The main goal of any digital marketing campaign is to drive more conversions. A landing page can bring visitors one step closer to conversion. Landing pages are part of every marketing or advertising campaign. Visitors end up on these pages after they have clicked on an ad or any other campaign CTA. These pages play a key role in encouraging visitors to take further action and ultimately convert. Hence, it is important that a landing page gives users a great experience overall.
While creating marketing campaigns it is important to consider every aspect, and that includes landing pages. Spending time building a landing page is important for the success of your overall campaign. In this article, we will discuss all the details that are important to create a successful landing page.
First, let’s understand what a landing page is and how it is important.
What is a landing page?
Landing page is a website page where users first come in contact with a website. These pages serve a purpose and provide users with more information they are looking for. A landing page can be a part of a marketing or advertising campaign. The important function of these pages is to provide relevant information and help users convert.
They contain various elements that encourage users to take desired actions. For example, product ads can lead users to a landing page that includes details about the relevant product and a CTA button that asks users to purchase it. Similarly, a marketing campaign can lead users to a page that offers a free downloadable content and includes a form for the users to fill up. All these actions depend on your campaigns. Landing pages should be relevant to your marketing campaigns and give users the right information.
Why are landing pages important?
A landing page is an important part of any digital efforts and here are the reasons why.
- Through landing pages businesses can drive more traffic to their website. When users click on any campaigns like social media, advertising etc. they end up on the landing page. These pages introduce the audience to your website.
- When designed well a landing page can encourage users to convert. When users find the right information they are looking for, they might be intrigued to know more about your business. Similarly, on an ecommerce website, a product page can give users important details about the product and convince them to make a purchase. Landing pages can help improve your conversion rates.
- Landing pages are built with a specific goal in mind. These pages can not only help complete your goals but also track them.
- You can collect personal information of your website visitors through landing pages.
- Now that we know how important landing pages are, let’s find out how to build a successful landing page.
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How to design a landing page?
As discussed above a good landing page can convince your users to take the desired actions. How you set up your landing page is important for its success. Landing pages should be aesthetically pleasing, but more than that they should be easy to navigate. Users should find the correct information they are looking for laid out in an accessible format. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create a landing page. All you need to do is ensure that your information is displayed in a clean and simple format.
Here are all the important elements that can help you design a great landing page.
Page Layout
Layout helps you organize all the data on your web page. It gives a structure to your landing page. When creating layout ensure that the format is easy on the eye. Consumers have a short attention span, and they will not read every single content on your landing page. Hence, keep information that is key. The user should be able to scroll through your page and understand the key points. Ensure that you do not overload the page with content.
Moreover, adding some visual elements is a great way to get all the information across. Along with images you can also add some illustrations to present your information. This can keep your user’s attention. Since landing pages usually focus on a single goal, ensure to have only one CTA related to that goal. Adding too many links or CTAs can confuse the users and they might end up leaving your website. The landing page should also have a balanced amount of white space to help users easily scan the page. White space is the space between lines of paragraphs and other elements on a web page. It helps your layout to look appealing and creates a good user experience.
Headline
A headline tells your users what they can expect to find on your landing page. Write an enticing headline to help capture your user’s attention. It should be relevant to your content and include important keywords. The headline should give the users an idea of what benefit they are gaining from the offers on your landing page.
Content
After the headline you need to spend time creating informative and relevant content for your landing page. This content will simply describe more about your offer and how users can benefit from it. In case of a product page, make sure to write all the product specifications that will be useful to the user. Do not include too much information here as the users might not read it and could exit. Write precise details in a few words.
For example, if you are offering an eBook for free download, the users just need to have a brief description of what they can expect to learn from that. Also, make sure to put the sign up or contact us forms where they are easily visible to the users, without them having to scroll all the way to the bottom.
Lead capture forms
Lead capture forms or conversion forms are the forms that users fill out in exchange for the offer. It is a form that helps you build your contact list. Create forms that have a simple layout. Avoid asking too many questions in this form as it might leave the users irritated. Sometimes users will exit if there is too much information to be filled in. Ask questions that are relevant to your offer. Name and email are the basic details that you will need to contact these users. Even if you have just two to three questions that will be enough. Place forms in an easily visible space on your page.
Call-to-Action
A call-to-action or CTA is an important element of your landing page. These are the buttons that allow users to take a desired action on the page. The CTA button should be relevant to your offer. Use appealing colors and fonts, which align with your brand image, to make your CTAs more attractive to the users. It should also be easily visible on the webpage.
Images
Images are essential to make your landing page look more attractive. Use high quality and relevant images to enhance the look of your landing page.
Landing page Optimization
Simply creating landing pages is not enough. You will need to optimize them to enhance their performance and make them more visible on Google’s results page. Here is how you can optimize landing pages.
Keywords
Like any other page on your website, landing pages should include relevant keywords in the title, headers, and text. This will ensure that your page is optimized for search engines. Your landing page should include the target keywords for both organic and paid campaigns. In case of paid ads if your landing page does not include the target keywords it can bring down your ad rank. This will impact your ad’s visibility and you might not get successful results from your ad campaigns. Hence, it is important to use relevant keywords on your landing pages.
Run A/B testing
A/B testing is a way to test various elements of a web page to see which performs better. If you are creating a landing page for a marketing campaign, you can create two different versions and test them. Experiment with elements like layout, fonts, images, headline, CTAs and more to see which one is more effective. A/B testing can help you see the preference of your target audience. For example, if you are not sure about the placement of your lead capture form, you can run A/B testing by placing it in different parts of the page. This will help you find out which placement makes the form more accessible to your audience.
Compress images
Ensure that your page is optimized for speed, this can help you create a better user experience. If a page takes too long to load it can drive away the users without engaging. There are many reasons why a web page can be slow and one of them includes heavy files. Sometimes large images can slow down the speed of your landing page. It is a good practice to compress the size of your images before you upload them. Reducing the file size of your images can help the page load faster.
How to track the success of a landing page?
There are many metrics that can help you track the performance of your landing pages. Here are some important metrics that you should monitor.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate can help you track the percentage of users who came to your website but left without taking any action. Monitor the bounce rate for your landing page. If the bounce rate is high, it means that more percentage of users are leaving without engaging. In this case you will know that you might have to improve the performance of your landing page. There might be many factors affecting the bounce rate. Maybe you need to improve the user experience. It could also mean that some link is broken. Based on this metric you can gauge the performance of your page. Keep optimizing your landing page to reduce the bounce rate.
Site Speed
Site speed shows you the speed of your web pages. A page that takes a long time to load can affect user experience. Keep monitoring this metric to ensure that your landing page is functioning smoothly.
Heat Maps
Heat mapping can help you observe the behavior of your users. It can show you how they engage with your page, what they read, where they spend most time and more. This can give you useful insights about the various elements on your page. Based on this you can make changes in the layout or content as per the preference of your users.
Conversion Rate
This metric helps you track the number of conversions on your landing page. One of the factors that impact conversion rate is landing page experience. If your conversion rate is low you might want to check your landing page and improve it.
While building landing pages always think about the ease of your users. Creating a good user experience is key for a successful landing page. And a great landing page has the potential to drive more conversions for your business.
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