A landing page is your food and drink. It’s what underpins all your marketing efforts. It’s what turbocharges your conversions and boosts your profits. Which is why it’s so important that you get it right.
The good news is that it isn’t rocket science. Anyone can create a high performing landing page as long as they know what they’re doing. The trick is to make yours so persuasive so that your site visitors simply can’t say “no” to your offer.
Let’s take a look at everything you need to do.
Keep The Design Simple
Since the primary aim of any landing page is to increase conversions, it should go without saying that your web design needs to be simple. There can be zero unwanted distractions. Instead, every element on your page has to count and it has to have one objective – to nudge people closer to accepting your offer.
So the first thing you need to do is nail your design. Like Uber did:
Source: Uber
The design is minimal and slick, and the colours complement each other and don’t clash. Moreover, the web designer has used a muted color palette that doesn’t distract from the message.
Notice how neatly everything is organized, too. You have the logo, the headline, the opt-in form, and the visuals. Nothing more than necessary is present. Zero clutter = lots more conversions.
Keep Your Headlines and Sub-Headlines Value Oriented
Most landing pages have a headline and one or two sub-headlines. Such as this one from Moz:
While your headline outlines your offer, your sub-headline needs to reinforce it. In Moz’s landing page example, we can see that the service on offer will make our content marketing strategy more accurate. The sub-headline reinforces this by outlining exactly what we can do with our content – we can audit, measure and discover more engaging content – if only we’d take them up on their offer. The value is clear. If we take advantage of this offer, our content marketing strategy will improve.
Here’s another example of a headline and sub-headline:
“Free Facebook Marketing eBook!”
Get more engaged Facebook followers double quick
Once again, the value is clear – we’ll be boosting our Facebook page by grabbing this eBook. Here are some more landing page headline tips:
- Keep it short and sweet – Don’t go overboard and keep it even shorter for mobile devices
- Be very clear about what your offer is – Use language they’ll understand and be as specific as possible. No one will download something they can’t understand
- Highlight at least one benefit – It’s a good idea not to highlight too many. Just one will do. That way, you don’t look too salesy
- Make it pop – Words like “free” and “boost” are easy ways to make your headline and pop and look more appealing
- Perform A/B tests – Your headline might not work straight off the bat. Keep testing variations of it until you get the one that boosts conversions
- Optimise it with keywords \
Discuss Pain and Pleasure In Your Body Copy
Us humans are hard-wired to avoid pain. If we think we’re going to lose out on something, we’ll do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen. And it’s this pain of losing out that you need to tap into with your body copy.
Your aim should be to make the reader feel a degree of pain. Talk about what they stand to lose if they don’t take you up on your offer and make them wince. Perhaps they’ll fall behind their rivals or miss out on the best growth hacks of 2019.
At the same time, you don’t want to overdo things. You don’t want to be too negative. To that end, balance things out by mentioning pleasure, too.
You can do this by showing what you’re really selling. Sure, you’re selling a product or service. But what you’re really selling is what your product represents. For example, let’s say I’m selling a painkiller. The product is a pill but what I’m actually selling is relief from pain.
“Relief from pain” is a powerful phrase that makes the reader feel good. It makes them feel pleasurable and can persuade them to go ahead and take me up on my offer.
Let’s think of another example. Say I’m selling men’s suits. So while the product is a suit, what I’m really selling is confidence and respect. Remember, people often buy products to feel good, or to at least feel better. Tap into this pleasure principle via your body copy and you’re onto a winner.
Demonstrate Social Proof
Social proof is a very powerful thing, as it shows your prospects that others have taken advantage of your offer – and enjoyed it.
Imagine if someone was to land on your page, never having heard of you. If they can at least see that other people have been using your products of services, it will help to build a bit of trust.
Adding social proof to your landing page is really simple. In fact, you could just add one line of text that says something like “So come join over 50,000 users who have already downloaded our app!”
Then, you follow it instantly with your call to action.
If, on the other hand, you don’t have too many users just yet, you could just add a few testimonials to your landing page instead. A testimonial must come from a real person, it must be authentic, and it must be relevant to your landing page offer and your audience. There are many feedback tools you can use, and the one we like the most is Feedier.
It’s a good idea to use pictures, too. Providing the person writing the review doesn’t mind, using their photograph will help to establish more trust and credibility.
Where possible, add numbers to your testimonials as numbers give you even more credibility.
Add a Video
It’s not always necessary to add a video to your landing page, and certainly, not all landing pages have a video. But a video is a fantastic way to build more trust with your site visitors and nudge them further down the sales funnel. Research has also shown that videos on landing pages do boost conversions. Meanwhile, stats show that just 28% of your landing page text is actually read. Videos can help to fill in the gaps.
With a video, you can explain more about your product or service, and you can build more trust by showing them who you are. There’s no need to make your video too long. In fact, you can keep it at less than 30 seconds. It just needs to be engaging, and it needs to say something about the benefits of using your product or service. It should also end with a compelling call to action.
It’s an especially good idea to add a video to your landing page if you have a product or service that’s a tad complicated. Explaining a bit more about how it works with a video is always a good idea.
Round Things Off With a Killer Call to Action
If your landing page isn’t converting, the reason could well be that your CTA is weak.
At the end of the day, high conversions come down to a strong CTA. In order for site visitors to turn into leads, they have to click on your CTA and opt-in.
Call to Action
The words you use are important. You don’t have the chance to use too many words, so you need to make sure they all count. Action words are important, such as “Download” and “Start Your Free Trial” because they’re specific and direct. They’re telling people exactly what it is they should do next.
Using the first-person language often works, too. Check out the example from HubSpot below.
By writing “I want to read this book” they’re creating a sense of ownership in the mind of the reader. This is really powerful stuff. Once your site visitors already begin to feel that they own something, they’re more likely to convert. First person language is also personal and helps to build trust. You could build even more trust by using words like “you” and “me.”
Size plays a key role as well. You need to make sure your CTA is noticed and that people can tell it’s a CTA. As such, it’s a good idea to make your button large. You don’t want to make it too large so that it stands out for all the wrong reasons, but it does need to stand out on your page. It needs to pop.
In terms of location, there’s no magic bullet. Instead, it’s a better idea to test your CTA in various positions to see what works best for you. Some landing pages keep their CTA above the fold, others put it below the fold. It’s really up to you to perform a few A/B tests on it.
Conclusion
As said, building a high performing landing page in 2019 isn’t rocket science – but it is a science. As long as you use the tips in this article and get creative with your words and organization, and as long as you perform A/B tests to see what’s working and what isn’t, you’ll be well on your way to more conversions.
Oh, and just make sure you’ve got a great offer – that’s kinda important, too.
The post A Comprehensive Guide to Creating a High Performing Landing Page In 2019 appeared first on Digital Media News & Training.
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