How to have effective landing pages

Landing pages are the pages visitors land on when they arrive at a website having clicked a link or ad. More inexperienced marketers will direct ad traffic to a homepage, however tailoring landing pages to different ads and offers is more effective for creating a positive experience for the visitor, and as a result for increasing conversion numbers. In addition, having the most high-quality landing pages possible will boost leads and conversion rates even further. Read on to find out more.

Before you start ask yourself the following questions:
1. What do you hope to achieve? Having a goal about what you want your visitors to do once they arrive on your landing page will help you to decide what needs to go on it. Should it include a form, a newsletter or a link for a free download? Deciding what your goals are is the first strategic step.
2. Who are your competition? Are they succeeding? And if so, how? If your competitors are doing well and their methods are working, why not try something similar?
3. Who is your audience? Understanding your audience is essential if you want to be able to address their needs and wants.
4. How did they arrive on your page? Ideally you will have a different message for each group of users and a landing page to match. The more landing pages you have, individually tailored to each group, the higher the number of leads you are likely to generate. This might feel like a huge task, so start with a custom landing page for each campaign and build on them from there.

Creating Persuasive Landing Pages
The best landing pages are uncluttered, short and sweet. To avoid overwhelming your audience, any one page should offer all necessary information to interest your visitors, but no more. Content should be of the highest quality and relevant, to ensure confidence and trust.
The best landing pages also carefully control their exit points. Limit hyperlinks which navigate away from you website and instead lead visitors along a specific pathway through it. Ease of conversion is essential. Users get bored quickly, so making conversion a long and drawn out process will only serve to scare customers away. Instead, have as few barriers as possible from start to finish and always ensure the next step is completely obvious. Think Amazon and the ‘buy with one click’ button. If you want them to fill out a form it must be as easy as possible. A name and email address is fair enough – ask them to fill out their address and date of birth too, and they are far less likely to do so.

Try Video and Other Visual Media
Design a landing page which is easy on the eye and very simple to use and follow. Clear calls to action, eye catching headings, and engaging copy are a must. If your product is particularly complex, it can help to have a video explanation on the landing page itself.

And finally…
Consumers LOVE special offers. Add deals and discount offers on your landing page to spark the interest of your visitors. Again, make it very simple to understand and take advantage of. Use images and visual cues if necessary.