Let’s say that you have done well setting up your landing page for your PPC campaign. It has well-written content, have clear headlines and has good calls to action. And traffic is actually good, yet conversions are way below your expectations. Considering that a landing page is actually all about conversions, you might have a problem on your hands.
A landing page is very much like a shop. People walk in, but your chances of selling anything largely hinges on whether or not they like what they see.
To make them like what they see, your landing page has to be great in all respects. Here are 10 tips to make your landing page great.
1. Make your core business easy to understand
Studies indicate that the first 10 seconds of navigation is the most crucial for majority of users. That is the time frame in which they decide whether to continue checking your site out or they move on. That’s why you need to establish clearly within that time frame what your core business really is all about. When readers know what you do right away, they are more likely to continue exploring your site to see what they can get. To make sure your core business is easy to understand in the first 10 seconds, put a lot of thought into the content that shows up above the fold since that is what visitors first see when they land on the page.
2. Create your landing page through users’ eyes
It would really be great if you can create your landing page by looking at every detail as if you were a user, not the owner of the website or a marketer. That way, you will be able to anticipate any questions or concerns that users might have about your products and services and their key selling points. If you think you’re too close to your work, have somebody else set a fresh pair of eyes on the work that you’re doing.
3. Make a clear design plan
Before actually jumping into content creation for your landing page, you have to put a clear design plan in place first. A landing page that is well-designed tends to be more effective at attracting more visitors.
There are many factors to consider when drawing a design plan for your landing page. For one, you need to decide which elements need to vary per ad group and which ones should be fixed. For another, you should decide about where the call to action should be placed. As for the navigation menu, do you put it both above the fold and in the footer? This is also the time you decide what goes above and below the fold, if you’re going to offer free stuff, and the writing style you would want implemented.
4. Align keywords, ads and landing pages
Your ad campaigns can be cost effective if you have a higher than usual quality score. To boost your quality score and lessen what you have to pay per click to get a given ad rank at the same time, you should align keywords, ads and landing pages. Doing that will also ensure that the user lands on a relevant page, which will make the customer experience better and make the who customer acquisition process simpler.
5. Establish unique selling propositions
It is a fundamental element of sales and marketing to offer something unique so that people will choose a certain product or service over another. Now the question is, what is your business’ unique selling proposition or USP? Do you even have one? If you do, be sure to communicate that clearly to your audience. If you don’t, put your landing page creation on hold and come up with a USP first.
6. Know what to do after acquiring a customer
Let’s say that you have acquired a customer. Now what do you do? Are you just going to make the customer wait, or are you going to give him options that will enhance his brand experience? For always, customers should be guided as to what to do after submitting the lead or buying. Don’t be like some websites that have thank you pages that are devoid of calls to action. When you’ve acquired a customer, you can do things like inviting them to download something that will give them more information about your products and services, or you can use the opportunity to sell complementary stuff.
7. Run content split tests
It makes sense to run tests of several variations of the landing page to see what works better. Tests like this are part of any smart marketing strategy. To help you with such tests, you can always use software that enables you to work out results with just a few clicks.
8. Collect data from incoming visitors
Your optimisation strategy relies heavily on data, and it’s only logical that you take steps to gather them whenever and wherever you can. To track how profitable each click would be, you will have to install all the necessary codes on your site. Any potential problems with the sales funnel can also be spotted when your site is properly set up with those codes. As a marketer, never ever underestimate how valuable data can be. The entire concept of search engine marketing, after all, is built on it.
9. Connect Google Analytics and Google AdWords
Why guess when you can easily determine the value of each keyword for your campaign using Google Analytics and Google AdWords? With these tools, you easily spot and pause any keywords that are generating high bounce rates or low average time on the website.
10. Draw inspiration from landing pages of successful competitors
Now this may sound a bit like “copy the landing page of your competitors”, but that is not what we mean. By drawing inspiration from landing pages of successful competitors, we mean you can take a look at their successful landing page, get some ideas on what they are doing right, and apply them to your own landing page.
A great landing page will always be a work in progress, as well as a continuous learning process. For as long as the website is up, you have to make tweaks here and there to maximise your website’s full potential. Hopefully, these tips to make your landing page great would give you a good start.