Your landing page is one of the most important pages of your entire website. It’s where you convince your visitors to take an action, whether this be a purchase, something simple like signing up for your newsletter. Read more here about the landing page definition.
Or maybe you’re trying to promote an app that you want people to download. If you don’t have a good landing page, people will come to your site, hang around for a few seconds, and then leave. You want to do everything you can to prevent this.
Luckily, with just a few minor tweaks, you can improve the conversion rates of your landing page. So if you’ve been struggling to keep people on your landing page, or having them complete the desired action, implement the conversion optimization tips below and you’re sure to see some improvement.
1. A Simple And Easy To Use Design
The first thing you’ll want to focus on is a simple and easy to use design and layout. How your landing page is designed will play an important role in the rest of the elements, so it’s important that you think about it first.
When it comes to a good design, there are two basic elements. First, you don’t want to use too many colors. Stick to two or three primary colors, and if you need more than that, use shades of those initial primary colors. Choose colors that work well together, and that convey the type of feeling you’re going for. For instance, if you want something more light-hearted you may go with pinks and yellows, whereas a more dependable feeling can be achieved through blues and greens.
The second element is that your design needs to be easy to use. You want something simple so that the people visiting your page have their focus where you want it. For a landing page, this will likely be on something like a “Buy Now” button or a form to submit their email address. If you have too many things going on in your page, their attention will be drawn away from these elements, and your visitors will be less likely to do what you want.
2. A Catchy and Noticeable Headline
The next thing you’ll want to look at is your headline. Just like you need eye catching email subject lines, you also need attention grabbing headlines on your landing page. When someone enters a page, the first thing they notice are the words at the top of the page. If this headline isn’t noticeable or if it’s dull, it’s going to leave a bad impression on the rest of the page.
Studies have shown that you only have a few seconds to grab someone's attention, otherwise they are likely to leave and try another website. This attention-grabbing starts with your headline, so put a lot of thought into it.
To help you write a better headline, here are a few tips you can try. First, insert some emotion to help connect with your reader. Think about what problem you’re trying to solve for them, and the emotion that goes along with it. Second, get right to the point. Let your readers know exactly what they can expect on your landing page in about 10 words or less. Finally, you could make an outrageous promise. This will pique their interest and hopefully get them to read the rest of the landing page to see how you can deliver.
3. A Strong Visual Focus
After someone reads your headline, you want their eyes to be drawn towards a strong visual focus. This could be a large image at the top of the page, or perhaps a video (Learn how to enlarge a picture without losing quality here). Visuals convey information more quickly, and you can say a lot about your product or service with just a quick visual, rather than a paragraph of text.
If you don’t have a photo of your product, and no videos to show, consider using a stock image. You can then add some text to this image to make it your own and to convey the message you’re after. The goal is to make your landing page immediately visually appealing to customers, and the key to this is a strong image or video.
4. Proof Of Concept
Next, you should think about adding in some proof of concept. When someone is considering your product or service, they want to know that it’s going to work. To ease their mind, you need to offer some proof. There are two main ways you can do this.
One option is to provide some customer testimonials. If you have some satisfied customers, ask them for a quote you can use on your landing page. Make these quotes noticeable, and attach the person’s name with it. If the source of the quote is a company, consider adding their logo or a picture of the business owner.
The other thing you can do is provide some stats. Let’s say you’re offering a new tool that will help websites increase their conversion rates. If you have statistics that show the success of your tool, you could display these on your landing page. This will give visitors a sense of what your product can do.
5. A Good Call-To-Action
No landing page is complete without a good call to action. The call to action is where you direct your visitors and ask them to complete an action. Without this call, your visitors will have nothing to do once they reach the bottom of the page, and are more likely to just leave.
There are a few things you can do to have a killer call to action. First, you need to make it noticeable. Don’t just make it a link within a long block of text. Make it a big, colorful button that is impossible to miss. Play around with different button styles to see what works best. Next, add some emotion to your CTA. A simple exclamation point at the end of your CTA could make a big difference, as it adds some excitement. Play around with different word choices and punctuation to see what works.
The last thing you could do is instill a sense of missing out. Let your readers know what they’ll be missing if they don’t convert right now. Is a sale ending? Are your betting sites having a special promotion? Are you providing something valuable this month only? No one likes to miss out on something, so you should instill a little bit of this fear in your readers. Take advantage of FOMO, fear of missing out!
6. Implement Testing And Tracking
Finally, you need to implement some systems for testing and tracking your landing page. Your initial setup is likely not the best possible set up for that page. There are always things you can tweak to make it better and improve your conversion rates. But the only way you’ll know is if you test different things out and track the results.
A great way to do this is through split-testing, also known as A/B testing. With split-testing you create two almost identical versions of the same page. One version is your original, and the second is a copy with a minor change. You then randomly show your visitors one of the two pages when they arrive, and you track the results over time to see which page performs better. For example, you could try out a new CTA button and see which one gets clicked on more often. Once you’ve studied your results, you can split test a different element, and then repeat the process to keep improving.
7. Always Look For Ways To Improve
The above items are the essential elements you’ll need for a high converting website landing page. However, there is no one set way to implement them all. You need to see what works best for your page and your business. The real key to a high converting landing page is trying out new things and always looking to improve. Use the above tips to get started, but keep looking for new ways beyond these initial tips.
Landing Pages For The Ages
Creating a landing page that creates conversions can be one of the most important aspects of your business. Keep the above tips in mind to maximize your conversion rates today.
Dave Schneider is the founder of LessChurn, churn reduction app. In 2012 he quit his job to travel the world, and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time he writes about SaaS, technology, sales, landing pages, digital marketing and online business at DaveSchneider.me.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post about the most important aspects of landing pages that consistently convert visitors into leads and sales.
Interested in more articles about converting visitors and leads?
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• Helpful Hacks To Convert More Website Visitors
• How To Write Compelling Content That Converts
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