Designing the Ultimate Landing Page

How do you convince your visitors to take the plunge on your website?

The answer is simple: Landing pages.

What is a landing page?

A great landing page consists of many different elements, all working towards one goal. When discussed in a marketing context, a landing page is a distinct page on your website that’s built for one single conversion goal. Visitors will land on this page as a result of one of your direct marketing campaigns and perform an action. This action will depend on your objectives. Without a good landing page, your other online marketing efforts such as PPC are just not as effective.

Types of landing pages

There are two main types of landing pages:

• Click-through Landing Pages
  These are optimised pages that lead to your sales funnel or shopping cart flow.
• Lead Generation Landing Pages.
  These are designed for visitors to opt-in, to maximise the chances of them becoming prospects.

Know your audience

Knowing your audience means you can market to them effectively. You should consider the following to create a user persona:

• Demographics
• What motivates them?
• What are their pain points?
• What can you offer them?
• How will they benefit from taking action when they arrive on your landing page?

As an example, a footwear retailer might build several different landing pages with content that is tailored to users in specific locations. This could take the form of winter footwear and boots in colder countries. It could even target local users to generate awareness of in-store offers and sales in their area.

Know where your traffic comes from

It is key to know that when a visitor clicks on your ad (or another entry point, like a promoted post on Instagram or website link), they do so for a reason. When they arrive on your landing page, every element of the page should be consistent and working together to create a clear overall message to greet them.

One thing to consider is the longevity of your campaign, as this will influence your traffic source. A VIP mailing list sign-up campaign could run for years and could rely on traffic from organic searches and social media. A short-term campaign, such as a time-limited discount voucher needs a sharper, more focused injection of traffic. This is often easiest to achieve through PPC marketing. Knowing where your audiences come from also means you can tailor content based on the source.

What makes a great Landing Page?

Conversion optimised design

It seems marketers’ and designers’ concerns are often at odds with each other. Whereas marketers tend to focus on persuasion tactics, information hierarchy and layouts, designers prioritise user experience, colours, typography and stylistic elements. Designing a fully optimised landing page should seek to align these two schools of thought.

The User Interface should be clean and structured in a way that improves the visitor's focus. They should follow the design flow and find the value proposition and call to action with ease. Using whitespace is a great way to keep the page distraction-free while looking fresh.

Invest in video

Video is a passive engagement medium, meaning visitors can experience your message with very little effort. Studies have shown that using videos on landing pages will increase conversions by 86%. (Wordstream, 2018)

“Studies have shown that using videos on landing pages will increase conversions by 86%.”

The average person will spend more time watching a video than reading. This gives more time for your brand message to sink in. Using high-quality video featuring your company, employees or other customers is a chance to raise your trust factor.

Use beautiful visuals

The type of media used should be of high quality to build trust with visitors. Product images should demonstrate the product effectively, and all images and must evoke an emotion that will provide inspiration to continue down the landing page. One pitfall many fall into is relying heavily on stock images that don’t accurately portray your product or solution.

One huge trend in 2018 was the use of illustration on landing pages. A simple cartoon or illustration of how your product can solve your customer's problems can be really effective. Generic stock photos often fail to represent certain abstract and conceptual ideas whereas illustrations are great at doing this. Giddyapp beautifully portrays their product as an invoicing solution for busy creatives through use of illustration. This is much more effective than using a run-of-the-mill stock image. Sorry, Harold.

Clear and relevant headline

An attractive and persuasive headline will increase the chances of a visitor staying on that page. This is important as you need you a visitor to stick around to see what you can offer them. Your headline should be attention-grabbing but get right to the point. It should be relevant to the offer and industry without getting too technical. To sum it up, your headline should be no more than 8 words and give the reader a compelling enough reason to stay on the page. Simple, right?

“A good formula to use is - Curiosity + Benefits + Instant Gratification = Winning landing page headline.”

Quotes and testimonials

Trust signals are important for making potential customers feel comfortable to convert on an action. What do other people say about your product or service?, according to BrightLocal, 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

“85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.”

Take advantage of the positive feedback you’ve received from your customers by including their testimonials directly on your landing page. Their comments can help you advertise your business or products.

Targeted copy

Landing page copy must target your audience. Convincing copy shows that you know their motivations and desires. A three-act structure works well for landing pages. First, address the customers problem by creating an enticing incident or confrontation. Second, a rise in the stakes, show how not addressing the problem can result in a crisis. And third, the climax - will provide the answer to the problem in the form of the call to action.

Irresistible call to action

The call to action is the make or break when it comes to a visitor becoming a potential customer. The CTA button should demand attention so the colours, size and message must all work together into the overall landing page to work.

An effective CTA should:

• Be compelling
• Have obvious benefit
• Be relevant to the context it’s in
• Trigger actual action

Intuitive forms

If your landing page is designed for lead generation, make your form as short as possible. Longer, more detailed forms can certainly help you qualify serious leads, but try to strike a balance. Understand that the longer the form is, the less likely visitors will complete and submit it. Only ask for necessary, relevant information like in the below example by UBER.

Follow up

Whether you’re using your landing page to help grow your audience or sell more, it’s important to have a plan in place for everyone that clicks your CTA. You got them to your landing page. You got them to sign up. You might have even got them to buy something! But now they’ve forgotten about you and have moved on. You can keep the conversation going by setting up an automated welcome email, this can be used for new and old customers alike.

A/B test, and A/B test again

A/B testing is great for improving the performance of your landing page, which is why you should always be monitoring and tracking the performance of your landing pages and then taking action on the data. The final answer is always given by your visitors as they are the ones who convert. By reading the data and metrics from your campaigns you will see which is the most perfect headline available to you.

A great landing page should be simple

As you can see, behind every great landing page there is real science that makes it work. But it doesn’t have to be difficult. Design should be simple - and it just so happens that it’s what we do best. We’re committed to making landing pages that convert, to find out more get in touch.