Your landing page should always be at the forefront of your mind despite being the final step to your advertising campaign. Yet producing a landing page that converts can sometimes be a challenge.
In fact, there are many pitfalls you should avoid when creating the ideal page. But never fear, we’re here to offer you advice on how to optimise your landing page with 7 simple steps.
Conversion is easy when you follow these essential rules.
1. Simplicity
Producing an effective landing page doesn’t have to be rocket science. It’s simply a matter of including key elements and executing them well. Now HBICC isn’t the catchiest of acronyms but it is an easy formula for ensuring performance. Each one is a building block on the way to creating a successfully converting campaign. But what does HBICC stand for you ask?
Headline – Make sure your heading matches your advert and is concise. The message of your advert and headline shouldn’t differ too much. Disparity between the two will confuse visitors to your site.
Brief description – The emphasis is on brief here. Perhaps you need to rethink your offer if you can’t describe its benefits succinctly. For more premium products these lessons still apply. A series of short, sharp, and value-centric points should convey your message clearly.
Image – High-quality images that add, not distract, from your landing page text. Cater to the 40% of individuals who respond better to images; choose a design that is attractive to the eye.
Credentials – If you are a new brand to the consumer than it can help to present some credentials. If you’re certified or have won awards, then show them. If you have a social presence, then link to that too. Even better, make your landing page shareable.
Call to action (CTA) – The finish line of your landing page. Make it visible and eye-catching. A big flag and free champagne would be nice, but we suggest at the very least you make it visible with bright colours. The same goes for language, ‘submit’ is unimaginative and uninspiring. Be creative with your CTA text.
2. Tailor your page to your offer
Research suggests the more landing pages you have the more likely you are to convert. Tailor and scale your landing page so there is a clear narrative for your customer to follow. They will fail to see the correlation between your advert and your offer if you use standardised landing pages for each campaign.
Even better, remove navigation to other areas of the site from your landing pages. Focus on making your landing page convert. Think of your landing page as your in-store checkout desk. Don’t mask the end goal with flashy images or tuck it away behind other signage.
3. Deliver value
As with any marketing campaign, there should be a clear target group for each landing page. Consider the offer that you have on your landing page. Is it clear what your potential customer will gain from your offer? The lessons you learnt as a fledgeling marketer regarding campaign copy still applies for landing pages.
Have a look at the contrasting copy below:
The first two examples show clear benefits to the customer and uses targeted language for personalised copy. Whereas the latter is vague and fails to connect to the target audience.
- Bannerflow can reduce your banner ad production time from 10 weeks to 2 days.
- Reduce your display advertising production time by up to 95%
Over:
- Display advertising is cheaper with Bannerflow’s CMP.
- Bannerflow can increase productivity.
There is a clear difference in the language. The text should expand what was in the headline and be clear on the value you are delivering to the customer.
Consider the length of the copy on your landing page too. It depends on the product you are offering. For instance, if you are offering a technical product at high cost then a comprehensive list of benefits will do more to convince consumers.
4. Don’t ask for the world on your form
Even Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t like sharing too much personal information. Consider the product you offer and the amount of information you actually NEED. It may be interesting to know what your customer had for breakfast but it’s certainly not necessary.
A form that is too invasive is immediately off-putting to potential customers. Remember, we need to reduce the number of barriers to the finish line as much as possible. Depending on your product, you may only need an email address.
5. Optimise your landing page
Creating a great landing page is half the fun. When it comes to producing the most effective landing page, optimisation is essential. 50% of marketers worldwide favour A/B testing as a tool to measure the success of campaigns.
With optimisation of your landing pages you can increase the conversion of this campaign and for all future campaigns. Learning what resonates with customers is the key to conversion.
Through A/B testing you can choose how to weight your campaigns and which variant to test. We recommend you always test and optimise the header, value proposition, imagery, form, and CTA of your pages. Once your campaigns are up and running, track your landing page successes and failures through tags and make your amendments.
Vary from the smallest detail to completely new design. All this is easy when you have the technology to do so.
6. Build landing pages that work across devices
Have you considered how long your landing page takes to load on mobile? In the words of Bannerflow Product Manager, Fredrik Lindberg, ‘optimising from mobile to desktop is crucial for your campaign and is something everyone should be doing’. He’s right. Scale your landing pages for all devices to ensure conversion across channels.
According to Google, 53% of visitors to a mobile site leave after 3 seconds if the page fails to load. Even more astonishing, over 70% of landing pages online take over 7 seconds to load above the fold. Beautiful landing pages are worthless if no one sticks around to see them. Don’t make the same mistake with your own campaign.
Best practice dictates that your landing page should weigh no more than 500kb. Set your weight ‘budget’ before you settle on your design. And make sure you test across channel before you launch.
7. Tack så mycket! Remember to say thank you!
Saying thanks can be a nice touch and it’s essential for your landing page. No matter where you’re from, everyone appreciates a thank you. Make your landing page no different. After a customer has completed your form, a pop up saying thanks, or a page saying thank you goes a long way.
You can also use it as an analytical aid. The typical bounce rate for a landing page is around 70 to 90%. Create a separate navigation for the landing page if you want to reduce bounce rate and have a more accurate picture of page views.
Bonus tips!
Testing, Testing…123
As with any campaign, make sure to test your landing page before it goes live. Share with colleagues across a range of formats to see how it appears on all devices. If you have a multinational business then you should coordinate with your translators too. From mobile to desktop, from Finnish to Swahili, with a cloud-based tool, it’s easy to collaborate with your team.
URL building with your landing page
Lastly, don’t forget your URL. An over complicated or confusing URL will detract from the quality and trust that a viewer has in your page. If someone thinks your URL looks like spam they’re unlikely to complete your CTA. This is particularly important if you are using subdomains hosted by third parties.
Conclusion
There you have it, 7 simple steps (and a few extra) for creating your most effective landing pages. Keeping it simple and always focusing on the customer is the secret to success. In fact, the takeaways are not much different than best practices for online display. With a creative management platform you can create the perfect landing page and campaign with ease.
Creating optimised landing pages can be easy with the right tools. And if you apply these tips then your conversion rates will reflect this.
We’ve created a video to show how building landing pages with Bannerflow works.
Want to know more about how our landing page builder works? Get in contact with us.
