The landing page: the place where visitors are directed after clicking on an ad, a search result, a link, or an offer. It’s also the critical page that can convert mere visitors or readers into your customers, fans, or followers.
What goes into building an effective landing page? Let’s check it out.
Answers. It’s likely that visitors clicked on your ad or your offer because they want to get hold of a certain piece of information, or because they want answers to their questions. So give them just that. Answer their search queries. Tell them what your offer is. Explain how they can benefit from buying your product or service, from supporting your brand. Guide them on how to get started. Regardless of what your objectives are – to make a sale, to get people to sign up for a newsletter, to get a Facebook user to like your fan page – make sure that you craft your landing page in a way that is relevant to the visitor. Provide information and answers that motivate them to stay on your site.
A Call to Action. By now, you’ll realize that “call to action” is one of our favorite phrases. Why? Because it signifies engagement; it constitutes an act of reaching out. It provides encouragement to make a decision. So don’t be satisfied at a Web user choosing to click your link instead of someone else’s; capitalize. Write textual content that’s concise and compelling, and which motivates visitors to take the next step – and place it on your landing page in a way that’s visually striking and easily read. Save the rest – like “History of Our Company” or “About Us” – for some other page. If you have to link to something, link to your order page, contact form, or subscription form.
Creativity. Yes, a landing page requires creativity – not necessarily in design, but most certainly in content. It’s time to unleash the copywriter in you; or if you think that a digital marketing agency will do a better job, then by all means hire one. Just remember that your visitor won’t have time to read novel-length text, so keep it short, sweet, and sexy.
Simplicity. Resist the thought of adding flashy presentations and quirky audio to your landing page. Instead, put everything above the fold. Simplicity is key. Avoid clutter that distracts your visitors and slows down your page loading time; you want to capture and sustain as much attention in as little time as possible.
Strength of testing. You can improve the performance of your landing page by testing it regularly. There are loads of testing tools on the Web that will help you, but what’s more important is to ask yourself questions and imagine yourself in the shoes – or maybe the Web browsers – of your visitors. Does the copy work? What are the revisions you need to make? Is the design attention-catching instead of distracting?
Testimonials. It’s not required, but if you can get new visitors to believe the buzz about you – buzz that comes from actual customers – then you may do well to add a short testimonial or two. Don’t resort to fake reviews; earn your visitors’ trust by passing words that actually, or at least believably, came from your happy customers and loyal followers.