Landing pages appear after an online Ad, e-mail link, search result, or specific promotional URL and play an important role in the success of an online campaign. These pages are specifically designed for visitors and offer the first chance to convince and convert your visitors into profitable leads and customers.
Check out our Infographic on how to create an effective landing page and for best practices of landing page optimization.
Infographic by- Invesp
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Why you should Optimize your Landing Pages
1. Well designed landing pages help you to build confidence and trust among your visitors
2. Landing pages enhance user experience by eliminating distractions and providing clear Call to Action.
3. Increase your conversion rates
4. Maximize your campaign Return on Investment
5. Improve your site’s usability
16 Steps to Optimize your Landing Page
1. Know Your Visitors –
The only way you are going to be able to design and produce a landing page that is fully optimized is to know the people that you are marketing to. That does not mean that you need to know them personally, it means that you need to know the type of people they will be.
The easiest way to do this would be to create a list of demographics for that target market. Better yet, create a number of personas that you think your buyers could fit, and try to think of the way they would most likely behave, especially when they are online.
Creating customer personas will enable you to understand your customer better. The better you understand your customer, the more you will be able to attract them to your website.
2. Present A Clear Value Proposition-
Most of the people who visit your website are going to be asking one simple question; “What is in it for me?” It is up to your landing page to answer their question before they even have the chance to answer it. You need to be able to show exactly what products, services, contests, or whatever else you are offering so clearly that your visitors will have no choice but to buy into your offer.
To do this, you are going to have to present your value proposition very clearly and plainly. You need to use the right words and images on your page to convey the right message.
3. Post Relevant And Persuasive Content –
The content that you post on your landing page should be relevant to you the product that you are trying to sell. You would think that this goes without saying, but you will be surprised at the number of websites which get this simple point wrong. if you post content that is not relevant to the products that you are trying to sell, you risk losing potential clients. Ensure that all the content that relates to your product can be seen first, and follow that with content that remotely relates or does not relate to your product. This way, you will keep potential clients interested in your website for longer.
You also need to ensure that the content that you post is interesting, as this will help to keep users on your web page, and help you to convert more leads. Regardless of the fact that the content relates to your product, if it is boring you are sure to lose customers. Remember, keeping your prospective clients engaged brings you one step closer to converting your leads.
4. Deliver a Consistent Message
This is another point that may seem rather obvious but it is something that very many website owners seem to forget. You have to ensure that the message you send is the same throughout the landing page. For instance, if you are marketing a particular product, you have to ensure that the product you are marketing, and the message that you are sending while marketing the product remains the same throughout your sales drive. This includes the message that you send on your landing page.
You need to ensure that your list of benefits and your selling points remain the same throughout the campaign. If you change selling points in between a sales drive, you are likely to lose clients, especially those people that have been attracted to your website because of something unique in your message.
5. Provide a Clear Call to Action
Your call to action is the action that you would like your customers to take should they want to complete a transaction. For instance, if you are running an apparel website, your call to action button would be the buy button on a particular item of clothing. Your call to action button should be the most prominent feature on your landing page, and there should be no doubt about its function.
It is important to ensure that your call to action buttons are all clear, bold, and use contrasting colors. You need to ensure that the words that are used to describe them are also short and action oriented. For instance, if you’re website sells watches, you need the button to say “buy” or “get”, anything that short that would provoke a positive reaction from your clients. You need to show your visitors that there is an obvious appeal to buying or getting your product, and make them an offer they cannot refuse.
6. Balance Your Content And Images
To optimize your landing page, you are going to need to find a balance between your content and your images. These days, the internet places a lot of value on images, after all, they are the most shared and liked content online, especially on social media sites. People’s affinity to images these days means that they are also very effective when used on lead generating pages. This is because the more interesting images that you have on your lead generating pages, the more people are likely to stay on your website, and the more sales you are likely to make.
However, you do need to balance out the images on your page with content. Despite the fact that images are most likely going to attract visitors to your website, your content is what is going to pass on your message most clearly. However, you must remember to keep your content interesting or risk losing leads.
7. Create A User-friendly Layout
Today, many internet users do not have the time to dig through a website to find the information they need. Neither do they have the time to try and figure out what you are trying to sell them. For this reason, it is important that you keep the layout of your landing page as simple as possible, so as not to confuse prospective clients.
Too much information, too many pictures, and too much clutter in general will confuse your users, and drive them towards your competitors. To avoid users rejecting your website completely, you need to make it easy for them to see why they have come to your page in the first place. You must also ensure that your users know what they have to do once they have made a decision.
8. Use Emotional Triggers
When you are designing your landing page, it is important that you keep in mind that you are going to use emotional triggers at some point. In this case, emotional triggers are not those things that make people want to write an angry letter, they are the things that make people want to make a decision, and make one immediately.
For instance, if you have a website selling books or toys, you could scarcity tactics to help you convert a lead. You could use language like “limited supply” or “Click now, while supplies last”. Such comments help to create a sense of urgency, and help press your prospective lead to make a purchase.
Promoting your products by reducing your prices for a limited amount of time will also help pull in sales. Creating a sale that lasts for a certain length of time, perhaps a week, could help boost the number of visitors to your site, and turn convert a majority of those leads into sales.
9. Remove Distractions
One of the most important things that you can do to optimize your landing page is ensure that you remove any information or content that could distract your client from the goal that you would like them to achieve. For instance, if you would like your visitors to buy an item from your online store, everything on your landing page should be designed towards getting them to hit the “buy” button on the item. All information that does not do this should be considered a distraction and excluded from your landing page.
This includes any distractions within your content itself. If you have a landing page with cluttered or excessive content you may distract people from making a purchase. Additionally, if the navigation on your landing page is too large this could also distract prospective leads.
10. Don’t ask for too much Information
There is a very fine line between asking your leads for too much information and increasing your conversion rate. With more people being concerned about their privacy these days, internet users are less likely to give you much more information than their full name and email address. Additionally, very few people are going to take the time to fill out a form that has more than four or five fields in it.
For these reasons, it is important that you keep your form fields to a minimum. Perhaps making just their names and email addresses mandatory information. This does not mean that this is the only information that you should give your leads the chance to give you, you should have optional fields in the form as well. This will ensure that your form takes the shortest time possible to fill it, while giving your leads the chance to provide you with the information that they want you to know.
11. Build Trust
The more trustworthy your brand, the more leads you are likely to convert. However, not all your website visitors will trust your brand, especially those that are visiting for the first time. You have to make sure that you get them to trust you enough to buy your product. You have to be upfront about your brand, what it is and what it stands for, and ensure that the message that you send on your landing page is consistent. You need to ensure that your clients know what your company is selling or promoting, or what services you provide from the minute they view your website as this will help to build their trust quickly.
12. Respect Privacy
One thing that people want when they are on the internet is to be assured that their privacy will be respected, and that the information that they provide to websites will not be misused in any way. This is especially important now that there are so many people worried about their information being tracked by hackers and other malicious entities.
You need to assure your prospective clients that their privacy will be assured when they use your website. One of the best ways to do this is to write something like “We’ll never give out your email address” on your form. Another good technique to use would be to post a link to your website’s privacy policy on your landing page. This will allow your users to get all the information that they need on your policies at a click of a button.
13. Use Testimonials
One thing that people want when they are on the internet is to be assured that their privacy will be respected, and that the information that they provide to websites will not be misused in any way. This is especially important now that there are so many people worried about their information being tracked by hackers and other malicious entities.
You need to assure your prospective clients that their privacy will be assured when they use your website. One of the best ways to do this is to write something like “We’ll never give out your email address” on your form. Another good technique to use would be to post a link to your website’s privacy policy on your landing page. This will allow your users to get all the information that they need on your policies at a click of a button.
14. Keep it Simple
Your landing page needs to be as simple as possible so that you can get as many conversions as possible. No one likes to have to dig very far for the information they need, especially when they are on the internet. One of the best ways to ensure that you are not making your clients spend too much time on your landing page is to apply the ‘5 second rule’. Basically, you should ensure that it takes no more than 5 seconds to attract your potential client’s attention, and draw them in. If your page does not attract your potential clients attention almost immediately, they are likely to take their business somewhere else, maybe even to your competitors.
15. Test Every Component of Your Landing Page
You will be surprised at the number of people that put their websites on the internet without carrying out tests to ensure that they are running properly, despite the fact that this is one of the most important steps you can take. If you would like to have an exemplary landing page, you have to carry out testing to ensure that it is functioning the way you need it to.
You need to ensure that the images that you place on your website convey the image that you would like to portray. You also need to ensure that the message that you send through your content fits your brand. One of the best ways to do this is to create multiple versions of your landing page and A/B test each until you find the most effective version.
While you are testing, you need to ensure that your call to action is compelling. For this reason, you will need to test everything from the message and font that you use to the button color to find the combination that works the best.
16. Ensure Less Loading Time
The amount of time that it takes for your loading page is very important, and can actually determine whether someone stays on your website or not. Lengthy loading times can be frustrating, therefore it is important that your landing page loads as fast as possible. This will keep your users engaged and interested in your website, and ensure that they do not even have the time to think about going to any of your competitors.
Therefore, you need to ensure that your landing page does not have too many images or videos, and that there is as little clutter as possible on your site. This will help to keep the size of the webpage down, which in turn will help decrease loading times.
Top 5 Landing Page Mistakes
1. Bad headline
The headline on your landing page is important as it tells your visitors what your website is all about. It also provides them with a glimpse of what they can benefit from by visiting your website. However, most importantly, it gets them to continue reading.
If your landing page headline does not do any or all of these things, you need to change it. If your headline is too long, or does not relate to the content of your website or to the image that you are trying to portray, and does not make users curious to find out more information, you have a bad headline that you need to change. You should consider adding a few key words you think your prospective clients will be looking out for, and using phrases like “We can help” to pique their curiosity.
2. Using main homepage as a landing page
A website’s homepage is meant to be the introduction to your website and your prospects, it is not supposed to be about selling people your products or services. Your homepage is meant to enable your prospective clients to connect with you, and encourage them to either convert to your brand because they know more about it, or encourage them to browse through your website to find out more. They are not meant to help you turn your site visitors into leads. However, that is exactly what landing pages are meant to do.
For this reason, using your homepage as a landing page could deprive your visitors of information that could have been used to convert them and guarantee a sale. Using homepages as landing pages has been shown to turn users away, and can even contribute to as much as a 20% drop in conversion rates.
3. Disconnect between Ad and Lading Page
The ads that show up on your landing page need to relate to the product or service that you are trying to sell. For this reason, you need to ensure that there is always a connection between the content on your landing page and the ads that appear next to that content. This is so that you can help maintain your visitor’s attention on what you are trying to sell, and minimize the distractions they have when they are making the crucial decision to make a purchase.
If you have created a host of different landing pages, you could try creating different ads as well so that they can better connect with the content on each landing page. By doing this, you could increase your conversion rate and make more sales.
4. Call To Action below the fold
There are many arguments on line as to where to place the call to action on a landing page. There are many who insist that it does not matter, however, it has been shown that call to action buttons that are above the fold are more effective. The fold is basically the first 600 pixels of a webpage, or the first space that you see before you have to scroll down. If you would like to make the biggest impact, you need to have your call to action buttons placed above the fold so that they gain prominence.
5. Poorly designed form
The design of your form is very important, especially if you would like to convert as many people as possible and gain as much information on your customers as you can. If you have a poorly designed form, people are going to be less willing to fill it in, and you will lose potential leads.
Forms that are too cluttered or that ask for too much information should be avoided, as should forms with elaborate fonts that may be hard to read. You should ensure that all your forms ask for as little mandatory information as possible, all other information can be provided as an option. You should also ensure that the information included in your form is easy to read so as not to confuse your visitors, and that the fonts you use are as simple and attractive as possible.
