Generate More Leads With These Landing Page Best Practices
Landing pages are used in digital ads, email marketing, and PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns so that users can be redirected to a page with a specific call-to-action. It’s just one page that presents all the details of the offer and contains specially tailored copy that completes the ad’s initial message or offer.
A landing page’s call-to-action might invite the visitor to take advantage of a sales promotion and click the buy button, sign up for a subscription, mailing list or webinar, or enter their details to schedule an appointment or sales call.
It’s different from a home page because it’s made for a single purpose — to convert the visitor into a customer or lead. The offer and click-to-action is presented first and the details of your brand or company are only there to support the offer.
If you don’t use a landing page for your ads and simply lead your target audience to your home page after clicking on your ad, they’ll have to dig through different pages to find out exactly what your ad was about. This can frustrate visitors and many will abandon your page in just a couple of seconds if they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for.
A landing page presents the visitor with only two options: either take you up on your offer or leave. This typically results in a higher percentage of conversions from your landing page visitors compared to those who are just casually ending up on your home page through organic traffic.
Landing pages take advantage of the fact that whoever ends up on it is already interested because they took the effort to click on your ad. They’re already a high quality lead so it’s important to make the most of the opportunity and make their customer journey as simple as possible.
To make your landing pages more effective at generating leads and conversions, check out these essential best practices.
Establish the Goal of the Landing Page First
Good planning is essential to any ad or marketing campaign, and it makes your landing pages more effective. Before you go out and create a landing page, you should determine what you want to accomplish with it.
Ask yourself what’s most important for your business right now. The most common types of conversions are:
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- Generating leads
- Increasing sales
- Growing your audience
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Different approaches are required for each of these conversions. Remember that landing pages are extremely specialized so you have to make sure everything about it is tailored for a specific goal. Trying to do too many things at once will just dilute the effectiveness of your landing page.
If you want to generate more leads for your business your landing page design and copy should be carefully chosen to entice people to give you their details and contact information.
Remove Unnecessary Clutter
A landing page shouldn’t have anything in it that could possibly distract your visitors from going anywhere else. Most digital marketers will advise against adding menu or navigation options to your landing page. It should be simple and pared down in order to make your value proposition and call-to-action stand out.
However, depending on the type of business you’re in and how strong your brand image is, you might still want to provide links or buttons to your home page or a specific section of your site that’s relevant to your landing page offers. This will allow people who want to learn more about your company to figure out for themselves if you’re trustworthy.
Focus on Above the Fold Content
The most important section of your landing page appears above the fold. This means that everything that the user sees when your landing page first loads up should be on point.
Your proposal and click-to-action buttons should be clearly visible, and in most occasions should be all that the customer needs to take the desired action. Your copy above the fold should also be clear and concise. They shouldn’t have to scroll through the entire page to understand what you’re offering. In most cases, it should only take a couple of seconds for a visitor to make a decision.
Add Social Proof
Aside from showcasing your offer, click-to-action and a bit of your company background, it’s important to include social proof to your landing page. This will give your brand more credibility which is crucial if you’re trying to convince people to accept your offer in the span of a couple of seconds.
People nowadays are extremely reliant on online reviews. If they’re thinking of buying something from an unknown brand on Amazon, a couple of decent reviews will make them pull the trigger. If you add testimonials and proof that you’re a trustworthy company in a landing page, you’re making their decision making process much easier. They won’t have to click off your landing page and spend extra time researching on the Internet.
When your landing page visitors go somewhere else for more information, there’s no assurance that they’ll come back. So you’ll have to make sure everything they need to make a decision is already on your landing page.
Make the Action as Easy as Possible
A landing page should make it as easy as possible for visitors to complete the desired action and convert. Aside from making the call-to-action button very visible, you should also trim down things like sign-up and lead capture forms, and only require the most important information such as their name, email address or phone number.
You want to avoid frustrating your visitors with too many questions or requirements and make the conversion process as quick as possible.
Create Unique Landing Pages for Each Campaign
Your ad copy and landing page text should be in sync and should complement each other if you want to drive up conversions. This makes the overall experience from the ad click to the landing page seamless and more satisfying.
You don’t want to alienate your audience by showing them a landing page with copy that doesn’t have a similar tone to the ad they clicked on. It’s also better if your landing page and ads share the same design language and visual elements. The same goes for your images. Many people will click on your ads simply because they like the picture you used. So make sure the above the fold images on your landing page are the same or at least share a similar theme. Otherwise, you might end up confusing your audience.
Test and Revise
One of the benefits of using a landing page is that it’s easy to track how well it’s doing since it’s just one page. You can easily see how much traffic it’s getting and how well it’s converting.
If you’re not hitting your goals, don’t be afraid to revise its design and copy. Start by changing one element at a time then observing if you get any positive results. Sometimes, you’ll just have to revamp the entire landing page if minor tweaks aren’t doing anything. You’ll also want to try out different versions of your ads until you find one that clicks with your audience.