By Howard Oliver, Director, What If What Next
What is a landing page? A landing page is a standalone web page created specifically for a marketing campaign. It is where a visitor “lands” after they click on a link in an email, ads, Google, Bing, and other search engine listings, social media, and elsewhere. Landing Pages address a single focus or goal, one well-thought-out call to action. A well-built landing page is the best option for increasing the conversion rates of marketing campaigns, lowering the cost of acquiring a lead or sale.
85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal yet. A staggering 80% of marketers also say their lead generation efforts are only slightly effective. Designing a landing page that converts is a challenge. Landing page design is hard to do well.
The biggest hurdle companies have in Landing Page design is creating a core compelling value proposition; the second is communicating it. It would be best if you asked, “So What’ to get it right. Use the following best-practices checklist to build High Conversion Landing Pages.
- Purpose:
- Dedicated to one campaign, buyer persona, or channel
- Start with a Sparkling Value Proposition
- Quickly communicating the major benefit of your product/service
- Value Proposition:
- Fine-tuning your value proposition can be tricky.
- Why do customers choose you over the competition?
- Pay attention to the language customers use on review sites, testimonials, and when you interact with them
- Fine-tuning your value proposition can be tricky.
- The Headline:
- Sells the sizzle, not the steak
- Describes the benefit of its product, reinforce its value proposition by explaining how those benefits come about
- Instantly acknowledges the target audience and explains how the offering is significantly transformative – you will be a rock star!
- Structure:
- Optimized for all devices, especially mobile
- Optimized for voice search
- Consider using Webchat and Webbots
- No navigation bar
- Blocks
- Social proof within the copy
- One link only
- Lively multimedia elements
- Short, multiple-choice sign-up forms
- Design:
- Colors and psychology are deeply linked.
- Use warm colors – red, yellow, and orange
- Buttons – make sure they stand out from the rest of your page.
- Visually appealing with a simple, clean design without too many bells and whistles
- Ensure that your landing page entices your visitors to act, use benefit-driven points to explain exactly how your product or service features add value.
- Copy:
- Lean on copy
- Only essential information
- Just enough information to get the buyer interested and asking questions.
- Bullets, headers, and spacing to break up large blocks of text
- Resonance
- Relevant tailored content, highly personalized, specific messaging that speaks to target personas’ needs and preferences.
- Strong ad copy and a compelling call to action
- Time-related words will create a sense of urgency
- Call to Action words
- Now
- Hurry
- One time only
- Last chance
- Before it’s gone
- Clearance
- Today only
- Limited time
- Instant
- Do not miss out
- Bonus Incentive
- Numbers
- Facts and figures
- Numbers are a great way to get people’s attention and make an offer more attractive
- Lean on copy
- You can use numbers to push a sense of scarcity – for instance, “Just three more in stock!”
- Or you can boost your social proof with numbers by telling customers how many other people have bought your product or service.
- Call to Action:
- Supporting information to encourage acting sooner
- Button clicks to help reduce the emotive level required
- Change text from “Buy” or “Buy Now” to something gentler, such as “Continue.”
- Offers
- Personalized, compelling urgency-driven offers
- Use URGENCY in moderation.
- Do not put pressure on your potential customers all the time, or they’ll stop taking your offers seriously.
- Forms:
- Asks for minimal information
- Clear
- Easy to complete
- Functional
- Responsive by design
- Provide trust signals and support information.
- Create a sense of urgency
- Offer Something People Want
- Set a Deadline
- Use FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
- Search Engine Optimization:
- Use On-Page SEO best practices tools such as SEMRush and Yoast
- To improve your landing page loading speed:
- Run speed audits with Google PageSpeed Insights or other tools.
- Optimize media files like images and videos.
- Use a content delivery network (CDN)
- Remove unnecessary landing page plugins
- Switch to a faster hosting provider
- Testing:
- Read through your features and landing page; ask yourself, “So what?
- Use SEMRush, Google Analytics data with mouse click data, scroll maps, and heatmaps to discover barriers to conversion
- A/B test key changes to discover a winner that continually drives more leads and revenue
______________________________________________________________________________