Landing pages are pages on your website (or created elsewhere, like mailchimp or constant contact) that are separate from the rest of your site and serve one main purpose. The goal is almost always to achieve a type of conversion (acquiring leads, sales, or subscribers). Because they have only one goal and users focus only on completing the task at hand, results are easy to track. When done right, landing pages can be extraordinarily successful at accomplishing specific marketing goals. Here are some ways to make yours more effective:
- Be strategic. As always, start with your why. Have one goal and purpose. Think through the results in advance. Know what success will look like and how you’ll measure that success. Think about your audience, and where you will place your ad or links to your landing page. The from is as important as the to. The source, the ad, the CTA, and the content of your landing page should all work together to bring your audience and have them complete the desired task.
- Create a valuable lead magnet. Usually you are asking people to supply their information to you (name, email address, etc.) in exchange for a product (access to a webinar, a how-to guide, etc.). They are giving you their data and permission to use it for your mailing list or other marketing efforts. What you provide needs to be as valuable as the information you’re being given. Your goal is not to sucker people into signing up. Your goal is to earn the trust they’ve given you by sharing something important and useful.
- Carefully consider the CTA and lead forms. Think about how many steps the user must take to complete the desired action. Avoid having long forms. User experience is extremely important for all aspects of a landing page and a website in general, but especially here. Forms should be simple, easy, and short. Regardless of how great your offer or how wonderful your download, many users won’t go past one step, and the vast majority will abandon a form with more than two steps. Ask for only what you need. Make formatting choices that help your users. Drop down menus and multiple choice options will increase participation over manually entering details of anything beyond name and email address. Your CTA and/or lead form should stand out (use color contrast, a button, or other unusual formatting), and be “above the fold” (users should be able to see them without scrolling).
- Keep your page design minimalist. You have on average 3-5 seconds to make someone want to stay on your page. The design must be clean and inviting, uncluttered, and have a lot of white space. Have one main visual, a hero image that relates to your goal and will resonate with your audience. Have an obvious hierarchy of information, a clear CTA, and a responsive design (I cannot stress this enough). Make sure your font is clean, easy to read, and large enough. Use color and design to guide the reader’s eyes to the steps you want them to take and to the most important information. Consider using video as it holds attention and converts at a higher rate than images or text alone. Remove navigation bars from the page; you want the user focused only on the task at hand. The one exception is that you should link to your privacy policy to make users more comfortable with sharing their information.
- Keep your copy focused on the benefits to the user. Show them that performing the CTA and/or giving you their information can make their lives better. Have a really great offer, a compelling headline, and testimonials or other social proof. Show a video or images of your product or service in action if possible. Use motion design to highlight testimonials if only text is available. Keep your copy short and simple. A landing page should not have paragraphs of text. Try to look at your copy like you’re outside of your industry make sure it makes sense. You should always be putting yourself in the shoes of your customers, clients, or the people you serve, but especially in short bursts of copy where it’s tempting to use jargon or other shorthands that might confuse outsiders. If there are no outsiders in your target audience, it’s safe to ignore this advice.
- Have a thank you page. As soonas a person has supplied you with their information, made a purchase, or subscribed, your site should thank them. It’s always better to customize this page rather than using a standard template. Give it a little personality. Share some of your brand voice. Make it clear that you truly appreciate their trust in you. Provide instructions on how they can unsubscribe, opt out, or remove their information from your site.
- Test your results and adjust your strategies. Track your campaign’s success. Look at visitors and conversion rates. Do A/B testing on one variable at a time. Options include the CTA to test different wording or design styles, and the channels where you’ve placed ads to drive traffic to your page. This will help you evaluate your audience’s behavior across different sites, especially if testing ads on different social media channels. Remember to keep everything except the variable you’re testing the same across campaigns to get a truly accurate picture of what’s working, and be sure to give each campaign enough time to work before changing tactics.
Substance and Style 