Create fully customized landing pages on your own

What is a Landing Page? A Guide to Effective Conversion Optimization

The requirements for an effective web site continue to change and evolve. The necessity to be aware of new changes in technology and the new developments of experienced designers place new demands on web site owners.
Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on whatsapp

The requirements for an effective web site continue to change and evolve. The necessity to be aware of new changes in technology and the new developments of experienced designers place new demands on web site owners. Finding new ways to draw and keep the attention of visitors to your web site for the purpose of generating contact lists or, best of all, sales, is necessary to stay competitive in the global Internet marketplace. The landing page design is the result of applying existing technology, new design techniques, and a sales-driven business model.

Start creating your own landing pages with Pagewiz

What is a landing page?

In its simplest form, a landing page is the web page on your site where you want a visitor to land that will present the most critical information about your product or service, and then presents a call-to-action that moves the person from acquiring information to performing an action that generates a potential or actual sale. A landing page is usually not the home page for reasons that will be discussed later.

What is a Landing Page - Save the Trees

A site can have multiple landing pages, depending on how many products a vendor sells, or it can be part of a specific Internet sales strategy. There are two primary ways to direct a visitor to your landing page: through a link redirecting the person to a specific page, or by the visitor clicking on ads placed on web sites which direct the traffic to the page.

What is conversion rate optimization?

The title of the article mentioned conversion optimization. The focus of this article is on the landing page, but the two concepts are directly connected so a brief explanation is in order. So, what is a landing page, and how it is related to conversion rate optimization?

The sole reason to create a landing page is to achieve conversion optimization. This is a term that describes the process of turning visitors into either contacts for potential future sales or converting a visitor into a buyer. The owner of the web site decides which, or both, of these are goals for the landing page. The optimum number of conversions as measured by the execution of the call-to-action is more easily obtained by including both sales and contact generation as goals for the landing page.

Use a landing page and Your homepage

The reason to avoid using your home page as a landing page is because the created content on the home page is almost never specific enough to suit the purpose of a landing page. A home page often informs, and sometimes entertains, but its primary purpose is to get the visitor to stay on the site and explore the site in-depth. If constructed properly, a home page serves as a tool for people who are researching the company for informational or financial research purposes.

The best landing pages are all about generating sales. A visitor who parks on a landing page needs only enough information to make a decision or ask to be contacted in the future as a potential buyer. This person is not likely to be concerned about the history of the company, the latest press releases, or reading the thumbnail profiles of the board of directors. This is one reason why links to the company home page on a landing page are highly discouraged.

 

What is a Landing Page - Lead CaptureAnother difference between a home page and landing page is how people will arrive at the page. A search engine entry for “ABC Stores” may pull up results that include its home page, weekly sales, or latest news. An entry for “ABC Stores Fisher Price Music Box” can land on a landing page that specifically makes an informational sales pitch with a call to order the product today.

Landing pages should be tested and optimized

In order to achieve the best results from a landing page, the design and placement of the elements must first be tested. Then, changes are to be made as needed to create the best possible arrangement of page elements and text. It is important to understand this is a process – part learning and part creative.

This focus must be on what the visitor will want to know to make a decision.

Create a path for easy navigation throughout the process, then lead them to a place where they can execute the call-to-action and provide contact information or go directly to the shopping cart and make a purchase. The simpler, the more direct – the better.

One method of optimizing the page is to use the available research concerning the eye movements of people who read web pages. It has been established through research that people have specific patterns they mentally follow when browsing the Internet. The page can be designed to optimize the way a visitor reads the screen, at which point you can emphasize the right information in the right places.

The end result will be the creation of a visual path that will achieve the best result.

The call-to-action not only needs to be worded correctly, but must also direct the visitor to a simple interface where they can submit the basic contact information or go through an easy to understand checkout process. This can be done through a hyperlink or visual element easily found on the landing page.

As the call-to-action link is the most important item on the landing page, its placement is critical. It is better to test its placement too much rather than not enough. Once you find its optimum position, do not change it, even if there are significant text and visual element changes on the page.

Design Your Landing Page with a Professional Tool

The right design tools for any web page design job can make your life massively easier. Working to create the right words, and deciding on the right number of elements to be placed on the landing page, will take considerable amounts of time and effort. Unless you are a professional web designer, creating a visually appealing and high quality landing page will consume even more of your time.

One important point to make in selecting design tools is that you need to choose the ones that are right for you. Some people will recommend one tool over another with the best of intentions, but you need to select the tools that fit your hand. In other words, the tools that are right for you are the ones that fit your level of experience and knowledge of design technology.

Making the right choice will dramatically affect the amount of work you will need to put in as well as the end result.

What is a Landing Page - Note

PageWiz website is designed to help attract leads, then convert them into buying customers. You can easily build more sophisticated landing pages to improve your conversion rates and generate even more leads. As we discussed earlier in the previous section, no matter how well your pages are performing, there is always room to test ideas and improve the performance of your landing page. With PageWiz A/B testing and analytics you will be able to test different headlines, insert different images, and modify your calls-to-action to decide which design generates more leads and increases your conversion rate.

Optimize Visuals and Text for Higher Conversions

Earlier the article discussed what conversion optimization was and its relevance to the landing page. It is critical that you understand the value of the landing page to increasing your conversion rate. Everything on the landing page must be focused to generate a sale, and that includes all the images, video, graphics, and text. Non-essential page elements are likely to distract the visitor and reduce the possibility of moving forward with the call-to-action.

One element whose inclusion on a landing page is debated is the use of video. There are those who say that having the visitor pause to watch a video clip, whatever its purpose, serves as a distraction and redirects their attention away from reading and in a direction away from the call-to-action. Proponents of videos make their case by stating that a video can say more in two or three minutes than a page of text, plus will redirect the visitors attention back to the text elements for more information, leading back to the call-to-action. What seems to be agreed upon in this debate is the video needs to run for an optimized length of time and convey precisely the right information.

Make Your Textual Elements Actionable

Textual elements, particularly headlines, are to be action-oriented in their language. The conversion rate will increase only when a visitor feels that following the call-to–action is the reason they are on the page. As was mentioned earlier, the visitor to a landing page is only interested in the product information. One way the conversion optimization will take place is when the content of the page convinces the visitor of the necessity of following through with the call-to-action. With any conversion, the buyer needs to have a hope that the product they are buying will provide them with a tangible benefit for a better life.

Using graphics to illustrate the “why” and not the “how much” of the purchase is an important consideration. Everyone loves using graphs and charts as a means of measuring the success of the product to the visitor. But that belongs in a link on the home page. Including a graphic that illustrates a tangible benefit to the potential buyer puts them one step closer to a conversion.

Conclusion

This article has offered a summary of what a landing page is, how it can benefit your sales and marketing efforts, and some common mistakes to avoid by taking the proper approach. As was stated earlier, the purpose of creating the landing page is to make a significant difference in your conversion rate by optimizing both the page content and the page design. As with most changes in technology, you will learn by experience and arrive at a point where you will see the results of your efforts. A landing page has proven itself over time by companies large and small to be an effective way to build sales and contact lists. Use it to your advantage.

 

Landing Pages Designer

Liked it? Share now

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp