The Successful Landing Pages

The Secrets Behind Successful Landing Pages

Generating traffic to your website is great, but it isn’t the ultimate goal. Traffic is only beneficial so far as you convert the visitors into customers. If you utilize email campaigns, pay-per-click advertising, or even if you gain website visitors directly from search engines, you could be losing the opportunity to convert website traffic into customers if you don’t create the right landing pages.

An all too common mistake businesses make is directing earned visitors to the home page. By dropping people off on your home page, it requires the visitors to navigate themselves and you are more likely to suffer from higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.

Using a few key elements, building the right landing page is not only possible but more likely to be successful.

Where to Start

Landing pages are created for the sole purpose of promoting a particular product, service, or offer. These pages are designed to gather information from website visitors by introducing a lead generating form. If done right, a landing page will entice a visitor to fill out the form.
If people are looking for something specific, and you provide a valuable solution, your landing page should reflect this and provide a way for visitors to connect with you.

There are two critical questions you have to ask yourself prior to perfecting a landing page:

1. What do you want visitors to do on your website?
2. How can you ensure visitors do what you want them to do on your website?

Optimized properly, you can subtly tell customers exactly what to do and how to do it.

Getting People to the Page

Sometimes, you need to nail down the basics. First things first for a creating a successful landing page is making certain you take advantage of the title and meta data. The title is displayed in the browser and search results page as the link that goes to your site. Be sure to include keywords in the title. Write your title strategically, and try to include your brand. A lot of specialists recommend leveraging your brand because it can help increase click-through rates.

Writing the meta-description is of equal importance. The meta description provides a brief synopsis of the page and should entice people to go to your page. If you leave this section blank, the search engines will simply pull content from your site that may not be useful. It should also include keywords as well as a clear call to action telling people what to do.

Landing Page Pointers

When people get to your landing page, tell them everything with the headline. The headline of a page has a lot of responsibility. This single line has to capture attention, describe the page, include keywords, and read naturally. Because the headline of the landing page is the first thing visitors see, you want the headline to be straight to the point. A solid headline is a brief statement and should match up with the title of the page. It also happens to be the first thing the search engines index.

The actual content on a landing page should be visually appealing. Huge blocks of text turn visitors away. In an attempt to make your landing page engaging, consider breaking up the page with:

• Lists
• Bullets
• Videos
• Images

The content needs to be long enough to cover the subject at hand, but short enough to maintain interest. Try to be both descriptive and clear, and do not forget to have a call to action.

One of the most important things to optimize on a landing page is the actual lead generating form. The key to a solid form is to determine how much information you need from the audience. If you ask for too much information, you run the risk of getting less leads, but the leads you do secure could be more valuable. If you don’t ask for enough information, you may get more leads, but those leads might be a waste of time. Find a balance for your industry, and test it. A good start is just asking for a name and email address.

Perfecting the Landing Page

When all is said and done, it helps to get an unbiased opinion about your landing page. After you put your hard work in, an outsider’s perspective can help you see if you’ve missed the mark or have perhaps been a little too over promotional. If you want your landing pages to really pay off, a second opinion can help ensure it looks natural for better conversion rates—and that’s what it is really all about.

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