Designing Landing Pages that Convert

Landing pages are made with the purpose of making the page visitors perform a specific action that gets them into the sales funnel. The action can vary from downloading information to completing contact forms to making actual purchases. Regardless of the desired type of engagement, landing pages play a pivotal role in digital advertising. You can have the most eye-catching ads that drive tons of traffic but if the associated landing pages are confusing and vague there isn’t much chance to convert those visitors into leads.

Here are the 7 must-dos while designing landing pages.

1.          Put your best foot forward: Curiosity is one of the main factors that bring in visitors to a landing page but they are probably wary of going further and must be convinced. That’s why landing pages should be built to gently unveil the best deals with the visitors, extend their stay by showing glimpses of your coolest inventory and coaxing them to buy or at least leave their contact details so your team can follow up.

2.          Ensure consistent messaging: Landing pages need to be designed to integrate with the content of campaigns. If visitors are lured by your communications and then see different offers, they will feel disoriented at best and cheated at worse. In fact, this could turn people off your brand completely. You should also keep in mind that sharing too little information can be dangerous. Include all the relevant facts.

3.          Write clear and concise headlines: The headlines are the first thing noticed by the visitors to landing pages. Focus on making them interesting and understandable instead of long, boring or confusing. Get to the point quickly without beating around the bush and use as few words as possible to explain the offers, what the customers get from them and how they benefit.

4.          Sell one thing at a time: A landing page that offers multiple deals could lead to more confusion than conversion. So the best approach is to keep things simple for consumers and design multiple landing pages where each concentrates on a particular client segment, product category or service and has only one main deal. This way, you will hold the attention of visitors.

5.          Make the call to action loud and clear: Once the deal is understood by visitors, they look for the next steps in the process. Vaguely written calls to action or those that are hard to find on the page make it difficult for users to complete the process and are a major factor in page abandonment.

6.         Share positive feedback: Customer testimonials are proven drivers of sales. According to statistics from Econsultancy: 61% of customers read online reviews before making purchase decisions. They can speed up the sales process by eliminating doubts potential customers have about products, reinforce positive attributes and can contribute to the selection of products.

7.          Create different landing pages for mobile users: Mobile landing pages have to follow all these tips, as well as accommodate the restrictions of screen size and bandwidth of mobile handsets. This means streamlining the options and limiting the messages to fit screens without looking cramped. Keep forms simple with no more than four input fields. Designs that are finger-friendly definitely earn brownie point from consumers, so bigger buttons and easier navigation are important. Last, but definitely not least, landing pages should open up quickly on all mobile devices and in the lowest bandwidth zones. Visitors will quickly move onto competitive sites if pages take too long to load.

Have you designed any campaign-specific landing pages? What advice do you have to ensure they increase conversions and sales?