How to create a great landing page that converts
You’ve gone through the whole website design phase and created the perfect website. All the vital information about who you are as a company as well as what you can offer your potential customer is there. Driving traffic to your website through email and even social media advertising campaigns has been paying off. You notice you are starting to gain traction. Your website alone is not generating the leads you anticipated.
So, what can you do about that?
That’s where a successful landing page comes in. This page is what your customer will see before visiting your website. You might be asking why anyone would put an obstacle in between their perfectly crafted website and the new potential customer? The answer is simple. Converting these new visitors into potential leads.
The goal of your website is to tell your potential customers what you can offer them. Your website tells customers the value you bring to them and why they should choose you over your competitors. But before you get to that point you should be converting them within the first five seconds of visiting your landing page.
The design of your landing should be an integral part of your advertising plan. Keep in mind the design should be based on a marketing funnel. Remember conversion is the goal. You want engagement from every potential customer to act.
But first.
What is a marketing funnel?
A marketing funnel is the steps from when the customer is brought “awareness” to them about your company, all the way till after the conversion has happened. A tried and true method to leading to more conversions. As with a funnel you are gathering everything at the top to “funnel” down to those that will convert.
The steps are:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Evaluation
- Commitment
- Sale/Conversion
Your landing page is first step to bringing customer awareness to your brand. By conveying a clear message as to who you are as a company and what you offer will lead to an interest in your brand. Subsequently, leading your customer further down the marketing funnel.
How to design a successful landing page that converts
- Reduce page navigation. Your advertisement campaigns brought your traffic in. Don’t let them leave so easily. By limiting the number of exits your customer can now stay focused on your call to action. You want to gather information as soon as possible and to do that they must stay focused with the least amount of distractions.
- Show your value. What value you can offer a customer is what will keep their attention after you have already got it. Customers want to know the value they are receiving for giving up their information. Tell them upfront what you offer. Being straightforward is the best approach to keeping attention. If what you offer aligns with their needs, customers will be more willing to give their information. By conveying clearly what you offer you now increased your odds of generating a lead.
- Be Social. If you are already using social media marketing as part of your advertisement campaigns (which you should be) then you know the importance of being easily shareable. Your landing page is no different. By not you are leaving money on the table. Think of when each customer shares your content, that is more potential customers you are reaching. For those that share your content, you have doubled your ROI for your initial campaign that leads to that first customer. If only one person sees that customer’s shared post that is still two for the price of one. Build off your traffic by being social.
- Keep it short. Your landing page is your first impression. You have five seconds to make a good first impression that will lead to a conversion or at least a click-through to your website. So, to keep that attention, you must keep the brevity of your page. This is can be made possible by reducing navigation, showing your value upfront, and using only enough words to convey your message without fluff.
- Test and test some more. Landing pages can be tricky. Many factors determine the success of a landing page. That’s why testing what works and what doesn’t is the most important step of all. As time goes on different methods will evolve and some will be left behind. What works for a few months may not in the future. By tracking what visitors are doing on your landing page you can determine what needs tweaking.
Many business owners are overlooking the importance of landing pages. Generating leads is part of the marketing funnel that leads to conversions. The end goal will always be converting customers that see value in what you offer as a business.
When a person finds you on the web by any means what is it that you want to accomplish from their visit? That’s what you should ask yourself for every time a new customer comes across your website. If gathering information is what you want, you will have to lead them in that direction. Your landing page is directing customers to what you want them to do.
As with your website design, your landing page should be taken into consideration with the same amount of detail. Your landing page is at the top of your marketing funnel and plays an important role of getting the customer from the top down to the bottom.
