How to Create a High-Converting Landing Page
What is the first thing visitors notice when they come to your website?
If you’re being deliberate about how you direct people to your site, it’s going to be a landing page. The first glimpse of your landing page decides whether the viewer will stay on your website or if they will bounce.
Every cent you spend on running ads, or every minute you
commit to writing guest posts – all of it is a waste if you don’t
convert visitors into leads or customers.
If you are not converting, the problem might be your landing page.
You might be offering superb content or products and your
ads might even be generating a good click through rate. But if your
conversions are stagnant or diminishing, it is your landing page that
needs more work…
What is a landing page?
A landing page is any webpage on which the visitor arrives or stops at, while visiting a website.
It usually serves a purpose of enticing a website visitor to do something specific – sign up for your email list, buy a product or set up a meeting.
A great landing page is one that targets a particular
audience. Drawing the attention of your audience is done when you
provide them with the information they seek about a topic. If the first
look at your landing page provides them with the information they are
looking for, their search ends there and they are ready to take
action. Here, the first impression plays the one and only part!
If you slip up on the first impression, potential leads fall through the cracks.
Do you need a landing page?
If you are trying to build an audience or sell something online, then yes.
A landing page plays a very crucial role for your website – it helps you turn traffic into leads.
If you have multiple products or offerings, you don’t want
to confuse the visitor with too much information. Create multiple
landing pages and make sure every one has a unique purpose of its own.
The anatomy of a high-converting landing page.
Let’s take the example of Rankwatch to understand the key components of a high-converting landing page:
Headline
This is the first place that catches the visitor’s eye. It should be phrased in such a way that concisely and completely covers everything that the page has to offer.image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rankwatch-landing-page.png
Body text
This includes the text on the landing page. It should be interesting enough to make the consumers stay on the page and complete enough to give the relevant information that the page is intending to convey.image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Email-Alerts-landing-page.png
Keywords
These are the main words you want people to discover you for. Page title, heading tags, and the content on the landing page should include the essential keywords.The highlighted word is a keyword used in the text of Rankwatch.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Rank-tracking-landing-page.png
Image
Landing pages should include a creative image to appeal to visitors.image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Rankwatch-2-landing-page.png
Social sharing buttons
These buttons enable the visitors to share the content of your page with their connections or networks on social media platforms.image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Social-sharing-landing-page.png
Hidden Navigation
The top/side navigation bars on the landing page should be hidden to minimize distraction, friction and bounce rate.image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rankwatch-3-landing-page.png
Conversion form
This form enters the customers credentials in exchange for an offer – leading to sales leads.image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Request-demo-landing-page.png
Don’t underestimate the power of video on your landing page
Watching is always better than reading. No wonder youtube is the second biggest search engine on the internet.
A study
by eyeviewdigital.com shows that putting a video on your landing page
can increase your conversion rate by up to 80%. Is this not a strong
enough reason to consider using a video on your landing page?
Not satisfied yet?
Go through these point and then decide for yourself, videos…
1. Build consumer trust
2. People are lazy
It is a human nature. They try to crack the shortest possible way to do something. Watching is always preferable over reading.
3. Keep visitors on your site for longer
According to a study
by statisticbrain.com you only have 8 seconds to impress a visitor
(which is their attention span). A video explaining the product will
tempt the user to stay for a longer time on your site.
4. Increases conversions
I shows you some stats about this already. At the end of
the day, the main aim is to get the conversion rate as high as possible.
5. Helps people understand complicated products
If you have a product that is very technology oriented,
explaining it in just words won’t answer all of your customers queries. A
video on the other hand, explaining how to use your product, has a way
of conveying a complex message in a much simpler way.
What does your landing page need for a better conversion rate?
If you want to increase the conversion rate of your landing page, these are the most important elements;
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Clear call-to-action - this is what you want your visitors to do. You want them to sign up, shop now, contact us, see your video, etc.
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An offer – this could be anything, coupons, discounts, a free trial, a gift, etc. You give these to your customers in exchange for what you want them to do.
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Narrow focus – keep your landing page simple. Variety leads to distractions and then people take a long time to make a decision.
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Important attributes – these are the reasons your visitor will take action. You can do this by highlighting the important features of your product or service and how they will improve your customers life.
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Effective headline – make your headline catchy and attention grabbing. But also make sure it captures the key benefits of your offer.
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Resolution savvy layout – create the layout of your landing page in a low resolution. There are many people still using low resolution computers.
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Tidy visuals – keep your design simple. White space makes the important factors on your page stand out. Use bold fonts and videos to make it more interesting.
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Social proof – people have a tendency to believe/follow things that others have done and had success at. You can highlight reviews by your customers, press mentions, testimonials, or even build statistics based on your customer responses.
A/B testing your landing page
A/B testing is a way of experimenting between two or more
pages to check which one performs or converts better. This experiment
can be done with as many pages you want to test but should only test one
element at a time.
Once it is decided what element to test on your landing page, you can create different versions of it.
Benefits for a/b testing your page
-
A/B testing helps to measure the actual behavior of your customers under real-world conditions. You can confidently conclude that if version B sells more than version A, then version B is the design you should show all users in the future.
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It can also measure very small performance differences with high statistical significance if you can attract traffic to each design.
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It is a relatively cheap method for testing landing pages.
Is one landing page enough for your website?
One is never enough. If your conversion rates are low it might be because you do not have enough landing pages.
According to data taken from the report- “Marketing Benchmarks From 7000 Businesses” by Hubspot - having
1-5 or 6-10 landing pages does not show much visitor-to- lead
conversion. But, increasing the number of landing pages from 10 to 15
shows a 55% increase in leads for a company.
The more landing pages you have, the more pages that get
indexed by Google. If search results show your landing pages, this cuts
down the steps the user would take to find that page on your site.
Hence, easy discovery leads to better conversions.
Lots of landing pages create a variety for the user. This helps in creating something unique to offer every user.
More landing pages mean you have more things to market. It
gives you more data to promote and more content to email your contacts
and share with your followers on social media.
Tools to boost your landing page conversion rate
Crazy Egg
This tool gives you reports on which parts of your site are getting the most user attention. It is a paid tool.
Plans start from $9 a month. It allows you to run a heat map, scroll map, develop confetti reports and much more.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Crazy-Egg-landing-page.png
Landing page grader from wordstream
This tool uses your Google Adwords account to assess your
landing page based on its keyword relevancy, conversions, spend, form
length and much more. It also helps you get better than your competitors
in your industry.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/WordStream-landing-page.png
Unbounce
With Unbounce you can not only test your landing pages but
also build them without any IT assistance. They have a large collection
of templates to choose from. It is a paid service which provides all A/B
testing tools needed for checking conversions on a landing page. The
plans start at $49 a month.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/unbounce-landing-page.png
Optimizely
This tool also allows you to create and test your landing
pages. Optimizely gives certain features for free to develop a basic
website. You can contact them for quotes for various business plans.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Optimizely-landing-page.png
Ion interactive landing page assessment
This is not one of the best tools in the market but, it is a
good free tool if you are a beginner. This tool assesses your website
by asking you 13 multiple choice questions.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ion-interactive-landing-page.png
Landing page analyzer
This tool makes an in depth analysis of your website by
asking you a set of 21 questions as well as asking you for certain data
about your website. After answering the questions the tool gives you an
overall grade as well as separate scores for different areas of your
landing page. It is one of the good free tools in the market.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/VWO-landing-page.png
Usability hub
This is a paid tool. You can choose from a set of four
tests to evaluate your landing pages and add whichever suits you to your
shopping cart. This tool provides an option to earn ‘karma’ and run
tests for free. You can earn ‘karma’ by being a part of other user’s
tests.
image: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Useability-hub-landing-page.png
Sum up
The major thing to conclude from the above is that every
website landing page should accomplish one goal- whether it is about
selling something, creating brand awareness or growing leads. Your
landing page should be different from your website’s homepage. Just make
sure that the visitor gets the information they are looking for,
otherwise, they won’t hang around.
Do you have anything to add? Please share your comments below!
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