The average business website is going to contain many different types of pages. You’ll have a homepage that summarizes your company and directs visitors to various topics or resources. You may have product or service pages that tell customers about what you have to offer. You could additionally have an about us page, employee bios, pages related to policies and events, and so on.
However, with all of these different pages out there it’s important to remember that no type of page is as misunderstood – or crucial to your success – as a landing page.
The job of a landing page is to generate conversions. It’s not your homepage, or even a product page, but a specially-designed destination that produces leads, sales, or some other measurable outcome.
In the online marketing world, landing pages are sometimes referred to as response pages (or even the more cringe-worthy squeeze pages). These names are less elegant but more precise. While a landing page might have to look good, introduce your brand, build your credibility, and spread information, its real goal is to persuade visitors to take the next step.
That’s not an easy task. It takes a mixture of design, copywriting, and marketing expertise to generate leads or revenue from pixels on a screen. That leads a lot of new clients to ask us: “what should a great landing page look like?” Here are a few defining traits that separate the best from the rest…
Simplicity in Design, Navigation, and Purpose
It’s worth repeating once more: the job of your landing page is to attract visitors and convince them to take action. Since that should be your one and only goal for the page, there isn’t any need to clutter it with unnecessary text, navigation, or distractions.
A good landing page won’t contain any extraneous links, and often won’t have any links at all beyond the call to action buttons that lead to a next conversion step. They will often feature one large image or graphic at the top of the page that pulls a buyer in based on what is known about their background, needs, and challenges. And, they’ll include large text headlines that reinforce the idea that it’s time to move forward.
By taking away any page elements that distract from these goals, you’ll make it easier for prospects to focus their attention and respond. So, keep things as simple as possible.
Concise and Focused Messaging
While some parts of your website (like a blog post) can be conversational and even meandering, you’ll want to keep the messaging on your landing pages clear and concise.
You can think of your landing page text as the online version of a sales presentation. The directness of that presentation will depend a great deal on your audience and their urgency, along with the size of the commitment you are asking for. In other words, a landing page that leads to a buying guide for in-home electronics might be “softer” than one generating appointments for a mortgage broker. Either way, though, the language should be geared directly towards the visitor, with problems and solutions rooted in emotional terms they can understand.
To put this another way, you are writing a short letter to your perfect prospect. Keep it brief and hit on the themes that matter most to them in their search for a product or service to solve their problem.
Verified Information and Social Proof
As you’re probably aware, humans make decisions based on emotional factors. However, they rationalize and double-check themselves using facts and figures. So, it’s important that you have verified information and social proof embedded in your landing pages.
Verified information could represent statistics, surveys, consumer reports, and other related materials. They can illustrate the scope of the problem, point to the cost-effectiveness of the solution, or give other insights that make the case for taking immediate action. Social proof usually takes the form of written testimonials, online video reviews, and third-party evaluations of your products.
You don’t want to include so many of these items that they bog your landing pages down, but there should be enough on your landing page to make a visitor feel comfortable taking the next step without having to worry that they’ll regret it later.
A Clear and Easy to Spot Call to Action
The focal point of your landing page should be a clear and compelling call to action. It’s the one step you want a buyer to take next, and also the thing that should lead them to immediate knowledge or relief for their problem.
It isn’t just that a call to action (or CTA) has to be present on the page; it also has to be easy to see and use. In functional terms, that usually means the CTA should come in the form of a large button with clear text like “download here” or “buy now.”
The design and wording of your call to action carries huge weight, so it’s worth refining both until they feel impossible to miss.
A Focus on Measurable Performance
While continued improvement isn’t necessarily an ingredient of your landing page that you’ll see in the way you would a button or an image, it is a detail you’ll notice in your bottom line.
Even an experienced design team like ours has to make educated guesses about what prospects and customers will respond to. It’s always good to challenge these assumptions by split testing new layouts, images, CTA buttons, and other factors. You may find that there are even better ways to structure your landing page and increase your average value-per-visit.
Never settle for leaving your landing pages on autopilot. By trying new ideas and techniques you can literally double and triple your response rates over time. That’s when your lead generation campaigns really start to take on a life of their own.
Want to Start Generating More Leads for Your Business?
There is an art and a science to online lead generation. Unfortunately, a lot of web design teams either lack the expertise to master it or don’t take the time to apply their own knowledge and skills.
If you want to use your website as a sales growth tool, rather than simply hoping buyers will find their way to you eventually, this is your chance to get the direction you need. Contact the online lead generation experts at Weblinx today at 630-551-0334 x1 so we can put our minds to work for you!