Let’s imagine users searching for your product or service online:
They enter a search query and come to your website. What do you have there to grab their attention and turn your website visitors into leads, compelling them to take action?
Yes, you know that your offer is awesome, and your service is excellent. But website visitors are unacquainted with this fact. You need a website page that would explain and prove your awesomeness to them. This page is known as landing: It embodies all the information a visitor needs to set his heart upon your offer and “land” at your website to buy from you. In other words, this page optimizes your site for lead generation.
In this blog post, we’ll show you how to create a landing page that converts.
What is a Landing Page?
It’s the page on your website that a user sees after clicking your pay-per-click advertising. A landing page is tailored to represent your offer and convert visitors into leads and eventually paying customers.
A landing page could be the homepage of your site, a separate page within your website, or a standalone page you create for a specific marketing campaign.
There are many benefits of a persuasive landing page:
- It increases conversion rates, revealing all the benefits of your offer and therefore inviting visitors to choose you
- It helps with e-commerce SEO (because you craft this page to target specific search terms and promote it via Google Ads)
- It allows you to focus on a particular marketing goal and track the success of selling a specific product or service
- A stellar landing page makes onboarding more manageable, and your sales funnel — more efficient
Before Creating a Landing Page
For your landing page to bring results, you need to research and determine a few critical details.
First, decide your marketing goal: What do you want to accomplish with this page? Is it for your new business or new product promotion? Or do you want to grow an email list?
Second, make sure you know and understand your audience inside out. Who is your ideal customer? What are their needs, expectations, and pain points? The more you know, the easier it will be to come up with a core message and write a critical copy that will compel them to take the desired action.
And third, do keyword research. Focus on keywords that are relevant to your offer and SEO goals, while also matching the searcher intent of your target customers. What do they type when they search for solutions to their problem that your product can solve?
Let’s say you are a tool that helps marketers see the PPC campaigns of their competitors. So you assume they will use the “advertising research” keyword when looking for your instrument in Google. But the truth is that people are looking for general info about advertising research, not the info about PPC ads when typing this keyword in search.
So it will be a great mistake to target your landing page for “advertising research,” as it doesn’t meet the searcher intent of the audience. Once they come to your page and see that it’s not about what they need, they’ll bounce it, therefore killing your SEO endeavors.
How to Create a Landing Page: 9 stages
Now it’s time to create your landing page for better sales. What information to mention there? How to represent your business offer? What writing tricks to use so users would get interested in learning more about your product?
Here we’ll describe the nine core elements to add to your landing page so it would bring results.
- Craft a headline
A headline is the first thing a visitor sees on your landing page.
Headlines should perform two tasks:
- Grab attention and tell the viewer what they will find on the page.
- At the same time, a headline needs to be short but compelling, so a visitor wants to stay on the page and learn more about the offer. Let’s take a look at the example below: “Business Email” is a short but clear phrase telling both visitors and search engine that we’ll talk about business emails here.
Limit your landing page headline to 10 words, make sure it gets to the point. Use active verbs, as well as, power words, so visitors understand what’s in it for them.
2. Choose a hero image
Most people are visual learners. They perceive information through images better than through words, so the image on your landing page is a core element that will help them decide if they want to scroll through the page and learn more.
A hero image is a banner image on your landing page. It looks like this:
There are several things you should remember when choosing a hero image:
- It should be of high-quality and relevant to your offer
- It should grab attention and help a visitor understand what the page is about
- It should fit the overall design of your landing page and shouldn’t distract users from your call to action button
- It should trigger positive emotions, demonstrating to visitors that they’ll benefit from choosing your service
3. Add subheads
A subhead appears just below the headline on your landing page. The subheading provides more details about your offer and persuades a reader to learn more.
A subhead appears just below the headline on your landing page. The subheading provides more details about your offer and persuades a reader to learn more.
An effective subhead is concise yet informative, descriptive, and punchy. Together with a headline, it’s a landing page element where effective marketers use neuro-copywriting techniques to influence readers: beneficial adjectives, questions, quotes, odd numbers — all trigger a more positive response.
Here go some examples:
- Not a fan of real-time tracking? (Source) — a question
- Take free online English language courses to improve your English grammar, composition, conversation, and writing skills. Learn effective English communication skills with online classes and courses. (Source) — beneficial adjectives: “free” and “effective”
- With more than 5,000 essays completed already, only 13 were rejected by students and asked to revise. (Source) — odd numbers.
- I Tried The Top 9 Proposal Management Software Platforms So You Didn’t Have To (Source) — a quote in the headline
4. Make an offer
If you want to initiate the process of lead generation, make sure your target offer is clear. Come up with a straightforward explanation, and integrate it into your headline and subheading. Make it benefit-oriented and use words with positive meaning when answering the “What’s in there for me?” question.
5. Address your audience’s pain points
You know your target audience, their needs, and expectations. And you know which pain points will motivate them to do business with you.
The biggest motivator is the fear of missing out. Many sales copywriters address this in landing page content, mentioning what we’ll lose if we ignore the offer. Another tactic is to create a sense of urgency: Offer a giveaway, a time-sensitive discount on a subscription, etc.
Organize your landing page so visitors will see your product or service as a solution to their problem.
6. Provide an added value
Human nature is so that most people crave pleasure and benefits from brands. So why not incorporate both into your landing page for better customer retention?
- Show that your offer isn’t only about cool functions but also emotions
- Reward them with some tiny yet cute byproduct of working with you: a gift card, a discount, a free copy of your e-book or subscription to your extra features, etc
- Think of a lead magnet, such as a free e-book, ultimate guide, or checklist for their subscription
7. Add trust signals
Trust signals are elements marketers add to landing pages to help customers feel more secure about buying. They may come in different forms — guarantees, social proofs such as testimonials from loyal customers, the list of prominent clients that work with a business, etc.
The goal of trust signals is to make prospective customers feel better about doing business with you. It’s a core element to add to a landing page for conversion rate optimization.
So, provide visitors with signals that your brand is trustworthy.
Trust signals come in different forms: testimonials, customer reviews, badges, numbers, etc. But regardless of how you present them, they’ll help people feel encouraged to take action while on your landing page.
Place trust signals on pages where you ask users for sensitive information (a credit card details, for example). Also, you can strategically place it on a product page below the offer to demonstrate to a visitor that you are worth trust and that they can rely on you.
8. Tell people how to contact you
With Google now focusing its Quality Evaluator Guidelines on trustworthiness, you need to provide some proof that you’re real. For that, make sure to include several contact methods to your landing page: a physical address, phone numbers, social media buttons, your email address, and a contact form.
As for contact forms, keep them short and clear: The more fields you ask someone to fill out, the lower the chance that someone will complete the form. Only request the basic info you need: While most users are OK sharing their name and email address, they might give you the side-eye if you ask for their physical address, phone number, company, or profession.
So, make it short and easy to find, avoid unnecessary fields, and link to your social media accounts to provide visitors with alternative ways to engage with your business. For creating a contact page, use corresponding plugins from your CMS (WordPress, Drupal, or whatever you use) or build one with contact form templates available online.
9. Include a call to action
While all the above elements of your landing page grab visitors’ attention and reassure them that your offer is what they need, a Call To Action (CTA) is what converts them into customers. So make sure to design it right.
Make it big and the text on it, compelling. “Click here” and “Submit” aren’t the best options. Use words or expressions that are inviting and persuasive.
Also, make sure your CTA button stands out from the rest of your landing page elements. Visitors should notice it immediately and understand they need to click on it.
Final Thoughts
Test it. Test again. And test some more! Testing is what makes landing pages effective.
Try different headlines, hero images, calls to action, and registration forms. Remember to track the page’s performance with heat maps, the number of visitors, the length of visits, and any other marketing metrics. Analyze the results to see what you’re doing right and what you need to optimize for better lead generation.
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