How to Make Your Website Landing Pages More Impactful

0
36

Share on LinkedIn

Never underestimate the benefits of an impactful landing page. It’s your chance to make a great first impression, so it’s undoubtedly worth getting it right. Site visitors need to feel informed but not overwhelmed. They should be able to see who you are, what you do and how you can help them. Your landing pages are those that set the tone and likely outcomes of their visit.

Your competitor’s actions can be a great help when improving landing pages. You can learn a lot about what works and what does not.

Competitors provide valuable insight

A buyer will likely look at a few companies offering the same product or service before settling on which company to use, so you need to do the same. Knowing what your competitors are doing is helpful for all aspects of your business, and landing pages are no exception.

That said, it involves more than a cursory glance over their website or following calls-to-action you find on their landing pages. You need to conduct some intensive research that analyses how competitor landing pages perform. What their customers say and whether the whole experience gels.

Looking at what works well and what does not (remember your competitors may not be getting it right) will give you a good idea of how your landing pages could be better and how you can achieve the conversion rates needed.

Research your target market

Knowing and understanding your target market is an essential business step, and it will help set the tone for your landing page. You need to speak to your target market and audiences in ways they understand; this is where your competitor results can help. Are your competitors showing they meet the demands of your target audience? Do they rank higher than you in the search engines because they have a better optimised website? Try running a website audit of a competitor site to compare with your own in terms of SEO, page speed, technical errors and mobile usability so you can begin to understand why they are performing better. Some of the best free website audit software includes Screaming Frog, Site Bulb and Site Analyzer.

Reverse engineer the keywords and keyword clusters used on your landing page to see where you rank. If you rank lower than your competitors, you should make changes.

Competitor offers

Look for the types of offers your competitors shout about and how this impacts your conversion rates. You may need to go bigger, bolder and better with offers, eye-catching designs or customer experiences to rival them. Check out their customer reviews. You can learn a lot about what people think from reviews, not just about the products and services, but how easy they found the shopping experience or were able to find what they needed. Use the information to improve what you deliver.

Check out their onboarding experience

Find out by trying for yourself first-hand how they treat customers, how they engage with them, how smooth their ordering or signing up processes are, and the holistic customer experience they offer, whether good or bad. Analyse the traffic statistics to see how they achieve engagement and focus your energies on those that meet your customers’ needs and improve revenue channels for your business. In that case, you can better understand what will work for you.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Look at what is ranking the highest in your markets. If it’s those with videos, you should look to add one to your landing page. Of course, you need to be mindful of how that might impact the speed with which the page loads. Seek out the common features of the most highly ranked pages, and use them on your page. Styling your page similarly to those achieving the highest rankings should see your pages climb.

Paid advertising

Pay attention to what and how your competitors are paying to promote if they continue paying for sponsored adverts. It’s likely because they are seeing results. You could find some great ideas to use by clicking on the sponsored results that match the keywords or keyword clusters that you have used and following a similar styling. Your landing page visibility will improve if you direct traffic to them. Sponsored posts that meet your customer needs that direct them to your landing pages full of relevant tailored content to offer a smooth user experience will help prevent your target audience from feeling the need to go elsewhere.

Qualitative data

User engagement levels, time spent on pages and the scroll and conversion rates of competitor pages will help you decide how successful they are and will guide you to tailor your content appropriately. Visualise the relationship your customers expect and pinpoint gaps you can fill to help your conversion rate. Customer support and platform features should be equally as good and better where possible than your competitors. Offer your brand as the ideal solution, and make sure the customer knows why you are the better choice and how easy you are to deal with.

Internal linking

Of course, all your content must be engaging, relevant and tuned to the wants, needs and personas of your target audience. By including links to other pieces of your content, you can showcase more of what you offer people and add valuable internal linking equity. It gives you a chance to highlight different content.

A clear focus for each landing page

Don’t try to do it all on one page. If you have different target audiences, products or solutions, then direct people to other places. Too many mixed messages will send people running to your competitors, so keep the focus clear. Don’t be afraid to covert feedback, run surveys, collect reviews and see how people feel about what you offer and how well you do it. Showing a customer how you can help them and that you value their customer experience and the journey will help you change to meet their changing needs. Use their feedback and reviews to show how you are responsive and build the credibility of your brand.

Creating impactful landing pages is not a one-time-only deal. You need to continually watch and make necessary changes for the market, new technology, your target audience needs and the actions of your competitors. That way, you’ll keep your landing pages constantly working well for you.

Anna Preston
Anna Preston is a business management consultant and small business coach at Problogineer. She advises SMEs at all stages from start-up through to established companies looking to accelerate growth with tailored coaching to develop better processes, target growth and improve customer experience. She has a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in International Business Management from the University of Bristol, UK.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here