Why Landing Pages Are So Effective For Your Business
This is the first page that the visitors see after clicking an ad or after clicking a link in your email.
As you read further - you’ll learn.
- What is a landing page?
- Types of landing pages
- Key elements of a landing page
- How to write content for a landing page?
- About the tools that you can use to create landing pages without much IT knowledge
- Landing page dos and don'ts
Types of Landing Pages
There are several types of landing pages:
- Lead generation page
- Product sales (or warm up) page
- Email opt-in page
- Content landing page - designed to rank well in search engines
Lead Generation Page
This landing page is used to generate leads. These leads are generated by offering ebooks, a call back for counselling, ecourse like the one you are reading now, or blog subscription to receive regular updates.
Product sales (or warmup) page
This type of landing page is used to warm up prospects - before they make the purchase.
Email optin page
An email opt-in page is focused on getting people to subscribe to an email list.
Content landing page
These pages are designed to rank for a particular term in search engine results.
Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing page is a good example of a content landing page. This page is designed to rank for the term “inbound marketing”.
Key Elements of a Landing Page
A landing page must have,
- A headline (explaining what you are offering),
- A subheading to support the headline,
- Benefits that the user will get by accepting your offer (to subscribe to an email list or buy a product),
- A form in case of an email opt-in page and,
- A call to action (a button that prompts user to take action).
Designing the Landing Page
Here is how you go about designing a landing page. Usually a designer will do it. but i'll tell you how you can make it;
- Start with logo
- Add one large image (known as a hero image).
- Write your offer - as a headline on top of this hero image.
- Give a line of supporting text under the headline.
- Under it give benefits in bullet points.
- Under it - add a CTA
All this info should be above the fold.
(The fold is the portion of the screen that can be seen by a user without the user having to scroll down.)
Do not have following on your landing page
- Navigation menu
- Links that take user to another page
- Unrelated images
- Long forms with more than 2 or 3 fields for email opt-in page or 5-6 fields for lead gen pages driven by PPC campaigns.
Some landing page examples;
Writing Content (Copy) for Your Landing Page
- Write body copy first.
- Then write product features and benefits.
- And, then move to Headline.
Designing the Landing Page: Research and More
Make a list of landing pages by your competition or landing pages by top companies in your space. You can also check out lapa.ninja for inspiration.
Think of something that you can do better. If you are newbie - you can simply do what they are doing.
Put critical landing page elements in above the fold area. Because a large number of users do not scroll to see what is on the page.
Keep the page load time in mind. Keep it low. If you are using images - optimize them to make sure that they load quickly.
Visual harmony. Use same colour elements as you use on your banner ads.
Emphasise CTA (Call to Action) - The design of your landing page should emphasize CTA. You can make the CTA stand out by making it big or using a different colour or by positioning it in the middle of the page. Such things draw attention towards it.
Avoid these Mistakes when creating landing pages.
- Not having the right headline
- Having a cluttered page with useless graphics and links.
- Asking your prospects for too many things (actions)
You reduce distractions AND you increase conversions.
How to write a (PPC) landing page
1. Make sure your headline matches the PPC ad text.
Keep the language on top of landing page exactly (or to the extent possible) same as on the banner ad.
This makes sure that prospects who land on the landing page are not confused. This is one of the most important element of a PPC Landing Page.
2. Write clear and concise copy.
3. Use You and Your more than I or We
4. Provide a clear Call to Action (CTA).
Tell them what they need to do. On a short landing page use 2 CTA. On a long landing page use 3-5 CTA.
5. Whether to use long copy (lot of words) or short copy (less words) on the landing page?
Go for short copy - when you are offering something for free and no payment is involved - like when asking people to subscribe to your newsletter.
Go for long copy - when you are trying to sell something and where cash commitment is involved. Your long copy should not have fluff (extra words). It should be tight.
6. Keep your most important points in the beginning and end.
7. Make content scannable.
Offer your benefits in bullet points. Write short paragraphs. Limit them to 4-5 sentences.
How to Create Effective Email Opt-in Pages
1. Decide who do you want to opt in?
Once you decide who you want to opt-in - you speak their language on the page. You can speak their language once you know them. This understanding comes over a period of time and also by making efforts to understand your customers.
2. What action you want them to take?
In case of the email opt-in page - you want them to subscribe to your email list. So you CTA should be on the lines of - Get Email Updates or Join the List.
3. To entice more people to join, you may give a freebie like an ebook, a report and audio or videos that subscribers can use.
How to Measure Success of Your Landing Page
You do that by checking the conversion rate.
[So what exactly is a conversation rate?
It’s the percentage of visitors that turn into a lead, sale, or a subscriber. An average ecommerce site converts about 0.5 to 1 percent of visitors and an average lead generation pages convert at 2 to 3 percent.
By using effective landing pages it is possible to increase conversions for ecommerce site to 3 percent or even more and for lead gen page it is possible to go over 10 percent conversions.
Landing Page URL
Your landing page URL ideally should be a URL on your domain. So, if your landing page is about makeup videos tutorials then landing page URL can be yourdomain/makeup-videos
Bonus: Thank You Page
Always have a good confirmation or thank you page after they submit lead or buy.
After they submit lead - you can invite them to follow you on social media or ask them to share about your offer on social media.
Homepage vs Landing Page (and why a landing page is important?)
A homepage is a web page where you showcase all that is important for your business.
On homepage users have the option to choose from multiple options. A homepage is not usually designed for conversions. It is designed as a gateway for your products, services and content.
On a landing page - you share one key service, product or offering and ask people who “land” on that page to take a specific action - like subscribing to an email newsletter or buying a product.
By sending paid (using ads) or organic (via email or blog) traffic to the home page - you dump your best prospects - in front of your website - without guiding them how to proceed further or what action to take.
Why homepage is not right to promote your product during a launch?
Because homepage has too many choices and too many choices confuse people.
This is backed by research. Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at Columbia University - along with a fellow researcher - conducted an experiment (popularly known as The Jam Study) in 1995, at a large supermarket in the US.
They found that consumers were 10 times more likely to purchase jam on display when the number of jams available was reduced from 24 to 6. Less choice, more sales. More choice, fewer sales.Strange, huh?
Tools to ponder upon for beautiful landing pages which can be designed by you in few simple steps.
Tools to create landing pages
- Unbounce
- Instapage
- Leadpages
- Wishpond
Inspirational Tool - http://lapa.ninja/
- Notes -
Put critical landing page elements in above the fold area. Because a large number of users do not scroll to see what is on the page.
Go for single column format. It is important to keep the attention of the user as she scrolls down the page.
Keep the page load time in mind. Keep it low. If you are using images - optimize them to make sure that they load quickly.
Visual harmony. Use same colour elements as you use on your banner ads.
Emphasise CTA (Call to Action) - The design of your landing page should emphasize CTA. You can make the CTA stand out by making it big or using a different colour or by positioning it in the middle of the page. Such things draw attention towards it.
- One Landing Page. One Goal.
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