In the world of digital marketing, a landing page is like the elevator pitch. It should be simple enough to be taken in quickly. It should be snappy and convincing at the first glance. It might not get you the sale, but it will get you a lead. And just as some products can’t be sold using an elevator pitch, relatively short landing pages don’t work well for all types of products and services.
Regardless of its length, the goal of a landing page is the same — to convince the person reading it to take an action. And because it’s usually easier said than done, here are a couple of tips that should help you design landing pages that perform better.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
The first and one of the most important tips you can get about landing pages is — have more than one. You should have at least one separate landing page for each marketing campaign you’re running. You have an SEO team that works on increasing your organic traffic? Create a landing page for organic. You hired an expert PPC management company for a paid traffic campaign? Talk to them about your targeting and create a couple of landing pages.
There are two very important things that you get by using multiple landing pages. You get the opportunity to segment your audience and create specific copy and design for each segment and serve it on specialized landing pages. You also get the opportunity to test and constantly improve your landing pages.
Provide Ample Social Proof
A while back, social proof was proclaimed to be the new marketing. It’s debatable whether the social proof is important. The fact that your landing page could use some social proof isn’t.
Testimonials, user reviews, expert or celebrity blurbs, or endorsements are all types of social proof. It’s a trust signal that says to people that it’s okay to use your products or services because other people are using it too, or experts say it’s good, or that celebrity says they like it, or their friends recommend it. And you can’t have too many trust signals because trust is the most valuable thing in business.
Include Other Trust Signals Too
And because trust is so important, you should make sure that you include other design elements that signal trust to your landing page visitors.
It can be as simple as including full contact information on the landing page. You don’t have to get rid of your lead-generating forms, but you should include some type of contact info that places your business in the real world, such as a phone number, an address, or even a PO box. And don’t forget about the list of previous big-name clients, and as many certificates you can fit in without overcrowding your landing page.
Use Consistent Branding
There surely are some myths about branding that need to be shattered, but consistency is not one of them. Your branding absolutely must be consistent across all of your business and marketing assets, including your landing page.
Remember to use the same style guide for all your assets. You can play with the design elements of your landing page, but those that pertain to your brand should always be the same. The logo, slogan, brand colors, and other things you want to be associated with your brand should stay uniform.
Don’t Forget About Mobile Searches
You’ve had too many warnings about the rise of mobile internet traffic to have a landing page that doesn’t display well on mobile devices. Currently, it’s not only a trend, it’s a necessity.
You can have separate landing pages for mobile and desktop visitors. You can have different versions of the same landing page that are optimized for different devices. You can do what most people are doing and implement mobile responsive design when creating landing pages. Whatever options you choose, just make sure that the people who land on your page using a mobile device have a decent experience.
Test New Ideas
You can infinitely fine tune your landing pages if you want to. That’s the benefit of online assets — they can be changed, sometimes very quickly and without much effort.
A/B testing is when you have two landing pages that are almost the same, except the one thing you’re testing. It could be a new call to action, a new placement of buttons, a new form length. You set them up to receive roughly the same number of visitors, and then you watch which one performs better. If you listened to the first tip, you probably have a landing page you can spare for testing. And always be sure that you test new ideas or improvements before you roll them out.
