion: Seamless sign-up process with minimal form fields.

5. Activation: Immediate onboarding experience to retain users.

✅ Messaging Clarity & Value Proposition

• We refined copy to highlight our product’s unique value: personalized AI tutoring, real-world coding simulations, and community-driven learning.

• Avoiding jargon and keeping it simple ensured accessibility for beginners.

✅ CTA Placement & Engagement Hooks

• Instead of a generic “Get Started” button, we tested more compelling CTAs like “Try a Free Simulation” or “See How AI Can Improve Your Code” to match user intent.

• Placement adjustments ensured CTAs remained visible across devices.

✅ Reducing Form Friction

• We trimmed unnecessary fields in sign-up forms, lowering the cognitive load and making it easier for users to start.

• Social logins were introduced to speed up the process.

✅ Mobile & Performance Optimization

• With 70%+ of our traffic coming from mobile devices, we ensured fast-loading pages, responsive design, and easy tap interactions.

✅ Personalized Landing Pages Based on User Segments

• Visitors from different channels (ads, organic search, referrals) were shown tailored landing pages that matched their intent and journey stage.

Results & Next Steps

Initial data showed a 10-15% improvement in conversion rates after implementing these changes. But optimization is an ongoing process. We are now looking at:

🔹 Heatmap analysis to understand user behavior better.

🔹 Further personalization, including AI-driven content recommendations.

🔹 Testing alternative onboarding flows to improve user activation rates.

Final Thoughts

Landing page funnel optimization is not just a marketing task—it’s a product growth strategy. For product managers, understanding how users engage from the first touchpoint and refining that experience is key to scaling efficiently.

Our approach to landing pages is data-driven, iterative, and always user-first. If your product isn’t converting visitors effectively, it’s time to rethink the journey and optimize every step of the funnel.

The Importance of Unsatisfied

April 30, 2019 Tuba Mertayak

"Every truly history-making transformation has occurred when people have decided to go far evolutionary change"

I suddenly remember the quotes that I read many years ago. Traveling and long walk helps me to clean up my mind and move on. I used to work at a company revolutionizing the travel industry. We made people travel, go see the unseen and gain more experience. After receiving the product feedbacks from users who are happy or unsatisfied, I was feeling lucky. When I break it into chunks, the unsatisfied users were the most helpful ones. Because they are the unconscious advocates for our product. They were not just reporting bugs but were helping us to improve. They gave us the ability to assess what we had then and how to leverage them.

For me, contacting and connecting are two very different approaches to reach the unsatisfied. Leading a team requires a connection between you and the ones who report you. I have experienced many cases in which we achieved our goals faster after ensuring the connection between me and my team. Do not wait for your employees to admit that they are unsatisfied. I always encourage them to share their deepest thoughts about our process and start from there.

An Intellectual Choice

December 5, 2018 Tuba Mertayak

For those of you who have limited time, here is the twenty-second version of what I am going to say (a.k.a TL;DR):

“It’s time to give back to my community what I borrowed from them years ago: Knowledge. I am going to allocate my time to share my design knowledge, and starting free mentorship program.”

It took me ten years to get here. Ten years ago, I realized that I was not the best fit for finance industry. I was working successfully but unhappy on the top of the plaza building. Every morning, I was looking at the world from a different people’s perspectives. I was looking at the people how they get into bus, what they are reading, how they sip their coffee, how they push the elevator button, how they decide, how they interact with the world. I was definitely curious about human behavior.

The awareness of what I don’t like helped me to find who I am. I am a people person.

Even though studying economics at the college, I was spending my days at Modern Art Museums, discovering the collections, spending my summers at space camps to understand the universe deeper. I was attending lectures without being enrolled at fine art university, learning more. This enthusiasm gave me zero credit for graduation, but my future self.

I decided to go down the career ladder that I climbed. I said good-bye to my formal education that I have degree in. I start from the scratch to pursue my dream.

My dream was to invent, to produce, to explore, to make good, to demonstrate, to learn more day by day.

I am writing this to prove that anybody who wants a career change that’s possible. If I could do it in Silicon Valley, as a woman Muslim first generation immigrant, you could do it too.

Starting from December 10th, I am starting a free mentorship program. Enrollment is open but limited to three people. I am looking for the most enthusiastic career changers, who couldn’t lend their first design job. This is my only criterion. Because I know how painful is landing the first job.

This is not a program for you to find a job, but learning the path how to search. I will connect 1:1, possibly group one-time a week. Our connection duration will be six months. I will share the details.

Demographics and User Experience Design

June 29, 2018 Tuba Mertayak

It is hard to believe that smartphones have been with us only for ten years, it feels like they are around forever. As smartphones intuitively changed everything about how we interact with the world being inclusive becomes more important than ever. The digital world doesn't belong to a selective few anymore. And everyone wants to be part of it. Let's think about how we can increase the inclusiveness of the technology:

Native citizens of the digital world: Kids. Today's little kids were born to a world of voice UIs. If you can get them included in your ecosystem early on your users' average lifetime will be automatically increase at least 10 years! Although it comes with some legal restrictions, e.g. COPPA, they are great investment to collect the fruits in long term.
Although we want to connect all the people on the planet the illiteracy rate is 17% today. Even we can make all people online today without proper usage of voice UIs we cannot get the benefit out of it.
Cultural aspect of the translations on the applications is important. In my natural language (Turkish) call-to-actions like "click here" sounds weird and sometimes even offensive to the older people. No matter how many times I explained my mom asks me "why this wants me to click it".

As we progress on engineering the user experiences we'll hit limits, getting over them may be being more inclusive of different groups. However being inclusive may sometimes mean being "divisive". We must be open minded to test our products with different cultures and age groups to provide the best possible experience because "the best" probably differs from one demographic to another.