8 ideas for optimising landing pages

Landing pages are often overlooked as an afterthought to a campaign. Yet optimising these elements of your marketing are crucial for reaching and converting your audience.

Here are our top 8 suggestions for creating exceptional landing pages.

1. Simplicity is key

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.

Call to action (CTA) – The finish line of your landing page. Make it visible and eye-catching. 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.

Image – High-quality images that add, not distract, from your text. Cater to the 40% of individuals who respond better to images; choose a design that is attractive to the eye.

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.

Credentials (landing page) – 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. Social presence? Then link to that too. Even better, make your landing page shareable.

This is an excellent example of an effective landing page by airbnb.

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. 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?

Have a look at the contrasting copy below:

The first two examples show clear benefits to the customer. The latter is vague and fails to connect to the target audience.

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Over:

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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.

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. Optimisation is crucial

When it comes to producing the most effective display ads and landing pages, optimisation is essential. 50% of marketers worldwide favour A/B testing as a tool to measure the success of 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.

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’.

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.

Google’s statistics on mobile bounce rates.

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.

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.

8 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.