Landing page best practices aim to convert website visitors into leads and collect their contact information on a form.
A homepage with a form on it cannot be counted as a landing page as it serves other purposes as well.
We’ve all clicked through ads that look interesting or when we need some information. But have abandoned those pages when it seems too confusing and didn’t contain necessary information.
Landing pages would ideally have a form for visitors to fill in. Avoid having long forms. Fewer form fields equate to higher conversion rates.
It’s possible that the use of various colors, designs, adjectives, or action-verbs for CTA’s could drive more conversions for your landing page.
Have social sharing icons as it adds social proof and yields better converting landing pages.
Below find valid points for better landing pages that trigger higher conversions.
1. Align your landing page best practices with your goal
Landing pages are harder to create in comparison to ads, so ideally you should be working backwards. While setting up a landing page, keep your priorities in sight. What kind of traffic are you aiming to drive to your page while having an ad campaign? Keep your goal always within reach.
Make sure the language on your landing pages reverberates with what’s in the ads or vice-versa. If your ad promises, “50% off on some products” then ensure your landing page elucidates how to avail the given discount.
2. Simplify your forms
Web forms on landing pages are often embroiled in the “Too long / too short syndrome.” Too long, and you risk deterring prospective customers from converting. Too short, and you may not gather enough information. Landing page forms are one of the most important part’s of a landing page, but yet many advertisers err while setting them up.
Many marketers, especially B2B software companies, ask way too much information on their landing page forms.
Of course, the company needs to know if the visitor is serious and they are not whiling away precious time. Ask for basic information and make sure your landing page form is aesthetically pleasing. Give your web form the feel on an intelligent interviewer. Make it interesting and less taxing to the user.
3. Test your copy and CTA
Brilliant landing page copywriting leads to conversions. The words on the screen begins a conversation with your web visitor. You got to be a cogent talker to convince them regarding your stuff.
Being concise is vital for effective landing page copywriting or the audience may lose focus quickly.
Anytime you’re writing copy for a page, keep the layout in mind. You don’t want visitors to be staring down a wall of text to scour through and find what they need. When you can, use bullet points, headers, and subheadings to drive home the point.
But always, test your copy and your CTA. You just can’t be sure what echoes with your audience.
The call-to-action is another important part on a landing page. Without a strong CTA, your prospects may hesitate to provide personal information. A strong CTA will reinforce their desire to know more about your offering and ensure they convert.
4. Keep the design direct and simple to navigate
Have you ever landed on a page and didn’t know where to look? It’s happened to many of us. You want to complete a hotel reservation and suddenly cannot locate the “Book Now” button. Instead you find lots of distractions, dropdowns, and display ads. Distractions can cost you big time.
Ideally your landing page design should include your brand colors and the info you prefer to have on your website. Keep the forms simple and your entire page navigable. A study carried out by HubSpot regarding effective colors on a CTA button tracked 2,500 conversions. They checked the performance of two button colors. The red CTA button outperformed the green one by 20%.
Unbounce carried out a test that showed a Big Orange Button resulted in a 31% increase in conversions. Unbounce surmises that the future of web design and optimization is a Big Orange Button representing get-it-done attitude, energy, and enthusiasm.
5. Leverage case studies & social proof
This tip is straightforward. Landing page practices makes it imperative to leverage positives mentioned by your clients. If you are running out of compliments then put in some nice logos. Ensure permissions have been taken.
There are a few platforms you can integrate with your landing pages to ensure that the reviews are the latest such as Google My Business, Trustpilot and Yelp. Keep the reviews to the bottom most part as you don’t want viewers to lose focus mid-way.
6. Have a mobile-friendly landing page
If desktop landing pages are appetizers, then mobile landing pages are desserts. You have less time after the page loads to grab the users’ attention and persuade them to act.
Majority of internet traffic comes from mobile devices with people spending 68% of media time on smartphones.
87% recommend a brand after a positive mobile experience. 57% won’t if the mobile website experience is lousy. Nearly half of all online shopping orders are completed via mobiles.
In any marketing activity, ensure that the landing pages are mobile friendly as most folks now use mobiles extensively. Play it safe by keeping your buttons and/or forms in the center of a full-size page with a single-color background.
7. Ensure loading speed
If you’re seeing a high bounce rate on a particular page, load time could be the culprit. You can easily cut corners with a one-off landing page, but guarantee nothing on the page is too heavy or big. If your landing page doesn’t load fast enough, it can undo any SEO done for the page.
Every business today has a website. While design, UI, UX, theme, user navigation, and content are critical elements for a good website, people miss out on loading speed.
It is important to understand that today’s buyer/customer/target audience are always online but are short on time. They access information via a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone and are impatient. Websites that are not optimized for mobile devices or are taking too long to load don’t stand a chance.
Don’t lose clients due to a lethargic website. Faster sites reduce operating costs and improve user experience.
8. Important information: Above the fold
Just like in email marketing, when someone clicks: the important stuff need to be visible first. This is imperative for highly actionable pages.
Entities to be positioned below the fold include testimonials, case studies, client logos, terms and conditions.
9. Update your landing pages regularly
Just as in blog posts or site pages and for obvious reasons the content on your landing pages should remain up to date. If your best-performing ads begin to get laggard, the reason could be outdated landing pages.
Even a refresh of the background colors, a fresh copy, or a new CTA, could drive some traffic. It could signal Google or any ad platform that the content has been updated, is fresh and prevent fatigue.
10. Add a thank you page
Including a thank you page is a polite thing to do, it’s being professional and grateful. After someone lands on your page and completes an action, give them a confirmation that you have their information, a spot is reserved and you will soon respond.
This can be a thank you script or a redirect to a full thank you page.
A visitor who has just accepted an offer is valuable. You have a lead on your hands who could become a full-fledged customer or an ardent fan. Don’t let this opportunity go begging – instead, use your thank you page to prod the user into further engagement.
Insert videos, info-graphics, blog posts or whatever a visitor will enjoy. This strategy has been employed by Amazon in their “others also purchased” or “you may also be interested in” pages following a purchase.
11. Ensure your landing page is SEO compliant
SEO on landing pages optimize them for search engines. Now these pages are appealing to the algorithms that decide whether or not a page is valuable during a search. Consider the following tips and best practices for a SEO complaint landing page:
- Unique URL: Giving your landing page a unique URL so that people come to the right place. It can also be optimized for any particular keyword you want to rank for.
- Apt keywords: This is vital. Research words or phrases that you want to rank for in searches. Make an in depth study and be prepared to wait for the results to show. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for than their shorter counterparts, and produce higher ROI.
- Title tag: This is different from your header tag, it’s the title of a page. Again, landing page solutions should have the ability to alter this (be different from your header tag), just remember to fill the field.
- Header tag: This tag is the title of your page. Whatever the landing page headline is, shrink it for your header tag.
- Meta description: Lot of people forget this field, this isn’t a good idea especially when it comes to landing pages. Google populates the meta below you search result. And on occasions it is seen that landing pages get a default copy. You should be telling Google what exactly you want to display in the SERP.
- Image file names: Self-explanatory for people who know even basics of SEO. Name your images that reflect the purpose of the page. Ensure to mention your target keywords will further build your SEO.
- Backlinking: This is the last step, after you publish the page. Not only should you be linking your landing page from Ads but you can also embed the link within blog posts, your website, or hand it to affiliate partners. Google will give relevance and authority to your site as more links appear.
After an Engineering degree and a Diploma in Management I devoted 16+ years working in the automotive industry. My innate skill and extreme passion in writing, encouraged me to adopt it up as a profession. I have been writing for more than 10+ years in the software industry. The 400+ blogs I published are informative, exhaustive and interesting to a professional and causal reader.
