How to create landing pages that convert
Campaign landing pages are either key in your online marketing success – or part of the failure. Make sure the traffic you invest in to your website generate the results you are aiming for.
Here are a few things to have in mind when either selecting or creating landing pages from scratch.
How to select the best landing page
When creating or choosing your landing pages – have the following four points in mind:
- Relevant – make sure the landing page you select is relevant to your ad (images, copy, URL etc) as well as yur target audience/visitor
- Offer – make sure the unique selling point or offer is prominently displayed on your landing page in relation to the products/service
- Call to action – make sure that you also encourage the visitor to do what you want them to do on your landing page – BUY – SIGN-UP i.e your call to actions should be very obvious on the page
- Focused and streamlined. The landing page should focus only on the relevant information, and be as focused as possible. Hence less is more and the page should be decluttered.
Relevant to your campaign
When choosing a landing page from your website, use the campaign topic to pick a relevant landing page. I.e – you are advertising a newly introduced product range of ceramic coffee cups in your online store. A suitable landing page would be a page holding all the new coffee cups which the potential customer can browse and buy from.
To go back to the ceramic coffee cup range, you could display an introductory offer in your ad, offer a 20% off any purchase from the new range during the first 2 weeks.
Call to action
When the visitor arrives at your page, make sure they know what to do. In the coffee cupscenario – this would be a landing page, with;
- the copy from the ad with more detail about the limited date range of the offer
- all the new coffee cups with buy now buttons
Creating landing pages from scratch
When designing landing pages, have your purpose in mind and:
- Campaign offer
- Obvious call to action or purpose
- Relevant content to the campaign
- Clean layout – less is more
- Easy to perform the call to action (for mobile, you should be able to convert with a thumb!)
- On brand look and feel to the page
- Contact details visible for support, delivery information or any other information supporting a purchase
- Designed for the device and context in mind (smartphone or desktop)
- Relevant for the target audience/user as well as user friendly (designet it with the end user in mind)
For mobile
In some instances you may require to create separate landing pages depending on the purpose of your campaign and the device you are targeting – keep in mind:
- Cut it down to the essentials in terms of displayed information
- Buy, call, or the action you want the visitor to perform
- Link to supporting information if necessary
A/B testing – test different landing pages against each other to drive conversion
Use Optimizely, or similar software to test different landing pages against each other.
Using this software you can test what converts and what does not to refine your landing pages towards increased conversions.
A few ideas and elements to test:
- Add customer testimonials or ratings to the landing page
- Add snippets from or quick links to supporting information
- Experiment with the layout
- Change the copy/message/tone of voice
- Different call to actions – buy, buy now, order etc
- Add credibility indicators
- Different pricing options – £9.99 versus £10.00
- Different icons or graphics
- Different colors
- Emphasizing different aspects of your product or service (such as bolded words in copy bulleted lists, copy in a different color)
- Promotional codes, such as free shipping etc, if they buy now
Image credit: unbounce.com