5 Elements for Creating an Optimized Landing Page
A landing page has a specific job — to warm up leads and drive them to take an action.
A great landing page will tell your customers what your product or service is, why they need it, and how they can get it. Consider these five points when designing and developing your landing pages to maximize efficacy:
1.) Ensure Your Offer is Consistent with Your Ads
Make sure any imagery, colors, design elements or keywords you used in your ad are reflected on the landing page. Readers should clearly recognize that they are on the website they intended to visit. If your ad promoted a downloadable checklist, but your landing page promotes 20% off an item, people will be confused. Include your brand logo on the page to give further assurance.
2.) Provide Digestible Content
No one likes to read a wall of text. And on smartphones, a long paragraph could become an intimidating text wall. Use visual breaks like uncluttered design and bullet points to help a reader’s eyes focus on the features you want them to see. If your site has a form, keep it short, and ask only for the information you need.
3.) Give a Clear Call-to-Action
A CTA must not only be present, it must be specific and obvious. A paragraph explaining why you should download an ebook is not a CTA. A button that states “Download the eBook” is a perfect CTA. By making the CTA a button in a contrasting color, it will be clearly visible. When a visitor comes to your landing page, they should not question if they should take an action, or what it should be.
4.) Build Consumer Trust
Include a review with a quantifiable measure of how your offer helped that person. Instead of, “It saved time”, choose one that explains, “I was able to complete my work two weeks faster than usual”. Online consumers understand popular star-rating systems, so include your average rating if it’s high. If you’ve won awards or been featured on a respected website, TV show, or radio show, tell your visitors! “As seen on Good Morning America”, or “As seen in Better Homes and Gardens magazine” uses the decades of trust from well-known media to establish trust in your brand.
5.) Optimize for Mobile
Any page you publish online should be designed and developed for mobile responsiveness. If your copy includes phone numbers make sure they are click-to-call, and when possible, consider making your forms auto-populate from social media or email accounts. If they don’t, forms should only require a few brief fields of information. Ensure your page has a quick load time, as even a few seconds of hesitation can be the #1 factor that causes someone to leave a page or abandon an offer.
BONUS TIP: Avoid external links
Linking to internal or external pages may be helpful for SEO, but they don’t belong on a landing page. Don’t encourage a visitor to click around and lose sight of your offer, or worst of all, to leave your site entirely. Create a page that only has one place to click: the CTA. Once you have contact info or you’ve placed a retargeting pixel, you can nurture a lead with emails, retargeting ads, more content, and additional landing pages.
Follow these rules to create a landing page that performs and converts.
Do you have any questions about Landing Pages?