Landing pages are the web pages where visitors arrive from an external link or search result. In other words, a landing page is where they first land on your website. A landing page is often a potential customer’s first exposure to your business. It is crucial, therefore to give a good first impression.
Typically, your homepage is your website’s landing page, but you can have as many landing pages as you wish. It is considered good business practice to create multiple landing pages, each with a particular market or result in mind.
According to a recent survey by Marketing Sherpa:
- 64% of marketers see landing pages as the most effective way to test value propositions (why a consumer should buy a product or use a service).
- 68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to gather new sales leads for future conversion
- 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign
How do Landing Pages work?
Another way to think of landing pages, other than simply where visitors land for the first time, is as a tool for landing customers. Success is measured not in visits to the page but in how many people follow the call to action you have set up on the page, I.E. your Conversion Rate.
For e-commerce sites, the goal would be to make a sale, but you also may want to capture email addresses so that you can add browsers as well as buyers to your mailing list. For B2B businesses, forms that require the visitor to enter their contact details are a good call to action if you want to secure leads for future conversion. The question is: what advantage is there for the visitor in filling out the form?
What you put on a landing page depends on who you are targeting and what you want them to do when they get there. Like any marketing efforts, creating successful landing pages will require careful planning and some trial and error.
Do’s and don’ts for successful landing pages
1. Make forms easy to find and easy to fill in
Don’t ask for too much information
A big turn-off for visitors is being asked to enter a large amount of detail about themselves or their business. Not only is it a pain to fill in lots of fields, it’s rude. After all, they don’t know you yet, so pumping them for information right from the get-go is crossing a boundary.
Do stick to only what information is necessary
Three or four fields are usually sufficient: like name, email and phone number, or name, email and a field to state their question. You can add a tick-box for permission to send them newsletters, or whether they want to talk to a consultant, but don’t assume they want to share everything you want to know about them immediately – this is after all, only your first date.
2. Keep it simple
Don’t put up multiple offers
Tempting though it might be to try and get more from a landing page, displaying multiple offers will only confuse visitors and result in a lower conversion rate. Landing pages with multiple offers get 266% fewer leads than single offer pages.
Do stick with one offer per landing page
A single offer with a clear call to action that is easy to find, understand and complete will direct visitors exactly where you want them to go, with no confusion or clutter to divert them from the desired path.
3. Avoid saying too much
Don’t drown your message in details
When it comes to information, less is definitely more. Too much text on the page will make it harder for visitors to understand what you are trying to tell them. If they cannot determine the point of the page in less than 5 seconds, they will leave.
Do direct the eye with clear signals
A small amount of information, with key points about the product or service highlighted, will serve you better than screeds of data. Most people don’t want to read the manual before they buy a gadget – they just want to know if the thing can do what they want it to do.
Answer the pertinent questions:
- What is it?
- How can it help me?
- What is required from me?
- Where to from here?
4. Make your headlines pop
Don’t be boring or generic with headlines
There should always be a headline to greet the visitor and clearly state the purpose of the page. Avoid headlines that are boring or don’t grab the reader’s attention immediately. If your headline doesn’t reflect the content of the page in a concise and compelling way, it is not doing its job. You may as well have it say: Go no further – there is nothing of interest here.
Do test your headlines
Headlines have an important job to do, but are often overlooked by marketers when testing the effectiveness of landing pages. Just as you would use A/B splitting to test the effectiveness of different headlines on a marketing campaign, you can set up two landing pages that split visitors, to measure which is more effective. Ask how to set up A/B testing on landing pages for your website.
5. Page loading speed
Don’t clutter your landing page with slow-loading content
If your landing page takes too long to load, then you will lose potential customers before they even get to visit your site. In fact, 40% of consumers will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Shoppers who are dissatisfied with a website’s performance are less likely to buy from that site again.
Do test page loading speeds on different devices
The number of New Zealanders accessing the internet from their smart phones or other mobile devices is increasing every year. It is important therefore that you check to see if your landing page is quick to load from a range of different devices. How it displays and where the call to action appears should also be previewed on different screen sizes before you launch the page.
6. Test everything and test again
Don’t leave low-performing landing pages unattended
If a landing page isn’t generating the desired results, you need to fix it. Change headline, change the message, change the call to action or change the layout. Try different things until you come up with the right combination that brings you the best results. The longer it stays as it is, the more visitors you are turning away from your front door.
Do track your results
Having several versions of a landing page allows you to measure what is working in real time. The level of traffic to your page will determine the best ways to test different landing pages and how many at once to get an accurate picture, but never stop testing and tweaking the content to improve your conversion rates.
7. The credibility factor
Don’t use generic endorsements
Sites with inflated or vague claims and empty endorsements lack credibility. Overstating the product or service undermines its qualities by making it less believable.
If you have an accreditation or mark of quality, display it. When giving figures to back claims, precise numbers are more credible than rounded numbers.
Do add honest testimonials
People can spot a fake testimonial a mile off. Publish real feedback from your satisfied customers. If you use reviews, don’t edit the results. 68% of consumers will trust them more if they can read the bad reviews along with the good ones.
Most important of all, don’t be afraid to use landing pages to try different things for your business. Responsive websites allow you to add new pages as and when you need to, giving you greater flexibility in turning your website a powerful marketing tool.
If you would like some help with creating a series of landing pages to fit with your planned marketing activity, then contact Web Tonic today. Our internet specialists will help you come up with a package to fit your requirements. We can design your campaign, test and measure its performance and achieve great results for your business.
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