How to create great landing pages
Michael Sharkey / Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Landing pages are an art form, when done correctly they can transform visitors into leads in just a few seconds that you or a sales person can act on. If your business has an online store landing pages are a great way of converting visitors into customers.
A landing page put simply is a dedicated page on your website to a topic, product or service that has a strong call to action. It's intended as the page the visitor “lands on” when they click through to your website. Many businesses create landing pages for their Google Adwords campaign or an email marketing campaign to increase the conversion rate of each visitor to a lead or sale.
To create a great landing page it’s important to work out your goal for each visitor to your website and the likely entry points. Don’t make the mistake of thinking visitors will land on the right landing page, design every page as a landing page and have a goal in mind. A few example goals might be to have the visitor:
- opt in to an email marketing list;
- Fill in an enquiry form; or
- Purchase a product or service;
The visitor is more likely to achieve one of your goals if you you give to gain. The marketing philosophy of give to gain is not new, but will drastically increase your chances of goal completion. Some examples of give to gain:
- offer a discount off your product or service;
- offer something for free;
- have a competition to win a desirable item (e.g. iPad); or
- send the user a white paper or e-book;
From my experience free things, competitions and discounts always work better than a white paper or e-book but it’s all dependent on your target audience. If you're running a store I prefer to offer a discount, e.g. "Subscribe to our mailing list, stay up to date and receive 10% off your next order"
No one likes purchasing or handing over information to a website that looks unprofessional or too sales orientated. With hundreds of internet scams and schemes the consumer is smarter and more cautious online - so make sure all of your landing pages are professional and honest. If you’re going to email the visitor a newsletter each week after they fill in the form, tell them. A few quick tips can help make a landing page professional:
- clearly display a phone number, email and address;
- don’t do the hard sell, explain benefits and how you solve the problem;
- be honest, tell the user what you’re going to do with their information; and
- make the information on the page informative and of value.
If the content is of value to the visitor and you provide a give to gain incentive it’s likely your landing page will be a success.
To take out the guess work many advanced business owners use AB testing to create the perfect landing page. AB testing is simply creating two, three, four or more landing pages with different layouts, content and calls to action to see which one performs best, the winner is often kept and used as the default landing page. It’s always best when doing AB testing to test minor adjustments rather than majorly different content pages. As you advance with your landing pages you might want to start AB testing.
I'll continue to blog more about my experiences with landing pages to help you, but in the mean time if you have tips or techniques you like to share or questions you want answered, let everyone know in the comments below.
UPDATE: I've added a video tutorial of how to create great landing pages using Bislr.