Optimizing landing pages to convert your visitors into leads and even customers is an art and science. You want to guide visitors through your sales funnel, while also representing your company’s branding. It isn’t rocket science, but it does take some serious work.
Fortunately, there are landing page builders that make your job easier. They help you design and build landing pages with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, and also provide highly-customizable templates so you don’t have to start from scratch.
Even with the right tool, you’ll still need to know the principles of an effective landing page to drive conversion. In this post, we’re going to share with you eight best practices to design an effective landing page.
Determine your landing page goal
Before you start building your landing page, it’s important to determine your conversion goal. Of course, most would hope to drive sales immediately. However, sometimes it’s too early in the funnel to ask your leads to swipe their credit card. Depending on your customer journey and funnel stages, there are multiple conversion goals you could consider:
Newsletter signup
Getting a free trial
Booking a demo
Creating an account (common for eCommerce stores)
Install an app
Downloading free resources
But bear in mind that every landing page should only have one goal. It confuses visitors if you ask them to signup for a newsletter here and to start a free trial there. Pick one goal, and stick to it.
Write a concise headline
The headline is the first thing visitors see when they land on your page. It helps them quickly determine what’s your page is about and whether your page is going to give them what they look for.
Good copywriting goes a long way
Besides the headline, pay attention to the copywriting for the rest of your page. In this era when everyone spends most of their time online, people scan the page instead of reading. Therefore, make sure your copy convey your message using plain language and highlight key benefits.
Provide social proof
Social proof can help you earn potential customers’ confidence and increase the likeliness of a conversion. Depending on the context, you can include social proof like client logos, testimonials, review ratings, and even client interview videos.
You can display social proof multiple times on your page. For example, you can show client logos above the fold, then customer testimonials near your call to action buttons. It’s particularly important to include social proof close to your call to action to show your leads why your product works. This can greatly boost customers’ confidence and increase conversion.
For example, the landing page of Adaface shows the logos of their numerous enterprise clients like Amazon, Microsoft, and PayPal. The logo section is also placed right below the call-to-action button to encourage conversion.
Keep it simple
To optimize for conversion, it’s important to keep a clean page with obvious call-to-actions, natural navigation, and removing distractions. Your landing page should provide all necessary information to drive conversion, and nothing else.
Here are a few best practices to follow:
Clean and simple design with plenty of white space to help people focus on your product and call to action
Use big font to make it easy for visitors to scan your page
Avoid excessive animation and website sliders that slow page loading and can be distracting.
Test your page for responsiveness to make sure it looks good on mobile devices
Make good use of visuals
A lot of people make the mistake of placing random stock images on the landing page just for decorative purposes. Instead, use engaging visuals to grab attention and bring your product to life.
If you’re selling physical products like clothing items, make sure to include multiple images and show different angles.
And if you’re selling digital products like software, use visuals to show how it works. This example of blink’s landing page visualizes what the users will see in the software suite, and what the frontline workers (another group of end-users) will get in the app. This gives higher transparency in the product offering and encourages conversion.
Drive conversion by designing a compelling call to action (CTA)
To drive conversion, it’s important to keep your call to action (CTA) clear and actionable. You need to consider what stage your leads are in and tailor your CTA accordingly. For instance, This page on auto insurance has a clear call to action for users to get quotes accordingly.
In addition, you should carefully craft your call to action message – make sure it’s direct, engaging, and encourage actions.
It’s best to place your CTA buttons at the top of the page (the header menu) and the bottom of the page (the footer) so your leads don’t need to scroll all the way up or down to click. Another option would be to add a sticky CTA button or banner at the top, bottom, or corner areas to make it easy for your leads to click.
A/B testing to optimize landing page design
AB testing means comparing two versions of the page with the same content and only one item changed on the variation, to see which returns the best result.
It’s highly recommended to run AB testing on your landing page to optimize conversion, increase sales, and learn more about your visitors. Through the AB testing experiment, you’ll gradually discover what your target audience likes and don’t like, and you can keep the learning and apply them to your future campaigns.
Here are some elements you can test your landing page:
Headlines
CTA
Visuals
Layout
Product description
A/B testing is a continual process and can go on and on (unless you hit a 100% conversion rate – which is a dream come true!) as long as you want to keep learning about your visitors’ behavior and improving the conversion rate.
Therefore, after designing your landing page, make sure you include several variations and versions to test them out!
Conclusion
Landing pages are essential for marketers to acquire leads and convert them into subscribers and customers.
Using the above best practices to design and test your landing page can have a powerful impact on your landing page result. Now, it’s your turn to create landing pages that convert!
