5 Essential Elements to Create a High Converting Landing Page
Creating a landing page that converts is not rocket science, but it surely requires some know-how and a suitable approach.
Get ready for 5 essential elements that should result in a highly-effective landing page.
Learning to Fly – first steps in landing pages
Us and Them – target audience
Money – value proposition
Lost for Words – content marketing
Shine on You Crazy Diamond – optimization
The Final Cut – conclusion
Sounds good? Let’s dive in.
The process of creating a landing page is the process of constant learning. But before you even begin, you should form a clear purpose for a landing page in your head. Setting the goal upfront should be the very first step if you want to create the best landing page you can.
The majority of landing pages have a specified, single goal. Only this way you can be sure what strategy you should choose to make your marketing campaign run smooth. Straight-forward goal means easy decisions for your visitors.
The majority of landing pages have a specified, single goal. Only this way you can be sure what strategy you should choose to make your marketing campaign run smooth. Straight-forward goal means easy decisions for your visitors. Click To TweetAvoid distraction at all costs – it can cause your conversions to nose-dive. The reason for that is pretty simple: people have plenty of other things to do. You have to keep winning them over. Creating a landing page with a simple goal increases your chances to keep users focused on what you want to say.
A short CTA above the button carries a clear message (Source: Dollar Shave Club)
Let’s say you decide to give it a shot and try to achieve two goals with one landing page anyway. There’s a “sell product” goal and “sign up for event” goal. There are two buttons. And there will be a confused visitor in the middle of it, not knowing what to do next. Chances are, he or she will simply… leave your website. And your job is to marginalize the room for error.
After setting a goal there’s still some questions left, one of them being “Who are you reaching to?”. Digital marketing is all about sending the right message to the right people.
Your visitors need value fit for their profile. If you’re selling IT solutions for corporate clients, you have to create communicate with your audience in a specific way. The same works with mothers, charity groups, medical facilities and so on. You’ve got to specify your target audience, and then proceed to choosing the value and creating content for your landing page.
Easier said than done. To prepare communication for a target audience you have to learn something about them. A lot, to be honest. And there’s no easier way to learn, than by talking to them or at least asking questions. You’ve got to find a way to reach your target – via e-mail, Facebook group, Instagram profile or Twitter feed. Listen, ask questions and focus on learning.
Before you get any revenue from your landing pages and marketing campaigns, there’s something you have to give to your visitors. It’s called value and it comes in various forms, not necessarily as something given away for free. Of course, freebies (case studies, checklists, guides and so on) are still a thing, but people don’t lose their minds for them. What they strive for is getting their problems solved.
Quit bragging about how your product, service or job offer changes the world or shapes the reality around us. Abandon all this worthless entourage and focus on what problems you can solve for your future customers.
Simple information about benefits can be a tie-breaker (Source: Amazon Prime)
You need to promise them something. But beware of broken promises – it’s the most horrible thing you can do to a potential customer! If they entrust you with their personal data and you’ll let them down… be sure they’ll never buy anything from you and they’ll never trust you again.
In a few words: promise real value and deliver on it. Only this way will make it work.
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Conversions don’t sprout up out of nowhere – if you want to get them, you need to convince visitors to take desired actions. You can achieve it by communicating with them through content marketing.
You’ve probably heard that content is king and stuff. I can’t help feeling that this phrase has been devalued over last few years. I think content can be king is a bit more precise, as it encourages people to do their best while writing.
Creating content may seem easy, but creating a good one takes time and requires some skills. It has to be entertaining, concrete, convincing and correct. Speaking of which – once you’ve done, check out Grammarly for quick proofreading, but do not trust it blindly, especially on commas and punctuation in general.
Ok, let’s head on to writing at last. Start with an eye-catching headline, but avoid creating a clickbait – it’s no good unless you’ve got some serious reason to do so (i.e. specific target audience). Deliver the message in a few words, like here:
A short, incentive headline encourages to take a closer look (Source: Heineken)
Once again: it’s so nice to say “start with great headline”, but coming up with one can be tricky. Luckily, there are some tools that can make it much easier or at least serve as an inspiration. One of my most favourite ones is AnswerThePublic. Just type in your main keyword and receive tons of propositions to look at:
Dozens of inspirations on AnswerThePublic are the result of simply typing the phrase
This tool, as you can tell, is designed for blog post titles, but you can try to build your perfect headline around them – do your best to remain original despite being under the impression, that “everything has already been invented”. It may be hard to believe, but there’s still a niche to fill with your headline (and your landing page).
Moving on, don’t forget about Call to Action. It’s a small piece of text that works as the last frontier between user and conversion. All those buttons with “Buy now” or “Learn more” on them are trying to convince visitors to convert by taking a desired action – mostly filling and sending the form.
CTA can be placed directly on the button or right above it (Source: Duracell)
There’s nothing wrong with experiments, though. Has anyone ever said that CTAs have to be two words long? Make it longer, funnier, more emotional, if you like. There’s only one rule I strongly recommend for you to follow: verify it afterwards. I’ll say a word about it next.
Every landing page you create is yet to shine, and in order to achieve it, you have to work on it a little. In most cases that means a lot of testing. If you haven’t heard about A/B Testing yet, now is the time to do some catching up!
Every landing page you create is yet to shine, and in order to achieve it, you have to work on it a little. In most cases that means a lot of testing. If you haven't heard about A/B Testing yet, now is the time to do some catching up! Click To TweetOptimizing your landing pages means much more than just testing its elements and choosing the better-converting ones. Have you ever heard of attention span? It’s an ability to focus 100% on one thing for a specific time. The thing is, it’s getting shorter and shorter. In a world full of opportunities, distractors and memes we can’t remain focused for longer than a couple seconds. This is why your landing page has to be lightweight.
Images, videos, sliders, and animations – all this stuff (usually) looks great, but it can be really challenging for your hosting. Try to keep balance between visual fireworks and loading speed of your landing page. No one will wait longer than 5 seconds for your website to load. An overweight landing page will make your conversions a will-o’-the-wisp and nothing more.
Working on a perfect landing page is a journey, not a day trip, but in the end it’s worth it. Everything you’ll learn while creating your first and every next landing page will bear fruit in the future, allowing you to build better and better ones.
Remember that there’s no such thing as a perfect landing page, though there are lots of great examples out there. You can always improve something to increase conversion. Be prepared for changes that may not result in a way you want them to. Sometimes you’ll just need a quick rollback.
Keep it simple – cut off all the elements that aren’t necessary. You can include detailed information somewhere further in the sales process. Treat landing page as a teaser of your product or service. Trying to squeeze too much information into a landing page can be repulsive for your visitors.
Run a quick check before publication – it’s a good practice that can help you eliminate minor errors. Use Landingi pre-launch checklist to see, if there’s anything left to do!
And a final words: to create a high converting landing page, focus on problems to solve, not a product to sell.
If you would like to see specific details on creating an ecommerce landing page – we’ve got a post on that here: The How and Why of Ecommerce Landing Pages: 15 Optimization Tips and 10 Design Examples
Sylwester Karnuszewicz is a Content Management Specialist at Landingi.com. As he says, he makes a living with words. Follow him on Linked.in
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