Landing pages are among the most popular ways marketing teams generate leads and sales and for their business.
Essentially, a landing page is a single page on your website that is designed to get more engagement. Marketers use e-books, webinar registrations, product promotions, and more to get curious consumers to provide their email address and name. Once they have this information, businesses can nurture these leads and eventually turn them into customers.
Turning your website into a lead-generation machine starts with your landing page. If you're not optimizing this page for maximum engagement, you're missing out on countless sales every month.
Our goal is to help you get more from your landing page, regardless of your industry or what you want to offer to subscribers. Let's start by exploring the importance of establishing goals. Then we will go over some design and marketing choices that will help you maximize your return on investment.
Have clearly defined goals
Before you start creating your landing page, sit down with your marketing team and establish your brand's goals. In other words, what do you hope to achieve by creating a separate page for users browsing your website?
Let's say your goal is to get people excited for your next webinar. You could offer a limited-time promotion for people that sign up for your event. Similarly, you could give away a lead magnet that compliments your webinar and adds more value to the viewer.
If you don't know what you hope to achieve, designing your page and creating an enticing offer will seem impossible. You have to start from a strong foundation, which includes a comprehensive plan that describes what you want to achieve and how you'll get to that point.
There are plenty of different elements you need to consider at this phase, so don't rush to a decision unless you're 100% sure your plan will help you ultimately reach your goals. Once you establish your goals, you can start thinking about the design of your landing page.
Keep your pages short and sweet (most of the time)
When you're designing your page, the first thing you'll need to consider is the length. Most users who make it to your landing page got there through social media, email or an advertisement from another site.
Because they likely found your page through a specific offer, you need to keep your landing page short and sweet. It's unlikely that a user will read through a 3,000-word blog post just to get to the offer that initially attracted their attention.
However, if a user lands on your page and the offer is front and center, there's a good chance they will follow through. Making small changes, like removing navigation links that are on many of your other pages, can double your conversions.
There's an exception to this rule that is worth mentioning. Users that are invested in your brand prefer long-form landing pages. It's possible to create short and sweet pages for new users because they are interested in a specific offer while at the same time creating a longer informational post for people that know your company and industry. Creating longer pages for these users can boost your conversion rate.
Landing page length typically boils down to user intent and brand commitment. Keep these factors in mind when you're creating different offers for your audience segments.
Add an actionable value proposition
Creating an appealing and actionable value proposition can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your landing page. Visualize going to a landing page with an uncomfortably long link at the bottom that goes to a web address that you don't recognize. Sounds terrible, right?
Now imagine going back to that same page, and seeing a visually appealing call to action that plainly says what you will accomplish by clicking through. There's no question that most users would click the link on the second page instead of the first. Why? Because there's a clearly visible value proposition in front of them.
For example, if you want to get people to sign up for your webinar, include an eye-catching call to action that leads to a professionally made registration form. Your audience will have an easier time trusting your brand, which translates to more clicks and conversions.
Avoid using broken links, unclear calls to action, and keeping information from users on your landing page because this will cause skepticism and result in more people bouncing from your site. Lowering your bounce rate is an entirely different topic, but trust us when we say it's much easier to focus on maintaining a low bounce rate than bringing it down after a sharp increase.
Test everything
A/B testing is a popular strategy used by brands to improve the results of their existing content and promotions. Simply put, A/B testing is when you make small changes to an existing campaign to get more conversions. Marketers test emails, blog content, social media posts and landing pages.
You can test your landing page by adding, removing, or changing existing elements on each page. Results are promising across the board to business owners that use this type of testing to build their lead list and boost sales. There's a good reason 44% of businesses use software to split test headlines, text copy, CTA buttons and adjust other elements.
The key to getting results from your experiment is to allow it time to succeed. Many business owners make split-second decisions when they see that their testing efforts are not immediately delivering the expected results. The truth is, you need a couple of weeks to determine if your test is working, or if it's time to go back to the drawing board.
Remember that negative results can still help you improve the quality of your landing pages. As you learn what works and what doesn't, you can slowly improve your engagement and click-throughs by keeping changes that yield positive results and reverting tests that cause a drop in conversions.
Showcase social proof
Finally, don't forget to include social proof on your landing page. Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon where people are more likely to buy a product if they see that other people had a positive experience with your company.
Testimonials and reviews are two of the most common forms of social proof. If you need proof that reviews work, think about the last time you bought something from Amazon. Did you blindly click Buy Now, or did you read through the reviews first? If you read the reviews, you've experienced social proof.
There's no question that adding a couple of testimonials can also dramatically improve your results. Business owners and marketers report a 34% increase to conversions on their sales page by adding testimonials.
You can gather reviews and testimonials by asking for them through email or social media. Simply send an email to existing customers and ask them to rate their experience on your site. Not only do you get the added benefit of reviews for your landing page, but you can also learn how to improve your website and products through constructive feedback.
Over to you
Improving conversions on your landing page can help you garner more positive feedback, boost brand visibility and increase your sales. Understanding the different elements that you should include and test on your page will help you gradually improve the way people engage with your brand.
Use these tips to fine-tune your landing page and create an irresistible offer that will keep customers coming back to your business for years to come.