What’s a “Landing Page”?
If you want to set up an online presence, you need to create a killer website. Then you’ll need to drive people to your website by sending them to a webpage that has relevant information that they are looking for. This webpage is called a “Landing Page”. It generates leads, referrals, revenue and sales.
A landing page should be different from your main website. It has to be created with a single objective – to get visitors to sign up for something free in exchange for providing their email address, name etc. If done properly to reach the target audience it will increase the flow of users and signups.
Nevertheless, you’ll need time and proper planning to create such a landing page. The following items are needed on your landing page to generate revenue.
Must-have items for a powerful landing page
- Targeting
- Headline
- Giveaway
- Copy
- Format
- Images
- Subscriber Box
- CTA
- Split Testing
Targeting
Do you know where your traffic is coming from in the first place? Your landing page may be doing fine but what’s the use if your targeting is wrong, if the wrong people see your advertising campaigns?
When ad targeting is inaccurate, visitors will only look at the landing page once, find nothing that may interest them and then hit the close button.
At the first stage of thinking through your landing page go through every tiny detail. Make sure, your ads speak to the right audience. This will help get interested clients, reduce the bounce rate, and increase your income.
Headline
Open any webpage. What do you see? I bet it’s a headline. Do you understand what you are being offered? Are you ready to go to another page?
Headline tends to determine what action people might take next. So when thinking over a headline for your page, make sure it clearly states your message and that it’s the best that it can be.
Word of advice:
- Ensure the CTA text, ad copy and headline match.
- Use plain, uncomplicated language to get straight to the point.
- Clarify in simple words what your offer is.
- Don’t use slang. Your aim is to keep visitors reading.
- Try to capture the reader’s attention!
Giveaway
To build an email list, you should offer something on your landing page that you want to give away for a simple signup. You can offer eBooks, webinars videos, audio recordings or something that your target audience might find useful. So you need to know your target market inside out to get a better response, increase sales and profit in the long run.
To find out what your clients might want, go to relevant forums and communicate with your prospects one-on-one. Get to know, what they are thinking about right now and whether you can solve their pressing problems.
Copy
In the body of your landing page further describe what you offer, what you can give for free and why visitors should sign up for it. Don’t include a big chunk of text with irrelevant info.
Word of advice:
- Describe what are the benefits of completing the form.
- Is everything pertinent and easy to read?
- Don’t write more than 5 lines.
- Of course there should be no grammatical or spelling mistakes.
- At the end of your copy there should be a CTA (call to action) because people need to know what to do next.
Format
The format can contribute to the success of your page the same way the content does. Make it easy for the readers to understand your offer and what they need to do to get it.
Word of advice:
- Direct your clients’ attention to the main elements your page.
- Use bullet points and numbering to reduce the visual layout of the text in complexity.
- Bold or italicised text can be used for emphasis.
Call-To-Action (CTA)
Your CTA is an instruction to the audience (ex. download an eBook). Effective CTA button should make visitors curious enough to click. Don’t forget to also make it relevant to your offer.
Word of advice:
- Your CTA button should be different from the surrounding content.
- Make sure it doesn’t overwhelm the design but still it is large enough.
- The colour you use should set the button apart but still be inline with page’s overall design.
- Use simple language.
Images
What is more important – the image or the headline? It depends on the outlook of the landing page. If you are promoting a webinar try using a picture of yourself speaking at some event (in the best case scenario looking at the optin box). If you are promoting an eBook, just place the cover of that book.
Word of advice:
- Above all the image should make a visitor sign up.
- It should be simple and relevant to the topic to enhance its importance.
- The bigger the image, the more attention it draws.
- It shouldn’t be too elaborate as it might draw the attention of your audience away from their goal.
- Matching the ad image and landing page image increases the probability of more signups, hence more revenue.
Subscriber box
Word of advice:
- Include a message that will tell your prospects you won’t share or abuse their addresses. It should sound like, ‘We despise spam the same way as you do.’
- Ensure the form will appear at the top. Not everyone will scroll down the page in order to see it.
- Surround the form with a colored box to separate it from other content and make it stand out.
- Ask for minimum information as many users are not comfortable sharing private details online.
Logo and Navigation bar
Add a logo on the landing page. This might help you earn reader’s trust.
If you still have a navigation bar at the top of the page, remove it as soon as you can! Readers often get distracted and can go to another page of the site having forgotten to sign up. You can add your navigation on the thank you page. The form has already been completed so it won’t do any harm.
Video
Try adding a video instead of an image. See if it does any good. But don’t forget that it should also convey the right message.
Split Testing
Landing page can never be perfect. Make sure you split test it to see if signup numbers can be higher. Try different headlines, change images, add bullet points. Don’t be afraid to implement extreme changes. No one knows what can yield 100% results. As long as you try you should succeed.
Word of advice:
- Test one component at a time. How else would you know what influenced a change in the numbers?
- Some insane changes are ok too. You might by chance encounter something that really works.
- Give changes a bit of time. Better a day or two and then check the numbers.
- First, try changing the headline. Then think about bullet points or the image.
Do you have any landing page tips and tricks to share? Have you seen other methods yield positive results? Let me know in the comments!
About the author:
Brian Jens is a designer by day and a writer by night, Brian Jens works at logo designcontest.com. Coffee addict, dog lover and an exceptionally active fella.
