An Essential Guide to Create a Stellar Landing Page.
A landing page is a standalone web page that is disconnected from a website’s navigation. This page is created only for the purpose of convincing a visitor to take action (whether it is signing up, making a purchase, downloading content, etc.)
When you have a well-designed landing page, it helps you attract the attention of your website visitors to just the one single offer which means there is no scope for any distractions. When the visitors reach your landing page, it is with a single focused intent — to receive an offer or something of value by completing a lead capture form.
To make things simpler, I have sectioned the tips and tricks into 5 different categories so that you have a guide in front of you that would help you design a great landing page.
I. Design
1. Apply Color Psychology
A revered study suggests that it only takes about 90 seconds for any customer to form an opinion about any product they encounter. About 62–90% of this interaction is dependent solely on the color of the product. This principle translates quite fabulously to the ad campaigns or your landing page as well! Use this fact to your advantage and increase your conversions.
2. Use Typography to Your Advantage
All these factors are of great importance because the content that you put up must be readable and easy to comprehend. When ignored, the focus of the customers might stray to the effort involved in reading the content, instead of the real message it intends to convey.
3. Design Must Stay Above the Fold
“Above the Fold” might be the bane that a designer has to live by, and the dreaded top box of 600 pixels might give much grief to the designer in you. However, the fact of the matter is that seldom do the visitors to your site scroll down. (I mean unless there is an indication of something really intriguing down below!) while designing the landing page make sure that none of the “good stuff” goes below the fold, especially the call to action! If going below the fold is simply unavoidable for any reason, make sure that your call to action is repeated at the end of it as well.
4. Design Delightful Buttons
The buttons you design for your landing page make all the difference in the world! In most of the cases, your buttons are essentially your primary call to action! This is why, it should be designed with great attention.
5. Pay Attention to Design & Make Sound Investments
No matter what you are offering, it is an offer with good design that would always have higher chances of winning. When you have pages that look good, you are conveying to the audience that you are a professional in every sense. A well-designed page would always create trust and security in the audience by simply looking better than the others.
6. Begin with A Blank Canvas
A landing page that has been designed in the right way, would not have a navigation, unnecessary links, or any superfluous elements that might prove to be a distraction because the whole idea and intent here is for the visitor to either convert or leave. The moment they have something else to do on the page, they are going to be distracted and your conversion rates are bound to take a nosedive.
7. Use Design Elements to Direct the Visitor’s Eye to the CTA
When you look at a painting, it is natural that your eye would follow the direction that the subject is looking or pointing at. It only follows that when you place design elements of images that point to the call to action button, the eye would naturally be guided to the CTA thus enhancing your conversion rate considerably.
8. Make Sure to Include All the Critical Elements
The landing page you design is essentially where you are going to be capturing all those precious leads and are critical for converting the visitors into leads by carrying out a transaction to completion or by collecting or grabbing their contact information. For these transactions to actually go through it is especially important that your landing page be fortified with the following critical elements in it:
- A headline and preferably a sub-headline
- Offer description with clear emphasis on the value of the offering
- A minimum of one supporting image (maybe more)
- Supporting elements like client testimonials, security badges or other such paraphernalia (optional)
- The defining element — a lead capture form
9. Less Is More
“Keep It Simple Stupid” and “Less Is More” are two great examples of classic sayings that go a great way in helping you design the best landing page there can be! Any landing page that has too much going on in terms of design can end up looking like a whole lot of clutter. A cluttered or overpopulated page can only lead to an audience that is confused, distracted and overwhelmed. You would produce better designs once you learn to accept and leverage white spaces and learn to keep the text and images on the page simple and to the point.
10. Add Proof Elements to Instill Faith
When you add elements like Logos, Pins, Likes, or Shares on your landing page, you are exhibiting to your visitors how popular you are and that your customers love what you have to offer them. In situations where visitors are having trouble coming to a decision or are looking for information, they would turn to others for suggestions or recommendation which would help you to come to a decision.
II. Content & Copy
11. Draft Gripping Copy
The copy that you create should be crisp and clean and must convey the value of the offer. The content should convey clearly the benefits of the offer and should clearly let the users know of all the benefits they are going to receive by downloading the resource or signing up with you. The copy on your landing page must compel the visitors to take an action and convert!
12. Make Sure That the Copy Is Scannable
Most of the website visitors scan through the content that they come across while browsing. It is, therefore important to make the copy on the landing page easily scannable. This can be accomplished quite successfully when you use bullet points instead of a wall of text, vary the font sizes in order to differentiate between the elements of different levels of importance.
13. Leverage SEO
Search Engine Optimization or SEO can go a long way in helping you get your landing page found by the right people. SEO helps increase the chances of your landing page getting ranked high on the search engine results page when relevant keys are used in your page URL, headlines, and all through the text.
14. Include Visual & Video Content
Some of the more serious case studies actually indicate that when photos of real people are used the conversion rates can go up by almost up to 50% as compared to the landing pages where stock photos have been used.
15. Include Testimonials from Genuine Buyers
This increases your trust quotient which can further come in handy when you want to increase the conversion rate of your landing page. When people see that other people just like them are already using your product and that you and your product are solving their problems, the chances of them getting converted are a lot higher.
16. Make Sure Your Opt-In Form is Optimized
This is the most important and critical part of the landing page is the lead capture or the opt-in form. The opt-in form is where the visitors fill in their information, in exchange for the offer. Now, this opt-in form needs to be optimized. The opt-in form is the real deal; it is what would get you the most out of the landing page.
17. Craft Appealing Headlines
The headline that you create must be able to convey the most in 5 words or less, and unless you can manage that, keep iterating! Clever wording won’t convert because no one wants to make efforts simply to figure out what is it that you are trying to convey.
18. The Ad Copy Must Align with the Headline
The ad copy and your headline must be aligned and if you fail to take care of it, you are only going to either confuse your audience or make them doubt your authenticity. The copy you draft for your ad and the headline must match exactly or be really similar. When you do this, you ensure a smooth transition, lower the bounce rate, and resultantly improve your conversion rate.
19. Offer Enough Information
The amount of information that should be included in the landing page depends on the level of complexity of the tasks that you want your visitors to perform. This means if you are offering complex products or the customers are making a large purchase, they are going to need more information as compared to smaller, simpler purchase decision.
20. Convey the Value Clearly
The offer that you are making should be made in a clear crisp manner. The copy you develop for your landing page must convey this value clearly sop that the visitors can see the way in which the product would help them. People would only covet your product when they see any value in it.
21. Make Your CTA Persuasive
The importance of CTA or your call to action is second only to the headline when it comes to improving conversion rates. Your call to action should be small (between 5 and 7 words), use verbs to indicate the value they are going to get like “Get Free Downloads” or “Create an Account” instead of things that they have to do like “Submit” “Fill in Details” etc.
22. The Ads, the Headline & the CTA Must Be Consistent
This might seem obvious, but it is amazing how many people fail to do this. If your ads, headlines, & the CTA are not consistent you might disappoint people. The landing page must match the ad perfectly so that the users may enjoy a predictable and relevant experience. It is important that your messaging is consistent.
23. Incorporate ‘The Voice of the Customer’
Quite like the design of your landing page, the copy is of great importance as well. When you make use of ‘The Voice of the Customer’ you would easily be able to create a stellar landing page. While you can use buzzwords and terminology, but it would get you much better results if you chose to speak to the visitors in their own language.
III. User Appeal & Experience
24. Make Sure the Navigation is Simple
The landing page that your visitors land on is of critical importance for the accomplishment of the goal of your promotion campaign that you are running. If this page confuses people or overwhelms them in any manner, the results are definitely not going to be favorable. This is especially true when it comes to the navigation aspect. It is of great importance to keep the navigation as simple as possible. Like I said earlier, all the content that is important must always be above the fold on the screen for ease of understanding and access.
25. Make It Mobile Responsive
The smartphone lives in our pockets today, and so can your landing page! 69 percent of the online activity today is accounted for by mobile traffic, and this is why you simply have to have a landing page that is mobile responsive. Not only would a responsive design offer to the user, a much evolved and better user experience, but it has also come to be included by Google as one of the main factors that contribute to the ranking for your landing page.
26. Showcase Trust Symbols
If the people visiting your landing page have a tough time putting in any kind of faith in you, the rate of conversion is going to be severely hampered. It is important that the landing page be able to establish credibility and a good way to take care of this is by displaying trust symbols like any kind of awards or accolades that you, your brand, or your product may have received or any other credentials that you may have. This can be a great space to flaunt about all the great clients that you have bagged. Put up the big brand names and the logos of the big clients you have acquired and offered services to.
27. Make Your Contact Information Accessible
It is only natural that some of the people who land up on your page would have some questions that the landing page may not be able to answer. In such situations they would want to reach out to you and ask you directly what they want to know. Now imagine that you were in their place and you could not find any way to get in touch with the organization. How do you think you are going to feel and what do you think you are going to do?
28. Integrate Social Sharing
When you have a page that is highly shared Google likes it, which is why you should make sure to include social sharing buttons on it. These social sharing buttons should be so designed and placed that they are highly visible on the page so that people can not only find them easily but also feel encouraged to share your content. It gives the prospects an opportunity to evangelize your content and the offers or products you have for them.
29. Offer Minimum Options
When you are designing the landing page, you might get carried away and end up offering a world of options to the clients. Though you might believe that numerous options would appeal to a wider audience, but too many options can confuse them and lead to a higher bounce rate and lower rate of conversion.
30. Ask Only What Is Essential
When you are developing a landing page and a lead capture form, it is possible that you would have a tough time figuring out how much or how little information should you ask for. Now, this is usually a little tough to figure out, but it would be safe to ask only for that information which is absolutely essential to qualify as a valuable lead.
31. Incorporate Contextual Design
When you design your landing page, you would have quite a few points from where you would be pulling in the traffic to it. You would be getting traffic from your social media promotional posts, the blog, your website, or any banner ads that you are putting in place for the purpose. Now the kind of information that these people are looking for, would also be different from one another.
32. Speed Is of the Essence
An average person on the internet doesn’t have the patience to keep waiting for the webpage to load. In fact, if your webpage is slow to load, it is going to get trashed!
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Google page speed tools can help you in a big way if you were looking for suggestion on optimizing the speed of your page. There are a number of things that you can do in order to keep your code light and making your page speed up. This can be done by reducing and optimizing the image elements on the page and making good use of CSS and typography.
33. Offer What the Audience Is Looking For
Aligning your landing page and the offer you put on it with the audiences you are targeting is one of the most important aspects that you must pay attention to. You might develop a stellar landing page, but the offering you have for your audience might not align with their expectations and that can only mean disaster for the success of your landing page.
34. Infuse Emotions
Human beings are emotional by nature and when you appeal to the emotional side of the user, chances are that they are going to sit up and take notice. When you add an emotional touch to the content or copy of your landing page, you can improve the conversion rate by capturing visitors’ interest. In this way the visitors would be able to relate to you, to your company and the brand, and to other customers.
35. Attend to Customer Anxieties
Whenever a customer is trying to make a decision about any purchase, it is only natural that they would have certain anxieties. It is important that you not only anticipate these anxieties and questions that the customers may have or concerns that might come up, but even address them and answer them even before any of this occurs to them. It is this trait that would make the landing page great.
36. Multiple Landing Pages Generate Additional Leads
According to HubSpot, when companies increase their landing pages from 10 to 15, they experience a 55 percent increase in leads.
In order to increase the number of landing pages on your site, you can invest in one of the basic landing page creation tool. This can also be used to create more offers, work on the offers you already have and make them suit better to the different individual buyer personas, and even repurpose the content that you already have.
37. The Form Must Appear to be Short
Now there are certain things that you can take care of, while you are designing the form which can help you make the form appear shorter:
- Reduce the spacing between the different fields that you are putting up on the form
- Put in the titles to the left of each of the field instead of putting them above the field making it appear shorter
- Make sure that the form takes up as less a space as possible indicating that you are asking for less than you actually are
- Wherever possible, implement smart fields which automatically adjust to a shortened version once a visitor had already entered into your marketing database
38. Bring A Drastic Change in the Sign-Up Flow
Small optimizations will only lead to smaller results. So, if you are engaging in changing the colors of the buttons or font kerning you are only putting in a disproportionately high amount of effort and bringing about little to no results and missing out on huge conversions.
39. Make Landing Page Forms Mobile Friendly
Using smartphones has made us look for instant gratification everywhere. It means that if I want to make a purchase, I want to do it right then and there, even if I am on the move! This means that the mobile landing pages that you put up and the forms on it should be as easy to use as possible with minimal effort needed for conversion.
IV. Testing
40. Test, Test, Test
There is a reason why we said it thrice! Start testing your landing page even before you start spending because there is absolutely no substitute for testing. Roll some tests out on one of the online platforms and find out what the users or the audience have to say about it. Consider their response and their feedback, so you know which elements to keep and which ones to tweak.
41. Use A/B Tests for Everything on Your Landing Page
It is the process of testing two versions of parallelly and comparing the performance of the two. Generally, what you would do is test the response of a subject to Version A as compared to Version B, with the final intent to determine which version is more effective. While choosing the landing page editor, make sure that it lets you A/B test your page, so that you can optimize every element of the landing page. This would go a long way in helping you achieve the conversion rate you are looking for.
About The Author
Vivek Srivastava, co-founder, Appy Pie, is a digital analyst and writes extensively about website and app promotion. He has over 8 years of experience in outbound and inbound digital marketing, website analytics, social media, conversion rate optimization and business analytics. Before entering the Digital arena, Vivek covered technology news for TV channels, Local Newspapers and Radio Channels. He also has a keen interest in music and he enjoys playing music instruments.
Originally published at https://www.appypie.com on August 7, 2018.
