Landing pages are an indispensable part of a digital marketing strategy. By enabling a website to capture the information of their visitors via a lead-capture form, landing pages are the heart and soul of lead generation efforts.
How do we make landing pages work to their optimum? Small Business Trends uncovers 20 magical landing page best practices designed to turn prying visitors into paying customers.
Landing Page Best Practices
Hone That Headline
A headline is the first thing a visitor to your landing page is likely to see. Avoid headlines that waffle, are weak or ambiguous. Instead, make sure your landing page’s headline sums up the content of the page in a concise, engaging and eye-catching way. This way, visitors will be more inclined to stay on the page and follow through the call to action.
Align Your Landing Page’s Offer with Your Audience
Alignment is a keyword when it comes to conversion optimization. Ensure that the offers and deals on your landing page cater as closely as possible to the requirements of your audience. Failing to provide an offer that caters for the needs of your target audience will result in poor performing conversion rates.
Use Great Images
Avoid overloading a landing page with images but ensure there is sufficient visual content to bring the page life. Including relevant and inspiring images help attract visitors to landing pages by making them more visually stimulating. That said, not any old image will do. The more original and striking, the better.
Position Images Strategically
Not only should images be inspiring, original and eye-catching, but they should be carefully positioned. Rather than placing images haphazardly on a landing page, position them so they direct the visitor to the call to action.
Striking images that draw attention to call to action help boost conversion rates.
Make Good Use of Video
A short, concise and entertaining video works well on landing pages and can help boost conversion rates.
Make Your Landing Page Clutter-Free
The subtle use of rousing images and an entertaining video is effective but cluttering a landing page with too much visual stimulation can be off-putting.
Too much visual clutter can slow a website down, which is anything but appealing to visitors. Research shows that a single second delay on a page load, results in a 7% drop in conversions.
Provide Emotive Content
Content that appeals to the emotions and crafts a sense of poignancy and deliberation is often significantly more effective than bland and boring landing page text. Spice up your landing page by creating content that makes visitors feel emotionally connected with the page and what it has to offer.
Address Specific Concerns and Anxieties
An effective landing page provides answers and solutions to problems. A landing page that eliminates concerns and apprehensions helps build trust with a brand. Improved brand trust results in visitors being more likely to convert.
Minimize Distractions
An effective landing page does not encourage visitors to navigate to other places other than the one highlighted on the call-to-action. Placing external links and other distractions can hinder the conversion rates of the page, as it endorses taking visitors away from the goal of the landing page.
Make Landing Pages Mobile Responsive
In 2016, research showed that mobile web usage overtook desktop for the first time. Given the prolific use of getting information online while on the go, landing pages need to be mobile-responsive to garner the best results.
Put simply, if visitors are unable to navigate to or use your landing page from a mobile device, they’re likely to dismiss your site, often in favor of a competitor’s site.
Test a Landing Page to See What’s Working and What’s Not
Remember, the design and content of your landing pages aren’t set in stone. One landing page best practice is to use split tests or A/B tests to examine your landing page. Make tweaks to the page to see what works best. Use a multivariate test that enables you to make several changes and see which combinations perform better than others.
Break up Text with Bullet Points and Subtitles
Online readers are lazy. There we said it! Ensure your landing page text is easy-to-read and digest by using plenty of bullet points and subheadings.
Make Wise Use of Testimonials
Testimonials should ideally be confined to a testimonials’ page. That said, giving visitors a taste of the praise and complements of others on a landing page, can encourage visitors to carry out the call to action.
Place a Phone Number and Other Contact Information on the Landing Page
Don’t feel afraid to make the company number or your direct phone number visible on a landing page. Build trust with visitors and potential clients by letting them know they can contact you directly.
Focus on One Solitary Call to Action
Landing page best practices for businesses and marketers involve only focusing on one call to action. Similar to how navigation links should be removed from the page, so too should other call to actions. Too many promotions and offers will only clutter a page and confuse visitors.
Share Landing Pages on Social Media
You’ve created a landing page you’re proud of. Shout about it! Social media is an effective tool for lead generation. It should be used to promote landing pages and encourage followers to visit them by sharing the link alongside some promotional text on social feeds.
Place Call to Actions ‘Above the Fold’
Above the fold refers to the section of a webpage that does not require strolling to. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to carry out your call to action by placing it ‘above the fold’.
Practice Consistency
Another landing page best practice to consider is to make the page consistent. Make the text and message on the page consistent with the tone of the rest of your website.
Make Your Brand and Personality Resonate
As well as being consistent with the overall tone of the website, a landing page should reflect the overall personality of your brand. This way, visitors will be able to identify your brand within the page.
Focus on More Than One
When it comes to landing pages, you can’t get enough. The more effective, well designed and unique landing pages you have, the greater the opportunities you’ll have to convert visitors into leads.
Are you a marketer or a business owner with conversion success on your landing pages? If so, share your tips with Small Business Trends on landing page best practices to turn visitors into customers.
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This article, “Apply These 20 Magical Landing Page Best Practices to Turn Website Visitors into Customers” was first published on Small Business Trends