Let’s talk about landing page best practices. Why? It’s an important step in your lead-generation strategy.
There are many posts and guides that discuss how to create a landing page and how to optimize it. We found them either too complicated or too boring in our research. We decided to create a landing page optimization manual that is helpful and would add value to your strategy.
Your landing pages are the only thing standing between you and new prospects. Although it might seem easy, landing page best practices can make the difference between getting the campaign off to a flying start and being stuck in the mud.
Are you willing to invest all your resources and time driving traffic to landing pages only to see your leads disappear from the funnel? Of course not. We have some quick fixes that will get you those landing page conversions.
Let’s start with the basics and answer the question: What are landing pages?
What Are Landing Pages?
A landing page is where visitors arrive after clicking on an ad or email. It is designed for advertising and marketing campaigns.
A landing page is designed for one purpose or goal, which is known as a call-to-action. They are the best way to increase conversion rates and lower your costs of acquiring leads or sales.
Landing pages, unlike your homepages, are campaign-based lead generator tools. These pages are targeted at a particular stream of traffic and serve one purpose: to convert higher percentages of web users into qualified leads.
The two main types of landing pages that guarantee conversions are:
1. Lead generation (or capture): These landing pages are the most popular. They capture contact information such as a user’s name and email address. These pages allow you to fill out a form in exchange for an offer (e.g., an e-book), but they do not provide an exit path. You can use this link to navigate to other areas of your website. This landing page is great for building your email database.
2. Click through: This page is the simplest. It provides details about a product or service and offers benefits to make it more appealing to a prospect. This landing page allows users to read the content and then click through via a CTA to your site to complete the transaction.
Landing page best practices aim to convert website visitors into leads by offering a single offer. This is possible by reaching out to your target audience. To cater for your ideal customers, you must know them inside and out. Focus on how to create a landing page that speaks to your ideal buyers and places them in their shopping journey.
How Do Landing Pages Work?
- A person clicks on a call-to-action and is directed to a landing page that includes a form.
- A form is completed by the person, who becomes a lead.
- Your leads database stores the information from these form fields.
- You market to them based on your knowledge of the lead or contact.
Landing page best practices allow you to see which offer they converted on and when and what interactions they had on your website if you use a marketing automation software such as HubSpot. This data will help you nurture your lead in a more targeted manner by helping you choose the best marketing actions.
Nurtured leads are more likely to become marketing qualified leads (MQL), and will move faster through the marketing funnel. This will help you show the ROI of your marketing efforts, and keep your sales team happy.
Landing page best practices attract visitors because they see that the content will be of value to them. A marketer, on the other hand, will gladly provide the content to the site visitor to make future marketing efforts.
All About Landing Page Optimization
Most online businesses place increasing leads as a priority. You must first grab every visitor’s attention on your website. This is not the hardest part. Most businesses have difficulty getting visitors to interact with their site and convincing them to take action.
Landing page best practices are all about user experience.
Landing page optimization refers to the removal or addition of elements on a website in order to improve conversions. This is a subset of CRO (conversion rates optimization). It also includes A/B testing, which allows you to better gauge which landing page components work or don’t (connect with your target audience).
Landing pages are created to help you get quality leads. Landing pages best practices will improve your conversion rate and ultimately increase your online marketing success.
Landing Page Optimization Best Practices to Generate More Leads
Optimizing your landing page is one of the easiest ways to get more leads. Your landing page should be the first thing visitors see when they visit your website. Visitors might leave your website if they don’t find your landing page interesting. Landing page optimization is something you should take seriously. You can get more conversions if your landing page best practices are well-designed. Here are 12 landing page optimization best practices that help boost leads.
1. Keep layouts simple and pay attention to white space.
Simple and minimal wins every time. No more cluttered landing pages. Your layout should be clean and concise. Keep your landing page components to a minimum, and keep your copy to the point. Your users should only be able to see one concept.
Your goal is not to overwhelm potential customers. If you overwhelm them, they will bounce at a rapid rate.
2. Make sure all important information is above-the-fold.
Above-the-fold is the screen that can be seen in the upper portion of a webpage. It can be seen without scrolling down the page. To grab visitors’ attention, it should be engaging and compelling. You can do this by adding relevant keywords to the body and headlines.
Landing page components that convince potential customers to convert are:
- A clear headline
- A value proposition is usually located under the headline
- Clear CTA
- Optimized form
3. Connect with your target buyers through relevant copy.
You don’t have time to play guessing games on your landing page. Your offer should be as clear as possible.
Visitors should be able to clearly understand what they are getting in return for their contact information. You want your audience to feel like they are going to accomplish something by using your offer.
4. Make calls-to-action unambiguous.
Without call-to-action buttons, you can’t capture leads. They are the most crucial element of your landing page. If visitors have no way to click, how else will they convert?
Only one CTA should be used on your landing page. It should align with your offer. You should not include extra offers that could draw users to take action. The button text should not be too cute or fancy. Be clear about what you want users to do. You should clearly state what you want users to do if you offer a guide for free.
Second, do not bait and switch. Do not ask for someone’s personal information without offering them something on the next screen.
Finally, allow your CTA to shine. It should stand out above all the other landing page components.
5. Capture leads with an optimized form.
Did you know that the average number of fields in a landing page form is eleven? Don’t let this fool you. Research shows that less is better when it comes to forms. For example, reducing the number of fields in your forms from 11 to 4 can increase landing page conversions by up to 120%. This is a good rule of thumb when creating forms for landing pages.
The buyer’s place in the shopping journey. Pages that target users at the top will have fewer form fields than pages that target users at the bottom.
Mobile devices will show you how your forms will look. Mobile devices will be used by the majority of users. Your form and landing page should be mobile-responsive.
You should only ask for your name and email address if you offer a top-of-the-funnel eBook. If you offer a free consultation, however, you will need to ask for more information such as a phone number and company name.
6. Use images and videos.
Images play an important role in attracting your target audience. Landing page best practices always include the use of high-quality images. Low-quality images can make it difficult for potential customers to grasp the purpose of your landing page. The potential customer could also move to another landing page. Use compelling and high-quality images on your landing pages.
Using images and videos are landing page best practices that should highlight your offer or product, introduce your team members, and create an emotional connection or human connection. This can be your header image or an image of a reasonable size located to the right or left of your form.
Videos, on the other hand, can increase engagement on a page and show how simple it is to use your product.
7. Build trust with social proof.
Brands that are trusted by customers are the best.
Your visitors will be able to recognize the difference between a typical marketing message and a scam. Unless you are truly original, they have heard it all before. You can’t fake the satisfaction of customers or community members, no matter how great your product is. It will add authenticity to your claims.
These testimonials can be made more human by adding personal details such as full names, job titles and residence dates, and portraits or videos. However, landing page best practices do not include glowing customer reviews by Jane Doe, Anonymous, or Satisfied Customer. These reviews will not convince anyone.
You want to prove that your business is legitimate by including testimonials or a list of clients on your landing pages.
You can add your phone number or a small excerpt from a case study to make it even more personal.
8. Improve your SEO landing page.
SEO is one of those landing page best practices you should never overlook. SEO is not essential for landing pages that are used for short-term campaigns. If your landing pages are meant for long-term projects, they should be search engine optimized, just like any other page on your website.
How do you optimize a landing page for SEO? It’s simple:
- Use keywords for your title, meta description, and URL.
- Use keywords, semantics, and URLs to describe your page.
9. Reduce your page’s load time.
Landing page best practices should always factor into your page load speed. Page speed is a crucial factor in the user experience, as most people use their mobile devices to surf the internet. You can be sure that your landing pages will have a slow load speed and a low conversion rate. Your landing page should load quickly.
Do you want to speed up your site’s loading times? Talk to your developer.
10. Practice A/B testing.
Testing is essential to landing page best practices. A/B Testing your landing pages will help you to take your LPO even further. But be smart. You can test which landing page elements will increase your conversion rates as your landing page traffic increases. To get better insight into the user’s interaction with your page, use heatmap. You should be aware that you cannot and shouldn’t split-test any elements of your landing page until there is enough data. Failure is guaranteed when you run A/B tests with no data.
Make Your Landing Pages Effective Lead Boosters
All landing page best practices have the same goal: to encourage visitors to take a specific action. If you want to get more leads, your landing pages must be optimized. Landing page optimization best practices intend to grab attention quickly. There are no set rules for landing page optimization.
There are millions of combinations of headlines, images and offers that can be used to help you build a landing page for your business. It is important to never stop testing because what landing page best practices that work today may not work tomorrow.
To find the best way to reach your target audience, you must constantly experiment with new methods. You can start by scheduling a website strategy evaluation with Advanced Digital Media Services. ADVDMS is a Denver SEO firm that can assist you with improving your lead conversion paths to increase your conversion rates.
Get in touch with our team today to discover more SEO industry-moving tips.