5 Best Practices for Great Landing Pages

The goal of a landing page is to provide relevant information based on customer intent, nurture customers who aren’t ready to buy and demonstrate how your company provides specific value in that area. 

A well-designed landing page is important when trying to drive sales of your product or service, boost customer experience and help you convert customers through your enticing offers. 

In this blog, you’ll learn about the key components of a great B2C and B2B landing page and five ways to integrate them into your content to increase conversions and create a more enjoyable customer journey. 

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a web page created for a particular purpose and is a standalone page where you can set tracking parameters to monitor user behaviour on the page. Landing pages usually have one of five purposes: 

• Encourage a visitor to click
• Get a visitor to make a purchase
• Encourage a visitor to give his/her permission for you to follow up (whether it be by email or phone etc.c)
• Get a visitor to learn something, or leave feedback. 
• Get a visitor to contact friends or family about your products or services. 

When a potential customer visits your landing page via organic search, PPC ads, social ads or promotional emails, they’re showing interest in the specific value proposition or product on which they’re clicking. However, a landing page isn’t enough to drive a purchase by itself. 

There are specific ways you can organise the content to drive conversions, and eventually sales. 

Here are five best practices to create landing pages that attract more customers and amplify their signals of interest.

Crafting the perfect headline. 

A headline is the first thing a user sees on your landing page, and the majority of visitors will read your headline but only skim through the copy. So it’s important to write headlines that sell. 

To do that, avoid headlines that are ambiguous or don’t reflect your content correctly. Firstly, it’s important to make sure you sum up your content in an engaging and concise way. Secondly, make sure the headline conveys the benefits of your offer. This will make users more likely to stay on the page and act on the call to action (CTA).

Thirdly, keep in mind that an optimised page title (including any keywords you are targeting) can help you rank better in search engines. Having an indexed landing page on your site that is keyword optimised raises its visibility for that particular query and there are some great free keyword research tools out there to help you find the right ones.

Finally, always ensure that the headline of your landing page matches the headline of your email, ad, SEO copy, etc. for a seamless user experience. 

For example, if your ad is for “boutique stores San Francisco” then the headline of your landing page should have the words “boutique stores San Francisco” in the headline and be accompanied by relevant content. 

Top tip: Learn how local SEO can improve your visibility online in the locations that matter.

Build a custom landing page for each campaign

It’s crucial that the content a user clicks on closely matches the headline and body content of your landing page. This is called ‘message match’, and it’s defined by WordStream as “[...] matching the heading of your landing page with the headline of the ad or piece of marketing your visitor clicked.” 

Message match is an important part of a great user experience. And because most companies create and distribute a lot of content across many different categories and product types, simply sending users to your homepage or a different product page from your promotional pages won’t allow that message to match up.

For example, if you send an email that advertises local concerts in your area, including one they might be especially interested in, he/she will click on your CTA button to buy tickets for that concert. If instead of a ticket page for that artist, you send the user to your site’s homepage where the content is for baseball tickets, they will probably be pretty annoyed.

To combat such an issue, any promotion you run should direct customers to a dedicated landing page where the headline and content match your ad or email promotional copy. The user should immediately see contextual clues that relate to a click or search. You don’t want to make users take additional steps to find the correct content.

Use images carefully

Readers are likely to remember 65% of the content if it contains images so there’s a reason to use them on your landing pages. 

Because of this, it’s best to provide an image that highlights someone using your product or service, or illustrates what the visitor will receive if they convert on your landing page.

But be careful. Your images should help you earn conversions, not distract your visitors. Not only should your images be inspiring, original and eye-catching, but they should be carefully positioned to inspire the reader to action. 

A concise, educational video can also help boost conversion rates if you’d prefer to go that route. Plus, with all the tools and software available now it’s easy to make great videos without hiring a professional. 

Craft Engaging CTA’s

Your CTA button is the most important part of your landing page because it’s the way that new leads are created in your system. Without this button, you don’t get potential new customers, and the rest of the copy and images on your page lose their importance. 

Great CTAs (that involve 3 key elements) can increase your conversion rate by tens or even hundreds of percentage points.

Visitors need to feel compelled to click on the CTA button, so you must convince them to do so. Avoid boring or unclear copy like “submit” or “get started” and focus on engaging, personalised copy such as “Send me the eBook” or “Get my free trial.” Make it crystal clear what the user will receive by clicking on the button.

In terms of CTA colour, your button should contrast with its surrounding elements to draw the maximum amount of attention. Use A/B testing to see which colours work best for your business. 

Preferences can often vary by industry and persona, so it’s important not to make assumptions based on “best practices” that may not be applicable to you. That being said, it’s typically best to keep your page colour and the objects on it to the left-hand side of the colour wheel shown below (green, blue, purple) and use contrasting colours for your CTA button(s).

Don’t make your forms too complicated

A poorly designed lead capture form can be the death of your conversions. Prospects don’t want to spend a lot of time divulging large amounts of personal information just to claim an offer. 

Only ask for the information you really need such as name and email address, and keep in mind that users will provide additional information later when they become customers.

Your campaigns will benefit from A/B or split testing, which basically pits one landing page against another to see how it performs. This can be useful for form design as it shows how much information a customer is willing to input. Too many fields can turn a user away. 

Many companies now give prospects the option to fill in their information via their social media platforms. This easy option is a great fit for many busy consumers.

Conclusion: Tips for creating landing pages that convert

To make your landing pages more effective, you should:

• Make headlines clear, concise, and engaging.
• Build a custom landing page for each active promotion or campaign. 
• Make sure the text and images in your advertisement or email directly match your landing page offers.
• Use images carefully. Make sure they drive conversions - not distract your potential prospects. When using photos of people, make sure they are facing the form you want your prospects to fill out.
• Build engaging CTAs that include text that inspires action, and consider your colours carefully. Make sure your language is tailored for each specific offer.
• Keep your forms simple, concise and easy to fill out. Consider giving users the option to fill out their information via their social media accounts or Gmail.

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Book a call with our founder Matt to find out more!