Welcome to the era of instant stimulation and accessibility in digital marketing, advertising, and eCommerce. At the click of a button, you can have pretty much anything you want delivered to your front door without ever having to leave your house! As a marketer or advertiser, this leaves a huge opportunity for leveraging stellar websites and landing pages to entice consumers and ultimately lead to conversion. Conversion is the quintessential goal of a landing page, yet it doesn’t always mean to sell. If you’re familiar with Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross and his famous ABC line “Always Be Closing” in reference to sales, landing page design should “Always Be Converting.” Continue to ask yourself, “What are you offering? Why should I pick you? What do you want me to do next?” (Larson)
If you hop on your favorite search engine (let’s be honest, it’s Google) and look for ways to increase landing page conversion, you’ll find an endless supply of advice and the latest “hacks” for optimization. Whatever Buzzfeed-like list you land on, ultimately all of those latest tips and tricks can be boiled down and segmented into to five concepts that every marketer, advertiser, designer, or web developer should have memorized:
Purposeful and Popping Design
There are a lot of elements to unpack when it comes to designing a landing page, but let’s face it – design matters. It is the first impression, a psychological motivator to stay engaged, and even helps remind consumers why they’ve landed on the page in the first place. Some key things to consider in designing an effective landing page include:
- Simplicity: Embrace white space and don’t overwhelm/clutter the viewer’s experience. (Simon) They need a place to rest their eyes and process the content. With that, comes scanability i.e. icons and bullet-point lists over lengthy copy blocks. (Larson)
- Stand-out CTA buttons and directional ques: Along the line of simplicity, CTA buttons should be front and center, clear as day, and never a guessing game for where it’ll take you. Straight forward labeling and high contrast buttons lead consumers down your sales funnel and remind consumers why they’ve landed on that page. (Quick Sprout)
- Hierarchy: Ensure that all the important content you want to stick with your consumer is above the fold. (Simon)
Favor Form Fills
Forms are a great way to convert and capture consumers in your database and help them return to your site again at a later date. They don’t have to be boring either. Adding imagery and clear CTA buttons can entice consumers to engage and give information. Here’s a great example of a form refresh that helped increase cellphone donations by 53%! (Quick Sprout)
Share Your Cred
In the digital era, word of mouth marketing still holds strong. Consumers are more likely to trust like-minded individuals and friends before trusting your online business. How do you navigate that online presence and get consumers to believe in your brand? Trust symbols, video demos, testimonials, social media presence, and return policies all play into how a consumer perceives your brand and if you’re worth their dollar. A great example of credibility implemented on a landing page is Backcountry, a third-party retailer for outdoor wear brands. Below the displayed product, they have a variety of customer reviews plus a section that displays what customers ultimately bought and why so as the consumer, you feel safe knowing you’re getting the best product.
Get Visual
Humans by nature are visual beings and we’ve all heard the saying “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” We process messages in images quicker than a copy block and that is only expedited in video media. Professional-looking imagery and videography can significantly increase conversion, video alone can cause an 86% increase in conversion rates! (Simon)
Test and Test Again
The key to a successful landing page is continuing to test out what works and what doesn’t in a strategic way through A/B Testing. As you drive traffic to your landing pages, examine certain elements in the data gathered to see what is successful and what is not. It may be tempting to scratch the page and start over completely, however more likely than not a single tweak to a CTA button may end up being a more effective solution! There are several ways and resources available to test out your landing page including heatmaps and Google Analytics. (Quick Sprout & Simon) There are a lot of ways to take the above advice and turn it into something great, and there are just as many ways to take that advice and turn it into something not so great. The only way you’ll know if you’re landing page is successful is to test and test again as you gather data!
Sources
“Create a Website.” Quicksprout, 16 Jan. 2019, www.quicksprout.com/landing-page-optimization/.
Larson, Jeff, and Stuart Draper. Digital Marketing Essentials. Mimic Pro Bundle.
Simon, Sha Drena. “The Top 11 Landing Page Optimization Best Practices (2019).” Yokel Local Inbound Marketing Agency, 11 Dec. 2018, www.yokellocal.com/blog/landing-page-optimization-best-practices.
