Landing pages come at a crucial stage of a buyer’s journey. This is where you get to shine and convert your visitors into leads and, eventually, increase your sales.
If your main goal is to sell more of your products or services (and it most probably is), you need to know that landing pages are incredibly important. They increase conversions, generate leads, and help you learn demographic information about your customers.
And while there is no one-size-fits-all guide to creating a high-converting landing page, the following tips will help you learn about the necessary elements of a landing page, both for websites and mobile apps.
Headlines
The first question you should ask yourself is: What does your landing page say and how does it convey the message?
That is why an effective headline, such as the one on this Shopify landing page, is invaluable. To convert as many visitors as possible, choose from the following types of headlines.
Testimonial
There is no better way to say something positive about yourself than to quote someone else’s words. In marketing, testimonials are a great risk-reversal since they increase the credibility of a claim made by an independent third party that praises your product or service.
Example: XYZ helped us increase our conversions by 247%.
Cliffhanger
Human attention span is only becoming shorter, so you need to use the words that reveal just enough to grab someone’s attention yet leave the real deal for after they have clicked the CTA button. That’s where cliffhangers do a great job.
Example: This tip will make your worst nightmare go away.
Value proposition
Your product or service should solve someone’s problem and improve their life. To convey this message, use a value proposition to offer something unique and highly desirable to your customers.
Example: Cost-effective and winning marketing services
Listicle
People love lists because:
1. they know exactly what they are getting 2. lists are easy to scan 3. lists feel definitive
Whether you are offering a cheat sheet or an e-book link magnet, create a headline that includes numbers and indicates that a list will follow.
Example: 5 tips that will change your parenting skills
How to
‘How to’ phrase is among the most popular phrases used in headlines. When you show people how to do something, they value your effort and are more likely to convert.
Example: How to grow your business online
Design
Even though the copy on your landing page is essential, landing page optimization doesn’t end there. We are all visual creatures and we are becoming more and more demanding when it comes to how good something looks, especially if we find ourselves in a customer’s role.
Therefore, creating a visually appealing landing page, like this one by Blue Apron, is a must. For better success in this quest, you can try using WordPress themes that will increase your conversions.
Apart from using visually appealing themes, here are some additional tips for landing page design.
Color contrast
Your call-to-action needs to be prominent so that your visitors clearly see where they should complete the action. Therefore, you need to make sure that you use contrasting colors in order to make your CTA button stand out from the rest of the page.
Logo
A landing page should include your brand logo. This lets the viewer know exactly where they are. While your logo doesn’t necessarily have to be in the center of your landing page, it definitely has to be easily noticeable, especially for visitors who come to your page from external non-branded sources.
Keep it simple
If you include too many images or other visual elements, you will distract your visitors and turn them away. Moreover, excessive use of graphics can increase your webpage load time, which will also result in loss of conversions.
Always format
Formatting is one of the best things you can do when creating an attractive landing page, and if you use landing page plugins, you can easily become a master at it. The practice of formatting helps you highlight the value of your offer and create a great visual user experience that will help your visitors convert.
Formatting includes clearly laying out your headlines, images and videos, copy, form, and all other elements of your landing page.
Use great visuals
High-converting landing pages almost always have quality visual content. As the matter of fact, according to a study, our brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text. This is more than a good enough reason to place high-quality images and videos on your landing page.
Images
To make your landing page visually attractive (see the H.BLOOM example), your images should be:
– large – high-quality – relevant to your product or service – attention-grabbing
Videos
According to a study by Cisco, video content will make up 80 percent of global internet traffic by 2020. Moreover, YouTube is already the second most popular search engine, right after Google.
With this in mind, including a sales pitch video is a very good idea if you want to capture more leads. Your video doesn’t necessarily have to be too long – about 30 seconds to two minutes is all you need.
Your video should:
– grab people’s attention right away – describe everything clearly and logically – contain the same elements as your landing page (headline, subheadline, explanation, contact method, CTA, etc.)
You can also place your landing page on YouTube, which is a very clever marketing strategy.
Motivate your visitors
Finally, all the elements mentioned above are sometimes simply not enough if you fail to motivate your audience to convert. Here, you can use a couple of proven marketing tricks:
– social proof – scarcity and urgency
Social proof
When you display the number of likes, shares, success stories, and other social proof, your visitors are much more likely to convert.
This landing page by Salesforce clearly shows that their product has generated 44 percent more leads for their clients.
Social proof displayed this way shows potential customers that your product or service is the real deal. When people know you have already helped someone and they can measure it, they are much closer to clicking that CTA button and convert.
Scarcity and urgency
This is a well-known psychological trick that you can use to encourage your visitors to convert. When something is limited edition or will soon be sold out, people are more likely to buy it because they feel they will miss out on something.
When you tell people that your product is soon to be sold out, not only does it mean that you sell a lot of products but also that they need to take action fast because if they don’t, the product will sell out.
With that in mind, you can use real-time quantity updates on your landing page to motivate people to buy now. Remember, you are not lying, you are just using a psychological trick.
Final words ‒ always test
These are some of the most effective tips for creating a landing page that converts. When you start implementing them, you will see what works and what doesn’t.
For this reason, it is important to constantly test your landing pages and modify them in order to get the most out of them and increase your conversion rate.
