Landing pages exist for many reasons — to introduce your company to your prospective clientele, to provide information or data to stakeholders and customers, or to act as an online storefront. They have specific benefits that make them an effective lead generation and marketing tool. They are an action-packed asset for your business, and you must make sure that you design them around specific actions that can be tailored to meet your business goals. But in the end, every business wants a landing page that converts.
After you finish this Internet Marketing tutorial, check out our post on the Best SEO Tools and Software.
B2B and B2C companies that create 30 or more landing pages get 7 times more leads than those that use fewer than 10, as certain content marketing statistics show. When you choose to create a landing page, you take a step ahead in your comprehensive inbound marketing strategy. Landing pages serve the simple, yet highly valuable, purpose of making your users “land” when they click on a call-to-action within a page or an email to learn more about your specific offer, product, or service.
Having a Landing page simply means that you want your visitors to connect with you by providing an email address, sharing feedback, or making a purchase. You want an opening in order to begin a relationship that will, hopefully, pay off in sales in the long run. With so much to offer, landing pages are as important as finding the right domain name. FYI, tools like www.namefresh.com are great for choosing the right domain name. Once you have chosen the right domain name, you can swiftly move ahead to design the landing page for your new business offering.
How to Design a Landing Page That Converts
Determining the effectiveness of landing pages can help you with a lot of performance data that can then be used for improving the overall strategy. However, a landing page needs to be designed correctly if you are really looking to convert your prospective visitors into email subscribers and sure-shot customers. You can learn more about e-mail marketing by reading our Email Marketing Tips tutorial.
Here is everything you need to know about designing a great landing page that will actually bring about conversions.
1. Get Targeted: Targeting and Testing Landing Pages
Targeting and testing correctly can boost conversions by 300% or more. So, start by making sure you understand your target audience: what they need, what they struggle with, and what they are seeking. Once you understand what they are searching for when they arrive on your website, you’ll be able to provide them with the same.
- You can start by creating a marketing persona: A marketing persona helps you understand who you’re targeting, and how to write copy for that person. This marketing persona is going to be different for your varied target demographics. So, put enough research into figuring out your varied marketing personas.
- Be specific, clear, and concise about what you’re offering: Always remember that the attention span of the current digital audience is very short, mostly because of the endless online content that is available to consume. In order to stand out, you must eliminate clutter and confusion on your landing page and be very clear and concise in your message.
- Limit yourself to one message and one call to action on your page: A single landing page should only serve one purpose; one landing page — one call-to-action (CTA). Putting multiple offers on your landing page can decrease conversions by up to 266%. If it’s spot-on, you’ll see email addresses rolling in for more. A great way to make sure your call-to-action CTA is clear is the squint test. You squint at your page and if the CTA stands out when it’s all blurry, it’s a good CTA.
Targeting is critical because this is what customers today are looking for — whether you sell B2C or B2B. If you know who your customer is and how to capture that customer with your page, it’s going to be that much easier for you to drive conversions for your product/service or campaigns.
2. Create Helpful Landing Pages
When creating a landing page, it’s a good idea to think about it as a funnel. What information does your customer need? What message do they want to see?
No one likes a constant hard sell. Adjust your page so the focus is not on what you’re selling but on what your audience needs. If you can provide some free information, tools, ideas, or solutions, you’ll begin building credibility and trust with your audience. Using videos on landing pages can improve conversions by 86%. This is true because videos are able to give out more information than a page full of text can do.
You want your page to be someplace your visitors will come to when they need what you’re offering. You want to position yourself as a helpful expert who cares about your audience. The idea is that when a customer has a need where they believe you’re an expert, you’ll be the first one they turn to for help. So, maintain yourself as a trusted resource.
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3. Use Visuals for Landing Page Conversions
It’s no secret that society is becoming more and more visual. Many studies show that photography, images, and graphics reach many more people than the written word, and that video clips will follow as the preferred way to communicate.
Landing pages with lots of visuals will be more appealing and hold the attention of your audience longer than text-heavy content. The human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text, so your product photos really are worth 60,000 words.
A great visual is not only delightful for your customers, but it gives your customers the information they need to make a purchase decision.
Make your site interesting and informative and your audience will continue coming back for more.
4. Invest in SEO Tools
Do a little research and find the right tools for creating your landing page, as well as managing your email subscriber lists. Plenty of marketing tools, design tools, and templates are available today to help you come up with creative, specific, targeted and effective landing pages.
There are a few things to think about when choosing a good landing page design tool:
- Does it have all the features that I want?
- Does it function well with my email marketing provider?
- Does it function well with my CMS?
- Is it easy to use?
- Does it fit in my marketing budget?
Some impeccable landing page design tools are Hubspot, Unbounce, LeadPages and ucraft, among others. Also, you’ll want your back office software to support your conversions as well. Be sure you can analyze where your leads are coming from, the campaigns that generate high open or click rates, and the best times to reach out to your audience.
Having all this information will only make your next campaign that much more successful and allow you to send more relevant messages to your customers.
You can find more SEO and digital marketing tools in our list of the Best SEO Tools article.
5. Write Strong Headlines
Be sure your landing page is attractive and understandable at a glance. Drop any jargon or complicated concepts from your headlines or CTAs. Boil your message down to how your business can solve your prospect’s biggest problem, and you’ll be certain to attract attention and convert visitors to email subscribers.
For example, if you have a headline that says, “Make your Marketing Better,” while that might seem powerful, it leaves the customer with a vague sense. How can your customers make their marketing better? How do you define better?
Instead, opt for something with a direct benefit or consequence: “Create a Marketing Message that Drives More Revenue.” This tells the customer what they can concretely do, and precisely how it’s going to help them. Create a message → Make more money.
You only have a few seconds to capture a customer’s attention, so you need to tell them exactly how you’re going to improve their lives.
By taking these tips to heart, you’ll be able to easily convert those browsing around your website to interested potential customers. Getting visitors to sign up and convert into subscribers is the first step to getting them to convert to customers.
Once you secure the email addresses, you’ll have the initial information to provide even more targeted offers and information, leading these prospects further down the sales channel.
In the end, you’re striving for loyal, long-term customers committed to your company and its products and services. That journey often begins with a great landing page.
What are your best landing page tips? Share the love and tell us by dropping a comment below.
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About the Author
Catherrine Garcia is an experienced Web Developer at WPCodingDev and a passionate blogger. She loves to share her knowledge through her articles on web development and WordPress.