July 07, 2017
Landing pages are remarkably simple things; they’re the end-point for email, social and PPC marketing campaigns.
They also appear to have an incredibly straightforward job; people are drawn in by your initial communication or advert and end up on a webpage that's designed to convert them from a casual passer-by into a paying customer.
However, while they may look simple, like all great things, landing pages are tricky to get right.
It’s all-too-easy to create a landing page that sucks and immediately turns people off. And that’s a crying shame, because it means all of your hard work in developing the campaign itself is pretty much wasted.
Let’s avoid that, shall we?
Here’s 6 simple tips for creating landing pages that convert:
Don’t fill the landing page with unnecessary content; everything should be battling hard for a position.
White space is your friend as a website designer. Use it judiciously and let the content that should be there breathe.
There’s nothing worse than heading to a landing page only to be met with content that doesn’t bear any resemblance to the advert of message on which you clicked.
Make sure the messaging, imagery and - obviously - offer, is consistent. You’d be amazed by how many businesses get this crucial element wrong!
The mere mention of ‘A/B testing’ is enough to make most people run a mile, but it’s not the laborious task you might expect - and it pays dividends.
Try testing a couple different versions of your landing page by either creating two campaigns that run side-by-side or swap halfway through. Review the stats for both - which worked best? Can you work out the change that made the biggest, most positive difference?
Think about the number of times you’ve ended up on a landing page only to be met with a huge form you have to fill out…
You didn’t fill it out, did you?
And why would you? Make sure your visitors don’t do the same disappearing act by creating a very simple call-to-action. Grab one piece of contact information (their email address, ideally), and ask them to click one button - that’s it.
Newsflash: the people who end up on your landing page don’t give two hoots about your company.
They care about one thing: themselves. So, with that in mind, don’t include any waffle about how many years you’ve been running or the number of trophies in your board room cabinet; stay on-message and focus on reiterating the benefits of your product or service to the customer.
Video works; eighty-seven percent of marketers use it for a reason.
If your budget can stretch to a video for your landing page, you’ll stand an even higher chance of seeing a boatload of conversions coming through.
Just thirty seconds will do, and a brief explainer about your offer or playful animation about its benefits is all you need to concentrate on producing.
Ok, so we started this post by suggesting landing pages are hard to get right - and that remains true, but as you’ll see above, there are some remarkably simple things you can do yourself to make sure they’re as effectively designed as possible.