If you’ve clicked an online ad, you’ve likely ended up on a landing page. These pages play an essential role in online marketing. If your small business site is not using them, you may be missing opportunities to increase leads or sales.
Landing pages are generally stand-alone elements of a website that exist to generate leads or “click throughs.” A leads generation page asks visitors to provide contact information in exchange for an offer such as a free white paper, e-newsletter subscription or e-book. By collecting this information from visitors, the page produces a list of business leads. The purpose of a “click through” landing page is to educate and motivate visitors to respond positively to the page’s call to action – such as clicking a “buy now” button.
Not all landing pages are created equally, however. To be successful, these pages must catch the visitors’ attention, communicate clearly and persuade convincingly. As with a website in general, the winning combination will include carefully planned words, design and graphic elements — but there is no one-size-fits-all formula. Effective landing pages begin with knowing your customers and prospects, their needs and motivations.
11 Best Practices for Effective Landing Pages
Keeping this knowledge of the customer in the forefront, consider these 11 best practices from online marketing experts when developing your landing pages:
- Use an effective headline. Together with a primary graphic element, the headline will either capture or lose the viewer’s attention. The wording in the primary headline should clearly match the wording of any ads that ‘click through’ to the landing page.
- Write landing pages with a single purpose. Keep the content clear, concise and focused. Each element on the page should support the purpose and goal of the page; remove anything distracting.
- Do not include navigation tabs found on primary site pages. These can distract from the objective of the page – guiding the visitor directly to your specific call to action.
- Use graphic elements that direct the visitor’s eyes to the call to action (CTA) button. Optimally, this CTA should be clearly visible on the first screen (no scrolling required to find it).
- Make content quick and easy to scan by using sub-heads and bulleted copy.
- Have a great offer. Keep your customers’ preferences in mind when developing your offer. Discounts, coupons, upgrades, free samples are just a few of the many possible options. An offer that is not appealing to your visitors can undermine even the best-planned landing page.
- Use video. Research has shown engaging video can increase conversion by 80 percent.
- Include testimonials from real customers to provide authenticity and include a phone number so visitors can interact with you personally.
- For leads generation, ask for only the most vital information. Requesting excessive information from customers will turn them away.
- For product sales, provide a free trial (‘try before you buy’) and/or a guarantee (to lower risk) whenever possible.
- Test optional landing pages with customers; let them tell you which is most appealing and effective.
Need help creating effective landing pages? Contact Page Progressive. We welcome the opportunity to apply our experience to help you grow your business.
Check out these links to read more about landing pages:
https://www.leadpages.net/blog/whats-a-landing-page-digital-marketing/
Image courtesy of pixabay.com.