Top 10 Great SEO Tips To Increase Traffic To Your Website

September 13, 2021September 12, 2021 by Learners Coach

This article captures the Top 10 Great SEO Tips To Increase Traffic to Your Website. A sound and fully optimized website technical environment is critical and a great priority when it comes to SEO and capturing strong organic traffic levels.

If you don’t have your website SEO set up correctly, your content will not get crawled, so it’s useless and pointless to not focus on your website technology first and foremost. Websites are usually managed via a
content management system housed on a website server.

Both the content management system and website server have important influence on how search engines crawl your content when reaching your website. Most SEO crawling tools and SEO platforms look at these key areas as part of their auditing features.

Top 10 Great SEO Tips To Increase Traffic To Your Website

There are some important areas that must be “set up” correctly to ensure the ideal crawling of your website. Let’s take a look at the Top 10 Great SEO Tips To Increase Traffic to Your Website.

1. Redirects

Redirects are used when a page has been moved to a different location or URL. These can be temporary or permanent. There are many kinds of redirects, but it’s important to know that search engines recognize and pass SEO value only for permanent redirects.

These are also called 301 redirects (whereas temporary ones are called 302 redirects). If you are using a redirect for temporary purposes, it should be flagged and evaluated as to why you are using it and for how long.

2. URL Structures

URLs are an important area for search engines. The actual URL string provides a unique identification for the page, almost like your national identification number. Additionally, URLs are a key area search engines look to when identifying what the page is about. In fact, it is critical that URLs and their folder structures include keywords. It’s also best to use hyphens when separating terms.

Hyphens communicate to search engines to separate out the terms versus merging them and ranking them for the merged phrase search results. Additionally, the closer to the root folder of the URL, which is the folder closest to the .com, the more emphasis the keyword gets.

3. Web page and Website load time

How quickly a web page loads, or page speed, is one of the most important ranking factors right now. The top search engine ranking is typically dominated by faster-loading pages, especially on mobile devices that are at the center of Google’s design. Furthermore, quick-loading pages positively affect user experience and may increase your conversion rates.

Google will reduce your search engine rankings if your site or web page loads slowly. Slow load time is typically attributed to your server performance and the density of your web page’s HTML code.

Keep code simple, clean, and easy to process.

4. XML sitemap and robots.txt files

XML sitemaps and robots.txt files are files that allow you to communicate to search engines the web pages that should get into the search results and rankings.

Be sure to leverage your CMS tools to build a complete XML sitemap and robots.txt files and have them validated and submitted via Google’s Search Console tool.

5. Broken pages or 404 errors

A 404 error page means that a web page is not accessible or no longer there. This is usually a result of a broken link or a link using the wrong URL for a web page.

The 404 error hampers the user experience by preventing a user from connecting to a desired page. Because of this, websites that produce many 404 errors can lead to a drop in SEO rankings and traffic.

6. Duplicate content

Duplicate content was one of Google’s original spam checks and part of its algorithm early on. Web pages are considered duplicates if their content is 80 percent or more similar. Sites that have duplicate content are usually significantly affected by penalties and lower search engine rankings.

Sometimes duplicate content happens by accident due to CMS or URL structuring reasons, so it’s important to ensure there is only one URL created for a web page.

7. Page linking

Page linking within a website is extremely important. Search engines follow them while crawling the site, and the anchor text that links use are another area search engines look to for determining what a page is about (also called relevancy).

Every page should have at least one internal link pointing to it and should include the term that you’d like the page to rank for in the anchor text. It’s also recommended that the number of links to a page from within a site (not external sites) be no more than 3,000.

8. SEO meta tags

HTML tags are extremely important to search engines. They explain what your site is about, what to display in the search engine result copy it ranks for, and what type of page it is (recipe, product page, etc.). Each page should have its own unique set of tags. Similar to duplicate content, tag duplication can be a big hindrance to search engine rankings.

9. HTTPS encryption

Providing users with a secure website has become a top priority to search engines. Security has become part of the search engine ranking algorithm. Google says, “HTTPS is an internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data between the user’s computer and site”

Websites that do not support HTTPS connects should expect a lower ranking in search engine results and be surpassed by sites that are using HTTPs in search results.

10. Page layout and text usage

The top-ranking pages typically offer long-form content, so it’s important that your pages have a lot of text around a given subject. Search engines tend to reward fast-loading pages that offer a lot of basic text copy (some even more than 500 words) with the top rankings.

Be sure your web pages offer a lot of text, especially in the “above the fold of the page” area, or the area at the top of the page that is initially displayed upon loading, without scrolling. Copy that’s within an image does not count since search engines have a difficult time reading the image and typically just scan a page and extract basic HTML text.

In Conclusion, these are the key “website SEO environment” areas that take top priority. Be sure these are set up and implemented correctly.

How to Increase Your Visibility on the First Page of Google

August 25, 2021August 22, 2021 by Learners Coach

It is important to understand how to increase your visibility on the first page of google. Particularly if you are serious on driving traffic to your website. Google normally assess the intent behind each search and will display the results it considers most appropriate, based on previous user behaviour.

This article presents seven free ways on How to Increase Your Visibility on the First Page of Google

#1. Google Organic Results

The amount of traffic you get from your Google ranking obviously depends on the position you’re showing in this area.

The latest statistics according to Advanced Web Ranking’s click-through rate study, shows that ranking position one (top of Google), for example, can bring you 38% of all the clicks made by people searching for that phrase.

Ranking in position two brings only 18.47% of the searchers. By the time you get onto page two, even the top listing is only picking up 1.86% of all searcher clicks.

One of the most common mistakes with SEO is complacency. Those running websites that rank on page one, but not in top spot, always assume that there is little to gain by focusing on increasing their ranking further. You can see from these stats, however, that being persistent and aggressive until you own top spot can really pay off.

#2. Featured Snippets

The second free way to appear on Google’s first page is through Featured Snippets. These are short pieces of text displayed by Google above all the other organic results as shown on the page.

Because they’re shown above all the regular results, they’re often referred to as ‘position zero’ results.

#3. Google Local

If you’re a local business such as Jumia Kenya, you’ll be well aware of Google’s map listings that appear for searches likely to have ‘local intent’, as shown below.

#4. Using Other People’s Websites

Again, it’s worth mentioning that you don’t have to use your own website to get business from Google. In fact, sometimes, appearing on a third party site can give you more credibility.

I know of a client, for example, who picks up as many leads from an article he wrote on somebody else’s website, as they do from their own traffic!

This makes sense; if someone else writes about you and says how great you are, doesn’t that hold more weight
than if you’re writing about yourself saying how great you are?

#5. Website Relevance

More than ever, this is the mechanism that defines Google’s success to date. The reason Google has become so dominant is that web users keep coming back because the results are more relevant.

Top of the list is the content on your website. That is the words and, to some extent, the pictures. Google has software that is affectionately called ‘robots’ that reads the internet constantly.

These robots are crawling over your website and making a note every time each relevant word appears.

#6. Popularity and Authority

Another way that Google uses to decide where to rank any website is that site’s authority and popularity.

If lots of websites link to webpage A, but no websites link to webpage B, then webpage A would usually be more popular and would have higher Page Rank. All those links mean that it’s probably a more useful and popular page, so if all else was equal, it should rank higher on Google.

#7. Quality Website Content

No discussion on Google ranking factors would be complete without a mention of content quality. In Google’s desire to serve searchers with the most valuable search results, it’s obvious that the content ‘quality’ of your website would be important.

Websites with small content – meaning low word counts, poor quality writing or pages with little to no text at all, always struggle to rank. Improving and increasing content is often the fastest way to boost a struggling site’s ranking.

Top 5 Free Online Courses To Help Improve Your Digital Marketing Skills

August 14, 2021August 14, 2021 by Learners Coach

Develop essential digital marketing skills you can apply right away, with e-learning courses designed by Google, Hubspot and udemy. Learn at your own pace and get Google product certified.

A free course gives you a chance to learn from industry experts without spending a dime. Below is a list of Top 5 Free Online Courses To Help Improve Your Digital Marketing Skills

1. Google Analytics for Beginners

Google Analytics for Beginners is a course that shows new users how to create an account, implement tracking code, and set up data filters. You’ll learn how to navigate the Google Analytics interface and reports, and set up dashboards and shortcuts.

The course will also demonstrate how to analyze basic Audience, Acquisition, and Behavior reports, and set up goals and campaign tracking.

This course covers Google Analytics primarily for measuring website traffic. To learn about new capabilities that bring app and web analytics together, register here for free

What you will learn

Module 1: Introducing Google Analytics

Lesson 1: Why digital analytics?
Lesson 2: How Google Analytics works
Lesson 3: Google Analytics setup
Lesson 4: How to set up views with filters

Module 2: The Google Analytics Interface

Lesson 1: Navigating Google Analytics
Lesson 2: Understanding overview reports
Lesson 3: Understanding full reports
Lesson 4: How to share reports
Lesson 5: How to set up dashboards and shortcuts

Module 3: Basic Reports

Lesson 1: Audience reports
Lesson 2: Acquisition reports
Lesson 3: Behavior reports

Module 4: Basic Campaign and Conversion Tracking

Lesson 1: How to measure Custom Campaigns
Lesson 2: Tracking campaigns with the URL Builder
Lesson 3: Use Goals to measure business objectives
Lesson 4: How to measure Google Ads campaigns
Lesson 5: Course review and next steps

2. SEO Training Course

Learn SEO tips and tricks in this SEO training course from udemy. Register here for free

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.

Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).

Course Content

3. Growth-Driven Design Training for Agencies

FREE Certification Course from Hubspot Academy. Register here

After the course, you will deliver better client results and accelerate your agency’s growth by offering Growth-Driven Design website retainer services to your clients.

This five-lesson course will give you the knowledge, templates, and real-world examples you need to start packaging, selling, and servicing Growth-Driven Design with your clients.

What you’ll learn:

Introduction to agile web design and project management
Build and optimize a website with GDD methodology
Transform the way you work and attract more leads

3. Growth-Driven Design Training for Agencies

FREE Certification Course from Hubspot Academy. Register here

After the course, you will deliver better client results and accelerate your agency’s growth by offering Growth-Driven Design website retainer services to your clients.

This five-lesson course will give you the knowledge, templates, and real-world examples you need to start packaging, selling, and servicing Growth-Driven Design with your clients.

What you’ll learn:

Introduction to agile web design and project management
Build and optimize a website with GDD methodology
Transform the way you work and attract more leads

4. Fundamentals of digital marketing

Learn the fundamentals of digital marketing to help your business or career. Start Course

Discover a range of free learning content designed to help your business or in your career. You can learn by selecting individual modules, or dive right in and take an entire course end-to-end.

Why learn with Google

The majority of the courses are free, and approved by industry experts, top entrepreneurs and some of the world’s leading employers. So you can be sure that you’re learning up-to-date, real-world skills that help you reach your goal.

5. Content Marketing Course

Whether you want to increase leads, accelerate sales, organize your contacts, or better serve your customers, HubSpot has a solution to help you grow. Register here

You will learn how to align marketing and sales for optimal efficiency, strategies and tactics.

You will learn the advanced email marketing strategy and tactics that grow your business, and your career.

You will learn how to power your business with remarkable content and effectively promote content

15 Best Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Website

August 24, 2021September 13, 2020 by Learners Coach

drive traffic to your website learnerscoach

Here are 15 best ways to drive traffic to your website. A dream of every website owner in Kenya and across the world is to wake up, open Google Analytics and see the graphs go up.

Number of users, conversions, everything that translates into real-life benefits and makes having a website worth it. Unfortunately, many web developers struggle with turning this dream into reality. They need user traffic, and they aren’t getting anywhere near enough.

Have you tried every method out there but your website still isn’t getting website traffic?

Do you struggle with turning your website into an income-generating asset?

No need to worry – driving traffic to your website may take some time, but if you follow these 15 best ways to drive traffic to your website right, then you’ll speed up the process.

#1. Improve Your On-Page SEO

What can help you supercharge your results is learning the right SEO strategies and the best practices for using target keywords.

You can improve your on-page SEO through keyword research and just the right optimization to your website content.

For example, you can:

Optimize the keywords in your SEO title
Put core keywords in the headlines throughout your website articles
Add keywords to your image file names so search engines know what they’re about
Make your URLs as SEO-friendly as possible by optimizing the slugs.
Make sure you include at least your main keyword in your meta description

Related: How SEO Works

To make it easier on yourself to optimize on-page SEO, consider installing plugins like Rankmath SEO, and use Ahrefs or HubSpot’s SEO tools.

#2. Optimize Landing Pages for SEO

Ideally, you’d want to improve website traffic for every page. However, your immediate business goals depend on the landing pages. That’s where you want conversions, and conversions can’t happen without visits. So most of the traffic has to go to landing pages

When you design your landing pages to catch the users’ attention and draw them to the big shiny button, remember that a customer’s journey begins before they even open a search engine. Try to predict what they’ll type in Google, then find and use the best keywords for the task. The better you grasp user intent, the more traffic you can attract.

Building backlinks and spreading awareness in social media help a great deal, too.

#3. Research New Keywords

Keyword research isn’t about finding one high volume keyword and ranking for that single keyword alone.

It’s about coming up with a keyword strategy with a variety of terms that are relevant to your product and industry.

But if that’s too narrow, don’t be afraid to expand on different keywords in your industry. For example, it’s perfectly acceptable for a website offering hosting services to create a content strategy for a blog that covers topics on hosting along with broader topics on web development, CMS platforms, WordPress errors, and more.

If you do expand on new keyword families, just don’t forget to identify the search intent behind them and try to serve that search intent with your content.

#4. Create Infographics

You often hear that infographics are a major help in SEO, and it’s true. They rank high in Google, they are shareable, they build backlinks like crazy, so is it any surprise they are magnets for user traffic, too?

Any information becomes more fun to consume when you spice it up with visuals. Videos and presentations work better than plain text for the same reason.

So get in touch with your creative side. Start producing high-quality infographics and become popular with your target audience.

#5. Create Content That People Want to Share

If you think about it, the stuff we tend to share or link to on our own is usually well-researched, genuinely helpful, or relevant and something we consider trustworthy. When it comes to great content, you’ll find that the key thing is to think about the value it provides.

If you think the quality of your copy is up there with the greats, the next step is to enrich it with media – using compelling and relevant images.

But why not go all the way? It’s always a good idea to add a video to your website content (a how-to tutorial or a product showcase for example). If you’re worried about production costs, you can always create an infographic.

These visual elements have the potential to make your content more shareable – and media always makes it easier to repurpose website content for social media.

#6. Interlink Your Site’s Pages Efficiently

Links are one-way tubes that carry traffic between websites. Smart webmasters know how to control the flow of traffic across their sites’ pages to maximize the benefits. They do it by designing an organized internal linking structure that ensures all the important pages get enough visitors. When you draw it on paper, it looks like a tree with the home page as the root.

Link your site’s pages in a way that will help users find the content they need. The rule of simplicity states: make the “click distance” between any two given pages three clicks or less.

#7. Natural Link Building

Natural link building happens when other websites, bloggers and web owners from your niche link to your content on their own.

Now, if earning quality backlinks from authoritative websites was easy we wouldn’t have coined the term “link building.” That being said, with enough effort you will eventually get your website up there, and the most straightforward way to do it is by creating valuable content people will want to link to.

#8. Use Structured Data on Your Site

Have you ever seen Google search results with more information than usual? Review stars, telephone numbers, addresses and other minor details that make websites look more professional and credible? It’s all thanks to structured data. And you can implement it on your own site, too.

Learn how structured data works and use it to mark up your website’s pages. Google will see the schema code and decorate your search results with those pretty, click-attracting features.

#9. Write Knowledge Base Articles

When it comes to content marketing, there’s something to be said about length.

Article length is important for several reasons.

First of all, Google likes length. A QuickSprout survey found that longer content ranks higher in Google’s search results.

“The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words.”

Second, you don’t want a bunch of smaller, similar articles focused around similar keywords cannibalizing each other in the SERPs.

Third, if you focus on creating the best, most informative and exhaustive article on a given topic, that’s also going to be lengthier, you’ll have the chance to tackle some smaller related keywords naturally, which means your article will pop up in several search results.

And last but not least, readers love genuinely helpful pillar articles and an easy-to-navigate knowledge base.

It’s great for site structure, it’s great for readers, and it’s great to link to as a relevant resource in guest posting, or if you happen to be doing some low-key marketing helping out people in forums like Quora or Reddit.

#10. Refresh and Improve Your Old Content

Some pages on your site might not be getting as much traffic as they could. One of the possible reasons could be their content. If that’s the problem, it’s time to breathe new life in your weaker pages!

Find these problematic pages. They have these traits:

They have lost rankings and traffic with time;
They have never ranked high.
Then improve their content and unleash their true potential.

Search engines like fresh and new content and upgrading is a great way to boost a page that’s not quite ranking.

Here are some great ways to upgrade outdated content:

Add media – images, infographics, videos
Remove obsolete information
Back up your content with more external sources
Interlink with newer content to boost your site’s structure

#11. Add New Content Weekly

Regular activity on your blog allows you to accelerate your growth – the more content you have, the bigger your chances for ranking on multiple search results. Plus, as you start establishing your presence, you can teach your audience to expect new content at a certain time.

If you can’t manage to write new articles weekly, hire a content writer.

Take some time to plan out a real content strategy and use some type of content calendar. Your content production shouldn’t be an afterthought.

#12. Produce Video Content

Statistics show that marketers who use video grew revenue 49% faster than those who don’t and 92% percent of customers say that visuals are the most influential factor in their purchasing decisions.

#13. Optimize Your Images for Image Search

Did you know that images are subject to 30% of all online searches? That sounds like a rich opportunity to get more visitors to your website. How do you make this awesome fact work for you?

Obviously, you start by using images on your website – or else you can’t get any of that sweet image traffic. What kind of visuals should you use? Anything you can think of, really.

Photos, Diagrams, Screenshots, Comics, Gifs, Infographics

But to gain traffic from them, you need to optimize them for image search. That means using keywords in their titles and ALT tags. If you make them shareable across the social media, you’ll get even more traffic from there.

Important note: be careful with your images’ file size. “Heavy” pictures put a strain on website loading speed.

#14. Add Social Share Buttons

It’s not that search engines take into account the amount or attention your website is getting on social media. But that can amplify the actual ranking factors, and adding social sharing buttons doesn’t cost you anything.

Not adding them to your website posts is missing out on a huge opportunity to increase organic traffic.

#15. Create FREE Online Courses

Lastly, If you want to establish your site as an authority in your industry, creating a free online course might be just the way to do it.

Plus, you’ll get to include lead generation forms for everyone that wants to sign up!

Depending on your skill set, knowledge, and the nature of your business – find a topic you think will be relevant to your customers. Of course, this should be a topic on which you can provide useful and in-depth knowledge.

However, if you want to create a quality online course you do have to think about production costs, so plan ahead and think about whether investing in it at the moment makes sense for your marketing strategy.

How To Optimize Your Landing Page

August 22, 2020August 22, 2020 by Learners Coach

Landing pages are an essential part of digital marketing. If you’re not using landing
pages yet, you’re most definitely wasting a big chunk of your ad spend and attention.
Use this article to learn how landing pages work, how to use them, and how to
build good ones.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a standalone web page with a single purpose. It’s typically used for
advertising and promotional campaigns. It’s the first page visitors see after clicking
your banner ad, PPC ad, or promotional email.

Campaign traffic lands on the dedicated page (hence the name “landing page”),
and that page gets people to take specific action. Typical uses:

Get people to sign up for your newsletter
Generate leads
Solicit donations to a cause
Sell a product
Share content on social media

The importance of landing pages in marketing strategy

An effective landing page is crucial for converting shoppers into buyers.
What makes them so effective is that they focus on a single goal: get the visitor to
take a single specific action.

Everything that doesn’t directly contribute to getting more
people to take action is removed. So ideally it doesn’t have links, a menu, or multiple
calls to action.
A landing page is a key factor in the success of your ad campaign.

Good landing page = good ROI.
Bad landing pages = needless waste of money.

Where to start?

Follow these steps to create your first landing page.

1: Identify your audience

You can’t market to people if you don’t know who they are and what they want.
The landing page needs to speak to a specific audience. Make sure you know the problem, the need, and desire of your target audience.

If you run several advertising campaigns that drive traffic to a landing page, you
should create several different landing pages. They can be mostly the same, but with
different headlines and with small tweaks in the copy.

2: Define your most wanted action (MWA)

MWA is the one action people should take on the landing page.Do you want them to join your email list? Buy a product? Sign up for a demo?
Whatever it is, make sure you have a single objective.

3: Define your message

You know your audience, their problem, and the solution you offer. Now craft that
into an easy-to-understand message. Your landing page has to make an offer, so it
should be clear who this offer is for (so people can identify with it), what the offer is
(specifics), and why it should be interested (benefits).

Avoid clever language, hype and business jargons. Go for simple and clear language.
“Clarity trumps persuasion” is a good maxim to follow.

There’s no way to know for sure in advance what will work, so create several versions
and split test them.

4: Design your landing page

You have your most wanted action in place, you understand your target audience,
and have a hypothesis as to which offer will appeal to them. How do you design
a landing page that will motivate them to take action?

First make a list of all the elements to include on your landing page.

What to include

A headline that speaks to the target audience
Your company logo
A quick explanation of your offer above the fold (the portion of the screen the average can see without scrolling)
A longer explanation of the offer below the fold if needed (depending on the complexity of your offer and product)
An image of the product offered
A simple form, ideally with just 1 to 3 fields (usually name and e-mail, but do you actually need the name?)
A buy button or signup button, depending on your predefined most wanted
response
A link to your privacy policy (to keep people on the page, this should open up in
a pop-up window and not load in the same window)
Remember, the more fields you ask the visitor to fill in, the more friction you create and therefore the fewer the people who will fill out the form.

What to leave out

Navigation menu – remember to focus only on your offer
Links to other parts of your site such as “about”
Pictures or images that don’t relate to the offer; these are only distractions
Hard-to-read text — anything less than 12px is bad
Links along the lines of “click here to subscribe” or “click here to read more.” If you can’t cram all your content into the upper fold of your landing page, just let the user scroll down. It’s almost always better than clicking to the next page.
Discouraging forms with unnecessary fields such as “title” or “fax”
“Clear fields” button

There are always exceptions, so you can’t just copy best practices, but this advice
should be your starting point. Get the essentials in place first, then tweak.

Anatomy of a successful landing page

Headline

Advertising guru David Ogilvy said that five times as many people read the headline
as read the body copy. Not much has changed since his day — the headline is still
critically important.

It’s your grabber; it’s what gets people interested (or turns them away if it’s boring).
A good headline can be crafted in many different ways. There is no universal formula
despite what some blog posts claim.

These 3 angles typically work well:

#1: Say what it is
The brain is a questioning organ. Whenever we see something new, our
brain asks, “What is it?” This formula addresses this fundamental question.

#2: State a benefit This is a benefit-oriented statement that sums up what you get when you sign up.

#3: Say what you can do with it
This is where the headline makes it clear what you can accomplish if you accept the offer, use the service, etc.

Writing a clear copy

The goal of most written content is to inform or entertain. The goal of landing page
copy is to get people to do something.

When it comes to copywriting, there are 3 keys to keep in mind:

Clarity: make everything as simple as possible; use the language of your
customers; avoid technical jargon and buzzwords.
Credibility: avoid big claims unless you have data to back them up; use specifics instead of superlatives, such as, “We deliver pizza in 10 minutes” (good) vs. “Fastest pizza delivery in town” (bad).
Value: make it all about the visitor, their problems, and the benefits they can
expect. Don’t make it about you.

Using images and videos

People rarely buy a thing without seeing it. Usually they also want to touch it, hold it,
and take it for a spin. You really can’t do those things online (unless it’s web-based
software). So to compensate, you need to work twice as hard to make your products
come alive by using excellent photography, graphics or videos.

If your offer is a physical product — show it. If it’s a virtual product — show it! This will
make your offer seem more tangible.

Use images that show an experience (example: campaign to win a trip to Kenya
– show an image of Kenya), how your offer is used (example: show the product in
action), demonstrate results (before and after) or show people using it.

Images of humans, especially their faces, can be very powerful for grabbing attention,
sometimes even too powerful — they can take attention away from other elements.
Make sure you test it! Also, the right face can make all the difference, so experiment
with different faces.

Generally you want to avoid cheesy stock photos (take your own photos instead),
closed poses (folded hands, hands on the hips, etc.) and disinterested people.

How to use call to action

Your landing page drives people to take action. The final step is to click your
call to action button: “Buy now”, “Download e-book”, “Subscribe to newsletter”.

A good call to action finishes the sentence, “I want to …”. So avoid words such as
“Submit” — nobody wants to submit. They might want to “Get instant access”.

Keep in mind the size, look and location of your call to action. To make it easy to spot,
use a contrasting color and make it reasonably large.

Principles of good design

It only takes 0.013 seconds for your brain to identify an image and 0.05 seconds for
visitors to form an opinion about your landing page.

The opinion they subconsciously form between 1/13th and 1/50th of a second
influences every decision they make for the rest of their time on the page.

What is good design? According to research there are two main factors:

Simplicity (simple doesn’t mean amateurish or ugly; simple design is the opposite of visually complex design)
Prototypicality (how familiar it looks and whether it meets expectations)

Is your page arranged in a way that is intuitive to users? Are your product images up to the standards your target market experiences when browsing the Web?

The brain registers information faster than your user can consciously perceive it. So if
these elements are even slightly off, conversion becomes an uphill battle.

Testimonials and social proof

You say you’re awesome — but who else thinks so? You need to establish credibility.
If people have never heard of your business, there’s an inevitable amount of distrust
and skepticism. You can’t fully get rid of it, but you can minimize it by providing proof
that you and your offer are legit. You can do this with:

Testimonials by people who use your services (full names with photos or videos, no anonymous testimonials)
Mentions by well-known third-party media outlets (featured in Forbes magazine, for example)
Impressive numbers (“500,000 people are already using it!”)
Product ratings and reviews (research shows that 63% of consumers say they’re more likely to purchase from a site with ratings and reviews).

Don’t go overboard, because overcompensation can cause buyer anxiety.

Unless you get a lot of Facebook likes or tweets, don’t add social media sharing icons. It’s a distraction. And if you have only 2 likes and 1 tweet, it’s negative social proof (nobody shares this information) so it harms your credibility.

Your landing page has a single objective, and most likely it’s not to get a tweet. Focus
on your main goal and move social media sharing to the thank you page.

Signup forms

Most landing pages have a form of some kind. It could be a simple form with just
name and email fields or it could have 10 fields or more.

How to design a form that works?

Less is more (few fields = more conversions). Every field you ask them to fill
increases friction. To improve conversions, get rid of as many fields as possible. Ask yourself which you want more: email addresses or additional information?
Of course, sometimes you want to add more fields to intentionally create friction in order to improve lead quality.
Sell the signup. Getting people to give you their email address (sign up to your
list) is a transaction. If you want them to give you their email address (and maybe other data), they’ll want something in return. Remind them what they get when they opt in, and be specific.
Single-column forms tend to work better. Avoid multiple columns.
Top-aligned form labels typically work best. It’s something you need to test, but this should be your starting point. Inline labels can cause usability problems.
Submit button width = field width. The call to action is the most important part of your form. A small button has weak affordance and can make users feel uncertain. Make it as wide as the input fields.