It doesn’t matter how unique your offers are or how optimised your PPC ads may be; if you don’t have a good landing page, you're not going to reap the customer conversion rewards. To smash your PPC ad goals your landing page needs to be flawless. To create the best landing page, you need three things: strong copywriting abilities, creative prowess and expert UX experience.
Before diving into the tips you can use to create a pretty neat landing page, you first need to understand what a landing page is: basically, a landing page is a webpage where visitors ‘land’ after clicking on one of your ads. The highest converting landing pages will have one focus: convince your target audience to hit the call-to-action. For this to happen, your landing page needs to be persuasive, attention-grabbing and provide the user with a positive experience.
I know we’ve made it sound simple, but crafting super-effective landing pages is an art that mixes creativity and social sciences, which is not easy to get right. To get you started on the right track, here are some tips you can use to create an excellent landing page:
Keep it clean and organised
The overall structure of your landing page design will significantly impact its effectiveness and how well it drives conversions. Your landing page’s primary focus should be to make it as simple as possible for a user to convert to a customer. It’s crucial that all the elements of your landing page work towards making higher conversions, whether it’s filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or downloading an ebook.
Think about the flow of the page - imagine you’ve just clicked on your ad and have landed on your page; what do you first expect to see? Ensure the branding is lined up with your brand and the PPC ads. If it’s drastically different, people may not trust the landing page, and you’ll lose potential conversions.
Keep it simple
A good landing page has a simple layout with all the navigation buttons clearly defined and in an appropriate place. It’s best to remove all distractions, like pop-ups or distracting imagery. To make an effective landing page, you need to create one that provides all the information required to push visitors to convert. There’s no need to put too much information as that might overwhelm visitors. It’s best to keep it simple and display only the necessary information to guide users down the funnel. The information you choose to put in your design should be easily scannable, making it easy to read and follow.
Let the titles do the talking
You know you have a firm offer (because they’ve clicked your ad), and now you have their attention - so don’t lose it. Keep your heading clear and concise, and try to sum up your offer and its value in the subheading. For example:
Heading: ‘Free Instagram Marketing Ebook’
Subheading: ‘Grow your Instagram audience and increase engagements – fast!’
It isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Some landing pages push the value proposition to the main headline, with the sub-heading showing the actual offer. Remember, you only have about 8 seconds to convince visitors that your offer is worth pursuing. It’s absolutely essential that your headings and subheadings are clear and convincing.
Flex your trust signals
Trust signals are a way for visitors to know whether your brand is trustworthy, so you should make sure your landing pages make use of them. They can come in many forms.
- Testimonials: They are a classic form of trust signals. You can reassure your visitors through written endorsements from past clients or customers. You can also do this with “Like” counters, which is a more subtle form of endorsement as you get to see the number of likes you get from various social media sites.
- Trust Badges: This is another powerful trust signal that you can use to create an effective landing page. Trust badges usually refer to logos of well-known brands that you’ve worked with before. They can also include specific endorsements and recognitions that you’ve received, groups and coalitions you are a member of, etc. They both serve as proof of your trustworthiness and skill.
Make it mobile-friendly
Since everyone is on their phone nowadays, it’s an absolute must to have your landing page be easily navigated on mobile devices. Around 30% of all web activity comes from mobile, so it’s crucial to ensure your page is mobile-friendly. If your landing page looks great on mobile devices, visitors will be more likely to stay on the page and close a deal. The page needs to be easy to navigate, load quickly, and be ultra clickable.
Use Short Forms
No, not LOL or OMG. As an online marketer, you need to collect as much data as possible when a visitor comes to your site. However, when it’s about a good landing page, the saying less is more has never been truer. It’s essential to make sure your users fill out only the absolute necessary forms. The more form fields you ask a user to enter, the fewer chances you have of them completing the desired conversion. If you need a form to make the conversion, it’s advised to only ask for the essentials. Don’t worry; you can always ask for more information later on once you’ve closed the deal.
You don’t need all their details in the initial conversation, just a few to get the ball rolling. Most users don’t mind providing their name and email address, but if you start asking for phone numbers or their date of birth, it can lead to your drop off rate skyrocketing to 50%. Stay far away from those form fields.
Customise for individual audiences
Let’s say you have a great offer available on your online store, and you have been promoting it well. Since you’re likely getting traffic from different sources, try to customise your landing pages for the various audiences that land there. You need to account that users who arrive at your landing page from social media posts would be pretty different from users who come from a PPC ad or your monthly newsletter.
Match the copy to your PPC ads
Speaking about PPC ads, you also need to make sure the content on your landing pages matches the keywords and text you used in the PPC ads. When you repeat the same language and key phrases, you reassure users that they’re on the right path and not on some scam site. It also shows that your website and ads are consistent.
It’s imperative to provide users with the information that they are looking for. If a visitor clicks a PPC ad about chairs, you shouldn’t direct them to a furniture store. You need to bring them to their desired destination; otherwise, you risk them hitting the back button and leaving your page, increasing the bounce rate. Once you match the user’s needs, you’ll start seeing more conversions happening.
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3
Testing and landing page optimisation are your best friends! The last and final hallmark of a remarkable landing page is to test the waters. You can’t create a landing page with the hopes that it’ll increase conversions. You need to test out what elements of the landing page are working and what aren’t. After considerable research, you need to change or remove the parts that are doing poorly. Testing and tracking results are the best ways to gauge how well your landing page is doing.
An effective landing page can mean the difference between acquiring loyal customers or increasing bounce rate. It doesn’t have to be over-the-top or loaded with information. A simple header with a small explanation will do the trick if you also include bold CTA buttons. Make sure your PPC ads have the same content and text as your landing pages, as you don’t want to confuse visitors by having a different layout or font. And remember - test, test, test! You won’t know how good your landing is doing unless you put it to the test.
