These days, marketing is all about getting visitors (and prospective customers) to explore your company’s website, often as a prelude to making that all-important purchase of your products or services. In many cases, the first contact a prospective customer has with a business is through its landing page.
Landing pages are what users “often encounter … after clicking an advertisement or hyperlink, and these pages can be optimized to encourage users to take a specific action,” notes Business.com. Landing pages are also useful for enhancing awareness of a business, as well as “moving prospects along the sales funnel, bringing them closer to buying.”
So, what goes into making an effective landing page?
Words count, but there’s no substitute for the impact of visuals and design when it comes to landing pages. An eye-catching landing page helps promote greater visitor engagement, while also communicating in a matter of seconds what your offerings are like. Key elements of landing page design often include product photos, videos, charts, maps—any visual element that helps get across the value of what a visitor is looking at.
No one comes to a landing page to read long chunks of text. The key consideration here is that users scan words on the landing page, rather than actually read them. Arresting headlines, short and concise paragraphs, and the ample use of bullet points helps keep the word count down. Pay close attention to the opening and closing sentences on your landing page, as that’s often where a viewer’s eyes will hover.
A landing page is designed to “capture” leads by encouraging visitors to sign up for something, click on a link that takes them to a special offer, or otherwise move the process forward. But it’s a tricky art to master. If your lead form requests too much information from a visitor, he or she may easily click away. If the lead form doesn’t capture enough information, there won’t be much for your sales team to work from, leading to frustration and missed sales.
As we have noted before, determining “the right length for your lead form may depend on what you offer as a ‘reward’ for sharing information.” Thus, a good guiding principle is balancing “your request for data with the value of the benefit you’re offering.”
Possible incentives to get people to provide information include:
Whatever your incentive is, it should always be tailored to the tastes and needs of your target audience.
Want additional insight? Download Setting KPIs for Business Sucess now to learn more
Getting eyeballs on your landing page is the first challenge. Equally important, if not more so, is encouraging users to take action—the first concrete step on the buyer’s journey. A call-to-action (CTA) can involve:
• Sign up for a free consultation.
• Download our free whitepaper.
• View our exciting product line.
• Join now!
In terms of design, it’s vital to keep your CTA “high enough on the page that it is seen without a visitor needing to scroll down (aka above the fold),” notes the branding firm Spellbrand. Any CTA positioned below the fold “drastically decreases your chance for conversion.”
Landing pages are a critical step in moving a prospect through the sales funnel. Don’t leave the design and content to chance. Think carefully about what’s most appealing about your products or services and highlight them on the landing page, to draw more visitors in.
To learn more about how to leverage the power of the landing page (and what not to do), register for our free TAB Boss Webinar, “Landing Page Conversion Mistakes."