A landing page is a page on your website that receives traffic from external sources.
For example, you pay to have an ad placed on another website (see below) offering a special discount to potential customers who answer your call to action to 'click here'. Those who click are routed to a landing page.
A landing page might be customized for each advertisement or other external link, or the Web designer may create a single landing page. The landing page will contain the information or access needed by the person who clicked in. Other uses for landing pages are:
- Making announcements about new products and services
- Providing customers with access to special content
- To create a customized website experience
Landing pages are only effective if the customer completes the action that they started by clicking into the website. This action could be providing an email address in order to subscribe to an online newsletter, placing an order, completing a survey, answering a call to action to comment or share, or simply reading the content you have provided to them.
Optimizing your landing page is simply taking the steps required to make sure that your landing page provides information that is quickly and easily understand, promotes engagement, exudes trustworthiness and is intuitive. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy to accomplish this. Even professional Web developers sometimes miss the mark when it comes to landing page optimization. The well-optimized landing page can increase traffic to your website or blog and increase conversion rates as well. In order to help you optimize your landing page, we have created a list of methods that you can use as best practices guidelines.
Make Your Landing Page Streamlined and Easy to Read to Keep Visitors' Attention
When a visitor hits your landing page, they should be able to discern all of the information that they need and know the next step to take in just a few seconds. They can't do this if the landing page is busy with a lot of images and superfluous information. Here are the steps that you can take to create a clean and easy to understand landing page:
- Use bullet points that visitors can quickly skim.
- Keep the call to action and information that is directly related to your visitors reason for clicking in above the fold.
- Include a single image or infographic that provides visitors with further information about your offer and what they need to do to proceed.
- Embedding a video to deliver content can increase the chances of it being viewed.
- Leave lots of white space this will direct visitors' attention to the information that they need to read and links (if applicable) that they need to click.
Optimize the Marketing Efforts on Your Landing Page to Close the Deal
You have gone to considerable effort, and likely cost, to get visitors to come to your landing page. Chances are you've linked to your landing page on social media, included the link in marketing emails, purchased advertising space, and done any other number of things to earn the 'click' that gets a visitor to enter your landing page. Now that they have 'landed' you have to finish the sale. Here are a few tips for making that happen.
- Make sure that your marketing campaign is completely hammered out. You should know who you are targeting, what your customers will get out of taking your offer, and the specific details of the offer.
- Make sure that your call to action stands out on your landing page. Use contrasting colors, or consider using a floating call to action button so that it is always visible when visitors scroll.
- Use power words in your call to action buttons such as:
- Free
- Sign Up Today
- Share
- Buy Now
- Start your Subscription
- Create a sense of urgency by indicating to visitors that there are limited supplies available, or limited time in which they can take advantage of the offer. To do this, try using a few of the following phrases:
- Only a few days left
- This offer is only good for the next ten customers
- We only have a few left at this price
- Just 5 spots available
Optimize Your Landing Page for Search Engine Optimization
If you want potential customers to be able to find your landing page via internet searches, you will need to use SEO techniques to increase the likelihood that it will receive optimal positioning on SERP. Here are a few steps that you can take in order to optimize your landing page for search engines:
- Include buttons on your landing page for sharing on social media
- Use some keywords in your content but vary them and don't use them over and over again
- Use meta tags
- Include relevant keywords in your landing page URL
Test Your Landing Page for Optimization
Once you have taken the time to implement some of these suggested methods for optimizing your landing page, you will probably want to know how successful your efforts are. If you want some feedback on how well your landing page has been optimized, you have several options when it comes to measuring this. You can also use analysis tools as a way to measure whether or not your landing page is getting the results you need. A good tool will provide information on bounces, which links are clicked, how long visitors stay on your landing page, and much more.
A well-optimized landing page can mean the difference between the success and failure of a marketing campaign. Unfortunately, in many cases, too much effort and care is placed in getting potential customers to the landing page, and not enough in getting customers to convert or answer the call to action when they arrive. With optimization, you can make your efforts worthwhile, and increase your customer conversion rates.
