Your landing page plays a crucial role in your inbound marketing tactics. Companies that have decided to boost their pages have experienced around 55% growth concerning their lead generation. Therefore, you might want to revisit your marketing strategy. With our years of experience in this business, we’ve noticed how even seasoned marketers commit the most common mistakes when optimizing this page. The average company will convert an average of 1-3% on their page; however, those who manage to create a solid page can quickly achieve a double-digit conversion rate.
What is a Landing Page?
In digital marketing, the main landing page pertains to a standalone page created specifically for advertising or marketing campaigns. It is where your audience will land after clicking a link in the advertisement or a link in their email. Compared to a web page, which encourages the visitor to explore, the landing page has a specific goal, to promote your CTA (Call to Action). Due to this purpose, the existence of this page has become integral to your web conversion rate. It also lowers the cost of lead acquisition and conversion.
What is Landing Page Optimization?
Landing Page Optimization is the process of improving or enhancing different elements found on this web page to improve your conversion rate. This procedure is more cost-efficient than starting from scratch and designing a new template. Unlike the traditional way of designing pages, which is based purely on your hunch, optimization is data-driven and depends on anecdotal evidence.
There are tools that you can use to gather numbers before you even launch your landing page. You can even conduct a survey of your targeted audience to understand their online behavior better. Nonetheless, you should understand that the perfect page will not be complete overnight. It must go through a series of testing and refinement.
The Best Landing Page Optimization Practices
Before you learn how to create a landing page that converts, there are some things that you need to keep in mind. For example, you will need to understand the goal of your company first. You should also be aware of the different tools that you can use to streamline the process.
Uncover the Potential Issues
One reason why you are reading this is that you are aware that a problem exists. You know something is not working the way you expect it, but you don’t want to change the whole thing. Perhaps you don’t have the time or budget to redo that. Moreover, it is impractical. It is not the proper approach towards optimization. The first step that you must take is to understand the root of the issues.
Using Heatmaps and Other Tools
Heatmaps are tools that will show you where the visitors are clicking or engaging. You can find out if your audiences are ignoring your CTA. An element in the landing page may have caught their attention, which draws their interest away from your call-to-action. It could be a random element such as a stock photo. With heatmaps, you can see the areas on your standalone page receiving the highest engagement rate.
Take note that Heatmaps will not be the only program you can use to determine your audience’s behavior. You can use list reports, overlay reports, confetti maps, and scroll maps to do this. Scroll maps show the scrolling activity of the visitor. Blue or white color on the map will not be a good thing. It means that your audience scrolled fast in your webpage and immediately left. You want to see yellow, orange, and red since it indicates that the audience stops for some time to read the content. Confetti maps, pay attention to the clicks. List and overlay reports will give you a percentage of clicks.
Be Clear
You may think that this is quite obvious, but a lot of marketers will forget this. Most of the landing pages will not focus on a specific goal or landing page marketing message. You will see them having multiple offers, which is not the right way to build it. You will only confuse your visitors and make them lose focus on your main objective. It would be best to focus only on a single offer or solution. Also, when developing your page, think of how you can stimulate a positive emotion. You want them to feel excited, appreciated, and intelligent. You want to inspire them to respond to your CTA.
Make it Simple
Some marketers think that having a simple main landing page is counterintuitive, however, removing the visual clutters can significantly improve your conversion rate. It would be better to let the visitors focus on your CTA. Sometimes, you can develop a page that contains five elements. Try to communicate your message without saying too many words and adding too many images. Know that you only have a couple of seconds to capture the attention of the audience. Make the headline bold and the message straightforward. The web page of Dropbox would be the perfect example.
Using Contracting Color on Your Landing Page
When learning how to create a landing page that converts, you should understand contrasting colors. By using the contrast color, you will be able to put a spotlight on the CTA. You are drawing the attention of the audience to the CTA button. By making sure that it is tough to ignore, your opt-in or subscription will increase. You should also use the negative space; proper spacing can help you make the crucial element pop out.
Adding the Key Elements Above Fold
When we are talking about the term ‘Above Fold,’ it pertains to the top section of the first page. In the newspaper, it is where you can see the headline that will entice people to buy it. It would help if you also implemented this in your landing page marketing. Place the crucial elements on the upper section of the digital fold. This way, your audience no longer has to scroll to get your marketing message. Be sure to use a scroll map to identify your average fold. The existence of various devices nowadays has made it difficult to determine the higher fold.
Add a Sense of Urgency
If you notice some common marketing strategies, it will not be surprising to see the term ‘limited quantities.’ You could also be seeing a countdown, which indicates the expiration of the offer. Scarcity would add a sense of urgency to your message and compel the audience to act today. Otherwise, they would be missing an offer if they decided to wait. Even the prominent players in the industry will use this tactic. For instance, the major eCommerce platform will add the number of items left on their inventory. It makes you want to click add to cart before other persons can. Make sure that you also do this strategy for your landing page. You could offer them limited-time offers.
Your CTA Button on Landing Page
When designing your CTA button, be sure to design it straightforward. Your CTA should not confuse or stress out your visitors. Your offer must be concise, obvious, and transparent. Try to avoid fancy language and complicated offers. Consider adding the phrases’ Join Now’ or ‘Sign-Up Today’ are so simple yet very effective in making a landing page.
Contact Information
When building your main landing page, you should offer the audience many ways to reach out to you. You can include your email address or hotline number on your page. You could also add a contact form. Some sites will choose to add a small link to their help center, which seems practical, especially for customers who want to know more about the product.
Try and Test Various Headline on Your Landing Page
We mentioned above that knowing how to create a landing page involves a lot of trial and error. While the audiences today are too focused on images and videos, the text remains the most crucial element of your page. People will read the things that you will write, so you have to be mindful of them. Compose different headlines and test each of them. You can also alter the content on the body of your page and analyze its performance. Find the content and element that work best for your conversion rate.
Adding Testimonials
Social proof or customer testimonials can encourage people to opt-in to your offerings. Moreover, you want them to know that other people and businesses have tried it and have experienced fantastic results. It assures them that you were able to help them find the solution to their problem. Try to convince any of your local customers to create a video testimonial. It gives you an extra edge over the competition. Simple quotes can help; just be sure that you add the full name of the customers and a good display picture.
Try Different Lengths
Some marketers believe that keeping the form short would be a viable way to optimize your landing page. They think that asking for the visitor’s email address would suffice, but that is not always the case. If you capture leads for a premium service or product, using a more extended form may be more practical. You will be receiving lesser leads, but all of them would be quality. They will not take the time to complete the form if they are not interested in your offerings.
Moreover, it can help you save a lot of time. For example, asking your prospect’s budget for a home remodeling project will make you sure that they fit your customer profile. The customer with a $2,000 budget will not reach out to you and waste your time if your minimum package plan costs around $20,000.
Using SEO on Your Landing Page
Most people will find your main landing page through organic search. Perhaps your home page serves as one of your landing pages. Therefore, it should appear on the first page of the result when you search for your company name. Be sure that you will also rank higher on industry-related keywords. Try to use different tools like SemRush or Ubersuggest that will suggest the best keyword for your company. Add the proper keyword density in your articles, video description, alt text on the images, and others. SEO is such a tricky subject that it often requires an expert. It would be better to consult a professional when designing your web page. They can check for the technical side of the SEO, such as the page speed, meta tags, sitemaps, robot txt, and others.
Exit Pop-ups
Exit pop-ups are the notifications that will appear if the visitor tries to leave your landing page marketing. It gives you an extra opportunity to capture the leads and make a conversion. Your audience will find them less intrusive than pop-up advertisements that will show up once they have been redirected to your site. Create a strong headline matched with an eye-catching image that will encourage the visitors to click. You could also add some incentives to the pop-ups like a special offer or a limited discount. There are different tools that you can use to develop an exit pop-up. You can try Hello Bar. It will simplify the design process and give you the power to capture a lot of data from the visitor4s who choose to interact with your pop-ups.
Your landing page is failing to convert due to various reasons. You may not be giving the customer the things that they need. If you can’t identify your prospects’ desires, wants, and needs, then there is no way that they will engage with your Call-to-Action. Other possible problems would be the clutters that distract the customers’ attention from the primary purpose of your business. You should also edit your poor headline and unintuitive design.