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.