Making an Effective Landing Page

A landing page is a dedicated web page, often called a squeeze or splash page, designed to collect your visitor’s data through a lead capture form. You can even use a landing page to give away a free e-book, or highlight a webinar or course in exchange for your audience signing up for your email list. There are a number of things that can be done to ensure that readers are enticed by a landing page and want to know more information. First, let’s start with the basics.

The best part about a landing page is that it’s only one page. But it’s a page you need to optimize as much as possible. People often go drastically wrong when designing their landing pages. A well-crafted landing page will enable you to target a specific audience, create a compelling message, and increase conversions. It all comes down to whether you know your audience or not. Those who know their audience will be able to create the right messaging, hold their audience’s attention, and come up with a mind-reading landing page.

It is very important that you don’t try to make your landing page appeal to absolutely everyone. It all begins with creating your ideal persona. When you know who you’re targeting, you will be better equipped to create a landing page that resonates with them. Your personas should be your ideal target audience. After all, if the right people aren’t visiting your landing page, you will never convert in the first place.

Your personas should include demographic information like where they live, their ages, and their genders, but should go beyond that – you need to know what inspires your ideal personas and what they hope to achieve. You must find out their opinions and how they feel towards specific ideas. When you do this, you’ll be able to position your offer to them so that it seems irresistible to them.

Remember that you only have a few moments to grab the attention of your visitors. And in those short few moments, they’ll decide whether or not they want to convert. The reason landing pages are so effective is that they isolate the action. Therefore, distracting them with multiple options is a surefire way to confuse them, otherwise your conversion rate will suffer. Make it clear what you want them to do. And to cement the effect, you need to create an offer that resonates with them enough to take the action, by providing the audience with something they would actually want. Ask yourself whether or not as a visitor you would take the desired action. If the answer is no, then there are changes you need to make.

Once you’ve got your offer down, you need to start working on the headline. The headline must be captivating. It’s usually the first thing your visitor will see, so you need to perfect it. The headline is often the deciding factor of whether or not a visitor will convert. And you only have one real opportunity to make it work. You need to outline exactly what will happen to the visitor once they take your desired action. If you’re struggling to find the right words, then look at the language your audience uses, because it will resonate better with them.

After the headline, you’re likely going to use a subheading. This is another opportunity to mention the benefits. It’s for people who were compelled by the headline but need some more convincing. It gives you another chance to keep their attention and draw them closer to your call to action.

Good copy is also a major selling factor, but it’s not as easy as just writing words on a page. They have to mean something to your target customer. Your copy is there as a tool to help you get your point and message across and increase the chance of conversion. It all begins with finding the sweet spot for the right amount of copy. Write too little and you won’t have enough words to get your point across. But write too much and the page will become overwhelming. Furthermore, in general terms, the amount you write depends on the offer. For things that need a lot of explaining and persuading, you’re going to need more copy. And, most importantly, when it comes to actually writing your copy, you should mirror your brand’s style. Keep in mind that it’s not about you. It’s about the customer, so the phrasing you use should be customer-centric and focus on them.

When you’re adding images to your landing page, you should utilize ones that help your visitors visualize their life after they’ve taken your action. Your audience cannot touch or hold your product. Your landing page should make use of images to help them visualize it.

People are also more inclined to take action if they know other people just like them have taken action and benefited from it. Using social proof such as positive reviews and testimonials on your landing page provides prospects with another layer of trust. They feel like it’s more likely your product/service will actually do what you say it will because they can see what other people thought about it.

The most important element on the page, however, is your call to action button. If your audience can’t see your button clearly, they’re not going to know what to do. Therefore, be sure to make it the most visible item on your page.

Once all that is done, you need to use Google Analytics to measure how many visitors came to your landing page and converted by giving you their data. Also keep an eye on your bounce rate, i.e. the number of people who landed on your landing page and didn’t convert. If your bounce rate is low it could mean you aren’t using the right keywords, images or design. You can also run an A/B experiment with two different versions of your landing page which are randomly displayed to visitors, to determine which one works better.

In conclusion, it can be said that, as it is with everything in marketing, there is no one size that fits all. Develop your understanding of your audience, and you’ll be able to create winning landing pages for all your offers.