Best Practices for Landing Page Optimization
Your landing page is your first impression on the visitors. It is the first thing your visitors get to see and interact with on your website, playing a crucial role in impacting the conversion rates.
Let’s understand this with an example. Let’s say a local bakery is looking to attract more visitors via its website. Now, using a beautifully designed and engaging landing page following proper landing page optimization practices with mouth-watering images of the bakery’s special delicacies, along with a clear CTA, the bakery can prompt visitors to visit the store or order online at their convenience. Not only does this drive their traffic, but it boosts their sales.
A well-crafted landing page is not only limited to being an eye candy but does much more than that. It guides your audience to take the desired action. It could be anything, including making a purchase decision, clicking on that sign-up form, or saying yes to your newsletters.
What is a Landing Page?
Before we go deep into the details, let’s first understand what a landing page is. A landing page is a web page designed for a specific purpose. This is where an individual lands once they click on your ad, email marketing campaign, or via some digital platform.
Landing pages are often designed with lead or sign-up forms where the user may need to fill in their contact details. And in return, they get exciting offers or discounts.
How to Create A Landing Page
Now that you know what a landing page is and what its basic purpose is, let’s move on to the next significant step, i.e., creating a landing page. Here is a step-by-step detailed guide on how to create a landing page.
Understand Your Goals And Audience
Before you start making your landing page, it is important to answer a few questions. This includes questions like:
Who is the audience of your landing page?
Why do you want to create a landing page?
What do you need to do to optimize your landing page?
Once you have answers to these questions, you’ll be able to write a compelling copy and make the necessary changes to make your page stand out.
For example, let’s say you need to create a landing page to announce the opening of your new bakery. This is the “Why” of your landing page.
The “Who” of your landing page will be the local foodies.
And the “What” of your landing page can include practices like filling up a sign-up form, or subscribing to your newsletter.
Select The Platform to Create Your Page
Once you are clear about your goal and your audience, the next step of how to make your landing page guide is choosing a suitable platform.
Here is how you can choose the best platform for your landing page creation:
See if the platform is easy to use and customize.
It should have a good collection of landing page templates. These templates should be easy to iterate, so you don’t have to start afresh every time.
Allows you to add customized CTAs.
Should have some kind of analytical tool to measure the performance.
Customize Your Design
The next step in creating your landing page is customizing your design. This design should match your brand’s offerings and tonality. Selecting a design includes everything, ranging from colors to fonts and images. Here is how you design a landing page with the best optimization.
Consider adding an image just below the header of the website. This gives your audience a clear idea of your offerings.
Consider using product images to tell a story on how the audience can gain something from your offers.
Consider adding real pictures of your product being used, or its uses, to make the ad more personal and relatable.
Balance your color palette to give a perfect mix of neutral and bright shades to make your design look more catchy.
The images on your landing pages must be optimized for web loading speed.
Compelling Copy to Stand Out
Once you’re done customizing your landing page, now is the time to add some real content.
Draft a landing page structure. This shall include a header, a tagline, an appealing copy, some images, and a Call to Action.
Compelling copies are important as they guide the audience on what you need them to do.
You may leverage AI to help you with a rough draft. Make suitable adjustments to it following your brand’s image and tonality. And here you go, you have a compelling copy for your landing page, that too, with much ease and convenience.
Catchy CTA to Make The Difference
Once you have added visual elements to your page, and have informed your audience on how your product benefits them, it’s time to add a CTA.
This is an important element to ensure conversion from your page. Use color contrasts to make your CTA more visible.
Make Your CTA clear and concise. Use verbs indicating the action to be taken. For example, BUY NOW, DOWNLOAD, SUBSCRIBE.
Add a Form If Necessary
In case you feel the CTA alone is not enough for your landing page, consider adding a form. Adding a form can be a reliable option for landing pages that cater to varied audiences.
However, when you’re adding a form, only ask for the information that you need. For example, if you need just the name and contact of your visitors, simply ask for those. Don’t make your forms lengthy by adding irrelevant details like their job, company, and more when the same is not required. This may lead the audience to lose interest.
Final Check And Testing
Woohoo! Your landing page is ready to cater to new visitors.
But wait! It’s time to run a final check. This check is an important step to ensure everything is working the way it was supposed to.
Make sure your copy is free of all kinds of grammatical errors, looks catchy, and is appealing.
Cross-check the design of your page to see if everything looks structured and organized.
Check whether you have added a CTA.
Once you’re done confirming everything, you’re ready to launch.
Regular Monitoring Is The Key
Launching your page might look like the work is done. But is it? Well, not really.
Once you publish your landing page, don’t just forget it. Instead, try testing and monitoring it. You can use A/B testing for the same. Try monitoring your forms, CTA, and headings, and keep making adjustments based on their performance.
What Makes a Landing Page Important?
One may wonder what makes a landing page different. Like why do you need a landing page? Why not simply use your home page?
Well, the answer is simple. The landing page helps you cut off those extra distractions on other pages. The audience needs not to navigate several links and options; rather, your specific service enjoys all the attention. Thus, indicating the importance of landing page optimization.
According to a study by Voog, landing pages help with a conversion rate of around 5. 89%. Another study by Unbounce experimented on 44,000 landing pages and 33 million conversions, concluding a median conversion rate of 4.3% for all industries.
Best Practices for Your Landing Page
Now that you know how to make a landing page and what significant impact it has on your conversion rate, it’s time to delve deeper.
Here is a list of landing page best practices.
Your Headline is Your Hook
Create a direct and catchy headline. It should be direct and not boring. The same can repeal visitors in just a few seconds on your website.
Add Visuals Images for Better Attention
Add images, maybe the real-life ones, to explain your offer. This makes your offer look more exciting.
Make that Lead Form Accessible
Ensure your lead form is readily accessible. And the audience does not need to search them the hard way. Use a scrolling option or an anchor link for better accessibility of your form.
Add Relevant Offers
Your landing page may ask for the visitor’s contact information. Now to share the same, you need to offer something in exchange. This should be something relevant to your business and appealing to your audience at the same time.
Avoid Adding Navigations
Avoid Adding too many navigations to your landing pages. Do not add internal links and more, as the same may divide your visitor’s attention and leave them confused about the desired action needed to be taken.
Don’t Ask Too Much
Your lead forms should be designed precisely, asking only that much that is necessary. Asking too many irrelevant questions may stand as a barrier between your audience and you.
Build a Responsive Page
Always make sure your page is responsive. It runs on mobile devices and other screens. This opens the opportunity for your business to convert as many leads as possible.
Use Search Optimization
Your emails, social posts, and other advertisements can help you draw visitors. But so can google search.
Make sure your page is optimized with suitable keywords. This ensures anytime someone searches for a specific phrase that matches your business, your landing page gets to appear on the list.
Add a Thankyou Page
Once your visitor has successfully signed up, don’t forget to thank them properly. Use a distinct thank you page to showcase your gratitude. Not only does it make you look credible and trustworthy, but it instantly builds a connection with your customers.
Final Word
Landing pages are crucial to gain new leads. With a landing page’s best optimization practices, you can make suitable changes, additions, and subtractions to ensure your landing page improves and offers better conversion every coming day.
At Small Biz Marketing, we believe in identifying your unique energy and style to best help you with marketing optimization practices. Here is how we do it:
Our collaboration starts with knowing your business and market goals.
We move ahead with knowing your customers, their demographics, and their persona.
We reflect on your USP.
We go deep into understanding your competitors, their strengths, and their weaknesses.
We tap into your offers, prices, and discounts for better customer engagement.
We tap into all available marketing options for you.
We sum it up with proper planning and execution using suitable resources and automation.
Get more information at info@smallbizmarketing.com
