Landing pages, as the name suggests, are objective-specific pages where users are prompted to take an action after ‘landing’ on the page. Whether your objective is to secure new customers for a £1,000 product or to simply get more subscribers for your newsletter, a landing page is the way forward, and there are innumerable examples supporting the same.
For instance, RankWatch, an SEO tool for businesses, was able to improve customer signups by 27% with a simple video landing page. In fact, marketers these days are using separate landing pages for each campaign that they launch.
However, not all landing pages are created equal and some convert better than others. In this blog post, we are going to focus on the various elements that go into building a landing page, and find out what separates amazing landing pages from average ones.
But, before you even begin thinking about elements, the first step is to think about what you are looking to achieve with your landing page.
Objective
As mentioned earlier, landing pages are objective-focussed pages. Sure, you want to drive an avalanche of traffic to your landing page, but what is the action that you want users to perform?
Think about the reason behind making the landing page, this will be a guiding point in the steps that come next. Landing pages (and the objective behind them) will differ with industries, products, and of course audiences (more on this in the next step). This step requires no tools, simply jot down your objective(s) on a piece of paper and you’re good to go.
If you have multiple objectives, it is advisable to think about multiple landing pages, each one serving a specific purpose. Not only would this simplify the design of your landing page for better user experience, studies have proven that multiple landing pages show better conversion rates.
Building Buyer Personas
The next most important factor when designing a landing page is to understand the target audience. After all, only after you fully understand how your audience thinks and what their pain points are, will you be able to design a landing page that addresses those pain points. For any online business, it pays to reorient yourself to simply please the consumer.
Buyer Personas, simply put, are fictional representations of your ideal customer. Having a thorough understanding of your ideal consumer is a great guide to creating products, content, and in this case, landing pages that will attract and convert them. Here’s a great guide to creating buyer personas.
However, simply understanding the user is not enough. It is important to understand what your users are looking for on the internet. That is, simply knowing what keywords to target will not get you far unless you understand the intent behind them. Let us look at two examples of long-tail keywords to understand intent better:
- How to improve SEO- If the user enters this term in the search bar, you can tell that they are probably an SEO newbie and don’t have specific questions to ask. They are probably a business owner that is not familiar with technical SEO jargon and are looking for a way to generate leads or sales for their business.
- How to generate more traffic in 90 days– This search term suggests that the user may be familiar with basic SEO and is looking to improve their strategies to bring about new traffic. The “90 days” in the search term also suggests they understand that organic SEO does not bring overnight results and have made their peace with the same.
Understanding the intent behind relevant keywords will help you make better design and content decisions when constructing a landing page.
Design Elements That Convert
While landing pages may vary in design and content across industries, all landing pages have certain elements in common. Let’s look at these elements and find out how each element can be optimised to drive conversions.
Headlines and subheaders
The headline of your landing page is the first thing a user will encounter after they click on your link. The headline is important for catching their attention and driving their interest. Keep in mind that the user is probably already searching for whatever your page (along with a million others) is offering. Your headline will decide whether the user continues to look for what they want on your page, or on the competitor’s landing page. Even David Ogilvy, regarded as the father of advertising, emphasises the importance of headlines:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
At a time when 77% of marketers are NOT testing their headlines, paying special attention to your headlines might be the edge you need to get ahead.
The case of subheadings is no different. Not only do they support your skillfully-crafted headline, subheadings are also responsible for creating enough interest in the visitor.
At a time when users are being subjected to an overload of information, headings and subheadings are probably the most critical elements of your landing page when it comes to grabbing attention and creating interest.
Visual Content
A picture is worth a thousand words and videos, a lot more. Moreover, humans process and remember visuals much better than words. Those should be reason enough to include some sort of visual content on your landing page. If not, here’s a few more inspiring statistics that show just how powerful visual content can be.
However, this is not to say that you should simply buy a few stock images and throw them on the landing page. While stock images may solve the purpose of having visual content on your landing page, they do very little to show effort on your side. Sure, they are professionally clicked photographs that may make your landing page more professional, but almost everyone visiting your website will know where you found them.
Instead, it is smart and cost-effective to use your own images. They don’t necessarily have to be professionally clicked photographs, simple photos of your teams engaged in their daily tasks would do the trick. If you’re offering a software solution, take screenshots of your product in action and show your visitors how it can solve their problems.
Benefits
Now that you have used the headlines and the visuals to hook the visitor, it is time to convert them into a customer by listing out the benefits of choosing your service/products. These benefits should ideally be laid out in a point-by-point manner and should send out a clear concise message.
CTA
The user has scrolled down the page, has gone through your offering, but now what? What action do you want them to perform? Sure, you could simply put a link to the subscribe/purchase page and expect the users to click on it.
The more effective way of doing this would be to have a bright, attention-grabbing Call-To-Action button present on your page. RankWatch has a great CTA button that stands out from the rest of the page and tells the user exactly what needs to be done.
Conclusion
Not enough stress can be put on great user experience design when it comes to the success of a landing page. That being said, landing pages should be continually A/B tested against variations to bring about best results. If done right, testing landing pages can potentially boost your conversion rates by 300%.