The success of your website lies in its ability to bring in traffic and convert it into potential customers. Your visitors come to your website because they are looking for something and if they cannot find what they are looking for, they will just leave and look elsewhere. This is where your landing page comes in. It will help with website traffic and lead generation. Your landing page is the next step for your visitors to become paying customers.
A good landing page is vital to converting leads to customers. It is the page that helps convince visitors to take action (subscribe to a newsletter, purchase something, etc). The landing page is where you communicate value as effectively and efficiently as possible. It is the page where building customer relationships start. Hence, it is important for your landing page to arouse the interest of your visitors in order for them to take action.
Creating an effective landing page is important for maximizing conversion rate. But building a landing page that converts is easier said than done. It takes time and effort to do so. If you are wondering how to create a landing page that converts, you have come to the right place. So read on and be guided on the different steps in creating an effective landing page.
Types of Landing Pages
- Lead Generation Landing Page
- Splash Page
- Long-Form Landing Page
- 404 Error Page
- Unsubscribe/Cancel Page
- Thank You Page
Steps In Creating A Landing Page That Converts
- Make Your Headline Benefits Oriented
- Keep Important Content Above The Fold
- Have A Clear Call-to-Action
- Create A Persuasive Sub-Headline
- Provide Social Proof
- Include High-Quality Images
- Minimize Distractions
- Make It Mobile-Friendly
- Maintain Consistent Messaging/Branding
- Test Your Landing Page
Let’s get down to it.
Types of Landing Pages
Before we get to the fundamentals of creating an effective landing page, let us first introduce the different types of landing pages. The type of page you will create depends on your business goals.
- Lead Generation Landing Page. The aim of this landing page is to get user contacts for future sales. This type of landing page will provide the exact data you need on what potential customers want to receive. To encourage customers to fill out the form, you can offer them rewards like discount codes and white papers.
- Splash Page. A splash page is a landing page that either makes the visitor a special offer or for segmenting them for redirection to a targeted offer. Although not ideal for SEO, splash pages do help with conversion. With splash pages, you will not be able to navigate to any part of your website until you have interacted with the splash page.
- Long-Form Landing Page. A long-form landing page is the best option if you are offering a course or service. The best examples of long-form landing pages are fitness or coaching courses. It is designed to give customers an idea of what makes your course special or better. Long-form landing pages usually come with bullet points outlining key benefits.
- 404 Error Page. If your visitor lands on a blank 404 error page, it will most likely bounce. Therefore, it is essential for such a page to redirect the visitor to a relevant page. A 404 error landing page aims to send visitors to a page they are interested in and prevent a bounce.
- Unsubscribe/Cancel Page. The unsubscribe/cancel page aims to make a last-ditch effort to retain current customers. This is because it is more expensive to acquire new customers than retain existing ones. Statistics show that the probability of converting an existing customer is at 60 to 70 percent as opposed to just 5 to 30 percent for new customers.
- Thank You Page. The thank-you page offers a good opportunity for upselling to customers or for adding new content.
Steps In Creating A Landing Page That Converts
How do you get started with creating the landing page once you already have an idea of the kind of landing page you want to produce? Here are the steps for making an effective landing page:
- Make Your Headline Benefits Oriented
The headline represents your first attempt in converting visitors to become potential customers and as such, it should grab their attention right away. Your headline is what compels visitors to stay and learn more about your offer. In addition, it should tell your reader what your product or service is all about.
Your headline should focus on the benefits the visitor will get from the product or service. If your landing page is about a course you are offering, state the benefits of the course in the landing page for the visitors to see it. Your headline will set up your offer, which is one of the most critical components of your landing page.
If your headline comes with an image explaining the product or service, you don’t need to be detailed about it. Keep in mind that while it projects the value of your product or service in an impactful way, it should not be too long. It should never exceed 20 words and should be limited to just 10 words.
- Keep Important Content Above the Fold
When creating a landing page, you would want to determine what content will be “above the fold” and which will be “below the fold.” The content above the fold will be visible to your visitors without them scrolling. If you are losing traffic and your website is not grabbing attention, it means that it is not catchy enough. This means that you did not put the most eye-catching products front and center.
Potential customers use multiple devices when shopping for products. On mobile devices, above the fold is the bottom of the visible page when it first loads and it is the point where a user would not have to scroll to see the content beneath it. Nailing content above the fold is important because mobile users will only scroll down if the above the fold is promising enough. Getting above-the-fold content right contributes to an enjoyable digital shopping experience.
So what content should you place above the fold? The following contents should be your priority and placed above the fold:
- Unique Selling Proposition. This tells your customers what you are offering and its benefits.
- Primary Copy. This convinces the visitor to scroll down to the secondary copy below the fold.
- Branding. This is your opportunity to make yourself stand out from the crowd using branding elements such as logo, font, and brand colors.
- Navigation. Give your customers the option to discover your company more using relevant touchpoints that are simple and clearly visible.
- Contact Information. This can add to the trustworthiness of your brand in the mind of your visitor.
- Call-to-action. This is an optional above-the-fold content since it is not always conversion-focused.
With above-the-fold content, you have only 8 seconds to capture the attention of your visitors. Your above-the-fold content aims not to convert them right away but to catch their attention first. If people are already on your landing page, then you already caught their attention. So it’s worth taking time and effort in understanding what is interesting to your target visitors.
- Have A Clear Call-To-Action
The call to action prompts your visitors to do something for your business. Whether it’s watching a video, signing up for the newsletter, buying a product, trying out a service, and others. Whatever it is that you want visitors to do, you need to be clear about it on your landing page. You should place your CTA buttons in convenient and accessible places for increased customer engagement.
Of course, you do not want to overwhelm your visitors with too many call-to-actions. It is crucial for your website to focus on the quality of your CTA but what about the quantity? Too many call-to-actions can be confusing for your visitors and ruin their experience. It may result in them ending up not clicking the button at all. At the same time, you don’t want to have too few CTAs. When creating call-to-actions, have a visitor mindset and add CTAs where visitors expect them.
In addition, you should create a personalized call-to-action. Making your CTA personal convert 42% more visitors into leads than generic CTAs. In creating your CTA, keep in mind that your visitors may not have a long attention span so it may be best to put it above the fold. But then there are some factors you need to consider in determining the location of your CTA. Depending on the complexity of the product, price, and how users arrive on the page, you may need to place your CTA further down the page.
- Create A Persuasive Sub-Headline
If the headline is what will make your visitors take a look at your landing page, your subheadline is what will make them stay. Because your headline should not be too long, your subheadline should clarify all the information in your main heading. Using compelling subheadings will help call the attention of the customer and guide them toward the next step that will lead them to action.
Your subheadings should provide answers to potential questions that your customers may have. It should encapsulate the best parts or main motives of what you offer customers. In your sub-headlines, explain the features that will take your offering a notch higher above your competition. When creating sub-headlines, you should consider the following:
- Position your subheadings directly underneath the main headline
- Your subheadings should have some elements of persuasiveness
- You can go into slightly more depth and detail than the main headline
It is worth noting that the explanation need not always come after the page’s most compelling statement. When writing your subheading, you really don’t need to follow a specific formula. Just arrange your content in such a way that will efficiently explain what you are offering in order to successfully connect with readers.
- Provide Social Proof
Adding customer testimonials to your landing page can help build trust. These days, people search for reviews when deciding to buy in a store. Testimonials will come in handy for sales pages but may be necessary on pages asking customers for email addresses or other personal information. 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Testimonials will help increase your website’s conversion rate and drive traffic and SEO.
Social proof is like word-of-mouth recommendations and 82% of consumers seek recommendations from friends and family prior to making a purchase. Positive social proof is more effective at persuading people to make a purchase. Testimonials can be influential on convincing prospects to buy your product or service because they tell a positive story about your brand.
So it is a must that you have social proof on your landing page. Aside from testimonials, you can also add social sharing buttons. It gives your landing page some credibility if it was shared a lot on social media. Social sharing buttons allow your visitors to easily share their content to their connections and networks.
- Include High-Quality Images
Incorporating high quality images on your landing page helps reinforce what you are selling and will make a difference in helping them make a purchasing decision. High quality images can help increase the conversion rate of your landing page. Some customers can process images much faster than text. Your images should show the benefits of what you are offering.
It is worth noting that images are the first thing that your visitor will process. Our brain processes image 60,000 times faster than text. Images can help shape your visitor’s impression of your brand. In addition, pictures on your landing page will give customers a visual understanding of what they will gain from your business.
When adding images to your landing page, keep in mind the following:
- The picture should be large
- Images should be relevant to your product or service. If you are selling a physical product, it is essential that your landing page should contain an image of the product.
- For services, your image should grab attention and demonstrate relevance to the visitor
- More importantly, it should be high-quality. Your landing page is not the place for adding stock photographs or Photoshopped image
- Minimize Distractions
Unnecessary distractions on your landing page can also hurt its effectiveness to convert. It will prevent your website visitors from executing your desired call to action. Examples of distractions are social buttons, unnecessary images or videos, and others. Remember that you only have a few seconds to grab their attention so any distractions would not help you with your desired goal.
Remove all distractions such as Flash or animation or navigation links that will let them click away as well as large and intimidating blocks of text. If you need to add an image, make sure that it is relevant to your offer and make sure that it is relevant to your offer or use formatting tools like bullets, numbers, or bolded headlines to break up the text.
Your landing page should be very easy to scan and every headline should direct your visitors to the call to action. If you need additional information that might result in a long copy, do it using pop-ups or rollovers. Only 16% of landing pages currently have no navigation links so if you’re one of them, then you could be losing potential customers. Keep your design clean and simple. If your design pulls readers in different directions, it will deter them from clicking your CTA.
- Make It Mobile-Friendly
These days, people use their mobile devices to search for products or services. 53.3% of web traffic comes from mobile devices so if visitors cannot see your website on their gadgets, how will they be able to buy from you? Thus, you need to ensure that your landing page is friendly on both desktop and mobile devices. It will not only help you improve conversion but will also help you with SEO since Google operates on a mobile-first indexing approach.
Making your landing pages mobile-friendly should be at the top of your mind. Not doing so will hurt your conversion rate as your landing page will be hard to navigate and/or slower on cell phones and tablets. How do you know that your landing page is not optimized for mobile devices? If the text is too small to read without zooming in or if the visitor needs to scroll around the page to read a full sentence, it means that your landing page is not mobile-friendly.
To make your landing page mobile-friendly, keep in mind that most people navigate mobile sites with just one hand. 75% of potential customers use one finger or thumb to touch the screen. To make navigation easy for your visitors, keep your clickable elements large and spaced out. Keep the contents of your landing page in a single column to make it easier to navigate and ultimately improve the user experience.
- Maintain Consistent Messaging/Branding
When creating a landing page, ensure that you maintain consistency in your messaging and branding from the tone of voice, color, offer, and others. 63% of people say that brand consistency plays a role in their spending with 34% of respondents willing to spend more on a brand that shows consistency in its messaging. Your landing page should give visitors the same look and feel as the rest of your website content. It should complement the customer journey to ensure that your customer will convert.
Being consistent with your branding and messaging helps create trust in your visitors. From the colors, fonts, image styles, and other digital properties, it should be aligned with your brand. Maintaining consistency in your brand and message is not an easy task but it will hold everything together and will make your brand look coherent to your target audience or brand specifications.
Having a consistent brand and messaging will help you connect with the right audience. Customers expect consistency in your message, tone of voice, and interaction when visiting your website or social media account. Brand and messaging consistency can help deliver a positive customer experience regardless of the manner of delivery.
- Test Your Landing Page
Once you have your landing page set up, you can’t just leave it sitting there. Check your metrics and see how it is performing. Is it delivering the number of conversions you expect? Gather information on your landing page’s performance to determine which area your page needs improvement. Create different versions of your landing page and see which one performs better.
By testing your landing page you can further refine your landing pages over time and make sure you get maximum performance from your website traffic and boost your potential revenue. Continue to test, iterate, and improve user interaction with your website. There are a plethora of online tools available for conducting A/B testing of your website.
A/B testing will help you make clear-cut decisions based on data rather than intuition. Examples of landing page elements that can be tested include:
- Color palette & schemes
- Call-to-action
- Number and relevance of form fields
- Visual design
- Number of links and reason for their placement
- Header & footer navigation
- Copy optimization
Your landing page is crucial to the success of your conversion rate. Ensuring its effectiveness should be one of your top priorities. Keep these 10 tips in mind to ensure that your landing page will convert.
Outsource Landing Page Creation with airisX
Landing pages are different from web pages because they have a single focus or goal: the call-to-action or CTA to drive your customer to either sign up for more information, or buy your product/service. airisX writers work with you to understand the offers/services you provide, and craft compelling copy for your landing pages to drive conversion rate and lower bounce crates.
At airisX, we help drive traffic and increase your conversion rates by creating engaging copy that captures your readers’ attention and drives them to action. Whether writing content for your blog, bullet points and product description, landing pages, and/or news articles, our writers have the training and expertise to craft the content you need.Schedule an appointment with us at contact@airisx.com and one of our representatives will get back to you to address your needs.