A well-constructed landing page can result in a higher conversion rate. Its purpose is to get the visitor to stop and focus on the content of the page – what you are offering – and either make a purchase or provide you with contact information that will enable you to create leads and generate marketing contact lists. There are select elements that you should pay particular attention to in order to achieve this goal. One characteristic all these select elements have in common is keeping the landing page, and your life, simpler.
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Using titles that attract visitors
Your choice of text – words – should be simple. Save your vocabulary prowess for other locations. If the reader has to decipher what you are trying to say, they will find it too tedious and move on. There is nothing less visual than a word the visitor does not understand. A shorter title length is better than longer – if you can convey your message and grab the visitor’s attention. Think concise, not short.
Another quality of a good title is choosing action words that get the reader excited by visualizing the action. For example, “Our clients have scaled the mountain” instead of “Our clients are at the top.” Climbing is more exciting than sitting.
An anonymous person said, “To emphasize your most important thought, let it stand alone.” In a visitor’s mind, each title stands alone. We read one word at a time, so in the same vein of thought, each word stands alone. What follows is what will keep them interested.
Using Visuals – Or Not?
Including visual elements in your landing page is a no-brainer in the 21st century. But what visuals should you avoid using? Proud as many web site owners may be of their home pages, avoid visual links to your home page or any other web site that will move the visitors attention elsewhere. You wanted the visitor to land on the page. Now they are here, so all of your visuals should lead to keeping them there until they give you what you want – either contact information or a conversion to buying your product.
On the positive side, keeping the number of visuals low keeps the visitor from being distracted and makes the web page design simpler.
Adding a clear call-to-action
For the purposes of a landing page, reading is not doing. The call-to-action should be the result of the visitor thinking, “What should I do next?” Instead of making a suggestion, directly tell the reader the next action to perform. Instead of, “You may fill out the form” instruct them – “Fill out the form.” Consider that a visitor arrived at your landing page because they believe they found what they were looking for and need to know what to do next.
Notice in the above example there was no hint of giving instructions. The call-to-action needs to direct the visitor to an element that allows them to do something immediately. If a form requires reading instructions to complete it needs revision. If the check out process on the web site is confusing or complicated, the visitor will leave without completing the call-to-action.
The call-to-action is the most important of the elements discussed here because while you can inform, inspire, educate, and encourage people to buy your product or service, if it doesn’t result in a substantive result (a new contact or purchase) the purpose of the landing page is lost.
Test your landing page to find out what works best
A common error is to create a landing page with the intent of what works best for the web site owner. The successful landing page will make the visitor the priority. In order to achieve this it will likely take more than one or two design and writing attempts to get the landing page to achieve its maximum potential.
There is worthwhile research available that analyzes the eye movement patterns of a person who looks at a web page. Though this is not new information, it is often lost in the maze of new marketing automation tools and ideas. People tend to be people, and although they are not robots they do have unconscious behavior patterns.
The way to use this information is to rearrange the key visual elements and track their response rates at each of the different locations. If you find many locations, you need to rethink your landing page design and number of elements you are using.
Organize your landing page with sections and use white spaces
What lists have in common with landing pages are two qualities – organization and spacing. People love lists. Think of the top 10 lists of the best cars, the most expensive getaways, or the cheapest places to buy gas.
Landing pages need to be sectioned because visitors need to find what they are looking for – quickly. This concept is connected to all of the other elements discussed in this article. If the reader becomes distracted at any point during the visit, either because there is too much clutter or they cannot find what they are looking for, the chances are they will leave.
As for white space, its biggest advantage lies in its ability to relax the reader’s mind. It does help clearly define the sections, but it also allows the reader to pause and digest what they have read and seen. The CRAP acronym that is often used in page design basically still holds true, but a landing page has a unique purpose, and that focus cannot be lost in its design.
Conclusion
The obvious theme to these tips has been simplicity. Keeping things simple requires more work than you may imagine. Steve Jobs said when designing the first Macintosh desktop that the simplest interfaces require the greatest amount of programming effort. Now consider his creations of the iPhone and iPad. And now consider their profitability. The simpler you make the landing page to read and use, the higher your conversion rate should be.
Ron Sela is an Inbound Marketing Manager at PageWiz. Named one of the Top 50 Influencers in B2B Marketing (#14) by Onalytica and a Top 50 Influence Marketing Blogger by InkyBee, Ron is a digital marketer and conversion optimizer, focusing on maximizing ROI with content marketing campaigns.
