From a marketing/advertising perspective, a landing page is a standalone webpage, different from the main website, which has been designed to achieve a concrete goal. There are many kind of landing pages, but we can make a basic distinction based on their goal:
- Click through: this is normally an intermediate step between the ad where the user clicked and the main website. It’s used to inform the user about the product/service before sending him/her to the main website where the product/service can be purchased or the user can register.
- Lead Capture: the goal is to capture the data of the user, there are no more steps after. There is an action button that registers the data of the user, and usually a “good bye” message.
All kind of landing pages have common points to improve and we will go over them in order to give you an overview of how to optimize your landing pages.
LAYOUT
A landing page is part of a pipeline, designed in order that a potential user/client registers to a website or buys a product/service. The first step is an ad, which can be a banner, an email creative, a text link, etc.. Second step is normally the landing page and the third and last step is the main website. The “look & feel” of this 3 steps has to be as similar as possible, in order that the user doesn’t get confused and abandons the process. We need to maintain the interest and the trust of the user during the complete process, and using the same layout will ensure this.
Another important part of your landing page is the action button. The goal of the action button is to grab the attention of the users and persuade them to take an action like submitting a form, subscribing to a mailing list, buying a product, etc… There are 4 main variables to take in account when creating an action button:
- Placement:
The placement of the action button is extremely important and implies to take in account the entire page layout. As an example, you won’t place a red action button on a red background, try always to use white spaces (negative spaces, space between screen elements which hasn’t to be white). The main goal is to choose the right place in order that the user can clearly identify where he has to focus his attention.
- Color:
In the image below you can see the different properties associated to different colors. You may choose the correct one in order to align it to the action you expect from the user.
Colour To Action
- Shape:
Action buttons can have a wide variety of shapes, but the most commonly used are rectangles with rounded corners. It’s the most used shape by the digital advertising industry, and users quickly identify their functionality.
- Message:
This is a critical part since we have to give a clear and effective message in a limited space. The message has to give confidence to the user and has to tell what to do next.
CONTENT
In order to transmit the right message to your users, the content of your landing page has to be aligned with the goal fulfilled (lead, sale, etc…). We can identify 3 main parts that that compose the structure of the content of your landing page:
- Text:
The most common mistake in this point is to promote the main features of the product/service we are selling/offering, but this doesn’t give any added value to the users. We need to promote the value of it, the benefits that the user will receive in order to attract their interest. It’s really important that this message supports our call to action, without creating an overload of information, with unclear call-to-actions or too many actions.
The message is clear and short, no unnecessary text that can drive to confusion and a clear call to action. More quantity doesn’t mean more information, sometimes it can even drive to confusion.
- Images:
Images can be used as a background without any objective apart from its aesthetic value, but since we called this article “landing page optimization”, this wouldn’t be fair. Images are a powerful tool to transmit a message, but we have to be sure that they won’t steal the attention to the action button, which has to be the main focus. The image has to transmit our goal to the user. Below you can see an image used by an affiliate platform in a landing page focused on getting new collaboration requests which is a good example of what we just said:
- Form:
In the Lead Capture landing pages, a form is needed to let users introduce their data. The number of fields is a critical point, since it will have a big impact on the amount of user that will fill it out. Shall we ask their names, email, telephone? In this point, it’s mandatory to take in consideration the origin of the user that will land in the page. Users coming through pull marketing sources (ex: search engines/organic traffic) will most likely be willing to complete a long form than users coming from push marketing sources (ex: display ads, email marketing). This being said, our recommendation is to ask only the basic information needed to acquire the lead and then nurture the lead to obtain extra information. Check the 2 examples below:
Imagine your see an ad of a service that could be interesting for you and after clicking you get redirected to a landing page with these two forms. Which one would you fill out and which one will make you abandon the process? Of course everybody has a different opinion, but most likely a higher percentage of people would choose to complete the short one and would abandon the process if they had to fill out the long one.
TESTING
After checking your landing page and applying the necessary modifications, it’s time to test!
A/B test is a popular methodology that simultaneously tests different variations of the same landing page, called “variants”, for at least one week and a maximum of two months. After the test you obtain a “champion version” which obtained the best results (highest conversion rate). In the second round of testing, this version will be compared to others called “challengers”. The goal of these is to optimize the conversion of your landing page.