A great landing page can make the difference between a potential customer converting to a lead or bouncing away.
If you want to know how to create an effective, easy-to-navigate page that takes users where they need to go, you're in the right place. We'll cover the basics of what makes up a solid landing page, that ensures your content gets seen—and understood—by the people who land there.
A landing page is a single web page that is optimised to convert visitors into leads and customers. These might be pages that people find in search engines, or you might direct them from a paid ad or offline promotion. There are two main types of landing page:
Your website may have “natural” landing pages such as product pages on an ecommerce website, or “services” pages on a professional service website. Every website has at least one natural landing page, which is the home page. You should treat these natural landing pages as such and make sure you follow the tips below when creating them.
Curated landing pages are designed specifically as landing pages that are extra to your core website content. A curated page might be based on something very specific that you’re promoting through Google Ads, or a promotion with a unique design that forms part of a social campaign.
The main difference is that natural pages are already in your website to solve an existing need, you just need to identify and optimise them. Curated pages are for a need you’ve identified but need to be created especially for that purpose. If your designing a new website, it's important to specify you need landing pages in your web design brief.
The first step in creating a successful landing page is to define its purpose. What are you trying to achieve with it? What is the goal of this page, and how does it fit into the overall strategy of your website?
Answering these questions will help you determine what content should be included on your landing page, as well as how best to convey that information.
Writing great content is one of the most important parts of a landing page—without it, you won’t have a compelling reason for your visitors to act.
Focus on benefits, not features. A benefit is what your product or service does for the customer; a feature is how it works. When you write about benefits, people will be more likely to notice that you understand their problems and have solutions.
Remember: People don’t buy drills, they buy holes.
Use persuasive words and phrases in your headlines and body copy, make sure you “sell”, and don’t just “tell”.
And remember content goes beyond words – images and video are content too. These should be high quality and relevant to make your landing page impactful.
Your call-to-action (CTA) is the button or link that your visitors click to continue their journey. It's a critical part of a landing page, so make sure you choose wisely.
They should be written so that the user knows exactly what action they need to take on your site. If you want them to sign up for your email newsletter, say it – "Sign up for our email newsletter".
Visual tricks such as 3D borders, icons and contrasting colours will help. If it doesn't stand out enough, users can easily miss it.
The worst thing that can happen with CTAs is having them hidden away or obscured by clutter. That's why it's important that CTAs are placed in locations where users will naturally look.
The Vincent Burch website uses clear messaging and a strong call to action.
Quite often a landing page is the first point of contact a potential customer will have with your business and one of the best ways to build trust quickly is through the use of trust indicators.
A trust indicator can be a logo, an endorsement, or simply testimonials from customers that have been impressed by your product or service.
It's important that your landing page is consistent with the rest of your website design and brand, otherwise it can feel forced. Keep landing pages relevant to what you are promoting. The goal is for people to focus on what you're saying and not get distracted by lots of things going on in the background.
After you've created your landing page, it's important to test and keep testing. You should continually monitor your landing pages for any conversions problems or issues that need to be addressed, including:
You can use Google Analytics, heat maps and A/B testing to measure how people interact with your website's landing pages, so you can adjust accordingly.
If your website has natural landing pages, all the above still applies. You can always improve product descriptions, add more / better images, a clearer “Buy now” button.
It is safe to say that landing pages are one of the best ways to increase your conversion rates and make your website more successful.
They allow you to customise your message for a specific audience, while also providing them with a streamlined process where they can complete any type of action without having to navigate away from the page.
If you’re unsure where to start with landing pages, try your home page first. Home pages can always benefit from being optimised, for most websites you can do this by making it clear:
Make sure you add tracking to your calls to action so you can see if they’re working.
For other landing pages, look at your site and see if you have natural landing pages. Or review your website objectives to see if you should be creating curated landing pages to help your website achieve these.
This article was updated on , filed under lead generation, b2b ecommerce, strategy and planning, website content.
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