The landing page is the gateway through which visitors can enter your sales funnel to become leads, and ultimately customers.
There is much that needs to be done on a landing page to make it convert visitors to leads. Simply setting up a landing page without having an end goal and knowing how to optimize it will not help in improving your sales. A good landing page should prompt visitors to enter their details on the lead capture form to get your offer. In particular, the landing page should pre-sell your offer; it should tell visitors why they need to get the offer right now!
There is no real formula for creating a high converting landing page. You need to test and optimize any landing page to find out how best it can convert. That said, there are a couple of elements you need to consider on your landing page to improve conversions. These elements include:
1. Page Copy
The landing page copy should tell visitors what to expect from your offer. The copy should be concise and speak of the benefits that the visitor will get when they download, buy or order your offer. In particular, you want to show visitors how your offer will solve the problems they have.
Make it easy for visitors to consume your copy. Use heading and bullets to highlight important information about your offer. Use a font type that is readable. Also, stick to one color font for the text. Black works best.
2. Graphics/Video
Graphics and videos are not really required on the landing page. However, depending on your offer, they can help to improve conversions. The best practice of using these visual aids is to ensure they are relevant to your offer and add value to the visitors.
For example, if you are offering a software, you can have a brief video showing the software dashboard and how to use it. Do not simply use video or graphics for the sake of it.
3. Call-to-Action (CTA)
Every landing page should have a CTA that clearly tells the visitor what to do. The CTA should be bold and conspicuous. Ideally, you want it to be an image or in a font that is bigger or different in color from the copy text font used.
Use an action verb for the CTA. Examples of good CTAs include “Download Now”, “Instant Access”, “Order Now”, etc. Make it clear to visitors what they need to do to get your offer.
4. Eliminate Distractions
Getting visitors to your landing page is already hard work and you do not want to lose them at this important point. Therefore, make sure any information you provide on the landing page is geared towards making the visitor convert to a lead. This means eliminating any distractions on the page.
Avoid linking to outside pages or having navigation links on the landing page. At the same time, present only one offer on your page. You don’t want to make users confused on which offer they should go for. If you have multiple offers on your website, each should be presented on its own landing page.
5. Lead Capture Form
You need to a way to get the contact information of your visitors on the landing page. Usually, you only need the email address of your prospects to keep in touch with them in future. If you do not have a prior relationship with the prospect, ask for the minimum bare information. Asking too much information can reduce lead conversions.
However, depending on your niche and existing relationship with your leads, you may ask for more information. For example, if you are targeting B2B customers, you may ask for more information than simply the prospects’ emails. Information like the name, company, prospects’ title, location and phone number may be important for your segmentation.
Make Your Landing Pages Work
Before you create a landing page, have an end-goal in mind. What do you want to achieve with the landing page? Are you looking to increase your email subscribers list or build awareness about your offer?
Your page should be optimized with your intended conversion. For example, if you want visitors to buy your offer, your copy and all elements in the web page should be geared towards buying. Keep in mind the needs of your users when designing the landing page. Forget “sexy” and go for what works. Your landing page copy and element should be based on informed solutions to real problems.
Never assume that a single landing page will work great for all your offers. It is important to split-test your landing pages to get one that will lead to optimal conversions. With some landing pages, the copy will help in conversions. With others, videos or testimonials may be the key conversion drivers.
Creating a landing page is not difficult. The difficult problem is creating a landing page that converts. When you understand your target visitors and have a compelling offer, you will have finished the first step of conversion. What will remain is optimizing the landing page for the best conversion rates.
