When your users click through to your website, perhaps from a social media or search engine ad, or maybe from a link in your mailing list, the first page they encounter is your landing page.
Landing pages are critical to successful customer engagement and online marketing, but how do you make your landing page the best it can possibly be?
Read on to learn more about what the perfect landing page looks like.
The Attributes of the Perfect Landing Page
1. A unique, separate page
Your landing page needs to be exactly that — a landing page. Don’t use your homepage as a landing page or send your visitors to generic product listings or search results.
Instead, give them what they came here for — focused and precise information on the product or service they are looking for, and an understanding of what they need to do next.
2. Key information above the fold
When visitors arrive on your landing page, they are expecting to be wowed. They are not expected to have to wade through paragraphs of content to understand what is going on. With this in mind, you need to deliver your key messaging right at the beginning — right in the eye line of your visitor so that they do not need to scroll down in order to see it.
Remember, around 80% of users will read the headline, while only 20% will read the rest. You can always include more detail further down for these interested visitors to peruse later on.
3. A clear and well-organised purpose
We’ve already spoken about focus, and this is certainly crucial when you are designing and crafting your landing page. It is estimated that over half of marketers reuse landing pages from previous campaigns and deploy new versions of them for future conversion initiatives. There is no problem with this per se, but it is risky. Why? Because a great landing page needs to be focused on a single purpose — moving your users towards very specific goals and objectives. Make sure that your landing pages are crystal clear in terms of purpose and user action.
4. Concrete detail and data
We humans are emotional creatures. We like to be dazzled and stunned by great visual content and powerful language. However, we are also highly rational beings — and it is this rational side of our personality that helps us make key decisions, like whether to sign up for a mailing list or make a purchase.
To support this rational element of decision-making, make sure that your landing page is full of facts and figures. Prominently display this data and include citations where possible to build up that all-important trust in what you are providing.
5. Tested and assessed components
All of the key elements of your landing page need to be thoroughly tested and assessed. This means carefully assessing the headline, call to action text, call to action format, and any crucial pieces of messaging you want to deliver to your user.
You can do this by A/B testing — publishing two similar versions of the same page but with one of these components replaced with another option. Your analytics will tell you which version is the most effective in moving your customer further towards conversion.
6. A focus on concision
Keep it brief. By all means, provide technical information and other important data, but don’t overwhelm your reader. Remember that the page itself sits in the conversion funnel.
The landing page should be at the mid-point in this funnel, gently encouraging your already warm, qualified leads forwards, edging them closer to conversion. They are not yet sure that they want to convert, and so they don’t need paragraph after paragraph of info. Consider, instead, what they need to know at this point in their journey, and focus on delivering that to them.
The perfect landing page is just a matter of joining the dots
With the right structural elements and impactful messaging, your landing page is already well on its way to being perfect. Once you have this framework in place, you will just need to add your unique content and imagery that will help nudge your consumers in the right direction.
Remember that this is an ongoing process.
Your landing page might be perfect for you now, but you can always improve the results you experience for the next campaign.
Conversely, if the page is falling short of the mark for some reason, use testing and analytics to decide why this is, and optimise your landing page approach.
