Fish and You Shall Find: Creating Landing Pages that Work
Creating landing pages can be difficult if you don’t know the basics. If properly presented, these pages can persuade visitors to complete certain actions and boost your marketing campaigns. Landing pages are also useful in promoting ads, guest articles, newsletters, product launchings, new pages, and more. How do you make effective landing pages that will encourage visitors to take action? How will you widen your customer base and generate more leads using these pages?
One way you can drive traffic to your landing pages is to make them appear as pop-ups as soon as visitors visit your home page. This will immediately attract their attention and engagement. If visitors close the prompt ad, you can place ads on the right side of all pages on the center position. Make the ad colors distinct from the background to make it noticeable.
When visitors click on the ads, greet them with a message. Tell them what you want to introduce: a new product, a giveaway or a webinar. Build your landing page around your call-to-action statement to ensure your visitors understand what you want them to do. A rambling and jumbling call to action will weaken your campaign and make it unsuccessful.
According to Dainis Graveris of 1stWebDesigner.com, a landing page should have the following elements to engage visitors and make them browse your website more often:
1. Page Headlines
The headline is one of the first things we see when a page loads. Make your headline catchy to engage your users’ attention. A well thought-out headline will grab attention and give the reader an idea on what the page is all about. Make sure the headline and advertisement wording fit together. A lack of connection between the two will only confuse readers. It also helps to make your headline keyword-optimized to make it appear on the search engine results and make it more visible to other web users.
2. Secondary Headlines
The headlines should also be clear and concise, and compelling enough to catch visitors’ attention. The words should convey what the page is all about in a ‘short and sweet’ manner.
3. Page Content
The page content should be easily understood by your readers. Avoid using big words that will make them look for an online dictionary. Use ‘you’ often to concentrate the message on them. Make your piece persuasive enough to compel them to follow the call-to-action statement. Your content should have impeccable spelling and grammar. A wrongly spelled word or awkwardly stated sentence can detract the trust of your visitors and make them doubt your credibility. In addition, highlight the benefits your visitors can get should they follow the call-the-action. This will intrigue and persuade them to get that ebook you’re offering or sign up for a trial period on your offered service.
4. Trust Indicators
A page is more trustworthy if there are testimonials, third-party trust and security certification, guarantee seals, and press mentions. These indicate that the business is reliable enough to ensure their online privacy and security. This would make it necessary to verify every detail you put on your landing page so you would not be proven wrong and be considered a fake. Look up details on how you’ll to get Better Business Bureau accreditation, VeriSign approval, and other security certifications.
5. Call-to-Action Statements
You need call-to-action statements that directly instruct visitors on what to do. Avoid using vague statements like, “Try our product today!” Instead, frame your call to action like this: “Order a diamond ring today!” The second statement will get more clicks because it’s phrased in a clear manner. The first call to action will not get as much response because it is uncertain how a visitor will try a product, unless you’re offering a free trial.
6. Conversion Buttons
Conversion buttons should be bright, bold and clearly highlighted. It should stand out because visitors might change their mind about the action you want them to do if they cannot immediately find the ‘Click Here’ button. In place of ‘Click Here,’ you can use ‘Download Now,’ ‘Buy Today,’ and use signal words like ‘new’ and ‘free.’
7. Links
Keep the links few and simple as possible. You don’t want your visitors distracted by many links while they’re in the middle of reading your content. Minimize the number of links to three or four to make visitors focus more attention on your headlines and call to action. Your links may point back to ‘Home,’ ‘Products & Services’ and ‘Contact Us.’ Do not make the links look like the tab titles you have on your website’s home page. This will prove to be off-putting and make your visitors click on them instead of reading your landing page.
8. Images and Videos
Make your visitors more interested on your landing page content with well-taken pictures and videos. Don’t use stock photos as this can hurt your authenticity in the eyes of your visitors. Use pictures that display your product well or post a video on how to use your product. You can also give actual demonstrations and show your viewers the benefits of using the product.
9. Above-the-Fold Position
When you’re making a landing page, make sure your visitors don’t have to scroll down the page to read the whole content. Some viewers neglect to scroll down as they tend scan the content and encode their details. This makes it important to ensure that the landing page is visible ‘above the fold’ and do not make scrolling necessary.
10. Landing Page Experiments
Test which copy, call-to-action, headlines, photos and videos get the most clicks and engagement from your visitors. Use analytics to help you learn which page will be more suitable for your campaigns. This will help you earn the high engagement and conversion rates you need to make online marketing a success, as well as avoid this scenario:
References:
Photo Credit: