Creating a Powerful Landing Page

How do you build a landing page that will boost your sales?  How do you resuscitate a dying landing page that just can’t convert?  Read these 5 tips to find out!

1. Keep Your Off-Page Promises

When someone reaches your landing page, they likely arrived by clicking an ad that somehow resonated with them.  If the content of the landing page isn’t consistent with the content of the ad that brought them to you, they won’t stick around.  No one likes a bate and switch.

Therefore, for best results, make sure your landing page is always in alignment with your ad. Don’t disappoint.

2. Make Your Message Clear and Simple

We’re sure you have a lot to say about what you’re selling.  We can’t blame you for your enthusiasm, but can you expect your visitor to share your zeal?

When arriving on a page, your average internet user decides whether or not they’ll stick around within just a few seconds.  Don’t turn off your audience with heaps of hype-filled paragraphs, or your landing page will only succeed in increasing your bounce rate.

Also, use a clear call to action, and be sure to make it stand out from the rest of the landing page.  Bold it, enlarge it, put a box around it, etc.  Let your visitor know what’s in store for them if they fill out the form or click on that link, and make sure you’re offering something rewarding and enticing enough to actually motivate visitors to make a conversion.

3. Use Images and Video… Wisely

Want to pique your prospects’ interest? Provide imagery, audio and/or video.  People love a good summary, and there’s no faster way to get your point across than a clear visual illustration or video demonstration of what you are selling.

If your landing page looks like something out of Wikipedia, filled with vanilla walls of text and nothing interesting to see, then you’re facing an uphill battle.  Only visitors with an unusual amount of patience and an uncommonly peculiar interest in you (i.e. your own mother) will bite before they bounce.

However, you don’t want to overuse images or video.  Having too many loud visual and audio elements can shock the system, creating a cacophony that causes your visitors to retreat to safety.  It could also cause them to laugh at the tackiness of your landing page’s design, and you do ultimately want your prospects to take you seriously, don’t you?

4. Build Trust

The more your visitors know about you, the more they’ll feel an affinity for your product or service.  Tell them very little about yourself, and you really can’t expect them to trust you.

You have to make a convincing case for yourself when creating a landing page.  If you’re a reputable company of merit, you’ve no doubt earned some form of licensing or accreditation, or perhaps you belong to certain professional associations.  If so, then share this information on the page.  Feature badges, buttons and logos of organizations that your company is legitimately associated with, and in turn, you’ll appear more trustworthy. Appear trustworthy, and your visitors will feel safer in dealing with you.

You’ll also want to include testimonials.  If you have repeat clients or success stories associated with your product or service, share their stories with your visitors.  A brief, sincere sentence or two from a client can translate to a really powerful trust-building device on your landing page.

5. Test Your Landing Page

How do you sabotage any chance of getting visitors to convert? Unleash a landing page that doesn’t work to the public (buggy, slow-loading and/or rife with broken links).  First impressions matter, and your visitors will remember the time they went to your website, when it clearly wasn’t ready.

Prevent this scenario by performing a private test.  Go through the steps necessary to convert from your landing page in progress.  If you encounter an issue along the way, then it looks like your landing page isn’t quite ready to come out of the oven.

Once you are confident about releasing the page, you can optimize your conversion rate by setting up a split test.  This allows you to test multiple variations of the page to determine which design/layout is most effective.

Want to know more about creating powerful landing pages or conversion optimization?  Contact us to setup a free consultation or get helpful tips for your project.