A “landing” page is any page on your website where you are specifically sending visitors. When people first try online marketing they often direct traffic from their online campaigns to their home page. This is a mistake because there are too many distractions on most home pages – graphic panels, menu options, rolling banners – so the visitor wanders off without completing your desired action. Instead you should bring visitors from your Google ad or email campaign to a dedicated web page – the landing page – that is designed to encourage an action – for example, to get the visitor to register for a download or an online product demonstration.

The main factors in improving the performance of the typical landing page include:

1. Clear linkage between keyword, ad and landing page – For Google ad campaigns, make sure there is a clear link  between your keyword choice, the Google ad you show and the subsequent landing page to which you are bringing visitors. If these are all consistent then you’re off to a good start. If they’re not, then messing around with other issues will be a waste of time. So, for example, if the keyword phrase someone searches on is “CRM systems” then make sure that the ad you show in response refers to CRM systems and that your landing page also refers to CRM systems. This seems pretty obvious but it is not unusual to have a keyword trigger an ad and then clicking on the ad brings the visitor to a page that seems unrelated. Don’t confuse people by showing a page that is not clearly related to their search term and your ad.

2. Clear value proposition – Make sure you articulate a clear value proposition for the item you are offering on the landing page. This is not the same as stating the overall value proposition for your company. For example, if I’m offering a white paper then my value proposition on the landing page should sell how great the white paper is, not how great my company is. (You can tell them about how great your company is in the white paper or in a follow-up email). Likewise a landing page that offers an online product demonstration should sell how great and beneficial the demo is, before selling how great the product is.

3. Brevity, benefits and bullet-points – Don’t be too long winded, sell the benefits of your offer and use bullet points rather than big blocks of text.

4. Clear call to action – A clear call to action (CTA) is one of the most important elements of a landing page. CTA’s that are clear and “Above the Fold” help to increase conversion rates. Clearly explaining what visitors should do next avoids confusion and reduces the risk of visitors clicking to another page. “Above the Fold” means the content a visitor can see on your website when the page loads before scrolling down. When creating CTA’s avoid business jargon and be precise about what you want them to do next. For example, it is best to offer something of value and use power words like “Download” or “Start your Free Trial”. It is also more effective to only have a single Call to Action displayed multiple times throughout your landing page.

5. Design of Call to Action Button – It is best to use action words when creating CTA’s. The text used for the CTA should be slightly bigger than the surrounding text to make it stand out. It is also important to use strong and contrast colours for the CTA button. Usually CTA buttons are red, green, orange or blue. The choice of colour is based on contrast with the dominant colour you use for the background. For instance, if a landing page has lots of red in it then there is no point having a red CTA button as it will blend into the website. You want to ensure that the colour you use for the CTA button is bold and eye catching. Once you have identified the most attention-grabbing colour, ensure all CTA buttons on your website are consistent and do not vary between colours.

6. Use of Images –When selecting images for landing pages they should be real and authentic. When visitors come to the landing page they should relate to the image, and it should reflect their values or challenges. Avoid clichéd stock images. We recommend keeping graphics down to less than a 3rd of the homepage. It’s also effective to use the main image as a directional cue. “Directional cues” are visual indicators showing visitors where they should look and what’s the next step. For example, the visual cue can indicate that you want them to download a whitepaper or register for a free trial. Images where an arrow points to the registration form or a photograph of a person is facing toward the call to action button are examples of visual cues. Clicktale and Mixpanel are great tools to use to check how visitors move around your pages.

7. Address perceived risk – People don’t register on a landing page if they are anxious about some aspects of the page or website. Is there anything about the landing page design or layout that could cause concern for the visitor? Show a few  people outside your company the keywords, ads and landing pages you plan to use and ask for their feedback. List any of the issues or concerns they raise and test different ways to address those concerns. For example, a typical concern could be “I don’t know this company, I don’t recognize their logo, they are asking for my email in exchange for a document, am I going to get spammed with a lot of unwanted emails after this?”  You could address this by (a) adding a clear privacy statement explaining how visitor’s email addresses will be used, (b)  stamping some well known logos or security badges on the landing page to increase trust (these are called ‘trust anchors’).

Aside from these 7 areas, there are lots of other elements to consider, including your headline text, encapsulation of forms, linking social media accounts and ensuring your landing page has a responsive design. 

Bear in mind that while there are lots of things you can change and test on your landing page, if you change too many things at once you may not be able to tell which change has made a difference. So when you first start improving your landing page don’t make ad hoc changes in the hope that they’ll produce a result – instead try to be systematic in your approach. Develop some ideas on what might improve your page (your ‘hypotheses’) and then methodically test 2 versions of your landing page to test those ideas (this is called A/B testing). When you get more sophisticated you can try multi-variate testing (MVT) where you test multiple elements of a landing page together.

There are a lot of great resources that provide advice on landing page design, testing and conversion rate optimization, including:

In addition to those links, you should also monitor the hash tag #cro (for conversion rate optimization) on Twitter.

Written by Saoirse Carlin

Saoirse is principal Marketing Executive at Motarme, the Sales Services and Technology vendor. 
Motarme provides sales prospecting and lead generation services to Business-to-Business (B2B) technology, engineering and services companies.

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